On the heels of a BBC radio report on the flooding tragedy in Texas comes the "oh so" everyday report on the tragedies occurring in Gaza. It is easy to feel empathy for people who live so close who die in a tragedy - why not Gaza? Can't we all be Gazans?

If you visit Washington DC, please bring along a bag of rice and drop it off at any gov't office. They are being collected to send to hungry overseas friends.

I stayed home on Buy Nothing day. No online purchases either. Did it make a difference, I got no sense that it did. But I love this concerted effort against Target. They disbanded their DEI initiatives and people are fighting back.

www.huffpost.com/entry/target...

1 of #365Minerals 🧪⚒️

Quetzalcoatlite:
- Named after Quetzalcoatl, an Aztec and Toltec god of the sea, due to its sea-blue colour
- Forms in the oxidised zone of tellurium-bearing hydrothermal deposits #minerals
- This below is a co-type specimen (one of the specimens used to define the species)

This Vance family trip to Greenland turned now sounds like something out of the movie "Spinal Tap". They planned a tour - including a Dog Sled race - and it had to be scaled back because they couldn't give away tickets. Suddenly, they were dispatched to an event 900 km from civilization.

Playing WordsWithFriends here - can you imagine playing scrabble with Donald trump - you'd just have to let him make up any word he wants. Then he would have a subordinate go off and write the Trump Scrabble Dictionary.

Will Jeffrey Goldberg be prosecuted for sharing state secrets? He said he left the group chat when he realized he didn't belong (not his words) but why would a journalist ever leave such a juicy discussion?

I think for his first event at the Kennedy Center, Pres. Trump should invite all those who have been exposed to measles and "stayed the course" - not been weak-kneed about the need to avoid vaccines.

I have thought of the republican party as the party of ,no matter how vile or undemocratic, "our ends justify any means" (like, blow up an abortion clinic to "save" lives). But we have gone beyond that - I can't even imagine an "ends" which anyone but a dictator might desire.

I know I am playing with fire here - but like back in 2008 when I kind of wished that GW Bush had been forced to serve a 3rd term to clean up the messes he created, I would like to see the actual damages of what Trump/Musk have planned to rain down in a torrent for all to see.

If you have the e-mail address that federal employees were asked to use when listing their accomplishments last week, please distribute it widely. I am not a federal employee but I would like to crow about the good naps I got in last week.

Sorry for my pessimism but I believe that Americorps will be on the chopping block. What's more woke then income guidelines and opportunities for at risk youth. My volunteering is with Foster Grandparents - tutoring 6th graders in math 5 hours a day - in an under-performing school district.

By interjecting himself in world affairs which are not US issues per se, it is clear that Donald Trump believes he has been elected kind of the world. His comments on Ukraine and Gaza mean that the parties involved in both cannot seek resolutions unimpeded by his influence.

Who needs fiction any more? And to think it started with a group worried about AI run amok. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

If we have DOGE, why do we need congress? Lots of money saved and the Capitol would make a pretty swanky hotel.

Ronald Reagan planted the seeds for the destruction of our gov't when he said "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help." He was president and it was his gov't. It's like the president of Ford saying, it's crazy to buy a Ford.

too bad he didn't pledge to resign if he didn't keep his pledge.
www.snopes.com/fact-check/h...

So the FDA finally banned the harmful Red Dye #3 on Jan 15, 2025. Wonder if we will still have an FDA that looks out for us. This ban was late in coming but it seems to have been done with urgency at the end of the former administration.

I need a "Blue Sky for Dummies" book. I haven't figured out how to reply to posts yet - and expect I am missing out on a lot of features that are here.