Category: The Current Situation

U.S. Election post #5: Leopards ate her face!

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date October 28, 2024

This is in response to the Trump campaign rally last night where comedian* Tony Hinchcliffe warmed up the crowd with racist jokes:

In response, Maria Salazar posted the tweet above that Jef Poskanzer is referencing. She’s a Republican and a U.S. representative for Florida’s 27th congressional district (Miami and area). Some people forget (and worse people wish otherwise) that Puerto Rico, while not a state, is a U.S. territory, and if you’re born in Puerto Rico, you are a U.S. citizen.

I’m sure she’s getting a lot of colleagues telling her, “Hey, when we say ‘those dirty people,’ we don’t mean you — you’re one of the good ones!” I know — I get this from time to time from conservatives who only have the best of intentions.

(In case you want to see it, here’s Jef Poskanzer’s tweet.)

In case you were wondering, the term “leopards ate my face” comes from a tweet made by Adrian Bott back in 2015, and is generally used as a joke to refer to people complaining about suffering from easily-foreseen consequences:

America Editorial The Current Situation The Good Fight

U.S. Election post #4: Just admit it

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date October 28, 2024

Here are screenshots from the closing bit of Seth Meyer’s recent A Closer Look segment on his late night show:

And because it’s worth watching, here’s the whole thing:

America Editorial The Current Situation

U.S. Election post #3: Project 2025 comics!

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date October 25, 2024

Since 1981, the American conservative think tank known as the Heritage Foundation — imagine decade-old mayonnaise in human form — have released a publication under their series of books called Mandate for Leadership, a right-wing “wish list” of things they’d like the U.S. federal government to do.

The latest edition, commonly known as Project 2025, is over 900 pages long, which is large enough to obfuscate its intent and dissuade the casual reader from diving in.

To counter this, a group of comics artists have pooled their talent to create the Stop Project 2025 Comic, which clearly and succinctly explains some key (and terrible) ideas in Project 2025:

Abortion
Anti-trans discrimination
Authoritarianism
Children
Christian nationalism
Climate
Cronyism
Education
EPA (Environment Protection Agency)
Executive Orders
Extreme Weather
Healthcare
Immigration
Internet freedom
Libraries
Militarism
Police Abuse
School lunches
Taxation
Teachers
Voting Matters
War on the Working Class

It’s a great way to learn about the details about Project 2025, and contains citations so that you can look it up in that odious manual, too. Check it out!

America Editorial The Current Situation

U.S. Election post #2: Trump’s McCosplay is Dukakis’ tank ride all over again

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date October 21, 2024

Marc Canter (founder of MacroMind, which became Macromedia, which made Macromedia Director, the dev tool I used at my very first tech job), makes an excellent observation about Donald Trump’s McCosplay photo op: It’s got the same energy as 1988 presidential candidate Mike Dukakis’ cringey tank ride.

Florida It Happened to Me Tampa Bay The Current Situation

Hurricane Milton post #14: Good thing I didn’t put away the generator!

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date October 18, 2024

As Murphy’s Law would have it, moments after posting yesterday that I hadn’t yet put away our generator just in case the repairs to our neighborhood power didn’t stick…

…the power went out.

Shortly after that, our poor FedEx guy dropped off this heavy beast at our front door. I would have helped him, but I was in our back yard starting up the generator:

Just about every “battery generator” (a strange misnomer) went on sale during the period between Hurricanes Helene and Milton. EcoFlow seems to be the current favorite with both Wirecutter and a lot of its users, and they had a good package deal, so I ordered one. Alas, it arraived after Milton.

This is the Delta Pro, which stores 3600 watt-hours of energy, charges off a wall outlet, car “cigarette lighter” outlet, or solar panels. The package deal includes a 400 watt solar panel and a smaller power station, the River, whose job will be to power a CPAP and bedroom fan during power outages.

I’m charging the beast as I write this. More reports later, especially if I end up needing to use it!

Florida It Happened to Me Tampa Bay The Current Situation

Hurricane Milton post #13: I haven’t put away the generator yet

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date October 17, 2024

Here’s “Lil’ Red,” a generator we bought from a friend of the family a few years back, which I have lovingly maintained for the past couple of years. We finally put it to use during Hurricane Milton to keep the fridge and freezer cold, to power cooking appliances and provide that tiny bit of power that our gas-powered tankless water heater needs, and to power wifi (our Frontier fiber connection stayed up almost the entire time) and laptops and charge phones.

I haven’t put Lil’ Red away just yet because no power restoration is perfect. We got power back on Saturday afternoon, but lost it later that evening due to problems with a nearby tree falling on a power line. We’ve got it back Sunday afternoon, but there’ve been reports of occasional hours-long outages, which is understandable considering the scope of Milton’s damage. I’ll put it away this weekend after first running the engine dry to remove the remaining gasoline — gas degrades over time, and storing a generator with gas in the tank is asking for a lot of cleaning and repair later.

I’m also looking at this bad boy pictured above for future use, as this one can be hooked up to our natural gas line, and I’d like to be able to use the additional watts to run a couple of fans and recharge our EcoFlow power station…