loud bark, deep bite

>Among the characters there are one or two White characters with minor and/or distinctly antagonistic roles.

>White tumblr users focus entirely on said White characters.

>Tag of Black led piece of media is filled with posts about White character(s)

Apparently juries in Texas are now issuing life sentences for possessing information ?? There was no terrorism involved, no assassination plot; the couple mentioned in the article did not do or plan to do any violence. They literally just got sentenced to life in prison for being associated with anti-fascism (aka... a pro-democracy movement).

So just to be clear:

Attack the US government and attempt a coup = Pardoned and free to go!

Be present at a protest or in possession of leftist information = Life sentence.

Last year on the Fourth of July, a small group from Dallas-Fort Worth held a night-time noise demonstration, setting off fireworks outside the Prairieland Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility south of the cities, in solidarity with the detainees. A few protesters broke away and spray-painted graffiti on employees’ cars and a security post, slashed the tires on a government van, and broke a security camera. The facility’s guards ordered the protesters to disperse, and most of them did. When a police officer arrived at the scene, drawing his gun, an armed protester shot her rifle, hitting the officer in the shoulder. The officer survived.

After a three-week trial, a jury found eight of nine protesters guilty of “providing material support to terrorists”, among other crimes.

For the Sotos, this “material support” included owning a “printing press” used to print anarchist zines and being part of a leftist book club, the federal government argued. The couple had already left the scene by the time guns were drawn. All eight of the defendants sentenced so far have received unusually harsh sentences – 30 to 100 years – essentially life in prison.

Their attorneys announced their intention to appeal, but many supporters are doubtful that anything short of a presidential pardon from a future administration would free them.

The Prairieland case was the first tried and convicted under the Trump Department of Justice’s “counter-terrorism” initiatives targeting “antifa” – short for antifascist – a decentralized movement the administration has officially categorized as a “domestic terrorist organization”. The federal government argued the Prairieland defendants, what they called a “North Texas Antifa cell”, had planned the demonstration as an assassination attempt against a law enforcement officer. The government alleged this conspiracy even though the defendants were loosely connected, and some who attended the protest did not even know each other.

So being anti-fascist is llegal and worthy of going to prison for life in the United States.

And they got. Life. In. Prison.

Do you live in our nation’s fair capital of Washington DC? If not, were you planning on traveling there this weekend to watch the annual Fourth of July festivities and fireworks on the National Mall? Great! Have fun! Take the usual precautions. Stay hydrated — the District’s heat and humidity in the summer are no joke! Don’t drink and drive. The crowds might be overwhelming, so be kind and patient with others. Particularly the public servants trying to keep things moving — they are giving up their holiday so you can enjoy yours!

Finally, wear a respirator at all times, as if you were spraying your house for termites or mining minerals on an asteroid. Wait, what?

Yes, wear a respirator. Because according to the Washington Post, the massive fireworks display is expected to produce so much air pollution that the National Park Service itself suggests — in internal documents because why actually warn the public of the danger — people “remain indoors as much as possible during and after the show.”

Apparently the levels of the type of particulate that’s the biggest concern are projected to be between about 60-120 TIMES the acceptable level, and those particulates could persist for three to six hours post finale. The National Park Service is recommending N95 masks while outdoors and the use of HEPA filters indoors.

I will be downloading everything I purchased from Bandcamp and keeping an eye on it.

Here are some basic primers. If someone is wearing what look like Meta glasses, they usually have a small circular camera in the outer corners of the lenses, like the one on your phone.

I would also regularly check their own product pages so you're on top of what the models look like. They tend to have larger frames, but come in a variety of shapes and colors.

A new hobbyist developed app warns if people nearby may be wearing smart glasses, such as Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, which stalkers and harassers have repeatedly used to film people without their knowledge or consent. The app scans for smart glasses’ distinctive Bluetooth signatures and sends a push alert if it detects a potential pair of glasses in the local area.

The American Foundation for the Blind has said that "The Ray-Ban Meta glasses are an accessibility tool only by coincidence. That makes them more affordable and, in many ways, unaware of the needs of users with reduced vision" although they do have seemingly positive views on Meta Glasses as a whole. (source 10). It also seems like their marketing push as accessibility devices began last year (source 11).

But to add even more into the nonsense, Meta is now toying around with adding a "limit" to the functionality of their glasses unless their users pay for more access (source 12). AND, as stated above, Meta has officially added facial recognition code in their glasses and only admitted it after being called out, which is basically the death of privacy as we know it (source 13, source 14, source 15). And oh look another lawsuit because of it (source 16) THAT THEY LOST (source 17)!

Long story short: I don't begrudge someone using them as a disability aid overall, but ultimately both their privacy and other people's privacy are being disregarded by Meta and that is not and should not be acceptable by any means.

I understand there is no ethical consumption under capitalism but there is a level of personal responsibility someone has to take when using them if they truly truly need them, such as opting out of sharing information, not filming strangers without permission, not posting footage of strangers online, opting out of facial recognition if possible, etc.

If you have any good ones for people, add them!

Do you have unglazed baked tile floors, bricks, or those windows with a bunch of stacked tiles or baked unglazed pipe stacked in them to fill them up and let a breeze through? Are they in the SHADE? GET THEM WET. Yes it will dry up pretty quickly in the heat but you can sit near or against them. As terracotta or unglazed clay dries off very slowly it will cool the air around it.

If you can, get the top of your head wet. Air across wet hair has a cooling effect.

Unglazed clay pots, flowerpots, and even canvas bags can be soaked with water, set in the shade with good airflow, and used to try to keep some things cooler, like bottles of water or packages of food.

You can take turns using a fan, a big palm frond, or whatever you have to fan each other or an elder or baby to keep them cooler. Doing it in shifts means no one gets too tired or too hot. You will all be very cranky because of the heat, but it is harder on the sick, the elderly, or children and infants. Watch them closely!! They can overheat so much faster.

GET LOW! If your house has a cellar and it is safe to be in (like, ventilated and escapable in an emergency), get down into it or put at least the high risk or elderly and babies in it. The earth will keep it cooler down there than anywhere else.

CROSSBREEZE. If you open a window or door at one corner of the house, then do the same at an opposite corner, this will draw air through the house. Dampened lightweight cloth in the window or doorway or damp mosquito netting will cool that air as it flows.

If you normally sleep upstairs, now you do not. Get everybody down on mattresses or just on the ground, on the ground floor. Upper stories or rooftops are often no place to be in a time like this. Even laying there with your eyes shut will give you rest if not sleep. It will help.

Dampened cloth hung up in the windows, doorways, breezeways, will help cool you off. Spray a fine mist over mosquito netting around beds.

If you have linen, or even cotton or hemp cloths but linen works amazingly for this, dampen it and put it over people's heads (like a nun's wimple or a sari, face clear) or shoulders, or over part of a baby's bed (never leave a baby unattended in this kind of weather or when you put drapey stuff by their bed like this) Again, it's evaporation that will cool you off a little.

Stay in the shade as much as you can. It is silly because it is obvious but stay in the shade.

The hottest part of the day will be the afternoon. Do not do anything physical or outdoors if you can avoid it during that time. If you must, --and jobs I know have no pity but this is a time when they will get you killed so you might have to risk losing your job, but keep your life, I am not kidding, you can drop dead out there- If you must go out, do so in the earliest morning hours or just before dawn. This is the best time and it will be the coolest then.

Unfortunately, my efforts to find anything with information on how to passively cool yourself in high humidity is being frustrated by so much ai junk.

This NPR segment post only has "stay hydrated, wear loose clothes, close the blinds, don't be too active, and find a cooling center" as advice for dealing with heat and humidity

This AARP post specifically says that swamp coolers (evaporative cooling) won't work in high humidity, but, again, beyond "stay hydrated and find someplace with air conditioning," it doesn't have any passive cooling suggestions for high humidity

I know there are more ways to deal with humid heat that are passive, but I don't know how many of them require physically building things to stay cool, which is not helpful for emergency cooling.

It acts as a heat sink and you can put your hands and feet in it to cool down throughout the day