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Phil Landmeier

@lolgop Yeah, Fox got off easy. $700 mil is chump change in their world.

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Phil Landmeier

@ramin_hal9001 No problem. There are clues that it's part of a thread. And since the comment was fairly long I added a sentence at the top to serve as an additional clue that it's part of a thread.

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Phil Landmeier boosted
Robert Reich

In most wealthy countries, the government figures out how much in taxes you owe them — and for free. As all of you know, that’s not the case here in the U.S.

The reason? Tax prep companies don’t want it that way. And they spend big money on lobbying to make sure of it.
---
RT @OpenSecretsDC
As TurboTax faced mounting scrutiny, Intuit spent more than $3.5 million on federal lobbying last year — a new record for the tax prep company. …
twitter.com/OpenSecretsDC/stat

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Phil Landmeier boosted
Hrefna (DHC)

The Colorado law says essentially that "Colorado won’t comply with wiretapping and extradition requests from other states related to abortion or medical transition. The state won’t issue subpoenas, summons, or search warrants either, and state courts won’t consider civil actions brought by individuals" ( them.us/story/colorado-shield- ).

This is great and exactly the sort of thing we need to fight for.

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Phil Landmeier boosted
pzmyers 🦑

This eyesore is repeated, with extreme variations, all across the country.

freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngul

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Phil Landmeier boosted
Daniel Keys Moran

"Great Gods" broke 100 ratings on Amazon the other day.

Thank you, those of your who reviewed this. Best reviews of my career -- and not to brag too much, The Long Run was already one of the highest rated SF novels on Goodreads at 4.54, with 700 ratings. (Possibly the highest rated.) This so far is trending better.

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Phil Landmeier

@TruthSandwich@toad.social Since it was such a long comment I added the opening sentence as a clue that it was part of another thread. I guess it didn't work. Lol.

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Phil Landmeier

@ramin_hal9001 Yes, I posed the question in a post that was a comment in a thread about the numeral system developed by Inuit schoolkids.

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Phil Landmeier

@TruthSandwich@toad.social Yes. My post was a comment in John's thread.

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Phil Landmeier

@JoParkerBear Doh! Sorry.

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Phil Landmeier boosted
Dan Gillmor

Missouri's transgender snitch form would have been right at home in the most evil days of the old East German regime:

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Phil Landmeier

@ai6yr Since ads are a necessity for many websites that are valuable to me I feel that blocking them is a form of theft.

Instead I use Firefox and DuckDuck's tracker blocking. Ads still come through, trackers do not. Only in the rare instance where the tracker and the ad can't be separated is the ad blocked. When this happens it's invariably a Facebook-sourced ad, which I find interesting.

On any page you can click an icon and see a report of what was blocked and what domain it was trying to connect to.

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Phil Landmeier

Will masks / face coverings once again become illegal after May 11th of this year?

shuttersparks.net/masks-after-

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Phil Landmeier boosted
John Carlos Baez

I'm fascinated by Eskimo-Aleut languages in Alaska, Canada and Greenland. There are many of these languages; they ring much of the Arctic Ocean. I just learned that they use a base 20 system for numbers, with a 'sub-base' of 5. That is, quantities are counted in 'scores' (twenties) with intermediate numerals for 5, 10, and 15. This makes a lot of sense if you look at your fingers and toes.

But the Inuit didn't have a written form of their number system until the early 1990s, when nine high school students in a small northern Alaskan school invented one!

They used 5 principles:

• Visual simplicity: The symbols should be easy to remember.
• Iconicity: There should be a clear relationship between the symbols and their meanings.
• Efficiency: It should be easy to write the symbols without lifting the pencil from the paper.
• Distinctiveness: There should be no confusion between this system and Arabic numerals.
• Aesthetics: They should be pleasing to look at.

They decided that the Kaktovik digit 0 should look like crossed arms, meaning that nothing was being counted.

This was the start of quite a tale!

(1/n)

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Phil Landmeier

As mentioned above, the Mayan number system is base-20. They also invented the concept of zero, apparently before anyone else on Earth did, in order to have a positional number system. Also the first of its kind.

A positional number system makes it possible to write very large numbers (billions, trillions) which they did, and to do arithmetic with such large numbers. (Try doing arithmetic with Roman numerals and you see the problem right away.)

This enabled the Mayans to take nightly measurements of the positions of stars and planets using Stone Age instruments (no telescopes) yet end up with extremely accurate results. They did this by averaging thousands of measurements to eliminate the noise from the data. (A technique re-invented by and credited to Gauss). By this method, they computed the orbital behavior of Venus to an astounding degree of accuracy only exceeded in the second half of the 20th century.

I wonder if base-20 number systems, especially with a sub-base of five, show up in other parts of the Americas, too.

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Phil Landmeier boosted
Biped Earthling

-->>> A newspaper in McCurtain County, Oklahoma has released audio of county leaders discussing plans to kill one of their reporters and lynch Black people.

"Investigators are looking in to see if the recording was made legally according to Oklahoma statute. "

ARE YOU FOCHIN' KIDDIN' ME?

You imbeciles were discussing the murder of a reporter and the murders of several Black folks by lynching! #blackmastodon oklahoman.com/story/news/state

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Phil Landmeier boosted
Sir Rochard 'Dock' Bunson

Scientific American talks about #StochasticTerrorism which I believe is the tool being used by the right to generate a plausibly deniable #AntiTrans #Genocide

How Stochastic Terrorism Uses Disgust to Incite Violence

Pundits are weaponizing disgust to fuel violence, and it’s affecting our humanity

scientificamerican.com/article

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Phil Landmeier boosted
gbhnews

👋 Hello #fediverse! I'm going into a meeting at 4ET to talk about our newsroom's social media options.

If you think our station and other NPR stations should have a Mastodon server and a broader presence in the #fediverse, pls boost this post. If you have thoughts, please reply, I want to hear them!

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Phil Landmeier boosted
Mike Fraser

Welcome! I'm the administrator of The Canadian
⛔ DO NOT USE THE OFFICIAL MOBILE APP! I find the app Tusky is best for Android and Ivory is best for Apple
🟢 It's best to just start following people, I can't emphasize that enough, follow as many as possible for the best experience! Start with 20-30 right away
📸 Fill out your bio and post a profile pic. People will follow back if you do this
👋 Use the #Introduction hash tag & write an introduction to let everyone know you're here

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Phil Landmeier

@QasimRashid Exactly.

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