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You and me both. This âresponseâ also looks like more theater
Abbott said that DPS will work with the Uvalde Police Department and Uvalde County Sheriffâs Office to target the five gangs he said are operating in Uvalde. Abbott did not specify which gangs he referred to, and his office did not immediately respond to questions about where the DPS units would come from. A DPS spokesperson also did not immediately respond to questions late Thursday.
I do appreciate how the Texas Tribune is not letting anyone forget about the victims and fuckery of Robb Elementary
Abbottâs decision to send in DPS comes as the agency faces questions over its role in the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School.
And the last 3 paragraphs are a recap of the cowardly response by law enforcement
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This is a really devestating news story coming out of Japan this past week.
A 3-year-old girl was left in a preschool bus on September 5 (still a hot summer day) and was found dead the next morning, having drunk all of the water in her thermos and removed all of her clothes to try to cope with the heat.
The preschool (the news story in English below calls it a kindergarten, but preschool is a closer translation) held a disastrous press conference on September 7, in which the head of the preschool and deputy head were quite flippant in their answers, mistook the girlâs name, avoided any and all responsibility and even were seen chuckling a few times (the Youtube videos have links that let you jump right to the chuckles).
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Not to minimize the apparently horrific callousness of the preschoolâs administrators, but did that âchucklingâ come across negatively to native Japanese people?
I ask because Iâve heard that laughing, smiling and so on can occur for very different reasons in Japanese culture, including embarrassment or discomfort. I seem to remember that the Japanese American coroner who announced JFKâs death got misinterpreted this way.
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They are getting absolutely ripped to shreds in the comments. It is a natural thing that people do, but the optics on it are just awful when talking about somebody who has died, especially a child. Society expects people to be dour and serious when talking about death, so even though itâs a natural impulse, it is one that people are supposed to suppress when facing the public in these situations.
The company that I work for does annual media training with mock press conferences and all that, and I got to interpet at a couple of these for visiting executives from our overseas subsidiaries before the pandemic. The lecturer was very clear in saying, âWhatever you do, do not smile. The cameras will pick that up, and the media will run with it.â
This press conference lasted for almost 3 hours, and I honestly cannot say that I would have been able to suppress a smile throughout (I naturally respond to questions with a smile first), but here it just added to the overall attitude of âWe donât care.â And the press conference was a day after the girl was found dead, so they could have at least prepared enough to know who this girl was, but they were drawing a blank when asked questions like, âWhat kind of girl was she?â Just kind of a light chuckle when saying, âWe donât really know. She just enrolled this year,â will make just about anyone cringe.
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Continuing story: One of the great triumphs of the 20th centuryâa vaccine for polio and its eradication in the USâthrown in the shitter.
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Speaking of wastewater⌠
Click through for short viddie
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Iâve seen nicer looking stuff from the oil drain of my car.
If you donât have safe drinking water, and sewage handling, you donât have a civilization, just fancy hill bandits.
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Just boil it, should be fine.
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Wow, these multimillionaire retirees complaining about financial worries make me think I should never retire.
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You may be right.
1. The average retirement savings in the US are $255,200.
2. The median retirement savings are $65,000.
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TBF,* I think most of the folks in that article have second homes. 
I think most even very wealthy people, at least in the U.S., find ways to live that eat up most of it, all while complaning that they have to tighten their belts and so on to get by.
*By which I mean, theyâre far wealthier than most USians. And certainly than me!
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not sure if this belongs here. tomorrow is a 10 year anniversary of a horrible, horrible tragedy on 11 September, 2001.
today, 10 September, is 5 years marked since hurricane Irma came across the Keys, making landfall over Cudjoe. the brunt of that storm crushed the upper Keys from Marathon to Key Largo.
our neighborhood was not untouched, in fact several places were destroyed. while our home suffered only minor damage, mostly from falling trees and branches, we did not flood.
it was possibly the most harrowing night of my life and i donât have much else to say about it, except we did not leave. neither did our closest neighbors. we had backup power and a chainsaw. this community came together in a way that iâve never known.
being here, on a coral rock, in the tropics (or at least subject to the climatic whims of the tropics), does make me ever grateful for what we have rebuilt, individually and as a community, yet the dread of that night and the terrible realization that it will happen again, make me want to say âfuck todayâ.
i donât need a reminder.
ETA:
in case anyone else does:
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Visited a small city in the Rhinelands yesterday.
Found neo-Nazi propaganda next to playgrounds, near bike routes, and in the window of a bicycle shop. They are mimicking âautonomousâ style, Antifa and typical protest culture associated with the left so far. They have been doing this, successfully, with anti-gouvernement protests during the pandemic.
Iâm glad I donât live in that town, otherwise Iâd be pretty on the edge every day now. Been there, done that, need to find a way to build resilience.
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Did they all look the same age? I work around the Texas capitol and it seems like various stickers pop up around the same time, as if someone spent a few hours putting them up on the same day. I remove the MAGAT ones. Area is lousy with cops during the day, so Iâm safe doing it. Never seen full out Nazi shit around the area.
Looks like youâd need a full on trash bag and scraper if the ones you saw are all that big. And if you felt safe enough removing them.
Could you report it it to the police? Or is that oblique enough to not fall under the anti-nazi laws? Or would the police just not do anything
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Nope, some are obviously very recent, others are older. The one in the bike shop looked like from 2020, so thatâs a pandemic decade at least.
The stuff isnât against the law. Itâs just using codes which someone in the know can interpret, and is even sneaky enough to call out to âleftistâ.
ETA: I made those I could reach a bit nicer, of course. Scratched out the QR codes when I realised I couldnât remove the posters completely.
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