🎵 Now Playing: Empty Hearts by Alison Krauss from the album Forget About It on Music

Seen on web: To use Google via duckduckgo just add !g to your search terms, e.g. noscript block settings !g Apparently you’ll be redirected to Google but DDG will strip all the personally identifying stuff/trackers/etc. for the request. As of 2022 & according to “BruceWayne” so obvs it’s true.

Some photos from Michael’s garden.

THE ONE COMPONENT LEADERSHIP TRAINING SHOULD ALWAYS INCLUDE

For several years, I’ve been saying that leaders at the executive level in government should have tech training because I thought it would help them develop themselves. (I even brought it up when I was on a committee to develop an executive training program. Nobody listened.) Now I’m starting to see a trend not of government executives who are a little out of touch with the latest trends - but of government executives who are doing real, actual harm to their agencies because they’re technically ignorant.

Just last year Republicans introduced over 315 anti-queer pieces of legislation, with 29 having passed into law. The violence that has characterized assaults against the LGBTQ community for centuries is essentially being ratified in law by the GOP. Trump Proves Hate & Violence Is Not the Fascist’s Final, Last-Gasp Option: It’s Their First

Trump Proves Hate & Violence Is Not the Fascist’s Final, Last-Gasp Option: It’s Their First A new report from the Leadership Conference Education Fund documents how hate crimes have more than doubled in the United States since Donald Trump entered politics in 2015.

You Have to Grind This Motherfucker Down - How Things Work This piece of writing right here? This absolutely deserves to be shared widely.Actually what it deserves is a goddamn Pulitzer. I could read this 100 times and not get tired of it. Somebody, please. Take. Him. Down.

Garish. That’s how I’d describe Ohio’s new tourism branding. Absolutely garish. 🤢🤮 And I wonder how many millions of dollars some consulting firm got paid for doing this. #Ohio #CrappyDesign #BadDesign #tourism

HEADLINE: DEWINE UNVEILS REIMAGINED, PREVIOUS SLOGAN. (NOT THE ONION)

Apparently Ohio has a new tourism slogan, “Ohio, the Heart of it All” which is exactly like the old tourism slogan, “Ohio, the Heart of it All.” It has a new logo and branding that might as well have been designed by…what’s something that doesn’t design things very well? A Great Dane? Microsoft Paint? Liza Minnelli? Well, whatever. The point is that it’s ugly. Like, I can’t even with this design.

🙋‍♀️ I really like and appreciate my new boss. She’s positive but also keeps things real. I trust her because she’s helped me to avoid some potential land mines, she’s patient with me as I adjust, and she’s easy to talk to.

Another typical move from the GOP to hold on to power at any cost. Fascists. They’re trying to make it impossible to amend the state constitution. God I can’t stand our politicians in this state. Stop Rolling Back Democracy in Ohio, No on HJR 1 and SJR 2 - Resist.Bot Petition

📺 Wow, CNN. Just heard the re-cap. I wouldn’t have opened my studio to those nut jobs if you’d paid me.

🫓 Michael brought some lovely biscotti and lightly sweet Italian cookies and cannoli with him to our morning bedside coffee time. It was delightful to spend our early hour together that way.

🎵 Now Playing: Graceland by Paul Simon from the album Graceland (25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) on Music

🦷 The tooth checker says I’m doing good. But also I need to floss more. Or at all. Like, ever. And now, please, show them your teeth, Froggy: https://youtu.be/ulBCfQjwrnE

🤖 Should we start adding disclaimers to emails we’ve written without AI assistance? One person’s recommendation: “No intelligence, artificial or otherwise, was employed in the composition of this message.” Yeah. I’m gonna hafta steal that.

🎵 Now Playing: Spin The Bottle by The Juliana Hatfield Three from the album Become What You Are on Music

Election lawyer Marc Elias (paraphrased, via Heather Cox-Richardson): “We cannot out-organize voter suppression.” Voter suppression is not “campaign tactics.” It is “the illegal and immoral deprivation of constitutional rights.” May 8, 2023 (Monday)

UN-NATURAL DISASTERS

These are not natural disasters. We are powerless to stop earthquakes but not mass carnage from guns. Fatalism is a favorite tool for those who peddle in death under the pretext of the “Second Amendment.” I’ve been saying that these are not natural disasters for literal years, around the time each year that we’re forced to take “surviving an active shooter” training. And that training always, always begins with, “Well, I wish it weren’t so but the fact of the matter is that these situations happen and you need to be prepared for them.

😶 When Serbia - SERBIA - does more to curb mass shootings and control gun ownership than the United States. https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/serbia-mourns-shooting-victims-prepares-illegal-gun-amnesty-99153432

📰 Texas lawmaker says 3rd graders should get training for gunshot wounds More guns + fewer restrictions + Republican logic = train 3rd graders how to control bleeding after a mass shooting. “Can’t address the real issue, it’s just a part of life today,” they say, and shrug. 🤷 Well thank god Texas and other red states are protecting children (even the zygotes!) from the REAL dangers: critical race theory, drag queens, and the free expression of ideas.

If US flags were ordered to be flown at half-staff “as a mark of respect” for the victims of every mass shooting that happened, US flags would never fly again. A Proclamation on Honoring the Victims of the Tragedy in Allen, Texas | The White House

💄 Drag isn’t dangerous. Fundraiser: https://gofund.me/62fb7d4f

Speaking of songs that have made me cry… Out To Get You by James

Some years ago I was listening to this song loudly, driving in my car, and for some reason it just kind of made perfect, overwhelming sense to me on such a primal level that I started crying about life and living and expectations. Once In a Lifetime by Talking Heads - song.link