Ah, Good The Sea

MR. SPIRO: Do you give these lectures at all of your depositions? MR. BANKSTON: I do, and you can watch them.

is ESPECIALLY hilarious to me having listened to multiple depositions Mark has had to take in the Sandy Hook case, where he has needed to lecture EVERY. SINGLE. ATTORNEY. at some point in the case about how they're violating Texas Rule XYZ, because they all, to a one, did something seriously ethically questionable during the deposition.

Next up someone is going to claim that the Narnia series isn't kids books.

Everyone should have a go-bag that they've prepared over time in the event of an emergency. It should include:

- All documents including IDs, passports, social security cards, insurance information, medical records: vitally include any documentation of recent medical procedures, documentation of any current legal proceedings, etc (or copies of all of the above)

- Credit & Debit Cards, cash, etc

- Medications (and clean medical applicators like syringes and such. If it needs to be kept cooled, I've seen people reccomend that the bag be kept within a few steps of a kitchen or fridge to be accessible to coolers/ice packs)

- Clothing (Three days of clothing per person tends to be a fair assessment. Typically add in a coat no matter the weather and a mask of any kind)

- Three days of non-perishable food per person per day. If there is a baby involved, include formula (EVEN if they are breastfed. Babies sometimes struggle to latch on when in stressful situations)

- Water. This rule of thumb is a gallon per living being per day for at least three days. Add an additional reusable water bottle for each being if possible.

- Animal/Pet Supplies (Pet food, collapsable litter box, backup litter in ziploc bags, poop bags, etc). Include Pet Medical Records if available

- First Aid Kit (which should be in your car anyway, but remember that you can't always take your car)

- Chargers for all devices

- Extra! Flashlight! Trust me on this one, you do not want to be relying on your phone. Preferably solar or battery powered but remember to add in extra batteries if it is the latter

- Basic Hygiene/Health Aid such as N95s, gloves, surgical masks, hand sanitizer, eye protection, saline, etc

THEN you add in sentimental items and valuables. Make sure you have thought about what items you own that you 100% could never ever live without and try to see if you can make sure they can be grabbed quickly if you are ever in an evacuation zone.

It is overwhelming and for a lot of people it takes time to curate this bag. You would much rather prefer to think about it now than panic in an emergency and forget something you can never find again.

People commonly defend this practise with "But the audience isn't meant to understand!" or "It's inconsequential!", neither of which actually address a) their assumption that the [ideal Anglo] audience wouldn't understand, or, perhaps most crucially in the context of CCs, b) that this is a failure of accessibility. A hearing person who speaks that "foreign" language will know exactly what's being said. A deaf or HoH person – the people CCs are primarily intended for – who speaks or reads that language should therefore have the exact same opportunity to understand. It very much feels to me like an assumption that we deaf and HoH people couldn't possibly understand any language but English, so there's no point in getting those languages transcribed for us. I hope it goes without saying how profoundly audist that sentiment is.

There is also, I think, a profound misunderstanding or ignorance of Deaf culture at play. Which is to say, CCs in English-language media are written with not only the assumption that the audience will be native English speakers, but that all d/Deaf and HoH people speak English as their first language, so all other languages are as supposedly foreign to them as they are for hearing people. But sign languages are their own distinct language. BSL, ASL, ISL, AusLan, NZSL etc ≠ English (and are indeed different from one another), LIS ≠ Italian, JSL ≠ Japanese, and so on. So, if you follow the captioners' logic to its natural extreme, all non-signed dialogue is "foreign" to many d/Deaf and HoH people and should therefore be labelled [speaks foreign language] / [speaks English] / [speaks own language] / etc. – which is, obviously, a terrible idea that perfectly highlights all the biases implicit in closed captioning.

The whole metaverse can no longer be properly viewed without an account and I am definitely not making one just to see your contact info or opening hours.

Painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by William Carlos Williams

PBS and NPR were never beholden to the US government.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was created so that the US government could fund public media without public media being influenced by the government. It was a private non-profit funded by the government, not a part of the government itself. This is by design. This was a good thing. It meant that even small local TV and radio stations, could afford to create media for the public good, without government influence.

This meant TV and radio stations for poor communities. For non-english speaking communities. For rural communities. For minorities. It meant that free and accessible media could be created for everyone, even if the government didn't like it.

That's why conservatives defunded it.

Because if they couldn't control it, and if it helped the people they hated, then they would have to destroy it. Do you really think that a fascist government would defund their own propaganda machine?

Not only is the idea that PBS before being defunded was propaganda wrong, but ignores the fact that defunding it is going to have long-term negative effects on vulnerable communities.