Tag Archives: comics

Star Wars Stuff, Perspective on Numerous Levels, Cool Looking Hobbies, and (of course) Politics

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This entry is part 51 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

I’ve spent far too long reading stuff and watching YouTube videos. Between that and hitting a meeting down in Silver Spring proper after work tonight, my “free time” has all but vanished, leaving me, once again, at the “Oh, crap, I should probably be going to sleep now-ish” point.

My “normal” sleep schedule really doesn’t fit well with the “normal” world. There’s really nothing close to normal about it. It rotates oddly if I’m left to my own devices. And, while I’ve found plenty of documented cases of variously odd natural sleep schedules. documentation doesn’t really help solve the problem of it not at all matching with a typical work schedule. (Let alone when anything else is going on.)

This has been the case for pretty much as long as I can remember.

And it really shows no signs of changing for the better. No matter how much I try to tweak it.

So, here’s the feed from today and the weekend. Enjoy it. I did. 🙂

A lot of humor (and some action) to counter-balance the really disturbing bits of news

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This entry is part 47 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

Another kind of crazy day, but there was plenty of humor to distract online (or so it seems).

That’s good because some of the news items that came across my various feeds were more than a little disheartening. Mostly politics and environmental stuff… and I didn’t bother to re-share many of them because I just didn’t have the time to dedicate to giving them a good intro.

But they’re out there… and, sadly, I’m sure they’ll come up again.

So, today you get mostly talking animals, heart-warming stories, and some movie trailers.

Because, really, the world sucks enough as it is… no need to dwell on it all the time. (Just take action when you can!)

Also, it’s supposed to be ridiculously warm this week (mid-90s during the day, mid-70s overnight, if we’re lucky). I don’t care much for that kind of heat… especially when it’s paired with equally ridiculous levels of humidity. Imma gonna melt.

More Than a Weekend’s Worth of Stuff

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This entry is part 38 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

Missed another Friday of posting the (week)daily feed. Ended up out and about late into the night catching the “best of” showings of the 48 Hour Film Project films. Some very, very impressive things were made in that weekend. (And, hey!, I even know some people who made one of them! You can find that in the feed below.)

The rest of the weekend was ridiculously low-key. Mostly spent catching up on some shows, a backlog of email (lots of YouTube video notifications), and playing a few too many hours of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat (both nostalgia-fueled Steam purchases, since they were on sale when I bought them… I’ve been reminded why I stopped wasting quarters at the arcade).

The quiet weekend was shaken out by another high-stress day at the office, thanks to near-impossible deadlines and technology seemingly conspiring against me at every turn. And totally capped off by the bus I normally catch not even showing up and the second one on the route running just slow enough to make me miss my connecting bus to home by about three minutes (gotta love it when you can see the bus pull out of the pickup area and onto the main road).

Oh, and my sunglasses broke. (And, apparently, they were my backup pair… I usually have two pairs hanging around, just in case… seems I forgot to restock last time.)

It hasn’t been that great of a day.

https://www.facebook.com/kierduros/activity/10152073399765981

Community News, Wolverine, a lot of Culture Talk, Some Science, a Little Food, and The Wonder Years Reunion

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This entry is part 37 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

I was asked in a comment stream today why I post (or, technically, share… since other people have found most of them first) the articles I do, especially about the whole misogynist culture stuff that’s really being talked about a lot right now.

The answer is simple: Awareness needs to grow.

I know far too many people–myself included–who either are or were blind to how their actions impact the lives of others.

You can’t consciously change things you don’t know you’re doing.

I can’t make anyone improve themselves. But I can at least, maybe, give them some insight into their own actions. (I know, long ago, I was utterly shocked at many of the things I was doing without realizing it.)

We can’t make anyone do anything… not without a whole lot of negatives that outstrip the positives. Plus, unless there’s a critical mass of awareness and will to begin with, forced change never sticks.

This is part of the build up to that critical mass of awareness and will to change.

If just one or two people are shaken awake, realize what they’re doing isn’t what they think they’re doing, and make personal change, then there is progress.

There’s always more than one or two people who are shaken awake.

In the particular case of this issue of entrenched male privileged and misogynist culture, we’re talking about something that is even more entrenched than racism or homophobia. It goes back thousands of years and is built into political discourse and religion like nothing else.

But just because we’ve never known a time that was different, doesn’t mean we can’t try to be better than we (as a species) have ever been before when it comes to equality.

That right there is the beauty of free will and not being trapped and controlled by our biology alone.

So, yeah, I think it’s kind of important.

Not Good Advice, Not Nazis, Not the Inside of a Building, Not Cool, Not Ishtar, Not Catholic, Not Earth

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This entry is part 9 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

There’s a lot of misinformation that floats around online. Today there were two big bits that just needed something said.

The first was that ridiculous “Ishtar is pronounced Easter” image meme making the rounds. It misrepresents pretty much everything about Ishtar and Easter. I let it slide the first couple of times I saw it… but by the fourth or fifth I just had to start telling people it was utterly incorrect. Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one who was totally annoyed by it, so there was already a nice vitriolic article with the proper information to link to.

The second bit was a much bigger deal. The initial reports had Ukraine requiring Jews to register with the government. That, of course, never goes well and is totally not cool. It’s also a bit out of character for any actual country (especially one that’s recently had the eyes of the world on it) to do in this day and age… so it smelled a little fishy to me and I held off indignantly posting about it. Soon enough, in another thread, another friend of mine who is much more knowledgeable about the goings on in Russia and Ukraine chimed in, mentioning that the people passing out the notices of the required registration were being called terrorists by the Russian and Ukrainian media… pretty much cementing that it’s definitely not a government program. Then an article turned up laying all that out.

There was a third bit that I hoped was some sort of hoax, but, after some quick checking, it turned out that, no, a school did, indeed, distribute some of the absolute worst, most harmful, and utterly idiotic guidelines for how its 5th grade students should deal with bullies. It included “Don’t tell anyone about it,” and a bunch of other stuff that came down to “If it keeps happening, it’s obviously your fault.” Totally not cool. Thankfully, there’s an appropriate level of outrage about this.