In PA, our State Board approved ignoring RFK so everyone should be able to get the COVID vax in PA. But the CVS hasn't updated their website yet. I'll wait a few days but not too long β RFK's minions meet on 9.18 and who TF knows what they'll do.
As the muggy malaise of summer winds down, you might find yourself interested in taking advantage of one of several safe and proven vaccines to help protect you from the inevitable brumal surge of respiratory illnesses.
""Based on the current regulatory environment," CVS said it's offering COVID-19 vaccinations in the following states: Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming."
As the muggy malaise of summer winds down, you might find yourself interested in taking advantage of one of several safe and proven vaccines to help protect you from the inevitable brumal surge of respiratory illnesses.
@Bfordham right β just means that a lot of people will be out of luck and harmed, which just makes me RAGE... this is the world Republicans want, inequality and injustice everywhere, no matter the cost (even to themselves)
My wife runs a nonprofit clinic in a heavily red county. She was telling me about the vaccines they have available, free of charge, but they'll expire at the end of the month and people aren't getting them
@Bfordham the deep brainwashing, convincing people to HARM THEMSELVES is also maddening, but at some point, people gotta take responsibility for their news/propaganda intake and want to know the truth. That's not some kind of "gotcha" it's just... reality. Either people wake up to what's harming them and change their actions or they don't and suffer. I don't want this for them. And I'm willing to blame a lot of evil people... but they also have agency.
It's wild to me how people are so hate filled that the idea that they're hurting "them" (however you define that group) is worth whatever suffering you inflict on yourself. I've seen some people that I considered good people just go off the rails
Hard to process. A lot of people who claim to be a Christian like me just being so hateful. So, apparently not like me, or more accurately I'm not like that anymore.
@Bfordham it's also worth checking your networks and checking with non-chain pharmacies β some of them will bend the rules and/or your doc might prescribe it off label.
Oh yeah, I'll be able to get it. And I haven't checked, but our pediatrician is a huge science nerd lol so I imagine we'll have no real issue getting the kids vaccinated, either. But I've been in this area my whole life and I know a lot of people, plus we can afford to pay out of pocket if we need to.
But so many others don't know where to go, and can't afford it anyway, and it makes me so mad
"[I]n the post warning users that the company will call the authorities if they seem like they're going to hurt someone, OpenAI also acknowledged that it is "currently not referring self-harm cases to law enforcement to respect peopleβs privacy given the uniquely private nature of ChatGPT interactions."
While ChatGPT has in the past proven itself pretty susceptible to so-called jailbreaks that trick it into spitting out instructions to build neurotoxins or step-by-step instructions to kill yourself, this new rule adds an additional layer of confusion. It remains unclear which exact types of chats could result in user conversations being flagged for human review, much less getting referred to police. We've reached out to OpenAI to ask for clarity.
While it's certainly a relief that AI conversations won't result in police wellness checks β which often end up causing more harm to the person in crisis due to most cops' complete lack of training in handling mental health situations β it's also kind of bizarre that OpenAI even mentions privacy, given that it admitted in the same post that it's monitoring user chats and potentially sharing them with the fuzz.
To make the announcement all the weirder, this new rule seems to contradict the company's pro-privacy stance amid its ongoing lawsuit with the New York Times and other publishers as they seek access to troves of ChatGPT logs to determine whether any of their copyrighted data had been used to train its models.
OpenAI has steadfastly rejected the publishers' request on grounds of protecting user privacy and has, more recently, begun trying to limit the amount of user chats it has to give the plaintiffs."
Folks thinking of making up a fresh excuse not to #vote in 2026 would do well to digest this article.
Sure, it's "complicated." But if one can pass a driver's license exam or similar piece of cake it's no problem to understand. Special pleading won't cover apathy or indolence.
Cliff Note version: start at "In 2023, it was Republicans controlling 26 delegations, Democrats 22 and two split delegations."
(Not voting is a slap in the face to those who've been disenfranchised, while actually voting is a way of being a proxy for those victims)
One big threat that looms over free and fair elections for president is that a tie in the Electoral College or a disputed race gets thrown to the House.
π Is it Monday yet?? YES, The Sift newsletter returns for the school year Sept. 8 & you don't want to miss out!
π‘ Daily Do Now activity slides π‘ Pop culture & real-world less π‘ Discussion Q's to spark critical thinking β so much more
ππ½ Already a reader? Great! Share this with an educator friend. π Not subscribed? Take a minute to join the list: newslit.org/educators/sift #Teacherthreads
i am utterly fascinated by the charging handle, which somehow has like a notch to keep the bolt open, weirdly "realistic" detail on a completely nonsensical gun?
This really shouldn't as any surprise, as the US govt has declared war on trans people and their rights, but it is worth nothing that these are the same people who opposed Red Flag laws to stop known abusers from purchasing firearms.
Iβm not eating much so my weight is dropping. Iβm still working out and, mostly, eating healthy stuff, so Iβm not particularly concerned about muscle loss.
I will say there are much better ways to diet than an ugly break-up in the hottest time of the year.
A new study of the trace amounts of lead in Venice's famous winged lion statue suggests that its metal originated in China β and Marco Polo's family may have brought it over.
How hard can it be to create your own inductors? Get a wire. Coil it up. Right? Well, the devil is definitely in the details, and [Nick] wants to share his ten tips for building βthe perfectβ inductor. We donβt know about perfect, but we do think he brings up some very good points. Check out his video below.
If you are winding wire around your finger (or, as it appears in the video, a fork) or you are using a beefy ferrite core, youβll find something interesting in the video.
Of course, the issue with inductors is that wires arenβt perfect, nor are core materials. Factors like this lead to inefficiency and loss, sometimes in a frequency-dependent way.
It looks like [Nick] is building a large switching power supply, so the subject inductor is a handful. He demonstrates some useful computational tools for analyzing data about cores, for example.
We learned a lot watching the tricks, but we were more interested in the inductorβs construction. We have to admit that the computed inductance of the coil matched quite closely to the measured value.
First time setting up LUKS-unlocking over SSH too. Not as difficult as I thought it would be! Only over local network though, just because I don't have a screen and keyboard attached to the server.
The National Gardeners should grab their garbage pickers and go check out the NPS HQ for National Capital Parks in Anacostia, we hear the building has been full of birds and birdshit **for years**
the trump family #crypto grift (#WorldLibertyFinancial, token #WLFI) just froze the account of #JustinSun, the single biggest backer of the entire grift, after Justin transferred millions of dollars βworthβ of WLFI tokens to #Binance (a large crypto exchange where he was probably going to sell them).
impossible to say for sure why this happened but occamβs razor suggests the WLFI team is desperately trying to keep the price from continuing to crash (itβs down ~45% from when it became tradable on Monday) so they intervened to prevent Justin from selling.
thereβs not a small amount of irony in the fact that the trump kids said they founded WLFI as a βdecentralizedβ platform to βprevent debankingβ.
maybe also worth noting that Justin has publicly claimed he has not sold and will never sell his WLFI tokens... but this being the worldβs most infamous chinese crypto grifter literally zero people in the cryptoverse believe that.
#TIL that Emacs ELisp version of sudo may be extremely slow and hang an Emacs if my real hostname (set in /etc/rc.conf) doesn't match with lines for localhost in /etc/hosts
Fuente De, Picos de Europa. We took a cable cart to see the top of the mountains. What amazing views! Looked like a volcanic mountain with ice tops π. We also hit our motorhome again π¦.
But overall our experience in Picos de Europa was fantastic!
"Finally, the current paradigm takes a kind of one-size-fits-all approach by relying on a single cognitive mechanism β the large language model β to solve everything. But we know the human mind uses many different tools for many different kinds of problems. For example, the renowned psychologist Daniel Kahneman suggested humans utilize one system of thought β which is quick, reflexive and automatic and driven largely by the statistics of experience but is superficial and prone to blunders β along with a second system that is driven more by abstract reasoning and deliberative thinking but is slow and laborious. Large language models, which are a bit like the first system, try to do everything with a single statistical approach but wind up unreliable as a result.
We need a new approach, closer to what Mr. Kahneman described. This may come in the form of neurosymbolic A.I., which bridges statistically driven neural networks (from which large language models are drawn) and some older ideas from symbolic A.I. Symbolic A.I. is more abstract and deliberative by nature; it processes information by taking cues from logic, algebra and computer programming. I have long advocated a marriage of these two traditions. Increasingly, we are seeing companies like Amazon and Google DeepMind take such a hybrid approach. (Even OpenAI appears to be doing some of this, quietly.) By the end of the decade, neurosymbolic A.I. may well eclipse pure scaling.
Large language models have had their uses, especially for coding, writing and brainstorming, in which humans are still directly involved. But no matter how large we have made them, they have never been worthy of our trust. To build A.I. that we can genuinely trust and to have a shot at A.G.I., we must move on from the trappings of scaling. We need new ideas. A return to the cognitive sciences might well be the next logical stage in the journey."
If you'd like to have a say in continuing Ireland's Basic Income for the Artists scheme which has been so transformative for so many beyond its pilot stage, please take a few minutes to fill in this public consultation survey. Here's hoping it gets retained, renewed and expanded. Feel free to share, survey ends Friday 5th. Go raibh mΓle maith agaibh. #BasicIncomeArtistsec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/2β¦
EUSurvey is an online survey-management system built for the creation and publishing of globally accessible forms, such as user satisfaction surveys and public consultations.
Today marks 30 years since the premiere of 'Xena: Warrior Princess' back in 1995. A show that was never ashamed of its campiness, but at the same time managed to be groundbreaking on multiple levels. Setting new standards for female action heroines, featuring a main character that was messy and flawed, physically strong and athletic, who started as a villain seeking redemption.
Xena, despite its cheesiness and often ridiculous premise, succeeded in pushing the boundaries of queer representation, challenged stereotypes, defied several of the sexist tropes of '90s media, explored LGBTQIA+ themes, even themes of gender identity, and made a clear statement against the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS at the time.
It may not be a flawless masterpiece, but it's a beloved cult classic for good reason.
I distinctly remember adults around me using slurs to describe Xena, which even at the time I was like what? Dude sheβs a bad ass and would kick your ass
@floatybirb I explain it more in the linked blog post. In the episode 'Here She Comes ... Miss Amphipolis' the show features an on-screen kiss between Xena and Miss Artiphys who was played by the late Karen Dior who was HIV-positive and an AIDS activist, and sadly passed away a few years later.
It was done as a deliberate message of solidarity and a statement dispelling the myths on how HIV spreads, especially given the widespread fear and misinformation about AIDS of the 90s, and it was pretty groundbreaking at the time.
Funny that, Xena definitely ticked some boxes that made me notice that I'm a straight dude with some fetishes, but I always wondered why I never saw the same level of speculation about the sexuality of Hercules, Sorbo always struck me as way prettier than a dude gets for the sake of women. (To bad Sorbo caught the brainworms)
I'm sure the level of heat in the fanfic is similar for both.
In one of my very few brushes with fame, I was once in the same voice acting class as Lucy Lawless. Suffice to say our career paths took very different directions from that point, but I've followed hers with huge admiration.
Happy Anniversary Xena! New ideas often start small and not so well thought through, but they are a start. What I would like to see in the future of female heroes is better armour. Compared to male colleagues, female heroes lack credible shielding, even basic clothing. Think of (my favourite!) Lara Croft in her silly long pale blue coat fluttering wide open in freezing cold, while all male companions are wearing serious winter gear.π
In regards to Xena making a statement against the stigma surrounding HIV: in the episode 'Here She Comes... Miss Amphipolis', Xena enters a beauty pageant undercover. There, she encounters Miss Artiphys, a character played by the late Karen Dior, an HIV-positive actor, singer, former adult performer, and drag queen (reports on Diorβs gender identity are contradictory, and probably also affected by '90s culture).
When Xena discovers that Miss Artiphys was an AMAB character who entered the competition presenting as a woman, the latter explains her actions with the line: "You really donβt get it, do you? I guess being born a woman you wouldnβt. This is a chance to use a part of me most people usually laugh at, or worse. A part I usually have to hide. Only here that part works for me, you see?" expecting Xena to force her to drop.
Instead, Xena encourages her to stay in the competition, never reveals her secret, never disrespects her, and in the end, she ends up being crowned winner. After her victory, Xena and Artiphys share a kiss. That was an intentional statement against the widespread misinformation surrounding AIDS and the transmission of HIV that reportedly Lucy Lawless insisted on being included.
It is near impossible to fully explain how *ridiculously* groundbreaking it was that this entire plot happened in the mid '90s.
My dad was a fan of xena growing up. I think nominally it's because it was full of attractive women, but deeply it's because my dad loves this kind of fantasy/scifi/etc. He's always loved stuff like the outer limits, which Xena fit right in wrt tone and visual style. As a result, I watched so much Xena. By contrast, my dad hated Hercules. It always felt so right that Lucy Lawless was an IRL good guy and Kevin Sorbo is an actual villain. Just played what I always knew.
@GabeMoralesVR I think it's no coincidence that so many people, myself included, just gave up on Hercules but love Xena to this day. The two shows were pretty similar in campiness, but Xena had a special kind of heart to it that makes it different. Plus, beyond his bigotry, Kevin Sorbo has all the charisma of chewed gum, and most of the other interesting characters that originated in Hercules moved on and became part of Xena eventually.
To me, Kevin Sorbo's hercules was the epitome of "we have arnold schwartzenegger at home." When you watched Hercules, you felt like you were watching a crappy knock off of better known similar properties (like ignoring that Arnie literally played hercules himself, hercules the show was basically the 1960's batman compared to Conan the Barbarian's Batman 89).
Meanwhile Xena was pretty unlike anything before or even after. You watched just to see new stuff, your OP is a good example
@GabeMoralesVR Yep, I think you make a really solid point. Hercules didn't really have anything newer or better to add to Schwarzenegger's Conan, and honestly, it was the supporting cast and guest characters like Bruce Campbell's Autolycus that carried the show mostly, and many of them worked better as part of Xena's plot in the end.
Ya, plus Xena actually had a character arc. She was a villain at first! Or I guess more of an anti-hero. It was really cool to see her become such a hero. Hercules basically stayed the same the entire show.
@scy Same! I watched this show as a kid with my mom, loved it. But I didn't get most of the subtext. I was kinda confused by the messaging about the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle. And this episode... My goodness.
@Mondgesicht @scy Watching as a kid, I *did* pick on a lot of hints that there was something going on between these two women beyond them being best friends, but rewatching it as an adult with full awareness of how people fall in love, I noticed that there's a ton of stuff that completely went over my head the first time.
I did almost pick up... I was like: "huh, the way they're acting... almost like they're lovers..." But I was kinda waiting for what I was used to seeing from hetero relationships in the media. People would be shown kissing and having sex. So I felt like it couldn't be meant to portrait a love relationship. Also in German synch we usually don't get a lot of "I love you" because we don't use those words for platonic relationships in German. They may have never said that in the German tv version. Very similar with Sailor Moon.
@Mondgesicht Honestly, I think in hindsight it becomes easier to see, now knowing that the romance was very much intended as it was clarified by the actors and creators involved. Also now knowing the restrictions of 90s television and the limitations they had in what they could show. At least it didn't come off as weird as Haruka and Michiru being introduced as cousings in some of the Sailor Moon dubs. π
We had the pleasure of meeting Hudson Leick (Callisto) at a con a number of years ago. She's a hoot. And honestly anything with Bruce Campbell I'll watch.
I didn't see much of it the first time around (though some of my friends were big fans) but I've been watching it recently and it really is damn good. It's really hard to walk that line of self-awareness without slipping into self parody.
It manages to put one foot in Robert Howard and the other in Curly Howard and actually pull it off.
@Thad That's a good comparison, and honestly, all in all, watching it relatively recently it has aged impressively well, especially compared to other shows from the same TV era.
"Al fine di rendere piΓΉ piacevole lβinterazione con lβassistente IA di Google, TCL ha dotato la sua nuova smart TV di microfoni a lungo raggio, in modo da consentire agli utenti di conversare con Gemini comodamente dal divano."
ZemΔ #EU jsou βΕ‘okovΓ‘nyβ rozhodnutΓm #USA zastavit programy bezpeΔnostnΓ pomoci a snaΕΎΓ se objasnit podrobnosti, pΓΕ‘e : 42tcen.com/publikace.
"#DHS is moving away from DeSantis's EVER Detn Camp & will be moving migrants with a criminal record (π¨can be as little as an arrest for a misdemeanor) to theπ¨notorious max security LA St Pen, Angola -largest max sec prison in the US with aπsinister & vicious history.
#ICE Barbie is dubbing it the βLouisiana Lockup,β 51 migrants: already detained in the fac." -N Glazer
π¨"The overwhelming maj of ppl in ICE #detention don't have a violent criminal record. ~40% of ppl sent detained by ICE in recent months has no criminal record.
By the end of the month,πthe single largest group of ppl in detention may be those with no record." -A R-Melnick
New data: #ICE hasπ¨π¨π¨diverted at least *25K officers* into its mass deportation efforts, incl ~14,498 fed LE officers. This is the lower-bound b/c many BP agents are independently engaged in int arrests. These#s rep staggering shrs of fed LE agts, being shifted fromπ¨criminal law enf to minor civil IMM offs.
Arizona GOP demands expulsion of Democrat who posted about ICE activity at a Phoenix school tucsonsentinel.com/local/repor⦠Arizona Republicans want to expel a Democratic state senator because she shared a post on social media about federal immigration officials arresting people outside of a South Phoenix elementary school. #Tucson #Arizona
Sue is Writing Solarpunk ππ±
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk ππ± • • •""Based on the current regulatory environment," CVS said it's offering COVID-19 vaccinations in the following states: Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming."
cbsnews.com/news/cvs-walgreensβ¦
CVS and Walgreens limit access to COVID vaccines as required by some state guidelines
Kierra Frazier (CBS News)Sue is Writing Solarpunk ππ±
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk ππ± • • •How Are You Supposed To Get The COVID Vaccine Now? An Explainer | Defector
defector.comBryan L. Fordham
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk ππ± • • •Sue is Writing Solarpunk ππ±
in reply to Bryan L. Fordham • • •Bryan L. Fordham
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk ππ± • • •Absolutely agree with you. It's infuriating
My wife runs a nonprofit clinic in a heavily red county. She was telling me about the vaccines they have available, free of charge, but they'll expire at the end of the month and people aren't getting them
Sue is Writing Solarpunk ππ±
in reply to Bryan L. Fordham • • •Bryan L. Fordham
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk ππ± • • •Yep
It's wild to me how people are so hate filled that the idea that they're hurting "them" (however you define that group) is worth whatever suffering you inflict on yourself. I've seen some people that I considered good people just go off the rails
Hard to process. A lot of people who claim to be a Christian like me just being so hateful. So, apparently not like me, or more accurately I'm not like that anymore.
So yes, it's all painfully eye opening.
Sue is Writing Solarpunk ππ±
in reply to Bryan L. Fordham • • •Bryan L. Fordham
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk ππ± • • •Oh yeah, I'll be able to get it. And I haven't checked, but our pediatrician is a huge science nerd lol so I imagine we'll have no real issue getting the kids vaccinated, either. But I've been in this area my whole life and I know a lot of people, plus we can afford to pay out of pocket if we need to.
But so many others don't know where to go, and can't afford it anyway, and it makes me so mad
Sue is Writing Solarpunk ππ±
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk ππ± • • •spiegelmama
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk ππ± • • •Sue is Writing Solarpunk ππ±
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk ππ± • • •bsky.app/profile/luckytran.comβ¦