Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalPenn State Hosted The Proud Boys Despite Outcry. Students Were Attacked.
A Pennsylvania State University event featuring Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes was canceled Monday night after McInnes’ supporters attacked students and members of the media.
In the hours leading up to the event — titled “Stand Back & Stand By” and featuring the bigoted gang leader and far-right troll Alex Stein — the Proud Boys and their allies attacked a throng of protesting students and journalists gathered outside the venue. One person, described as a member of the Proud Boys, pepper-sprayed the crowd. Another video shows a Proud Boy fist-fighting with a crowd of protesters.
For weeks, students had been petitioning university administration to cancel the event due to safety concerns. McInnes has a documented history of bringing members of his violent street gang to speaking engagements, where they attack students and protesters.
But Penn State administrators allowed the event to continue on the grounds of constitutionally protected speech. Student Affairs Vice President Damon Sims told HuffPost earlier this month that the administration had weighed student safety against campus speech concerns.
“Our commitment to both freedom of expression and the welfare of our community are equally strong, despite the obvious challenges that brings,” he said at the time.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/penn-state-proud-boys-gavin-mcinnes_n_6357e1d2e4b051268c58e50b
Sims obviously doesn't understand that it's not a good idea to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater--or allow terrorist gangs on your campus.
My kitty Winnie
is back, after a period of disappearance following her sister Vicky's death, during which time she showed up only when we were not around, to eat a bit of the food I left and then disappear again (I have it on my back door cam). I suspect she may have been back to wherever Vicky was when she was so badly injured she couldn't make it home. But for better or worse, my little spitfire is back in all her tortietude, hanging out in the woodpile and complaining if I'm late with breakfast or dinner.
I'm considering adopting a sister for her after our gem show trip to Tennessee next month. The sister will be carefully chosen after consultation with the head cat person at the shelter and will reside in a "habitation crate" for 5 weeks to give them a chance to get used to each other through the bars. I expect a considerable amount of discussion and swearing between them during that time. I may decide to let Winnie come into my studio to be fed and spend the night--she ventured in the door last night and I would have let her stay had the upstairs door been closed. I'd considered that for both of them during the winter prior to Vicky's demise. In any case, a sister for Winnie will have to be able to stand up for herself without trying to take over. 
We need more rodent control than one cat can handle by herself.
Adidas Has Finally Cut Ties With Kanye Over Antisemitic Remarks
Adidas announced Tuesday that the company was scrapping its partnership with Kanye West after the rapper, known as Ye, made a series of antisemitic remarks.
“Adidas does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech,” the company said in a statement Tuesday, where they called the rapper’s comments and actions as “unacceptable, hateful and dangerous.”
Adidas was the last major company to cut ties with Ye, ending an almost decade-long partnership. Over the last few days, fashion giants Baleciaga and Vogue dropped Ye, talent agency CAA refused to represent him any more, MRC entertainment shelved a documentary about the rapper, and Instagram and Twitter suspended his accounts.
Adidas said Tuesday that it conducted a “thorough review” and would immediately stop production of its line of Yeezy products and stop payments to Ye and his companies, adding that Ye’s comments violated the company’s “values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/93agvv/adidas-kanye
About time everyone stopped paying attention to this mentally ill person's tantrums. When my kids had tantrums, I put them in their rooms and shut the door, telling them they could come out when they could behave properly. When they were older, I sent them to their rooms with the same instructions.
After a UPS worker's suicide, employees disclose 'tragic' conditions at largest facility
The gargantuan UPS Worldport is the largest automated packaging sorting facility in the world. Covering 5.2m sq ft in Louisville, Kentucky, with 70 aircraft docks and 155 miles of conveyor belts, the site is larger than the Mall of America, employs around 20,000 workers and is capable of handling 115 packages a second.
But for all its impressive stats, working conditions at UPS Worldport have recently come under scrutiny in the wake of a recent workplace suicide of a pregnant worker, with claims from workers that she had recently been fired.
No one can ever know the true reason why someone takes their life. Workplace suicides in the US have risen dramatically in recent years and reached a record level in 2019, the last year for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics has data. The worker’s death, which happened on 5 October, is under investigation by Louisville Metro police.
In a statement Teamsters Local 89, the union representing package handlers, drivers and other rank-and-file UPS workers in Louisville, said: “Although we do not know the cause behind this heartbreaking decision, our Local Union grieves for this terrible loss. To all of those affected, our hearts go out to you as you mourn.”
After news of the death broke, workers at UPS Worldport spoke to the Guardian about conditions at the site under anonymity for fear of retaliation for speaking with the media. They claim intense productivity and quota pressures on workers, common injuries on the job, an unclean environment, worn-out equipment, and understaffing of sections all take a heavy toll on staff.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/oct/24/ups-worker-suicide-employees-disclose-tragic-conditions
Because of the undependability of the USPS, and because we know the franchise owners of the local UPS, we generally send packages via UPS, but this upsets me no end.
Curtis Yarvin wants American democracy toppled. He has some prominent Republican fans.
In September 2021, J.D. Vance, a GOP candidate for Senate in Ohio, appeared on a conservative podcast to discuss what is to be done with the United States, and his proposals were dramatic. He urged Donald Trump, should he win another term, to “seize the institutions of the left,” fire “every single midlevel bureaucrat” in the US government, “replace them with our people,” and defy the Supreme Court if it tries to stop him.
To the uninitiated, all that might seem stunning. But Vance acknowledged he had an intellectual inspiration. “So there’s this guy, Curtis Yarvin, who has written about some of these things...”
Nearly a decade earlier, a Stanford law student named Blake Masters, asked by a friend for reading recommendations for a book club, emailed a link to a set of blog posts. These posts made an argument that was quite unusual in the American context, asserting that the democratically elected US government should be abolished and replaced with a monarchy. Its author, then writing pseudonymously, was Yarvin.
Masters is now the GOP Senate nominee in Arizona. At a campaign event last year, according to Vanity Fair’s James Pogue, he was asked how he’d actually drain the swamp in Washington. “One of my friends has this acronym he calls RAGE — Retire All Government Employees,” Masters answered. You’ve probably guessed who the friend is.
In many thousand words’ worth of blog posts over the past 15 years, computer programmer and tech startup founder Curtis Yarvin has laid out a critique of American democracy: arguing that it’s liberals in elite academic institutions, media outlets, and the permanent bureaucracy who hold true power in this declining country, while the US executive branch has become weak, incompetent, and captured.
But he stands out among right-wing commentators for being probably the single person who’s spent the most time gaming out how, exactly, the US government could be toppled and replaced — “rebooted” or “reset,” as he likes to say — with a monarch, CEO, or dictator at the helm. Yarvin argues that a creative and visionary leader — a “startup guy,” like, he says, Napoleon or Lenin was — should seize absolute power, dismantle the old regime, and build something new in its place.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23373795/curtis-yarvin-neoreaction-redpill-moldbug
The article refers to this dude as an "intellectual". I argue that he is a fascist rabble-rouser, using big words and a fake intellectual varnish to justify his disgusting thoughts and behaviors. Strip that away and you have nothing but a MAGAT.
'Absolute and total incompetence': Governor slams mayor at turkey-pardoning ceremony
Gov. Tate Reeves pardoned a turkey at a ceremony Thursday at the Governor’s Mansion, only moments later to turn a flamethrower on Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba.
The governor was no-holds-barred when asked about the city’s decision to issue its own request for proposals for water system manager this week, days after the state issued its own request for qualifications for a firm to take over management of Jackson’s water system.
“As long as the state, over the last 52 days, is doing little things to make sure the water system is operated, the mayor was perfectly fine with it,” he said. “But when it comes time to put your thumb on the scale for a contractor, just like he did in garbage... he decided, ‘Hey, not only do I want to have a seat at the table, I want control of this,’” he said.
“Because if you go back and look at the two documents that come out this week, 95 to 99 percent exactly the same. You know what’s different? Who chooses vendor. Who chooses the contractor.”
https://www.whsv.com/2022/10/20/absolute-total-incompetence-governor-slams-mayor-turkey-pardoning-ceremony/
Tater Reeves is SUCH an assclown.
Just buried our Vicky girl
We found a place for her down by the holly tree where she used to hang out, taking her ease and possibly lying in wait for the errant rodent. I placed her so that she will face the rising sun and put a toy and a tiny cross in with her, and asked the Creator to accept Her servant Vicky, a shy, gentle friend and good mouser, into Her keeping until I see her again at Rainbow Bridge. Now I'm crying again, dammit.
I'd always thought that Winnie, with her tortietude and loud mouth, was the "boss cat" of our two, but it seems not so. it must have been a big sister-little sister dynamic, besides the fact that Vicky, in the dark, was apparently Winnie's seeing-eye cat, running a few steps ahead of her, then waiting for her to catch up while they walked shoulder to shoulder for a bit. Now Winnie has melted into the woods back of the house and I only catch glimpses of her on the back door cam. How am I supposed to lure her into the house at night when she does this? She doesn't even come around for evening feeds any more.
A high school student's mural angers parents over what they say are hidden messages
School district officials and a high school student in Michigan have drawn the ire of parents who allege that a painted mural contains LGBTQ propaganda, a depiction of Satan and a message of witchcraft.
The painting covers a wall inside a teen health center at Grant Middle School in Grant, Mich., and was created by a local high school sophomore who won a competition.
The mural features caped characters, bunny- and bear-headed nurses and smiling students dressed in brightly colored outfits. One student is wearing a blue T-shirt with pink and white stripes — colors found on the transgender flag. Another student is outfitted in shorts overalls with a rainbow-striped T-shirt and tights underneath. Parents have said that the rainbow stripes represent the colors of the pride flag. Two other students are dressed in tops with colors of the bisexual flag — pink on the top, royal blue on the bottom and an overlapping purple stripe in the middle.
Among the drawings of the students, the artist added multiple smaller line drawings, including a mask, which some parents have complained is Satan, and a hamsa hand, which is considered a symbol for the hand of God in many cultures, but in this case, some adults have claimed it is a symbol of witchcraft. The mask and hand are both design elements that were not included in the artist's original contest submission.
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/20/1129786060/student-school-mural-angers-parents-hidden-messages-michigan-lgbtq-satan
Some parents really need to grow the fuck up.
Larry the Cat outlasts fourth U.K. prime minister
Britain's prime ministers may come and go, but Larry the Cat is here to stay.
The 15-year-old tabby dutifully serves as Chief Mouser of No. 10 Downing Street, the residence and home office of Britain's prime minister, and where countless political decisions affecting the country are made. Larry outlasted prime ministers David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and, as of Thursday, the six-week tenure of Liz Truss.
"The King has asked me to become Prime Minister because this nonsense has gone on long enough," Larry the Cat wrote in a now viral tweet from an unofficial account hours before Truss announced her resignation.
And in a period of shaky political leadership, Larry's steady tenure led to an enormous loyal following among British citizens. His presence at 10 Downing Street often leads to brief appearances in historical moments — including taking a nap underneath a limo that extended Donald Trump's visit in 2019.
But Larry's record isn't completely spotless, either. A 2016 visit to the vet put his health into question while a 2011 mouse sighting put the integrity of his work into question.
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/21/1130251187/larry-the-cat-prime-minister
He'd surely be better than any of the last three.
Gone girl
I was finally able to get a vet appointment for my Vicky this morning. It was not a happy occasion, although she behaved well once I got her in the carrier (surprise!). Other than a mild hiss at me while I was catching her, she was gentle and well-mannered, not usual for her. Unfortunately, the X-rays confirmed my worst fears. Her pelvis was completely smashed; the vet thinks she was run over by a car or something, possibly even an ATV as Vicky was afraid of the road. There was no way this could be fixed, so we elected to have her put to sleep. My girl is now frolicking at Rainbow Bridge. I'm glad she came home so I could give her this last gift of going easy. I will miss her, her tiny meow, her big green eyes, and her inexplicably heavy-footed run as she came down the deck stairway for meals. We'll bury her this evening under the holly tree where she liked to lie in wait for small critters.
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Gender: Do not displayCurrent location: Virginia
Member since: Wed Jun 1, 2011, 07:34 PM
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