Notices by Brian Ó (blacksam@social.gibberfish.org), page 39

I know I'm mostly revealing my own ignorance, but I don't really know what a Bernie Bro is. I mean, I gather they're Bernie supporters who are dicks to people online, but I've never seen one in the wild. Which internet cesspools do they frequent?

#berniebros

Hal's theory, which he practiced on others, was that one must get hardened. -- Jack London, The Call of the Wild

I'd like to believe this, but, well... you know.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/peter-wehner-trump-presidency-over/607969/

#usa #trump #covid19 #coronavirus

I'm 85% woke, and for the other 15% I keep my mouth shut. -- #MarcMaron

My kid helped me make up a batch of agar plates using some PP5 food containers instead of regular petri dishes. Aside from being cheaper than petri dishes, they're autoclave-able, so you can pour and then sterilize instead of having to pour hot agar in a sterile environment. The lids also form a seal, so no need to use tape/parafilm to keep the dishes sealed. I'm in love already.

#mushrooms #fungi #mycology #agar #diy

Seriously though, what the fuck is up with toilet paper? I honestly don't know why people have the idea in their heads that they need to stockpile it. A woman at the pharmacy yesterday was buying 72 rolls (and nothing else). Today I went to the supermarket and they had none left at all. What's the motivation here? Is this a Facebook thing? Cable news? I haven't heard a single explanation why people are doing it.

#covid19 #coronovirus #toiletpaper #hysteria #wtf

The Rob Corddry sketch at the end is fantastic :D

https://youtube.com/watch?v=v_kak7kAdNw

#lastweektonight #johnoliver #robcorddry #sheriffs #lawenforcement

[T]here's a chance you'd end up dead or stupid on Mars. Or both.

Seeing how the chances of ending up dead on Earth are pretty close to 100%, and the chances of being stupid are also shockingly high, I'm not sure how this is supposed to be relevant :P

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/death-on-mars1/

#mars

https://youtube.com/watch?v=BKDgE1rcEoA

#somemorenews #codyjohnston #berniesanders #joebiden #satire #notsatire

On the left is the crappy, beat-up mushroom cluster I bought at the supermarket. On the right is a much more appealing-looking cluster I grew by cloning it. Achievement unlocked.

#mushrooms #fungi #mycology #cloning

This is pretty funny. It's a video from a company called ChipDrop about why you probably DON'T want to use their service.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilAv8SzB_Aw

I watched the first two episodes of Devs last night. It smells a lot like Ex-Machina, which I've tried several times to watch, but I could never finish because it gets on my nerves. Apparently Alex Garland still thinks that groundbreaking innovations come from eccentric billionaires obsessed with unconventional architecture. However, I like Nick Offerman a lot and I've never seen him in a dramatic role, so I'm giving it a chance. It's interesting so far, but I feel like at any moment something could happen that makes my eyes roll so hard that I turn it off. We'll see.

#devs #alexgarland #nickofferman #tv #scifi

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZSnXI93lY-0

#thoughtslime #billgates #microsoft #billionaires #philanthropy

Susan Collins Unable to Decide Whether to Wash Hands

#humorsatirefromtheborowitzreport #humor #satire #susancollins #coronavirus
posted by pod_feeder_v2

I started reading Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. The main character's native language doesn't have gendered pronouns, and although they're fluent in languages that do, they apparently also have trouble discerning people's gender. As a result, they refer to everyone using feminine pronouns. I'm not sure if there's an ultimate purpose to this in the story, or if it's just an authorial flourish.

For a while now, I've said the best solution to the "preferred pronouns" quagmire is to switch to using a single set of neutral pronouns for everyone, reasoning that in most communication, the subject's gender is irrelevant, and in corner cases there are other ways to denote it. However, I must say that when reading a book where this is effectively the practice (and the author's also not big on physical descriptions) it's confusing as fuck. (This is compounded slightly by the fact that other characters in the book don't share the POV's gender-blindness and do use gendered pronouns, so sometimes a single person is referred to as both "he" and "she" in the same conversation.)

I guess ultimately the characters' genders don't matter to the story. Perhaps this is the point the author's trying to make. However, my gender-habituated brain has a hard time forming a mental model of the characters without this information. It makes it a frustrating read, as I'm constantly distracted by the dissonance.

So, maybe my idea about pronouns is a bad one. Or maybe it just falls down in circumstances like this. Or maybe the author is just being a pain in the ass. I have no conclusions.

#annleckie #scifi #gender #language

Another shot of my P. adiposa today. This is the first time I've come full circle in cloning a piece of mushroom tissue. I deserve an amateur mycologist merit badge.

#mushrooms #fungi #mycology

I'll go further than T1J and say that being a billionaire is inherently evil and unjustifiable. We need to elevate people from poverty by forcing the wealth hoarders to foot the bill.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=5Jo0y9_k5xY

#t1j #poverty #inequality

I decided to BE MY OWN BOSS
it pissed off my boss
he fired me

I came home from Florida to find my P. adiposa pinning. I had more or less written these off, and decided to chuck them if nothing happened while I was away. Now I'm super excited!

#mushrooms #fungi

Did Altered Carbon go off-book this season? The writing seems a lot less smart.

#alteredcarbon #scifi #netflix