lacci - Network

I'm honestly surprised it hasn't happened yet.

I'm honestly surprised it hasn't happened yet.

I keep expecting a story to drop that the judge who let an AI generated video of a manslaughter victim "testify" at a sentencing...

I keep expecting a story to drop that the judge who let an AI generated video of a manslaughter victim "testify" at a sentencing hearing has had an AI video made of him confessing to taking bribes or being the zodiac killer or something. https://www.404media.co/i-loved-that-ai-judge-moved-by-ai-generated-avatar-of-man-killed-in-road-rage-incident/

Obviously there are reasons you might not want to eat animal brains, prion disease for one. But that's a large part of why so many...

Obviously there are reasons you might not want to eat animal brains, prion disease for one. But that's a large part of why so many people are deficient in omega-3 fatty acids. Cultures that eat a lot of fish were protected because fish have a lot of omega-3s and distribute them through their bodies and so people who eat fish eat them.

Incidentally the omega-3s in fish actually accumulate up the food chain from algae so vegetarians can still access them from algae oil or just the right algae.

I'm still feeling very weirded out by my discovery the other day that the general narrative that people don't get enough omega-3...

I'm still feeling very weirded out by my discovery the other day that the general narrative that people don't get enough omega-3 fatty acids because they don't eat enough fish is at best misleading and at worst straight up false. People who ate meat but not fish used to get plenty of omega-3s but they don't now. Fish is high in omega-3s, but fish is not what changed about our diets. What changed is people stopped eating the brains of mammals which is where mammals concentrate all their omega-3s.

This is really important advice, especially for anyone dealing with mental health struggles or a chronic illness.

This is really important advice, especially for anyone dealing with mental health struggles or a chronic illness.

Saint Thomas of Villanova was a famous Augustinian and is not one of the ones in the question. Saint Augustine of Hippo wrote The Rule of...

Saint Thomas of Villanova was a famous Augustinian and is not one of the ones in the question. Saint Augustine of Hippo wrote The Rule of Saint Augustine which the Augustinian order based itself on and he isn't one of the two either.

Trivia Question: The new Pope is a member of the Augustinian order. There are two famous members of the Augustinians who kids pretty...

Trivia Question: The new Pope is a member of the Augustinian order. There are two famous members of the Augustinians who kids pretty universally learn about in school. One became disillusioned and left the order after seven years. The other was unappreciated during his lifetime. Neither is famous for being an Augustinian, only one of them is famous for doing something related to religion. The one who is famous for something not religious is the one who stayed an Augustinian. Who were they?

The man didn't fix the church, he didn't fix all of his own problems. But he did some good things and made some structural changes...

The man didn't fix the church, he didn't fix all of his own problems. But he did some good things and made some structural changes to the church that someday might make a big difference.

And he whipped conservatives in the church hierarchy into a raging frenzy which is always fun to see. And they lost more battles with him than they won. And even in the US, who's Catholic Church is among the most conservative, 80% of Catholics approved of him. That's not by any means a given for a pope.

Say what you will about Pope Francis, and there are plenty of negative things to be said, but he was a real change and had a message that a...

Say what you will about Pope Francis, and there are plenty of negative things to be said, but he was a real change and had a message that a lot of people needed to hear.

And every night since Israel's invasion of Gaza, including the last night of his life, Pope Francis called Holy Family Church in Gaza City to talk to regular people there, and mostly to listen to them. And that's pretty different too. And the kind of thing the world needs more of.

"The weapons produced and sold for wars, the profits made at the expense of the most vulnerable and defenceless people, such as those...

"The weapons produced and sold for wars, the profits made at the expense of the most vulnerable and defenceless people, such as those who leave their homeland in search of a better future, the exploitation of resources and peoples, which steals land and health: all this is not an economy, it is not a good aspect of reality to be maintained. It is only bullying, violence. It is just a predatory structure from which humanity must be freed."
—Pope Francis

"The economy that kills, that excludes, that pollutes, that produces war, is not an economy : others call it economy, but it is only a...

"The economy that kills, that excludes, that pollutes, that produces war, is not an economy : others call it economy, but it is only a void, an absence. It is a disease, a perversion of the economy itself and of its vocation. "
(continued)

I especially feel that because I'm poor and I can't financially support many of them. But also because Substack is likely to be very...

I especially feel that because I'm poor and I can't financially support many of them. But also because Substack is likely to be very regime friendly and for some reason people are sticking to it and the economy is likely about to do very poorly.

Thank goodness good people have managed to hang on in little pockets and find independent niches. So much critical reporting comes out of...

Thank goodness good people have managed to hang on in little pockets and find independent niches. So much critical reporting comes out of little outlets or independent people now. People like Erin Reed (who runs Erin in the morning) and the people at 404 Media are doing some critical stuff. We need more and I fear that in this climate we might get less.

Like what is going on at the New York Times when like one opinion writer, Jamelle Bouie, seems like he's carrying almost the entire...

Like what is going on at the New York Times when like one opinion writer, Jamelle Bouie, seems like he's carrying almost the entire weight of contextualizing anything that's happening. There should be people at the news desk doing that and frankly most of the opinion staff there should be employed in a different field. And that's true across the US media and has been for a long time.

Why is it that the political and economic media thinks that knowing history is not something it should do? Like that feels like it should be...

Why is it that the political and economic media thinks that knowing history is not something it should do? Like that feels like it should be absolutely core to what it does and yet across the US news media only very scattered figures seem to be familiar with like what authoritarian takeovers looked like, or frankly most of US history.

If you have the resources and are planning to try to get out of the US now is probably the time. If you are outside the US please try to...

If you have the resources and are planning to try to get out of the US now is probably the time. If you are outside the US please try to help people. If you're here tell people what's happened, protest, help the vulnerable, and hang on. It's probably going to get quite a lot worse.

That is not a stable status quo. Maybe his regime falls apart. Maybe he makes himself firmly dictator. Maybe something else. We have a...

That is not a stable status quo. Maybe his regime falls apart. Maybe he makes himself firmly dictator. Maybe something else. We have a little say in how that goes. But we can't ever go back to where we were January 19th. We can try to pretend but I think that would be an exceptionally unhealthy thing to do and we're likely to end up continuing to be very unstable if we do. We may be unstable no matter what, again we have some say in that, but less say than we'd like.

We're never again going to have a United States that has not had a successful authoritarian coup. We're probably never going to live...

We're never again going to have a United States that has not had a successful authoritarian coup. We're probably never going to live in a United States that is a stable prosperous country that operates under something like our old constitutional system. The system we had is not the status quo anymore. The status quo is that Donald Trump is the dictator of the United States of America and he is in the process of trying to consolidate power.

The United States has undergone a successful authoritarian self-coup and the leadership is now in the process of consolidating power....

The United States has undergone a successful authoritarian self-coup and the leadership is now in the process of consolidating power. They're quite vulnerable right now, but they did it. And it is terrifying to me that virtually the entire population seems either unaware of this or still waiting for the coup to really kick off in earnest.

The regime is still vulnerable, but like they already did the hard legal part. Congress and the supreme court have given them essentially carte blanche.

I saw my first cybertruck in the wild today while I was riding my bike home from PT. I was shocked that it was actually uglier in person...

I saw my first cybertruck in the wild today while I was riding my bike home from PT. I was shocked that it was actually uglier in person than they are in photos, which doesn't seem like it should be possible.