Read as: Taylor Swift has enough money to defend herself by threatening Musk legally.

The law is a weapon wielded by the rich, and brandishing it can convince other rulers to yield. Anyone else it helps is an unintended side effect.

Originally titled we let our 3 year old son decorate a tree on Reddit's r/CasualUK. Later recycled into A very Dinklage Christmas in r/suicidebywords.

I just want to take a moment to reflect on the ableism at the core of this the joke. The tweet isn't even by the real Peter Dinklage, it's from a "Fan Account". This is just someone who found the picture, and created a joke based on Peter Dinklage's disability (without his input or consent) by comparing his abilities to the efforts of a toddler. It's actually a pretty great example of how society continually questions people with disabilities about their competence in vaguely-related situations.

Dinklage said this about the Snow White remake and I think it's pretty worthwhile revisiting:

“Literally no offense to anything, but I was sort of taken aback, ... They were very proud to cast a Latino actress as Snow White, but you’re still telling the story of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ Take a step back and look at what you’re doing there. It makes no sense to me. ... You’re progressive in one way, ... but you’re still making that fucking backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together.” - Dinklage on WTF podcast 24th Jan 2022

As a civilisation, we're still doing "lol, person with different body can't do things like most people because the world wasn't built to include them" and calling it comedy when it's actually a hugely pervasive and damaging stereotype that keeps people with disabilities from being able to contribute meaningfully. Achondroplasia (and other medical conditions) are not a joke, and the difficulties people do face as a result of exclusion are not in any way funny to experience or be reminded of unnecessarily.

I wish so much of comedy wasn't just hurtful bullying pretending to be good-intentioned playfulness.

If we are, we're emergent behavior, not the topic of study.

Frankly, simulation theory feels a lot like other previous "humans are super special!" ontologies. We're not, we're just organic bags of complex chemical processes like every other lifeform on Earth, with all the cool potential and shitty vulnerabilities that such a thing entails. I've yet to see anything which truly sets us apart as a species beyond the need to ascribe a meaning to our mortality.

Also, phys.org is (yet again) trash and have just reposted this piece as "news" from a book advertisement by the author on theconversation.com but altered the title in a small but meaningful way that conceals the disclosure

Phys.org title:

Do we live in a computer simulation like in The Matrix? Proposed new law of physics backs up the idea

Original title:

Do we live in a computer simulation like in The Matrix? My proposed new law of physics backs up the idea

Poor bastard must have been itchy as fuck. Sadly the article on a shitty ad infested site is also padded out for word count. So here is the important parts. Hand-summarised, unlike the AI-assisted article:

• A 72-year-old man presented with a 2-day history of an itchy, linear rash across his back. Two days before symptom onset, he had prepared and eaten a meal containing shiitake mushrooms. - Paywalled report from New England Journal of Medicine
• Caused by the carbohydrate lentinan which triggers the release of interleukin-1 (and other chemicals), which causes cause inflammation.
• The rash develops usually 2-3 days after eating undercooked shiitake.
• Lentinan is broken down when thoroughly cooked at temperatures over 145° C / 293° F

Because fuck shitty pop-science padded journalism and their marketing strategies and hostile UX, and fuck the NEJM too for paywalling medical research.

I apologise for butting into yet another country instance I am not part of, but no, I'm not letting nazi apologism stand.

He served in the 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division, a voluntary unit made up mostly of ethnic Ukrainians under Nazi command.

The division was formed in 1943. Not even all Ukrainians were allowed in it because only the Galicians were 'Aryan-like' enough.

It was formed after all the ghettos inside Lviv, Galicia's main city, and Ternipol, in this old man's home oblast, were built and had been running for years. It was formed after Jews, who were 44% of Ternipol's population, were dragged from their homes to be publicly shamed, beaten and evicted in the pogroms. It was formed after the Final Solution began. It was formed after mass deportations, slave labour, after the ill, elderly or orphaned were shot in the streets of the place he lived. It was formed after the mass graves of all those victims and more were exhumed and their bodies burned in open-air pits.

This man had functional eyes and ears at the very least, because the Nazis did not like people with disabilities, and he knew what he was signing up for because he was living in the middle of it. Every major town surrounding his birthplace had ghettos and were already sending people by train to the death camps. He didn't choose a charitable hypothetical peaceful Ukrainian autonomy, he and 53,000 other people volunteered to fight for the new unit of an army who were very publicly killing and torturing the majority of the people around him.

And, this wasn't about a Ukrainian group allied to the Nazis to achieve long-term independence for Ukrainians. They were voluntary Nazis under direct Nazi control fighting for greater Nazi control in countries outside of Ukraine. This man could have changed allegiance at any point if he had been naive and somehow swindled into committing atrocities for Nazis instead of Ukrainian Independence. Atrocities like the Huta Pieniacka massacre where his division committed 500 murders of civilians by grenading the town. Where, assuming he was with his unit at the time and not in hospital, he murdered civilians too.

He joined at 18, by choice.

According to Hunka, his reason for enlisting was following the call of the Ukrainian Central Committee to fight for the idea of "Unified Ukraine". - his wiki page

If it was about Ukrainian independence, why were they fighting the Yugoslav Partisans and Slovak Partisans in their countries? People who were actually fighting for independence instead of doing it via Nazis.

Do not give Nazis the benefit of the doubt or the ability to hide behind hypothetical post-rationalised stories. This is how Naziism becomes permitted.

10-15 years ago I remember being told that Nazism couldn't take hold again in Germany because of all the laws, and the education in schools about Nazis, and stigma, and people who would fist-fight Nazis in the street if they saw right-wing symbols.

Was I sold an optimistic outlook or has the situation just changed that drastically since then?

As a non-German who is particularly not keen about Nazism but who doesn't speak enough German to keep a closer eye on it over there, I'm grateful for your name and shame overview.

Apartheid mining heir baby, even. The man is practically a living stereotype of modern colonialism.

If he were fictional, the author would be accused of lazy writing and overusing tropes. Unfortunately for us though, he is not fictional.

American government to businesses after loaning them money during covid: Oh, don't worry about paying it back even though you just bought new cars with it instead of anything you were supposed to do with it, we forgive you.

America government to vulnerable people after overpaying them: WHERE'S THE MONEY, LEBOWSKI?!

Why have you chosen to attack me so personally on this fine day? Give me some warning before you completely demolish me like that. Even just a countdown from 3 or something.

Many Iranian cities and towns have suffered from temperatures above 40°C /104°F in recent days, while the oil-rich southwestern city of Ahvaz hit 50°C/122°F on Tuesday.
- OP article

Here in Texas, the month saw several cities shatter heat records, with some parts of the state seeing sustained temperatures over 37°C/98.6°F for days on end.
- Thirsty and exhausted, Texans feel the heat - BBC posted 1 day ago

It is newsworthy hot in both places. The difference is, Iranians are getting some relief from their government instead of having their water breaks rescinded.

This is the social network’s second update rollout for the logged-out experience this year. In March, it made the pages screen reader friendly along with making the webpages cleaner.

First, no it didn't. Second, how much if this is copied and pasted from their PR team? Lastly, what is this 80 Accessibility score on the new homepage.

Both Reddit and Techcrunch need to do better.

Also >4s LCP, lol performance

Alex Gleason, for anyone wondering he's said he's going to work full time on...

open-source technology for “decentralized” social media platforms that operate on independently-run servers and provide an alternative to Twitter and Facebook. ... developing technology for connecting multiple decentralized platforms

Reinventing the fediverse? Watch out for that, I guess.