TheOldGuy @TheOldGuy@social.cleverlibre.org

Born #onthisday in 1809, Edgar Allan Poe. Many illustrators have tackled Poe's dark and macabre tales but perhaps none so hauntingly and brilliantly as Irish artist Harry Clarke. See his exquisite imagery for Poe's Tales of Mystery & Imagination: https://buff.ly/3qzOHiC #otd #edgarallanpoe #harryclarke #illustration #art #books

Two retired Met officers charged with child sexual abuse offences

And so it continues…

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/19/two-former-met-officers-charged-with-child-sexual-abuse-offences

The federal govt has opened an investigation into a Texas school district over its alleged removal of books featuring #LGBTQ characters — marking the first test of a new legal argument that failing to represent students in school books can constitute discrimination. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating the Granbury Independent School District. #BannedBooks #discrimination #éducation #libraries #CivilRights #LegalResearch https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/01/13/granbury-book-ban-biden-civil-rights-investigation-title-ix/

Thinking about complexity and beauty and the meaning of life (to update my bio for those locked fedi accounts I want to follow).

Too long for bio so:

Good for me is organized and intelligent entropy -- beautiful and interesting complexity (diverse biological and social evolutionary systems).
It's the oposite of mechanical fractal complexity, synthetic or fake complexity (GPT-3 Stable Diffusion Dal-E Copilot). Human crafted things not autogenerated gobligook.
I hate being tricked by fakes.

pre-coffee thoughts with Tilly:

why are secret societies evil? Imma start one based on fanatic kindness and respect, we pop up, shout YOU ARE VALID AND LOVED!, hug you, then disappear in a cloud of smoke. also there are member jackets

this has been pre-coffee thoughts with Tilly

This video camera study showed that less than 5% of people on bikes break traffic laws while riding, yet 66% of people do so when driving. And if you REALLY want even MORE bike-riders to obey laws, build more protected bike infrastructure. Via @carltonreid

#urbanism #bikes #cars #laws #cities #safety
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/05/10/cyclists-break-far-fewer-road-rules-than-motorists-finds-new-video-study/

@TheOldGuy I hope she wins that lawsuit. The professor gave every opportunity for Muslim students to not view the image. But it's cultural and historical value is real. I get that moden Islam frowns on images of the prophet. But in an art history course, the image being used in a respectful manner with proper warnings ahead of time is on no way justification for the firing.

We call on all people of good conscience to stand in solidarity with the movement to stop Cop City and defend the Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta.

Here are some ways to support the defense of the forest in Atlanta:

Donate to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund to support legal costs for arrested protestors and ongoing legal action.

Call on investors in the project to divest from Cop City (list of APF investors). Call on builders of the project to drop their construction contracts.

Organize political solidarity bail funds, forest defense funds, and forest defense committees where you live.

Participate in or organize local solidarity actions.

Endorse and circulate this statement of solidarity. Email defendweelaunee@riseup.net.

https://defendtheatlantaforest.org/2023/01/19/solidarity/

Soon UK kids, everyone in UK probably, will have to learn how to use the dark web if they want to access sites like #Wikipedia.

Thanks to the incredibly, no really really improbably bad #law going through parliament right now.

And literally being made worse in the process 🤦‍♂️

The #OnlineSafetyBill is mass censorship for government control.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg believes public pressure is the key to real action on reducing climate change, but admits that it is unfair to demand the same changes from developing countries as the Western world

https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/uk-news/2023/01/19/greta-thunberg-tells-davos-public-pressure-is-key-to-combatting-climate-change/

#ClimateEmergency #ecology #environment #ClimateCrisis #ClimateCatastrophe
#ClimateChange #Climate

Today in Writing History January 19, 1809: Edgar Allan Poe was born. “The Raven” made Poe an overnight sensation. Yet, he spent much of his life in poverty. Poe originally considered having an owl or parrot, rather than a raven, quote “Nevermore.” Poe was a binge drinker who sometimes remained sober for months before falling off the wagon again. His alcoholism worsened as he got older. He died in 1849, mostly likely from alcoholism. His grave remained unmarked until 1865. For 60 years, from 1949 until 2009, the “Poe Toaster” left a bottle of cognac and three roses on Poe’s grave every January 19th.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #poetry #fiction #poverty #edgarallanpoe #alcohol @bookstadon

Amazon dropped two-day shipping for Prime, made using Kindle books more difficult, and now they've killed Smile.

If you want to build a narrow-market competitor, this is the time.

@arktronic Amazon killing off AmazonSmile because "it was spread too thin" misses the point completely. My local community band was able to make a couple hundred a year from the program, which is no small potatoes to a program like that. Amazon sure isn't gonna give any of their money to them now. They just want big headlines for big gives. It's all about ego.

In satisfaction of the first $1.5 billion annual interest payment on the Twitter buyout, Elon offers his creditors 200 million months of free blue checkmarks.