arethinn: photo of a fox looking interested in something (curious interested (fox))
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/03/for-the-first-time-an-irish-nationalist-will-lead-northern-irelands-government/
Sinn Fein Vice President Michelle O’Neill was named first minister in the government that under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday peace accord shares power equally between Northern Ireland’s two main communities — British unionists who want to stay in the U.K., and Irish nationalists who seek to unite with Ireland. [...]

“This is a historic day which represents a new dawn,” O’Neill said. [...]

O’Neill will share power with deputy first minister Emma Little-Pengelly from the Democratic Unionist Party. The two will be equals, but O’Neill, whose party captured more seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly in the 2022 elections, will hold the more prestigious title.


The post subject refers to this, if anyone reading this doesn't know:
arethinn: Doctor McCoy with text "die in a fire" (angry (mccoy DIAF))
(argh, apparently DW sanitizes a Tumblr embed down to just the link. That would have been easier than constructing this by hand. oh well.)

https://logan-galbraith.tumblr.com/post/712873216595591168/weve-got-a-problem-here-i-know-most-people-here:
j-thealchemist:
Here is a link to the US Restrict Act (commonly known as the TikTok ban) as it is currently written.

Please read the actual bill and share even if you do not live in the United States. The precedents this piece of legislation would set would have far reaching impacts on how the internet is used for everyone in the future.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686/text

We’ve got a problem here. I know most people here probably hate tiktok, and for some good reasons, but believe it or not there’s actually a good amount of good on tiktok too.

But this isn’t about banning tiktok. That’s just a cover for this, given power thanks to Meta (Facebook) lobbyists pretty much paying the United States Government.

For the tldr: This act, while saying it’s to insure American’s personal information will be safe from foreign powers, it goes much deeper than that.
  • It will give the United States Government the power to remove and ban ANY online service they deem “a security risk” while making it so they do not need just cause and do not need to clarify or release a public statement

  • It allows them the power to gather American’s data without our knowledge or consent and even force us to submit documentation for anything they wish.

  • It protects the government from scrutiny on this, and if you try to speak about it and inform people on what it ACTUALLY allows, they can claim it to be false information and charge you.

  • It prevents you from using a VPN as it’s seen as a breach of information security, thus they can charge you.

  • Failure to abide by these “guidelines” can lead to a fine up to ONE MILLION DOLLARS and/or 20 YEARS in prison.

  • And above all it does NOTHING to prevent AMERICAN companies from collecting and selling your data.

And that’s not even everything it does. This isn’t about banning tiktok. It’s about control, taking away our freedom of speech, censorship, and selfish monetary gain. This doesn’t just affect tiktok users. This affects ALL Americans, small businesses, communities, and even those that use American online products, like Tumblr.

The US is turning into a fascist regime, where they are slowly but surely stripping away our rights and freedoms even more than they already have. And it terrifies me.

If you’re not an American, please share this. We already have a hard enough time knowing what goes on with those in other countries. This could make it all the more difficult.

And if you are an American, share this, then contact your state representative and your state senators. Email, phone, even mailing a physical letter for crying out loud. You can search “who is my representative and senators?” on Google, bing, duck-duck-go, or whatever, and it’ll take you to where you can find that out and even how to contact them.

Calmly and professionally tell them that not only do you NOT support the TikTok ban(since that is the cover they are using), but you DO NOT support the Restrict Act.

And let them know that if this bill is to pass, you will be spending all your time and energy supporting their opponents in the PRIMARIES. They do not expect Americans to contact them about this, so not only will they see us going out of our way to contact them, but by saying you’ll be supporting their OPPONENTS, they’ll have to either listen or have to spend thousands of not millions of dollars in campaigning so they don’t lose their nice day paychecks, and to them this is all about money so it’ll hit them where it hurts.

It doesn’t matter what political party you’re on, because BOTH parties in office want this. This is not about sides. This is about the ENTIRE government stripping our rights away so they can keep lining their own pockets.
arethinn: text "You always a wiseass? No, sometimes I'm asleep." on blue-grey background (humor sarcasm (wiseass))
Kijyata: 2 GOP members on the floor. Both named Cheney.
Arethinn: Liz and...?
Kijyata: Her dad joined her to be like "wtf happened to my party?"
Arethinn: ... Dick Cheney is alive?
Arethinn: i mean. "alive"
Kijyata: Well, walking at least.
arethinn: glowing green spiral (campbell (excited))
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the United States economy into an economic crisis. Across the country, more than 10 million Americans are unemployed, 14 million renters are behind on payments, and 29 million adults – and at least 8 million children – are struggling with food insecurity. Because of pervasive systemic racism and inequality in our economy, the burdens of this economic crisis are hitting communities of color and other underserved families hardest. One in ten Black workers and one in eleven Latino workers are unemployed. Navigating through the current crisis and emerging stronger requires immediate action to provide equitable economic relief to working families everywhere.
... whitehouse.gov, people. whitehouse.gov. Can you fucking believe this? (I mean that in a positive way.)
arethinn: Alice in Wonderland upside down (weird (alice upside down))
Yesterday [personal profile] enotsola read out something to me from Twitter that referred to "President Biden" and after a moment's disorientation I was just like,



Can I stop asking for a damage report every single morning now? Not saying there's nothing left to be done - it's very much "now the real work begins". But can we have terrible things maybe only once a week?
arethinn: Jon Stewart with text "WTF!" (wtf (jon stewart))
Sen. Feinstein draws criticism after hugging Sen. Graham

WHAT THE ACTUAL. And even besides the whole "um... you have got a pretty outdated picture of the dignity of the Senate or some such blah blah blah in your head, haven't you, lady?" and "Lindsey Graham does not deserve kudos for this" things, why in the chicken-fried hell would you get in close physical contact like that in a pandemic?!

Of course, DiFi was just re-elected in 2018 so she's not up again until 2024, at which point she'd be 93 -- not that it stopped Strom Thurmond, behind whom she'd become #2 oldest if elected again (she would be about 93 and 7 months when she took office), or Chuck Grassley for that matter (he's only about 3 months younger than Feinstein).
arethinn: Purple and pink cartoon Cheshire Cat, grinning (crazysauce (cheshire cat))
Sooo... howzabout all those people who have come down with comeuppance, eh?

eta: Man, this is turning into some kind of Saturday Friday Night Massacre.
arethinn: Zorak raises his fist in anger (angry (zorak fist))
[personal profile] enotsola: So I lost my mind and cussed out Ted Cruz. [on Twitter]
[personal profile] arethinn: I'm not sure you lost your mind. You may have lost your composure, but it seems like the only rational response to Ted Cruz.
arethinn: Schmendrick from The Last Unicorn juggling, text "quit dicking around" (random timewasting (schmendrick))
[personal profile] arethinn: Remind me about "Fuckface von Clownstick"? [mentioned in some video we were watching]
[personal profile] enotsola: It was something Jon Stewart said - [looks up a video of Jon Stewart recounting this] "Why did he change his name from Jon Leibowitz? Jon Stewart is a total phony" - "So I decide to tweet back at him, Donald Trump's real name is Fuckface von Clownstick."
[personal profile] arethinn: Was this when he was still doing The Daily Show?
[personal profile] enotsola: Yeah.
[personal profile] arethinn: Ah. Another world, another time, in the Age of Wonder...
arethinn: animated Weird Al Yankovic with text "R O T F L O L" (amused (weird al rotflol))
Stygian Syzygy: https://thehardtimes.net/harddrive/next-democratic-debate-to-feature-hot-questions-and-even-hotter-wings
Eldrynn: oh no
Eldrynn: that'd be hilarious
Eldrynn: so how can we make this actually happen? :D
Eldrynn: and is the hot sauce kosher?
Stygian Syzygy: I would watch the shit out of it, but they'd both die. Hillary comes in and just slams Da Bomb like a shot of tequila, eats both the last dab wings, and wins. Becoming president of YouTube.
arethinn: Angry golden-eyed wild elf with blood dripping from her mouth (angry (rahnee))
"He could shoot Lindsey Graham in the chamber, and Graham himself would argue Trump's defense as he bled out."
arethinn: Joel Robinson from MST3K, giggling (amused (joel))


Headline for the article with this photo was "Elizabeth Warren's Latest Climate Plan Is a $2 Trillion Investment in Green Manufacturing." For a second I thought it was going to involve Vulcans. Which, to be fair, might not be a bad idea.

(nb, I don't have any real opinion at the moment about the article or the plan, I just thought my double-take on seeing this thumbnail in the sidebar of another article was funny.)
arethinn: Purple and pink cartoon Cheshire Cat, grinning (crazysauce (cheshire cat))
Good News From the Resistance

(New to me, though unsurprisingly also started a little over 2 years ago, through What The Fuck Just Happened Today, a daily roundup of what it says on the tin that I have been subscribing and donating to for the past 2+ years.)
arethinn: Lady Godiva looking pensive (sad (lady godiva))
I am getting really tired of the number of times per day I read that some political figure or commentator "blasted", "slammed", or "ripped" someone else. I wish we could stop constantly using language of violence like this.
arethinn: animated Weird Al Yankovic with text "R O T F L O L" (amused (weird al rotflol))
This is The Onion, of course, but still.

Report: Mueller Investigation Nearly Done With First Day Of Trump Campaign
“After two years of thoroughly pursuing all leads and documenting any evidence that suggests a connection between the Trump team and Russia, the Mueller investigation is almost ready to reveal the crimes and misdeeds that occurred within the first 24 hours of his campaign,” said a source who spoke on condition of anonymity, adding that Mueller’s investigation was nearly finished compiling the Trump campaign’s illicit behavior during working hours on June 16, 2015 and could finally move on to indictments for the early evening.
arethinn: MST3K's mad scientists looking confused, text "buh?" (confused (mads buh))
Apparently, what I thought looked like pretty decent voter turnout to judge by my precinct, namely that it was not a ghost town with just me and the poll workers (and maybe one other person) but actually had four people in the available booths and four more waiting behind us, was 34% in Santa Clara County. WHAT THE HELL ASS BALLS. Maybe it was slightly higher in my precinct than countywide, I dunno. There is a precinct-level spreadsheet, but my precinct's not in it (!!). (Maybe they're still counting the possibly massive number of mail-in ballots here? The voter roll page I signed in on had, like, 4/5 of the spaces where you normally write in your street address greyed out as mail-in.) Out of 1099 precincts listed, only 29 were 50% or higher, and some of those look like some kind of administrative fictions and not actual residential areas since they have single-digit numbers of registered voters, even as low as 1 (although maybe there are "precincts" for "that one dude living way out on his former cattle acreage in an unincorporated part of the county").

eta: I lost the tab I had the article in, but apparently more than 75 percent of voters use mail-in ballots in Santa Clara County. And this doesn't exactly translate to early voting, because you can drop them off in person or mail them as late as election day itself, and they're still counted if received within 3 days. Yikes.
arethinn: Doctor McCoy with text "die in a fire" (angry (mccoy DIAF))
The Man Who Broke Politics

tl;dr (I don't blame you; it is about 8,000 words): Screw Newt Gingrich.
arethinn: glowing green spiral (general (colors))
Video of the Feinstein/De León not-debate from yesterday afternoon: A Conversation with Candidates for United States Senate

(can someone take away the phrase "the courage of their convictions" from Kevin De León, please?)
arethinn: Angry golden-eyed wild elf with blood dripping from her mouth (angry (rahnee))
Meanwhile, 2400 Texas voter registrations rejected right before deadline—all from Dem counties
Before I say anything else: If you are from Texas, check your voter registration right now. Especially if you used Vote.org to register to vote. Why? ... More than 2,000 potential voters in Texas had their voters’ registration applications unfairly rejected by the Texas Secretary of State, a national advocacy group said Wednesday.

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