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peachfront

@[email protected]

Senior parrots, birds, birding, rock swaps, crystals & stone-cutting. Sometimes I write funny dialogue for the birds in your photographs. I read books, & I vote!

Formerly known as Peachfront on Twitter & Instagram, & Amethyst Qu on Medium.

Haven't owned peachfront.com domain in years but you may find my old trip reports at peachfront.diaryland.com.

Pro Tip: Diaryland does not have any www's.

#birds #crystals #photography #fedi22 #books #writing #selfpublishing #birding #nature

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arstechnica , to random
@arstechnica@mastodon.social avatar

“Outrageously” priced weight-loss drugs could bankrupt US health care

Prices would need to be dramatically slashed to avoid increasing the national deficit.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/05/outrageously-priced-weight-loss-drugs-could-bankrupt-us-health-care/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

peachfront ,
@peachfront@toot.community avatar

@arstechnica

prices of drugs are made up

if the drugs are needed, then either put a firm price ceiling on the drug's price & arrest any Pharma Bro who don't like it-- or else nationalize the pharmaceutical industry & make the drugs the property of the taxpayer

allowing this industry to make up extortionate prices is a crime that kills people

indivisibleteam , to random
@indivisibleteam@mastodon.social avatar

Medicare Advantage is hailed as a success by the GOP, but it's part of the MAGA scheme to end traditional Medicare by empowering private insurers. The result? Rampant fraud, overspending, and denied essential care. It's time for Congress to step in and take action against these misleading plans. https://act.indivisible.org/sign/ask-your-representative-support-save-medicare-act?source=mastodon&medium=directpost

peachfront ,
@peachfront@toot.community avatar

@indivisibleteam

it denies seniors the ability to go anywhere, traditional Medicare allowed you to go to ANY doctor & hospital in the US whereas Advantage restricts you to those very few doctors & maybe one or two hospitals in your network

imagine that, you work your whole life, have some time finally, but now you can't even visit the grandkids because one out of network illness or injury will destroy at a time when you're too old to work & get the money back

eyrea , to bookstodon group
@eyrea@mstdn.ca avatar

Something I apparently need to declare in public today:

I have a strong negative reaction to people plucking actual persons from history and writing fictional stories about them. I can enjoy it if the person lived long ago and the story could plausibly fit in their actual history (so most of Doctor Who doesn't count), but the recently dead or (cringe) still living? No.

My suspension of disbelief crashes down.

Be creative. Make up someone.

@bookstodon

peachfront ,
@peachfront@toot.community avatar

@eyrea @bookstodon

i'm just the opposite, i love this genre esp. all the different takes different authors may have seeing people from their unique POVs

Libra by Don DeLillo (about Lee Harvey Oswald) is one of my favorite books, a character so colorful he should have been fiction & DeLillo has so much empathy for all the characters...

Uair , to bookstodon group
@Uair@autistics.life avatar

@bookstodon

Idea:

Bookstores should group fantasy with horror instead of scifi. Both fantasy and horror are purely creations of the author's mind; scifi is tethered to factual information.

If you need to group scifi, I'd put it with mysteries and thrillers.

peachfront ,
@peachfront@toot.community avatar

@danielcornell @NilaJones @Uair @bookstodon

"I think we should move the horror out of current events..."

this is the right answer

if horror was "fantasy," nobody would be much concerned about where it was shelved, but the genre touches too much on people's real world anxieties & fears

gerrymcgovern , (edited ) to random
@gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green avatar

"Training GPT-3 at Microsoft’s state-of-the-art US data centres would consume 700,000 litres of clear freshwater. This is due to sheer scale of an operation that Microsoft has revealed contains supercomputers with 10,000 graphics cards and more than 285,000 processor cores. That’s a conservative estimate, because training could also be done at the company’s less efficient Asian data centres. If that’s the case, water consumption could be tripled to 2.1 million litres."
https://ca.style.yahoo.com/news/ai-chatbots-guzzle-enormous-amounts-104503976.html

peachfront ,
@peachfront@toot.community avatar

@jarjan @gerrymcgovern

yeah, that's a typo but it's a typo that makes the situation even more dire, not less so

gerrymcgovern , to random
@gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green avatar

"By now it’s been made fairly clear that the bedazzling wonderment that is “AI” doesn’t come cheap. Story after story have highlighted how the technology consumes massive amounts of electricity and water, and we’re not really adapting to keep pace. This is also occurring alongside a destabilizing climate crisis that’s already putting a capacity and financial strain on aging electrical infrastructure."

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/10/ceo-ai-power-drain-could-cause-data-centers-to-run-out-of-power-within-two-years/

peachfront ,
@peachfront@toot.community avatar

@gerrymcgovern

AI/LLMs should be shut down world wide as a crime aga. humanity

unbelievable this is allowed to go on after the energy to fuel whole small countries got wasted on utter garbage like crypto that has no legit reason to be

has nothing been learned

tech bros boast about creating disruptive tech because they enjoy burning the world to feed their own sick egos> it's a show of power

time to shut this **** down

but they won't, they'd rather let the world end than offend a tech bro

peachfront ,
@peachfront@toot.community avatar

@gerrymcgovern

i wouldn't even mind if it was "we" doing this, but it isn't

there's an actual "they," a real enemy who considers themselves superior to the rest of us & since we are mere cattle in elite eyes, they see no crime in taking everything, including the planet, cattle are property & don't have rights

i've got no trouble understanding it> what i don't know is how you change it

NevadaWolf , to random
@NevadaWolf@birds.town avatar

Caught some morning shots of a couple Turkey Vultures in the early sunlight.

A large dark brown bird perches on a bare branch amid the new green leaves of the tree. Sunlight filters through the leaves, shining light and casting shadows on the bald red head with a white tipped beak, and the grey talons that grip the branch. It's dark black eye glints in the morning sun.

peachfront ,
@peachfront@toot.community avatar

@NevadaWolf

huggable

the intelligence in their eyes is ❤️

GottaLaff , to random
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

NEW 🧵 starts HERE.

Please remember I don’t reply while live-posting. Plz use NFL (Not For Laffy, but no hashtag) so I can ignore those replies.

1/

McB:

...At 2:14 p.m., Trump walks in, entourage in tow.

Boris Epshteyn just handed a piece of paper with a photo on it to Kaitlan Collins.

I thought he maybe said "Conway" to her, but I'm not exactly sure.

peachfront ,
@peachfront@toot.community avatar

@depereo @GottaLaff

what i was thinking too

kimlockhartga , to random
@kimlockhartga@beige.party avatar

I know with La Niña and ocean surface temps, we should expect this, but I've never seen predictions like this for an Atlantic storm season. Maybe take the kids to the mountains instead of to the beach this summer.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/hurricane/explosive-atlantic-hurricane-season-predicted-for-2024-accuweather-experts-warn/1633944

peachfront ,
@peachfront@toot.community avatar

@kimlockhartga

2005 was like this but i don't recall it being predicted in advance

peachfront ,
@peachfront@toot.community avatar

@kimlockhartga

that was 2004, which wasn't a great year for Florida, i think 1 out of 5 residences in the state took on hurricane damage that year

but that was just the supporting act for 2005...

peachfront , to random
@peachfront@toot.community avatar

"Overserved at the feeder" is today's pic for my

Brown Thrasher

peachfront OP ,
@peachfront@toot.community avatar

@BeazLouise

they are abundant in this neighborhood but don't always spend a ton of time on the feeder as opposed to scrabbling around beneath it

biggest issue is sometimes the Mockingbirds keep hitting them on the head & then they either wander around on the ground or else in thicker foliage

Nonilex , to random
@Nonilex@masto.ai avatar

Thurs 9 May, 2024 🧵

The prosecution asks that the defense be precluded from asking whether she was arrested. Justice agrees w/the prosecutors, saying that “anybody can be arrested” & that it “doesn’t prove anything.”

The people call Stormy Daniels back to the stand

atty begins questioning by saying that in 2011, Daniels denied having had sex w/Trump.

peachfront ,
@peachfront@toot.community avatar

@Nonilex

IMHO she's taken an irrelevant track> regardless of what went on between Stormy & Mushroom Penis, he's on trial for lying about money tracking/business records-- nothing the defense attorney talks about is proof that Stormy wasn't paid off

Example: Hastert was paying off an extortionist & got sent to jail because he engaged in deceptive business practices to avoid revealing the true flow of the money> being extorted or lied about isn't a defense

w7voa , to random
@w7voa@journa.host avatar

Police shot and killed a student in Wisconsin after receiving a report of someone with a weapon while class was in session.
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2024/05/01/police-kill-mount-horeb-student-to-prevent-school-shooting/73533915007/

peachfront ,
@peachfront@toot.community avatar

@w7voa

they killed a middle school student so kid is what-- a 12 year old? 13?-- "after receiving a report???"

"they say" is a phrase that makes me think the reporter can't verify there was any f'n gun or maybe it was a cell phone or a bag of Skittles, who knows

"The student was killed before he could enter the school" so the part about bringing a weapon into a class in session was pretty obviously a lie

was this swatting or what was it?

i got questions, maybe you do too!

doersino , to random
@doersino@mastodon.social avatar

Also from today and easily my best shot of the year so far: A little grebe on the run (a great crested grebe, its larger relative, had come too close for comfort).

(I almost never get shots like this, not even of much-more-common coots that chase each other around all the time – it's nigh-impossible to steadily keep up with a bird "running" like this, not to mention autofocus difficulties!)

peachfront ,
@peachfront@toot.community avatar

@doersino

well done!

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