Kris Sargent, MD @kristofor@social.cleverlibre.org

The Supreme Court “is not an infallible institution whose decisions should be accepted without question. It is not a debating club that is just trying its best to figure out what the law is. And, most importantly, it is not a body that should be placed beyond public scrutiny.”

Exceptionally good piece from @chrisgeidner on how we should handle #SCOTUS #history #histodons

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/supreme-court-think-s-special-s-not-rcna68567

The bots speak for all of us

Prior to 1982, stock buybacks were considered stock manipulation. It was Reagan's SEC that opened the floodgates to their abuse.

Stock buybacks don’t create more jobs. They don't increase wages. They don’t grow the economy.

They do one thing: Make corporate execs richer.

You can still post on Twitter by scheduling posts. So any tweet you see on the platform is created by a bot or scheduled, not in real time. Elon Musk said he was going to go to war with the bots on Twitter, and the bots won.

With the states enacting laws that will effectively ban kids from the Internet,

and the anti-kids-online rhetoric we're likely to hear during tonight's #sotu2023,

I wanted to share the many ways the Internet has crucially shaped my life as a digital native. 🧵

...

I grew up online.

I do not know a world before or without the Internet.

Q: Why are homeless people so rare in Madrid and so common in San Francisco when here GDP per capita is half?

A: Racism.

Of the homeless folk in the USA, 45% have mental health challenges and 40% are Black, even though only 13% of the pop is Black. In SF, less than 5% of the population is Black, but 37% of the homeless population is Black.

In the 80s, when Reagan killed mental health facility funding and Black homelessness exploded, no one cared. 🤷🏿‍♂️

Tin Type Toy Cats!

If you love a Cat, but you can't take care of a Cat, you can have a wind up tin type wind-up cat that will still avoid you and refuse to sit on your lap!

All you have to do is feed it love and affection and it will automagically ignore you -- just like their warmer life brethren!

#AI #Cats #Toys #catsofmastodon

If I say I was driving back from Tijuana Mexico, and Mexican please pull me over and took $1,000 from me, you will say "Mexican police are corrupt!" and maybe follow up with some racist statements.

But if a Black US driver is driving in Florida, police can just take $10,000 from her in broad daylight, without even bothering to accuse her of a crime.

It is very risky for poor Black folk to do any cash based transaction in the US. Not because they might get robbed by criminals, but by the cops.

@Benfell
Capitalist libertarians are pretty much American libertarians, which is to say neofeudalists who seek to establish a new overclass to rule over all of us (whether they do this intentionally or not is irrelevant, this would be the net result of their policies).

The differences between them and other American conservative groups are extremely minor in my opinion.

Sam Bankman-Fried is not a child https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/sam-bankman-fried-is-not-a-child

Russian Spy Balloon

I can't get over this New York Times headline saying Ron DeSantis is "building his brand" by wrecking public education in Florida. It reminds me of NYT’s first mention of Hitler in 1922, which claimed his anti-Semitism wasn’t “genuine” or “violent” but was just “bait” to attract followers. From 1922 to 2023, NYT is still covering fascists from a marketing perspective rather than a moral perspective.

TikTok's transparency theater: "The company seems to have realized that it won’t save itself from a US ban on the technical merits of its Project Texas proposal. The debate is now purely a matter of politics and optics. Unlike the tour I went on, that’s something TikTok can’t control"

https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/2/23583491/tiktok-transparency-center-tour-photos-bytedance @alexeheath

I don't know if Americans know this, but threatening to assassinate doctors is, like, a bad thing. It's generally frowned upon, if you can believe that. In fact, during military conflicts— it's actually considered a war crime.

Despite this, mainstream right-wing media figures in this country are pushing the idea of executing doctors (and educators) constantly. And apparently that's... Just... Fine? Nobody cares? Law enforcement isn't concerned?

Word. Word.

And make no mistake: when Trump's new genocidal speech against transgender existence mentioned doctors, city officials, and educators who help LGBTQ+ folks exist— he mentioned them in order to place them in the cross hairs of his violent fascist armies.

Today in “neither our media nor our political system is designed to deal with a far right authoritarian party”

This article from @ProPublica is a long read, but completely worth it. It pulls back the curtain of what happens behind the scenes at health insurance companies. It is frightening, frustrating, and incredibly accurate. https://www.propublica.org/article/unitedhealth-healthcare-insurance-denial-ulcerative-colitis

I wrote about how Elon's API plan should help Mastodon. https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/02/elons-new-api-pricing-seems-perfectly-designed-to-help-send-more-users-and-developers-to-mastodon/

my body is NOT a temple. it is a STORAGE UNIT for my REGRETS