A Little Amoeba

Rainy Day ☔️…

If ever David needs defending, I have no doubt Michael will be there.

"Why did he choose a black female tory to shit on"

Because if you didn't know. Kemi was the one actively gunning for trans youth in her leadership campaign.

KEMI was the one, while brianna gheys (a teenage trans girl who was BRUTALLY attacked) murderers were convicted, released an article saying trans youth shouldn't have safe spaces at school and should, BY LAW be outed to family and superiors by teachers who find out/or are confided in.

He called out kemi not because it's easier to shit on a black, cis female politition.

He called out kemi because SHE is the one who was the cause of terror and outrage of trans youth and their families. Which may I remind people, includes him and his family.

Have some links and screencaps

Badenoch is a Tory. She has privilege (and wealth) - furthermore she has real and genuine political power. She has a platform. She has the ability to drive her transphobic ideology into legislation. She is an actual danger to trans children.

And, as the prime minister said, free speech is a fundamental part of democracy. And that most definitely includes freely speaking out against politicians and policies that are harmful.

This was never a case of a wealthy privileged white man punching down at a woman of colour. That's how the tories and the terfs spun it. This is a father putting himself in front of his (and our, and your) kids.

You cannot in conscience speak from your position of authority as a politician, then claim victimhood when you are judged and challenged on what you say.

The sad story of what happened to a married team of creators who lost millions - and their names - to a corporate takeover.

Hold on to those trademarks, kids.

Sure, but also.

TiL (click to go to the thread, which probably has more interesting tidbits I missed).

Bonus:

In addition to the print terminology stuff: the visual shorthand icons and ad graphics for something about writing are still often pen-nibs, fountain pens and typewriters…

…while graphics of a monitor, keyboard and mouse remain visual shorthand for computing…

…even though most writers now use monitor /  keyboard / mouse or even laptop / touchpad.

In addition, headers for “this blog / website is about writing” are often in one of the many imitation typewriter fonts complete with smudges, or just Courier.

The start and end call icons on most / all smartphones is still the handset of a classic desk telephone, and sometimes the open-app icon is a complete phone.

The term “hang up” for “end the call” refers to something even older - one of these…

And of course the Save icon is indeed a 3½ inch floppy disc.

Why it wasn’t a 5¼ floppy is a mystery. The icon version is just as distinctive.

Also, why various OP updates never changed “Save” to the graphic of a CD / DVD or flash drive is another mystery, and nowadays a Save icon should probably be a cartoon cloud.

We ended up having a lengthy conversation about how a disease, sea star wasting syndrome (SSWS), decimated the wild populations of that species and many sea stars a few years prior and how that aquarium was actually one of the few in the country exhibiting Pycnopodia that didn't lose their entire population to the disease. We talked about some of the research that was happening to help protect them and she started to feel a little better. She wanted to feel like it was okay for her to visit the aquarium and that she wasn't just staring at caged animals.

Pycnopodia are now listed as critically endangered. They are a keystone species in their environment and SSWS is estimated to have killed 90% of the wild population. Without them, the shores of the entire west coast have changed. Now, ten years later, that same aquarium was the first to establish a successful treatment for the disease. Before that, most aquariums had the protocol to remove symptomatic animal and generally had to euthanize them because nothing could be done. Within a matter of days, they were completely melted. Now, there is a treatment. It's not a cure, but there's hope that something can be done. That same aquarium is also part of efforts to work towards reintroducing Pycnopodia to the wild to help restore the ecosystems.

People have started to understand that zoos work in conservation and education, but aquariums do, too. We talk about the California condor and black footed ferret as success stories and Panamanian golden frogs and rhinos as works in progress, but aquariums are doing that same kind of work! There are coral conservation labs, efforts to reintroduce wild animals and remove invasives (looking at you, Florida), housing of non-releasable marine mammals, research into new medical procedures and treatments, and breeding of endangered species. The fish (and inverts!) in aquariums have an easy life, and might even be part of something so much bigger.

And old people use ellipses simply to indicate a pause, or for some other incomprehensible reason I’m not aware of. But young people use ellipses to indicate passive-aggression.

So an old person could type something like:

how are things going with your “boyfriend”….

and what they mean is

How are things going with your boyfriend? [Im so excited for you, sweetie, and I wanna hear about it]

But a young person would interpret that sentence as