I wasn't online for most of Wednesday, and when I came online, this time it was Google STEALING the paid computer time. We need a law about this. We need back payments. Gentle Readers, if you're online from a privately owned computer and/or a privately owned Internet service account, I seriously recommend you start keeping a log of all the time you lose to "updates" and browser glitches. Someone--possibly you--is paying for 24/7 access to the Internet. If yours is blocked by some arrogant corporation's "need" to "update' the spyware you never actually told them to run, they owe you money.
Etiquette
Can the swastika be saved? Many cultures have seen it as an innocent symbol of symmetry, balance, good luck, the wheel of time, yada yada...I think it's too soon. As long as people who remember the 1940s are alive, the swastika will be a symbol of The Enemy. In the year 2045 swastikas may start to be cool again.
Gardening
UK edition of the general idea of working with, not against, nature in a garden. Chemical-based "high-input, high-yield" methods are unsustainable and don't even produce food fit to eat. Natural is the way to go. I've not heard that US hoverflies are so helpful in a garden--other lifeforms pollinate our strawberries--but our hoverflies are certainly less harmful than chemical sprays. (Local readers know local hoverflies as "news bees" because they hover a foot or two away from you, buzzing, as if "telling the news." Some find their inanity amusing.)
Glyphosate Awareness
FOR US CITIZENS ONLY...Chemical company lobbyists are trying to sneak protection for Bayer, and if possible for other corporations that produce poisonous "pesticides," into various agriculture-related bills pending in Congress. I've been notified about US HR 4288:
and HR 4417:
There will be others next year. The strategy is to claim that Bayer provided adequate warning about glyphosate's role in cancer, which Bayer is still actively denying the existence of while trying to censor any discussion of the issue online. I've linked to the lists of co-sponsors so you can see whether you need to call your people in Washington about this. If not, go to this useful page to find a form letter you can customize--the text varies depending on your State.
INTERNATIONAL READERS: It's considered cheating even for us to write to other US citizens' congressmen! Representing their own constituents is supposed to take the full attention of each Senator and Representative, so we hardly even know the ones who don't represent us. Please support your own campaigns, in your own country, your own way.
Green
Synecdoche: the problem in a nutshell:
Politics
Well for one thing the out-of-touch, limo-lefty D party bosses keep handing Kennedy all the lines...
But actually that's only one of Biden's real problems. Another one, a big one, is that he's done nothing about glyphosate. Another one is that he's done nothing about censorship. Another one is that he's done nothing about the "transhumanist" and globalist messes. That brings up the one about there having been a time when the meaning of "Democrat" could include "a decent, reasonably intelligent American who identifies with the less wealthy, opposes war, and thinks about the concerns of the young; e.g. Jimmy Carter, John F. Kennedy, or Rick Boucher," and a lot of nice people used to vote for Democrats. For at least twenty years now those people have not had anybody to vote for, and now they have Kennedy.
Mr. President. Please. With all due respect. Your presidential administration is dead. Please go home now.
Psychology
For those who consider themselves "depressed"...
This web site claims fair use of Stephan Pastis' cartoon, which this web site, we should mention, has loved for a long time. I've carried around clipped "Pearls" to show to people since 2002.
Virginia History
Some whiny misfit was whining on Reddit about living near an historic battlefield that attracts tourists. Tourism being a big part of the town's economy, the battlefield is advertised with great big battle flags, and ooohhh, it hurts per widdle fee-wings. Honeychild. Have you never heard the saying "Shut up before you get something to whine about"? Y'might try moving to a big city up North where real racism is undead and virulent. (In Baltimore, does the response to an emergency call still include "Is the patient Black or White?")
Now, if this person had wanted to reenact a battle and been told "You can't, because you're not a White man," I would have a problem with that. It would be petty and mean-spirited, and also it would be un-historical. Both armies in the Civil War were officially made up of White men, with the exception of a few special "Colored Regiments" on the Union side and Watie's Cherokee army on the Confederate side. Nevertheless, both armies were desperate enough that volunteers of both sexes and all colors are known to have fought on both sides.
And why were Black people Confederates? That'd be a good topic for a book. ("Think of how stupid the average human is, and then remember that half of them are more stupid even than that..."--it was a stupid war.) In general terms, some were taken to war as property, as horses were, and donated to the Cause; some were promised freedom; some wanted to defend their homes and families, as did White men who didn't own slaves. Confederate Army policy did not arm Black or female volunteers, and Union Army policy armed only a small minority of Black volunteers. That suited some of them who wanted to help their Cause in other ways--scouting, spying, nursing. But several volunteers armed themselves--as did most regular soldiers.
We can't change history but we can learn from it. I don't like the fact that women couldn't vote, let alone couldn't vote for one another, before the War...but I like learning about the ways women got around that and other forms of discrimination, and did what they wanted to do with their lives. I'm guessing that the whiny misfit is Black. I'd like to see that person do some research about the ways Black people coped with prejudice and discrimination in the 1860s.
Am I saying that the cure for feeling hurt by the facts of history is more history, digging up more empowering facts? Why yes, I believe I am. Try it.
In the same general category, some readers may be interested in Ellis Elliott's free-verse portrait of a Union soldier on the Virginia-Kentucky border:
Zazzle
Zazzle recommends name plates as end-of-term gifts for teachers, so they're on sale now (in order to be delivered in the first week of May). They also, of course, make any-time gifts for anyone who works at a desk.
I didn't even know they made printable name plates with built-in, working clocks...
...so there needs to be one with a "Save the Butterflies" motif...
Zazzle has also introduced jean jackets, in women's sizes only.
Someone else designed this one using the same method I use.
Does everyone already know how Zazzle works? People put our own designs up for other people to buy, but you are your own designer. If you want to support the campaign to protect Monarch butterfly habitat but want a different image, you can pop one in. If you don't like the way the person's name looks in the Dellarobbia font, which is the "Save the Butterflies" trademark font because of the butterfly-watching character Dellarobbia in Flight Behavior, you can change the font, and the colors, and whatever else you want to change. As long as you're "customizing" an object displayed as part of the Save the Butterflies Collection, profits will go to the cause. And Zazzle's "commissions" (when customers use links people have posted to buy other people's designs) are higher than their "royalties" (when customers use links people have posted to buy those people's own designs), so if you are a fellow Zazzler and want me to promote your stuff, please send links to your pages...and, of course, promote my stuff for your own profit, heh-heh!
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