Leftovers & Links # 59

The late Bob Dole was a Republican Senator all through my childhood and most of my adulthood, culminating in a run for President in 1998. I’m not interested enough to research it, but as a Republican he presumably opposed abortion and worked against civil rights and loved giant corporations — all the ordinary Republican positions of his era.

I don’t remember him mocking science, though, or lying about everything every time he quivered his lips, and while I certainly found him annoying, I don’t remember hating his fuckin’ guts.

What a piker, compared to contemporary Republicans.

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This is a long and introspective essay from a woman who didn’t have an abortion, reflecting on that choice many years later, and how it changed her life and ended her dreams. Worth reading, I think.

Quote: Yes, it can be true that you will love the child if you don’t have the abortion. It’s also true that whatever you thought would be so hard about having that child, whatever made you consider not having a child at that point in your life, may be exactly as hard as you thought it would be. As undesirable, as challenging, as painful as you feared.

This would be bad politics on a broad scale, but personally, I am done pretending to have a reasonable conversation about abortion with anyone who's passionately against it. They're monsters, and it's futile discussing such issues with Godzilla.

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San Francisco’s ‘Starship House’ imperiled.

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“Supply chain issues” continue, so for the past two months my beloved cat has been deprived of her favorite cat food. When there’s genuine Friskies™ in her preferred flavor, she meows only when her bowl is empty, but with any other food she’ll meow like heavy metal even when her bowl is full. She's eating less, meowing more, and it’s frustrating for both of us. I want Izzy to be a happy cat, so until her seafood flavors of Friskies™ return, she'll be eating the same tuna I sometimes eat, sans the mayonnaise and mustard. And she’s lovin’ it.

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I am opposed to cruelty to animals, but People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is a bunch of nuts who damage their own cause. Latest example: this parody website offering clothes and bags made from human skin. It's icky, creepy, and mean — par for PETA.

When it’s revealed that the leadership of PETA was long-ago infiltrated by spies from the pork, beef, and leather industries, it will hardly be a surprise.

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One-word newscast:

Good news:

• Drones

Bad news:

• Snow

Stupid news:

• Coronavirus

• High school

• Trump

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You are Jeff Bezos.

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Imagine a world without celebrities.

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Visit to Scientology Central, Florida headquarters for the scam church. Tom Cruise has a penthouse nearby.

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Coupla weeks ago, I saw a doctor for the first time in years, and now the company that employs the doctor wants me to take a survey, and rate his doctorin’. I used to work for a survey company, and kinda enjoy taking surveys, so I clicked the link, and the first question is, “To ensure privacy, please enter Douglas’s date of birth.”

Nope.

The survey comes from a “do not reply” email address, but with some internet sleuthing I was able to find the company’s executive in charge of such stuff, and sent him this:

You're a busy man, so I'll be brief.
A survey that requires my date of birth "to ensure privacy" smells like BS. Can’t imagine what my birthday adds to the data except helping to identify me, which means your survey is not anonymous, which means it isn't worth squat as a survey.
Your company knows that, of course.
My doctor's doctorin' was fine, but I'm not taking a non-anonymous survey.

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Speaking of grifter companies, Menards is a Midwestern household supply and hardware chain, where a friend of mine used to work. From her I know from her that they’re owned by a right-wing lunatic, but I disliked Menards before knowing that. I’ve only been a customer once, accidentally, many years ago.

Several weeks back, though, looking for a something somewhat obscure, I landed at the Menards website, where I may have visited 2-3 pages before noticing where I was. In those few moments, Menards scraped my email address, and I’ve been receiving spam from them ever since — 15 spams in the last 26 days.

There’s required to be an ‘unsubscribe’ button in any commercial email, but in spam from Menards that button takes me to their “sign up and save big!” page, as if I want to receive even more emails from Menards. Instead, I’ve sought and found email addresses for a few of their executives, and all incoming spams are forwarded to them.

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Be my help desk, please: I am old and stupid and still new to ‘subscriptions’ on YouTube, but I want to believe that their page called ‘subscriptions’ is a grouping of YouTube pages I’ve subscribed to. I visit that page once weekly, to catch up on what’s new from my favorite few YouTubians.

And yet, each week I find that I’m ‘subscribed’ to a few pages I would never subscribe to, and didn’t. Are my own fat fingers to blame, or is YouTube ‘subscribing’ me to pages based upon its mysterious algorithms? If it’s the latter, I’m done with YouTube subscriptions.

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My last grouse of the day, I promise: Blogger’s comment function for this site is becoming less and less functional. There’s no response from Google, so when it annoys me enough I reckon I’ll pack everything up and switch to the competition, Wordpress. Sigh. I’ve used Wordpress software before and found it clunky, but at least it works.

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Mystery links — Like life itself, there’s no knowing where you’re going:

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Sing along with Doug:
Oh Yeah, by Yello
Sincere tip 'o the hat:
Linden Arden • BoingBoing
Captain Hampockets • Follow Me Here
John the Basket • LiarTownUSA
Messy Nessy Chick • National Zero
Ran Prieur • Vintage Everyday
Voenix Rising
Extra special thanks:
Clayton Barnes • Becky Jo
Name Withheld • Dave S.
12/6/2021
Leftovers & Links