I spent my first morning of retirement having breakfast with a friend at my favorite diner, the retirement dream of every trueborn daughter of New Jersey.

The real ones are retiring.

Working on my final project with a dear colleague. Here's an excerpt from the assignment he wrote for his 10th grade American lit class. We're really trying to get them to trust their own brains, rather than turn over all the thinking to #LLMs
"Essentially, I want EVIDENCE OF ACTUAL THOUGHT. What this means is that you should feel free to risk failure, waste time going down rabbit holes, and wander around in mazes of information until something sparks an unexpected discovery for you."

People who treated their sacred vote as a one-click poll to unlock an egg discount don’t get to cry that they “didn’t vote for THIS!”

America voted itself right out of the Enlightenment.

Something to bear in mind about the leopards eating people's faces is that 21% of American adults are illiterate, and 54% have below sixth grade #literacy. #LeopardsAteMyFace

https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-statistics-2024-2025-where-we-are-now

In the last two weeks that I will be at my job of 20 years, I’ve been inspired to finally deal with a box of news clippings about the school’s history going back to 1964. I gave myself a very fast and dirty introduction to archiving, then got to work. I’m LOVING this project! And now I think maybe I would like to be an #archivist? Or at least learn more about it? I’d also like to show an archivist my project and learn what I did right (if anything) and wrong (probably quite a lot). #librarylife

“Our last election was a referendum on the price of eggs” is a hell of an epitaph for a democracy.

I know a lot of you are really looking forward to the finding out phase, but I think you’re going to be disappointed with it.
Don’t you know people who are 100% the authors of their own catastrophes who constantly find a way to make it everyone else’s fault? That’s what we’re dealing with.

I don’t anticipate much of a “finding out” phase for supporters. Maybe for those who didn’t vote, and possibly for low-information voters who thought the election was a referendum on egg prices.

When those who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party are having their faces eaten, they’ll swear with their dying breath that it’s obviously not a leopard. Anyone who doesn’t have the woke mind virus can see it’s a hyena, and the leopards are coming to save them any minute now!

People’s complacency right now is the result of the Trump administration using the “flood the zone with shit” tactic. Elon Musk’s gaining access to the Treasury Department’s payment system becomes just another wild news story amidst a stream of wild stories. It’s a coup hidden in plain sight.

From a friend:
“An attorney friend advises everyone to retrieve their #SocialSecurity earnings statements now - so you have a record of what you are entitled to from all your years of working. Especially people who are currently collecting.”

I try not to be alarmist, but you should actually be alarmed by this news, especially if you receive any federal funds, including Social Security.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02/01/us/trump-tariffs-news/treasury-department-payments-system?unlocked_article_code=1.tk4.oA7G.U8-aFmRhXej7

Okay, all you techie people of Mastodon whose posts I rarely understand, help an English major out:
I know that I can download all my #Facebook data.
But is there any way to set up an imitation of "Memories" privately with all that data, so that I can see what I've posted on a given day over the past [redacted] years?
If anyone wants to make a Fedithing that will do this, I'd happily subscribe. #Meta

Shouldn't the price of gas be about $1 per gallon today? And I expect to get a dozen eggs for about 75¢. I understand the President controls all the prices.

I'm curious if people under...40 or so?...know who Leonard Peltier is?

Elon Musk just did an actual Nazi salute on live television. He did it twice, so no one could explain it away. This is really happening in our time.

Leonard Peltier is going home. I never thought I’d see the day. Shame on Clinton and Obama for never doing what Biden did today, and Biden sure as hell could have done it before today. #LeonardPeltier

For people asking why activists aren’t organizing as much now as in 2017:
Last time, he lost the popular vote. He and his policies were unpopular.
But if this is the America most Americans want, there’s not much hope.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/us/politics/trump-policies-immigration-tariffs-economy.html?unlocked_article_code=1.qE4.-Y8u.zOo5pZN9UIy9&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare