Yvonne Lam

Yvonne Lam

@yvonnezlam.bsky.social

5157

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I play with books, cats, food, yarn, and dirt, not all at the same time. Software engineer. Society of People Interested in Boring Things. She/her, cis.

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O this looks interesting...

our methods for studying political change and stability typically provide group-level estimates, while our theoretical goal is often to understand individual-level processes. Steve Vaisey (@vaiseys.bsky.social) & I ask whether we can go from the former to the latter in panel data: osf.io/rhf4q

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Rest in power. www.nytimes.com/2024/07/07/b...

Jane F. McAlevey, Who Empowered Workers Across the Globe, Dies at 59www.nytimes.com An organizer and author, she believed that a union was only as strong as its members and trained thousands “to take over their unions and change them.”

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look - I'm receptive to both "no, it's gotta be him" arguments and "he's gotta step aside" arguments. not to be wishy-washy but both arguments have merit. "then we do a tourney" is OTOH flatly hilarious. yeah that'll go great. there will much much unity in the wake of the electoral deathmatch

To save democracy, the Democratic party may resort to deploying the greatest concept of all time: a political version of the NBA In-Season Tournament

What's everyone making for dinner? I can't even with the heat, so I am making my current favorite hot-weather dinner.

I poach a whole chicken in the instant pot and make ginger scallion sauce and Saimin Nosrat's cucumber salad.

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I could stare at that beautiful face in the tree forever!

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Our fosterer has just sent the best cat picture I've ever seen

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and even for people who love politics POLITICS IS NOT ONLY ELECTIONS!

I deeply feel that shorter elections could be part of a winning political strategy centered around normal people who do not live and breathe politics.

Long elections waste immense amounts of money. they harass potential voters into apathy. They play into the horse-race, scandal-fed view of politics that feeds deeply unserious media coverage. They NOT INCIDENTALLY make it difficult/impossible for campaigns to deal with last-minute surprises.

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And here's Jane commenting on Twitter about an embroidery I made for a friend out of a quote of mine they liked. I like to remember her this way.

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"The core of organizing is raising expectations." - Jane McAlevey

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Here's a fun read about museum taxidermists who care for oodles of specimen.

Meet the Taxidermists Who Care for the Animals at Your Favorite Museumswww.smithsonianmag.com Only a few U.S. museums still employ the specialists. The rest rely on a small group of highly skilled contractors

My understanding (*) is that one reason the US has these painfully long campaign cycles is fundraising. We should fix fundraising in any case, but especially if it means we don't have to have political campaigns that go on forever. (*) I don't remember where I learned this, so I may well be wrong.

note how long it took the French from calling the election to holding not 1 but 2 votes? and organizing the shit out of the second one? LESS THAN ONE MONTH A national election does not have to be a painful 1.5-2 year process! the US election campaign should quite honestly not even have started yet!!

my question: is "just voting for the non-fascist candidate will never work in the US" one of those things people say when they want people to be doing more than just voting?

"Just voting for the not-fascist candidate will never work in the US" sounds suspiciously close to "gun control will never work in the US" let's TRY IT OUT FOLKS

Not for the first time, it occurs to me that a lot of "learn by doing!" people don't think enough about what either learning or doing looks like for people who are not them.

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And arguably what I am enjoying most is that this is not the hero theory of history. We’re not seeing a charismatic leader carry the election through rhetoric and force of personality. We’re seeing populations say: nope. I like the power of nope.

Renovation pruning of Old Blush continues. I've gotten it to the point where I can see into the middle enough to tell which canes I need to remove. 🌱 www.davidaustinroses.com/products/old...

Old Blush Chinawww.davidaustinroses.com Buy Old Blush China from David Austin with a 5 year guarantee and expert aftercare.

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Heard 'Just the two of us' performed by a big band this afternoon and it's reminded me of one of my favourite jokes (better said than read). How do you turn a duck into a great soul singer? Put it in the microwave until its bill withers

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I've been obsessed with the term invitation for a while. MK helped me think about "radical invitation" as a way to organize. I wonder if it's useful to think about invitation into harmful stuff. I think, at some level, people are invited to participate in various harmful actions and sentiments.

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Happy #primeweek! I just want to let y’all know that the Amazon shipping warehouse where my husband works is denying workers fans during a nationally recognized heat emergency and everything you order during time week places workers’ lives at risk.

Oscar wants to sit in my lap and get chin and belly scritches. I am covered in a thin film of cat hair.

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"the real flourishing of Black studies that everybody thought might have been occurring in the 80s or thought might be occurring now, that it will occur when Black studies makes its move back from the university and back into our communities."--Fred Moten www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFTk...

Left of Black with Fred Motenwww.youtube.com Left of Black host Dr. Mark Anthony Neal is joined in the studio by Dr. Fred Moten.Moten is a poet and a scholar. He's a Professor in the Department of Perfo...

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Today in Jeremy's salad: romaine, bamboo, hibiscus, and rose

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I laughed, a LOT

You had me at “exceedingly dry in-jokes for recherché subcultures”

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1/21 Four great thinkers of the early industrial capitalist era who created schools of thought, who still resonate today, even though the majority of people misunderstand them if indeed they even try to understand them: Darwin, Marx, Einstein, and Freud.

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We shared this photo with Dad and he said "is she getting bigger or are the boxes getting smaller?" so Sarah got out the tape measure and said "it's 6" x 10" x Ginny" because she will definitely go to great lengths for a joke

Technically, not on the counter Also technically, a fragile jelly bean

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Important penguin news

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Thisssssss

"Peer reviewed" is such a loaded phrase anymore. Like. You want your science to be reviewed by people who understand the field so you don't end up with bullshit like the ROGD paper, but also you want to ensure your science isn't being gatekept by people with unexamined biases.

A Japanese-American friend's dad did military service during the Vietnam War. His job was to play the enemy during training exercises, then go back to barracks with the same people who'd been hunting him. His PTSD was complicated, and the VA was...not helpful.

One of the least nuanced assumptions in US political discourse is that folks who have served or are related to people who have served are patriotic or pro-military. The collective memory and personal experiences of Black, indigenous, and other vets of color makes that way more complicated.

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There’s a nigh infinite number of books to be written about the early decades of the FDA. Every claim of “The market will fix it because consumers will demand clean/safe $ITEM” only works if: 1) The market provides such a thing, despite monopolies. 2) It actually is and not marketing bullshit.

WE remember the convenience pitches, but sanitation/hygiene/health pitches were VERY common at the time: Our Brand Won't Kill You Thanks to SCOTUS we'll find out empirically, again, which brands of food will kill us.

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As I am impatiently waiting to board a 9 hour flight, please enjoy this baby duck I meet this week.