Seeing the usual In-Love-With-Failure and/or disruptors saying don’t take or post photos.
If you’re saying this: THERE IS MORE THAN ONE KIND OF PROTEST.
Don’t take photos at a direction action were laws may be violated, of course. But this isn’t that kind of protest. This is a LOUD AND VISIBLE protest, where showing massive numbers is the entire point, and having lots of sources posting massive numbers is more critical than ever.
A flood of sources is important, because the more A.I.-generated images are used to flood the zone, the more many sources of photographs matter. We have to out-flood their flood.
Now, if you are taking photos, don’t take close-ups without permission! That’s always true. But I advise that you DO take and post WIDE AREA PHOTOS which INCLUDE PEOPLE WHO COULD FIT IN AT A MAGA RALLY.
Middle-aged white men in particular.
MAGAts don’t give a shit until it’s them. If you see someone and think “yeah, they look like they could be someone at a Trump rally,” include them in the shot. That’s what they need to see.
You want to scare Trump, make it look like he’s losing “his people” to opposition rallies in your photographs.
No time to rewrite this better, I’m out the door. See you on the streets.
Today’s the day. It’s not too late to get out there. In Cascadia, most protests haven’t even started yet. If you can’t do the mornings, some protests start late – Lake Forest Park’s protest starts at 4:30 in the afternoon.
Two weeks after seeing the CGI Lilo and Stitch at the cinema I'm watching the original with the kids. And it's so much better. The direction, the writing, the acting are all just much higher quality.
The remake felt much clumsier. And I don't really understand why.
Edit: Just realised that they entirely cut the Ugly Duckling part from the remake. Why would you do that? It's key to Stitch's arc! And all of the bits where Lilo how to be like Elvis.
In fact, nearly all of the bits where Lilo talked to Stitch and built a relationship with him.
Thomann and Sweetwater. Minor grumps at
Thomann for having a US
site that looks tempting until you find out that shipping and
tariffs are added at checkout. Major grumps at my old standby, Musician's Friend, whose
site is totally broken when seen from Europe. Major grumps at ME for
not having installed a VPN yet.
Online filk circles. NO thanks to the weird audio problems I was
having tonight during Eurofilk. But I got one song (The Stuff that Dreams are
Made Of) out. (I wrote it for my father, who died 26 years ago.
And Father's Day is this Sunday.)
Find your local No Kings protest and show up. More different protests are better, not worse; one huge protest is easy to crack down upon; a dozen across the same area is impossible.
- My Chemical Romance released a remastered version of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. I managed to resist the lure of the various editions of the vinyl, and only bought the CD and digital download. DAMN. The difference in the songs! Predictably I've listened to nothing but this since Saturday.
- I booked a haircut! With this stylist! I'm excited and a little nervous, because I haven't had any sort of haircut since early 2020, and even then it was just trimming the split ends. This time I'm going to have my hair cut to bottom bra band length, and ask what they can do to enhance the waviness/curl my hair has developed.
- The Wegovy is slowly working. I'm losing a pound a week without really changing anything other than eating smaller meals. The "Ooooh, snack! Let's have just a bit more of this because it's so tasty" noise in my head has stopped, which means I'm not constantly thinking about food. Another really odd side-effect (that lots of folks have discussed over on Reddit) is that the urge to impulse shop has stopped. I still windowshop a lot, but I don't buy anything. Weird, but I'm not complaining.
Reading this article on advice to teachers in the UK about using AI, they suggest using it for things like "marking quizzes" and "generating routine letters".
And what really annoys me about this is that it's a perfect example of where simple automation could be used without the need for AI.
The precise example in the article is "Generate a letter to parents about a head lice outbreak." - which is a fairly common thing to happen in schools. So why on earth isn't there one standard letter per school, if not one standard letter for the whole country, that can be reused by absolutely everyone whenever this standard event happens? Why does this require AI to generate a new one every time, rather than just being a standard email that gets sent?
Same with marking quizzes. If children get multiple-choice quizzes regularly across all schools, and marking them uses precious teacher time, why is there not a standard piece of software, paid for once (or written once internally) which enables all children to do quizzes in a standard way, and get them marked automatically?
If we're investing a bunch of money into automating the various processes that teachers spend far too much time on, start with simple automation, which is cheap, easy, and reliable.
Also, wouldn't it be sensible to do some research into how accurately AI marks homework *before* you tell teachers to use it to do that? Here's some research from February which shows that its agreement with examiners was only 0.61 (where 1.00 would be perfect agreement). So I'm sceptical about the quality of the marking it's going to be doing...
Trey Haddad, President Ken Patterson, Vice President Dave Gallaher, Treasurer Galen Tripp & Laser Pistol Packin’ Mama, Sergeants at Arms Barbara Johnson-Haddad, Secretary meeting held online AND meeting live at Parktown Pizza [at Meridian & Hillsdale in SJ] https://www.parktownpizza.com
Called to order at 8 pm 11live/8online beings attended the meeting
The minutes of meeting 1811 were accepted as 'the war of 1812'
Proxy Treasurer's report = Regular: $15,805.32 Party: $230.58 Money can be sent to salve guilt via PayPal - sent to: dwgallaher@gmail.com Though we have accrued $142.34 since the resumption of live meetings.
the VP had nothing fannish to report
the President had nothing fannish to report other than it's been hot
no old or new business
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Yochanan announced that July 5-7 will be showings of 'This is Spinal Tap' where available - check Fathom
Reviews:
Rick reviewed 'Poker Face' on Peacock & says it is listed as 'mystery/crime/drama/black comedy & it's basically 'Columbo' & says the acting is wonderful. He looks forward to all the episodes & highly recommends the series see = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poker_Face_(TV_series) and Rick reviewed the latest episode of 'Murderbot' on Apple TV as very well done, absolutely exceptional and Skarsgård completely owns the role. And to Patty's questions, the books that they are based on are also very highly recommended. see = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murderbot_(TV_series)
Ken reviewed the movie 'Novocaine' as funny and 'hijinks ensue'. He rates it as worth full price - or subscribing to Paramount Plus. He warns that there are moments that the squeamish may not be able to stomach. Yochanan agrees & said he enjoyed seeing it in the theatre see = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novocaine_(2025_film)
Yochanan reviewed the live action, 2025 'Lilo and Stitch' & he really enjoyed it, although there were changes from the original. He thought Stitch's CGI was done well, but the other aliens were not done anywhere as well. He rates it as worth matinee, or full price if you have kids. and Yochanan reviewed 'Karate Kid: Legends' as lots of fun and very nostalgic. He rates it as worth full matinee and maybe full price, if you like nostalgia. He enjoyed himself. see = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karate_Kid:_Legends
Seattle DOT have dropped a new bike map for 2025/2026, but have chosen to show several incomplete and/or entirely unstarted projects as completed. We respectfully disagree with this decision, as it will direct map users to infrastructure which is not actually present for most or all of this year.
Therefore, we have chosen to stay with Seattle 2023 as our Seattle-area base map. We will take on the additional work of updating it over the next year, continuing work we have already been doing. In addition to not showing incomplete/nonexistent infrastructure, this means we will continue to group “Neighbourhood Greenway” and “Healthy Street” under the same common green colour, rather than separating them into green and blue markings.
(Seattle 2025 breaks them out into greens and blues, but unfortunately at the same intensity, meaning there’s no difference for those with colour vision limitations.)
As additional Seattle projects are completed, we will add them to our maps. Once all projects shown on Seattle 2025 are completed, we will most likely transition to Seattle 2025 as our Seattle base map.
There’s only one change since 1.7.1 for outside Seattle, but it’s big:
Juanita Drive bike lanes are finally open (again) in Juanita! There’s still a little construction on sidewalks, but functionally, they’re done
I’ve been looking forward to that finally being finished since they started work! The bike lane standard is meaningfully higher than it was before. It’s not consistently up to Kenmore’s standard, but it’s a significant and welcome improvement.
Note that sidewalk construction isn’t quite complete, but there’s very, very little left and should not interfere with biking the route.
Updates since 1.7.1 in Seattle include:
1st Ave NW neighbourhood greenway north of Greenwood to Broadview added
S. Walden/Della neighbourhood greenway added
Ashworth Ave mix of neighbourhood greenway and ped/bike shared path added
N. 120th St. neighbourhood greenway from Ashworth Ave to Corliss Ave added
N. 130th St. bike lanes north of Haller Lake added
W. Marginal Way SW bike lanes extended north to 17th Ave SW
6th Ave NW steepness indicator in Fremont corrected
6th Ave NW Neighbourhood Greenway corrected (was marked as bike lane)
Alki Drive/Beach Drive SW Healthy Street in West Seattle added
Maple Leaf Reservoir Neighbourhood Greenway and related ped/bike path added
Pike Street bike lane hillclimb over I-5 updated to reflect upgraded status
21st Ave Greenway/Health Street from Columbia to Yesler added
Greenway/Healthy Street connection between 30th Ave S east of MLK to Mountains-to-Sound Trail added
39th Ave South Greenway/Healthy Street from south of Othello to Kenyon added
One block of Neighbourhood Greenway on 27th Ave NE north of Lake City REMOVED
Several small corrections/adjustments, carrying forward Seattle map corrections/adjustments
Rather than the usual MEGAMAP preview, here’s a comparison between on section of Seattle across the two maps.
All permalinks continue to work.
If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because it doesn’t.
... so I still haven't done a full con report -- it's been almost a week
-- so in the interim I'll just refer you to last week's "Done Since
2025-05-25" (posted on Monday) and "Thankful Thursday"
posts. The only parts of the trip it doesn't cover very well are the
songs we sang ( "Millennium's Dawn" deserves full S4S treatment), the hotel
(the breakfast and dinner buffets, included in the room price), were
noteworthy), and the travel.
Right. The travel. Tips:
Don't leave anything in (travel guitar)Plink's case -- it could delay
inspection (and did, at Hamburg).
On arrival, stay in the plane until somebody tells you that your
wheelchair is ready. Hamburg again.
If you don't look disabled (like m, for example), take a cane and
hobble out of the plane with it. This is especially true for Schiphol
-- the Dutch tend to be ablist.
Yesterday N, m, and I had a good band practice/conference, including more
tweaking on "Millennium's Dawn", scripting for several songs that
still had only two-person arrangements, and harmony arrangements because
we finally have someone in the band who can reliably sing
harmony. We're also going to want a keyboard. Or two, since m is
leaving tomorrow for Seattle.
Health-wise, I don't think I'm doing all that well, so it's a good thing I
have an appointment with a cardiologist soon, as well as with an
oncologist.
If you're interested in word origins, check out the Online Etymology Dictionary, which
includes some fascinating articles as well as the dictionary entries.
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