VT Moderate

@vtmoderate.bsky.social

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Retired Social Worker, business partner, wife, mother, grandmother and friend. News junkie, avid gardener and bookworm.

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I hate it when lilac season is over.

Help. The leaves on my lilacs are turning brown. They did this last year after blooming.

It has taken me years to get this garden between two maple trees to prosper. It’s still early for these in Vermont but everything is waking up.

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Now I’m no tech visionary, but if I asked a very famous actress to provide the voice for my product and she turned me down, I would not simply use her voice anyway (Statement from Scarlett Johansson on OpenAI’s “Sky”)

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Remarkable: Senior House Republicans told Zelensky in a private meeting last week that Ukraine aid would easily pass, and that the real obstacle is the refusal to vote on it, says Dem Rep Jason Crow, who was there. Crow told me this and much more on the pod. Listen👇 newrepublic.com/article/1789...

Wow. They are not even pretending anymore.

Cornyn's candid quote, in reference to the bill on Ukraine aid, is quite helpful: Republicans aren't working towards a compromise solution; Republicans are demanding a ransom. They're not playing the role of policymakers; they're playing the role of hostage-takers.

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The Supreme Court ruled that police don't have a constitutional duty to protect you from harm. It's very important to remember this.

An 82-year-old woman told police that her caretaker was going to kill her The officers complimented the caretaker on the firearms he had inside the home and left, even though she begged them to stay The caretaker killed the woman four hours later

Rio Rancho woman killed after police respond to her homewww.koat.com "I said you're fine until I kill you," her caretaker said with Rio Rancho officers present in the room.

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What if universities are having civil, nuanced discussions of events in Israel and Gaza, but they are happening in classrooms, office hours, and dorms, not out in the public view of lazy reporters and not in a way that fits the narrative people want to tell?

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Not unexpected. This is in the “top 5” of AI concerns — that the existence of AI-produced “evidence” will reduce trust in actual evidence. This is especially troubling around war crimes and human rights abuses, because AI-fueled distrust can (and will) be strategically employed by denialists.

Researchers have found few AI fakes related to the Israel-Hamas conflict. But the mere possibility that AI content could be circulating is leading people to dismiss genuine images, video and audio as inauthentic.

A.I. Muddies Israel-Hamas War in Unexpected Waywww.nytimes.com Fakes related to the conflict have been limited and largely unconvincing, but their presence has people doubting real evidence.

Block this guy

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somehow I thought, fool that I am, that the ""campus free speech"" panic people would shut the fuck up when this Hitler Youth shit really got going. but no www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/u...

For Book Fairs, Scholastic Will Separate Titles That Deal With Race and Genderwww.nytimes.com Schools can opt to display these books — or not. The list includes biographies of the civil rights icon John Lewis and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

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Pundits and journalists, in particular, need to grapple more seriously with the fact that the empirical reality of crime levels and the *perception* of crime-associated threat are two entirely separate things. It’s true for many public policy issues, but most pronounced here. 1/

Fox talking about violent crime rising in 2022 vs. what crime actually did. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

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These allegations are … pretty much saying the Minneapolis police ran something akin to mob-like protection rackets.

Small business owners in Minneapolis say the city forced them to hire off-duty MPD officers for security gigs. Some were led to believe MPD wouldn't respond to their calls if they refused. The officers often insisted on cash payment.

Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty MPD cops for security - Minnesota Refor...minnesotareformer.com Small business owners — particularly immigrant owned — say they've been pressured by police to hire off-duty officers to provide security.

And this thread isn’t even comprehensive and only covers the last few weeks. Read it and weep.

So, just to recap ... After taking fifteen votes to become Speaker of the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was forced out of that position by the hard-right fringe of his own caucus. /1 www.pbs.org/newshour/sho...

McCarthy faces revolt from far-right Republicans after deal to avoid government shutdownwww.pbs.org The government is open after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy side-stepped the hard-right flank of his party and cut a temporary funding deal with Democrats this weekend. But this week, he may need to bro...

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The US government plowed money into Covid vaccines, money that allowed for their rapid development. As the vaccines transition to the private market, the USG is pay 3x more per shot than it did earlier — & more than elsewhere. www.statnews.com/2023/09/28/c...

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Pew Research Center analysis found that Democrats and Republicans in Congress are now farther apart ideologically than at any time in the past 50 years. Republicans have moved further to the right than Democrats have to the left. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

This is horrific. It sounds like Ohio (and I’m sure other states) need to review all their laws on pornography etc and update them something is very wrong if you can arrest a manipulated 11 year old child.

This makes about 0 sense. cc @radleybalko.bsky.social ‘his 11-year-old daughter…manipulated into sending explicit photos to an adult, he turned to the police…an officer seemingly threatened to charge her under a law most people view as designed to protect child victims.' apnews.com/article/ohio...

www.nytimes.com/2023/09/21/a... This is a great article on Rupert. Gifted

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Rubert Murdoch's farewell letter to Fox says (real quote): "Elites have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class. Much of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth." By that, he was referring to other people.

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