David Baer @david@arktos.social

Hello, froggy!

They defy gravity!

These Lipizzan horses are really magnificent.

Fox offers sidewalk cafe on henhouse security:

Facebook rolls out pop-up cafes offering free drinks and privacy checkups https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/08/16/facebook-rolls-out-pop-up-cafes-offering-free-drinks-and-privacy-checkups

Seriously, this is not a good children's story. People get taken in by the cute animals, but it's really a gruesome, terrifying tale.

Once upon a time God, massacred almost everybody on earth, but when the survivors made really good barbecue, he promised not to do it again.

Sleep well, kiddies!

Scammers don’t even try to put in decent effort anymore. Sad.

Then there's this gem, which crosses the line from tendentious crap to outright slander. You can't falsely attribute anti-Semitic slurs to someone and then claim it's all just a joke.
https://babylonbee.com/news/women-who-dont-believe-israel-has-right-to-exist-not-sure-why-they-got-banned-from-israel/

I like a lot of the Babylon Bee's satire stories, but they do put out a lot of tendentious crap as well. And yes, Snopes can and should fact-check satire when there's a clear intent to mislead.

--
Babylon Bee, Snopes feud over fact-checking satire - Religion News Service

(RNS) — The popular fact-checking site Snopes and the Babylon Bee, a religious humor site, have feuded online over the difference between 'fake news' and satire.

https://religionnews.com/2019/07/31/babylon-bee-snopes-feud-over-fact-checking-satire/

I moved my RSS feeds from feedly to (self-hosted) Tiny Tiny RSS, and I'm loving it. But now it's time for bed...

Given the strength of racism and xenophobia, this commitment might prove to be just a dream. But no movement that rejects freedom and justice for all, even as an aspiration, can lay claim to a vision for American “greatness” that I would find remotely worthy of support.

Lazarus’s poem was part of the narrative of the civic education I received as a child—America as a promise, still unfulfilled, of “liberty and justice for all,” with that word “all” left unspecified, as though it were a dare or an invitation to test the thoroughness and extensiveness of our commitment to liberty and justice.

The idea of America as a refuge for the poor and persecuted is a national myth, and like so many others it falls apart as an assertion of historical fact—as Cuccinelli himself points out. But the value in all myths is their capacity to shape an identity that drives public ethics and, ultimately, public policy.

My youngest has a picture book about the Statue of Liberty, and there’s a photo of the plaque with Emma Lazarus’s poem at the end. I always read him the poem, and it always wrecks me to do so.

Now we have public officials trying to re-write the poem to suit their callous ideology:

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1161253946180165632

Many 19th century immigrants from Europe would have been expelled, had officials been able to follow the letter of the law. As it was, though, (1) their numbers simply overwhelmed the system of enforcement, and (2) compassionate public officials willfully ignored the law, in order to provide refuge to those fleeing famine and persecution.

"The danger of vilifying poor immigrants: Your ancestors weren't as legal — or as wealthy — as you think."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/08/13/danger-vilifying-poor-immigrants/

The light was beautiful in the sanctuary this evening.

Eldest child has bedroom A/C set to "fimbulwinter." ❄⛄

At a minor league ballgame... Are we still doing the "tomahawk chop"? Really?