When I was a boy attending Hebrew school, the Holocaust was living memory for the adults teaching us. They told us: “You think of yourselves as Americans first. That’s exactly how German Jews thought of themselves in the early 1930s.” I think about that more and more lately.
Cory’s Pluralistic blog turns four. Here, he talks once again about his Memex Method of taking notes in public. I have never been able to make that work for me, though I’ve tried. pluralistic.net
Alabama’s supreme court rules frozen embryos are ‘children’ theguardian.com
In a decision using flagrantly unconstitutional religious language, the court allows two wrongful death lawsuits to proceed against a fertility clinic.
Haley’s plan to unite the United States: pardon Trump. “It is unclear why or how Haley thinks this move would bring the American people together unless the together she speaks of is a civil war.” boingboing.net
“I just kind of think of her as a lowlife” Colorado GOP voters reject Lauren Boebert boingboing.net
My five-year-old Mac wheezes to a halt if I have more than a few Safari tabs open, but I recently switched to the Vivaldi browser, and now I have 93 open tabs. So, um, yay?
Stickers to manage social media replies. “Do not reply to deny my lived experience.” “Do not reply to tell me to use open source software.” “Do not reply to teach me about capitalism or enshittification. I know.” And more.
An in-depth explainer why the New York Times might win its copyright lawsuit against OpenAI, which the AI community says would be catastrophic. arstechnica.com
Japanese startup Astroscale’s mission is cleaning up space junk. arstechnica.com
We watched the first episode of “Resident Alien,” about an extraterrestrial who assumes the identity of a doctor in a Colorado small town where people are colorful. “Northern Exposure” meets “Starman.” The show stars Alan Tudyk, who played Wash in “Firefly.” Pretty good. I’ll give it another try.
Before the IBM PC, There Was the TRS-80
Radio Shack, known for its DIY kits and gear, unveiled this low-cost computer in 1977 in a bid to capture the fledgling PC market.
I had forgotten that the consumer PC revolution started in the mid-late 1970s, even though I was a teen-ager then and aware of what was going on. I think of it as a mid-80s phenomenon.
Trust Between Southeastern San Diego Flood Survivors and Local Government Is Dead
Flooded residents of the Southcrest, Shelltown and Mountain View neighborhoods of San Diego say they’ve been abandoned by the city and county and some say politicians are trying to drive them out to inflate real estate prices.
Will Huntsberry at the Voice of San Diego:
The flood waters have receded, but in these southeastern San Diego neighborhoods a crisis of trust is now ripping through the streets. From block to block the narrative is the same: City officials knew for years the flood canals were clogged and did nothing to clean them. After the floods, city leaders didn’t jump into action to provide relief; it was neighbors and homegrown nonprofits.
The residents of these historically Black and Latino neighborhoods can draw but two conclusions. At best, city leaders don’t care if they are forced from their homes. At worst, city leaders want them gone.
…
In other words, city leaders purposefully allowed Shelltown, Southcrest and Mountain View to flood, so that other people could take the land.
City officials, of course, have offered many explanations for why they never cleaned Chollas Creek. The amount of money for stormwater improvement is dangerously low. Certain environmental regulations were hard to get around. They have also said the amount of rain was so severe that cleaning the canals would not have stopped the floods. But none of this has resonated with the flood survivors. Would so many calls for a channel to be cleaned have gone unanswered in La Jolla they wonder?
Now, they are all forced to watch as the fabric of their community is torn apart.
Jessica Calix adored her neighbors in Southcrest. She rented a two-bedroom for $1,650 per month — unheard of in today’s rental market. Now, she’s stuck in a motel, searching for a new place. She can barely find a studio apartment in the same price range.
That’s bad for her and other renters, Calix said. But it’s good for landlords.
“Landlords will clean their places up and rent them for an extra thousand dollars or more now,” Calix said.
Roughly 70 percent of people in Shelltown, Southcrest and Mountain View are renters, according to US Census data.
And it’s not just renters being pushed out, according to the rumors going around. Stories of cheap cash offers for waterlogged houses are also making the rounds.
Rain and possible flooding is forecast to start again in a few hours and continue two days.
EFF: Don’t Fall for the Latest Changes to the Dangerous Kids Online Safety Act. KOSA supporters claim it protects kids, but it actually endangers them and unconstitutionally restricts free speech. One of the co-sponsors of the bill specifically says she wants to use it to suppress trans speech.
The season finale of “All Creatures Great and Small” was satisfactory. Drunk Carmody is my role model.
Ezra Klein: Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden. Biden is a great President, but he’s running a lousy re-election campaign. Polling shows him losing to Trump. The solution, says Klein, is for Biden’s closest advisors—people like Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer—to convince Biden to stand aside and not seek re-election, and then to choose a new candidate at the convention.
The New York Times explains the controversy around the 2023 Hugo Awards, hosted by China
The Cluetrain Manifesto is turning 25.