Peter Drake, he/him, LFHCfS 🔥 @peterdrake@social.cleverlibre.org

Accessibility test. Can people read the caption?

We're guessing smoke coming out of the garbage disposal is a bad sign.

Your Phone Is Listening and it's Not Paranoia https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/wjbzzy/your-phone-is-listening-and-its-not-paranoia?utm_campaign=sharebutton via @viceuk

Weirdly, the second chapter of @duolingo@twitter.com for Mandarin teaches numbers, but not in order. Instead it's like, "Let's learn 2, 4, 7, and 9."

Any recommendations for asynchronous android games?

Unusual things outside my office window:

Yesterday: Bagpiper
Today: Goats

A good piece on why American colleges cost so much. Compare the analysis in Weapons of Math Destruction. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/09/why-is-college-so-expensive-in-america/569884/

@Urmothersbtt Of course, word meanings drift and not everyone uses them in exactly the same way.

Etymologically, it looks like the key feature is the "bundling" of power, specifically state and corporate power. I think the left sees this when corporations have power over government and the right sees it when government has power over corporations.

In terms of connotation, I think the important features are brutal oppression (stifling descent or certain groups of people) and centralization of power (usually in one man). Militarism and nationalism tend to go hand-in-hand with these.

Mentor/mentee
Manator/manatee
Matador/matadee
Mercator/mercatee

@Urmothersbtt I think there are always people at the extremes who will accuse the other side of fascism. The Trump situation is different, because he's doing many very unusual things that are mentioned in any checklist describing fascism (e.g., https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/holocaust-museum-warning-signs-fascism/):

* Attacking the press. Sure, the left attacks Fox News (justifiably, in my opinion) and the right might reasonably attack something like Daily Kos, but it is bizarre and dangerous for the President to repeatedly proclaim that the media are the enemy.

* Demonizing various ethnic groups (Mexicans, Muslims, etc.).

* Rounding up immigrant children (including, I believe, some who legally applied for asylum) and imprisoning them indefinitely.

* Failing to condemn people who are literally marching in the streets with swastikas and murdering people.

* Spreading baseless conspiracy theories about millions of fraudulent votes, calling the democratic process into question for no reason.

* Denying passports to members of certain groups.

* Partaking in voter suppression. (That's a GOP thing, not just Trump.)

* Announcing that he is the only one who can save us. All politicians say "I'm the best person for the job", but they don't do this.

* Asserting that an attack on him is an attack on America.

* Asserting that he is above the law and trying to install judges who support this opinion.

Of course, we are not really living in a nightmarish dystopia just yet (although some black Americans might disagree). I can publicly criticize Trump without serious fear that I will be arrested or killed. We're still planning to have an election in November. We on the left are seriously worried, though that Trump is an existential threat to the American experiment in democracy.

Ezra Bridger is just Aladdin without the fez. Change my mind.

Me: If your OS supports it, you can use Unicode characters in Java identifiers.

Student: Does that include emoji?

Alas, no: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1422655/java-unicode-variable-names

Violet ate a grasshopper in the hope of absorbing its powers.

No one skips like Darth Maul
does backflips like Darth Maul
has tattoos from his scalp to his lips like Darth Maul