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Cartoon: Naughty to nice list
Dec. 7th, 2025 01:30 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
dailykos_feedA cartoon by Mike Luckovich.
Related | Nothing says 'tough on drugs' like Trump pardoning a trafficker
slashdot_feedToday America's college professors "struggle to accommodate the many students with an official disability designation," reports the Atlantic, "which may entitle them to extra time, a distraction-free environment, or the use of otherwise-prohibited technology."
Their staff writer argues these accommodations "have become another way for the most privileged students to press their advantage."
[Over the past decade and a half] the share of students at selective universities who qualify for accommodations — often, extra time on tests — has grown at a breathtaking pace. At the University of Chicago, the number has more than tripled over the past eight years; at UC Berkeley, it has nearly quintupled over the past 15 years. The increase is driven by more young people getting diagnosed with conditions such as ADHD, anxiety, and depression, and by universities making the process of getting accommodations easier. The change has occurred disproportionately at the most prestigious and expensive institutions. At Brown and Harvard, more than 20 percent of undergraduates are registered as disabled. At Amherst, that figure is 34 percent. Not all of those students receive accommodations, but researchers told me that most do. The schools that enroll the most academically successful students, in other words, also have the largest share of students with a disability that could prevent them from succeeding academically. "You hear 'students with disabilities' and it's not kids in wheelchairs," one professor at a selective university, who requested anonymity because he doesn't have tenure, told me. "It's just not. It's rich kids getting extra time on tests...."
Recently, mental-health issues have joined ADHD as a primary driver of the accommodations boom. Over the past decade, the number of young people diagnosed with depression or anxiety has exploded. L. Scott Lissner, the ADA coordinator at Ohio State University, told me that 36 percent of the students registered with OSU's disability office have accommodations for mental-health issues, making them the largest group of students his office serves. Many receive testing accommodations, extensions on take-home assignments, or permission to miss class. Students at Carnegie Mellon University whose severe anxiety makes concentration difficult might get extra time on tests or permission to record class sessions, Catherine Samuel, the school's director of disability resources, told me. Students with social-anxiety disorder can get a note so the professor doesn't call on them without warning... Some students get approved for housing accommodations, including single rooms and emotional-support animals. Other accommodations risk putting the needs of one student over the experience of their peers. One administrator told me that a student at a public college in California had permission to bring their mother to class. This became a problem, because the mom turned out to be an enthusiastic class participant. Professors told me that the most common — and most contentious — accommodation is the granting of extra time on exams...
Several of the college students I spoke with for this story said they knew someone who had obtained a dubious diagnosis... The surge itself is undeniable. Soon, some schools may have more students receiving accommodations than not, a scenario that would have seemed absurd just a decade ago. Already, at one law school, 45 percent of students receive academic accommodations. Paul Graham Fisher, a Stanford professor who served as co-chair of the university's disability task force, told me, "I have had conversations with people in the Stanford administration. They've talked about at what point can we say no? What if it hits 50 or 60 percent? At what point do you just say 'We can't do this'?" This year, 38 percent of Stanford undergraduates are registered as having a disability; in the fall quarter, 24 percent of undergraduates were receiving academic or housing accommodations.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Dec. 7th, 2025 12:00 pmnotalwaysright_feedA client calls us on the phone asking about her M1PR. She says she’s worried because the money hasn’t come yet. Here’s the thing: It’s currently mid June and the money never comes before August. Client: “I’m calling to check on my Property tax rebate. It hasn’t come yet, and I’m getting quite worried.” Me: […]
Get Rec’d with Amanda – Volume 104
Dec. 7th, 2025 10:00 amsmartbitches_feedWelcome back!
A nice variety in today’s post! There’s a YA holiday anthology, crafty non-fiction, a monster romance, and some saintly history.
What recommendations would you like to share? Let us know in the comments!
For the Rest of Us
A YA anthology edited by Dahlia Adler, who runs our monthly queer romance posts. If you’re always searching for other representations of cultural holidays, this is a great collection of authors.
Fourteen acclaimed authors showcase the beautiful and diverse ways holidays are observed in this festive anthology. Keep the celebrations going all year long with this captivating and joyful read!
From Lunar New Year to Solstice, Día de Los Muertos to Juneteenth, and all the incredible days in between, it’s clear that Americans don’t just have one holiday. Edited by the esteemed Dahlia Adler and authored by creators who have lived these festive experiences firsthand, this joyful collection of stories shows that there isn’t one way to experience a holiday.
With stories
Dahlia Adler, Sydney Taylor Honor winner of Going Bicoastal
Candace Buford, author of Good as Gold
A. R. Capetta and Cory McCarthy, authors of the Once & Future series
Preeti Chhibber, author of Payal Mehta’s Romance Revenge Plot
Natasha Díaz, award-winning author of Color Me In
Kelly Loy Gilbert, Stonewall Book Award winning author of Picture Us in the Light
Kosoko Jackson, USA Today bestselling author of The Forest Demands Its Due
Aditi Khorana, award-winning author of Mirror in the Sky
Katherine Locke, award-winning author of This Rebel Heart
Abdi Nazemian, Stonewall Book Award–winning author of Only This Beautiful Moment
Laura Pohl, New York Times bestselling author of The Grimrose Girls
Sonora Reyes, Pura Belpré Honor winner of The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School
Karuna Riazi, contributor to The Grimoire of Grim Fates
How to Be a Saint
I’m a Last Podcast on the Left listener and one of my favorite series they did was on the lives and deaths of saints. If you like wild, religious history, this is a worth a look.
Part history lesson. Part sacrilege. An entirely good time.
Think you have what it takes to be a saint? Lucky for you, thousands of souls have paved the way to heaven—creating a clear formula for getting the job done while also leaving a rich, disturbing history behind them. And in just five easy-ish steps, you can learn how to secure your own halo!
But even if the whole “dying and becoming a saint” thing doesn’t appeal to you, the bizarrely bureaucratic process of canonization is still guaranteed to delight and entertain. How to Be Saint is a compulsively readable and endlessly entertaining ride through Catholicism for anyone who enjoys their history with a side of comedy. From flying friars to severed heads, this book explores the wild lives (and deaths) of saints and pulls the curtain back on the oddest quirks of religious doctrine.
Whether you’re a lifelong Catholic or a weird-history enthusiast, How to Be a Saint is your ultimate guide to understanding the hilarious, fascinating, and shockingly true history of sainthood.
Little Woodchucks
Looking to pick up a hobby and increase family bonding time? Nick Offerman and Lee Buchanan have put together a primer on woodworking with some family friendly projects.
From New York Times bestselling author, Emmy-winning actor, and charismatically carnivorous woodworker Nick Offerman and his fellow champion creator Lee Buchanan (who is also not averse to delicious meats), an illustrated woodworking guide with projects for the whole family
Are you a parent or an otherwise amply sized Woodchuck interested in making projects with, or for, your kids? Or are you an aspiring small Woodchuck ready to get into some quality mischief that involves a hammer, nails, and your very own pocketknife? Well, do we have a guide for you!
Offerman Woodshop is opening its avuncular doors to woodworkers of all ages in the form of twelve brand-new, family-friendly undertakings perfect for kids, from beginner offerings like a handmade box kite to more challenging structures like a garden planter.
All projects are achievable and fun and encourage eye contact, giggles, handshakes, and other old-fashioned familial engagements, while introducing young woodworkers-to-be to the satisfaction and good clean fun of hands-on crafting.
No Planning for Love
For all my cozy monster romance lovers. I will say that the gargoyle on the cover gives me Mass Effect Asari vibes.
Welcome to Monstera Bluff, a quaint, coastal small town with a monstrously big secret.
After Cara Bishop’s terrible year of heartache and upheaval, she finally lands her dream job as a city planner… in a place that just so happens to be inhabited by monsters and witches she never knew existed. Go figure they’d grapple with the same urban planning issues as everyone else! As the shock of their existence wears off, she’s determined to land on her feet once and for all in this unusual yet charming place that feels so far away from everything she’s trying to escape. Except, a brooding gargoyle named Ben—who is frustratingly unavoidable both at work and outside of it—as well as some odious local power brokers seem quite unhappy with her sudden appearance in their hidden, magickal town.
Ben Garde-Pierre thought his humdrum road construction project for the town would proceed like any other. That is, until Cara—a human uninitiated with his world— arrives with a shiny new job at town hall, shaking up his entire life. Her presence proves to be an unexpected though not unwelcome complication. Ben soon recognizes he must protect her from a series of escalating forces that would drive her away, including his own burgeoning attraction to her.
Despite these obstacles, will Cara reclaim her career and make a life for herself in Monstera Bluff? Or will this be yet another mistake in her rollercoaster of a year?
Is Ruby Still a 'Serious' Programming Language?
Dec. 7th, 2025 08:34 amslashdot_feedWired published an article by California-based writer/programmer Sheon Han arguing that Ruby "is not a serious programming language."
Han believes that the world of programming has "moved on", and "everything Ruby does, another language now does better, leaving it without a distinct niche.
Ruby is easy on the eyes. Its syntax is simple, free of semicolons or brackets. More so even thanPython — a language known for its readability — Ruby reads almost like plain English... Ruby, you might've guessed, is dynamically typed. Python and JavaScript are too, but over the years, those communities have developed sophisticated tools to make them behave more responsibly. None of Ruby's current solutions are on par with those. It's far too conducive to what programmers call "footguns," features that make it all too easy to shoot yourself in the foot.
Critically, Ruby's performance profile consistently ranks near the bottom (read: slowest) among major languages. You may remember Twitter's infamous "fail whale," the error screen with a whale lifted by birds that appeared whenever the service went down. You could say that Ruby was largely to blame. Twitter's collapse during the 2010 World Cup served as a wake-up call, and the company resolved to migrate its backend to Scala, a more robust language.
The move paid off: By the 2014 World Cup, Twitter handled a record 32 million tweets during the final match without an outage. Its new Scala-based backend could process up to 100 times faster than Ruby. In the 2010s, a wave of companies replaced much of their Ruby infrastructure, and when legacy Ruby code remained, new services were written in higher-performance languages.
You may wonderwhy people are still using Ruby in 2025. It survives because of its parasitic relationship with Ruby on Rails, the web framework that enabled Ruby's widespread adoption and continues to anchor its relevance.... Rails was the framework of choice for a new generation of startups. The main code bases of Airbnb, GitHub, Twitter, Shopify, and Stripe were built on it.
He points out on Stack Overflow's annual developer survey, Ruby has slipped from a top-10 technology in 2013 to #18 this year — "behind evenAssembly" — calling Ruby "a kind of professional comfort object, sustained by the inertia of legacy code bases and the loyalty of those who first imprinted upon it." But the article drew some criticism on X.com. ("You should do your next piece about how Vim isn't a serious editor and continue building your career around nerd sniping developers.")
Other reactions...
"Maybe WIRED is just not a serious medium..."
"FWIW — Ruby powered Shopify through another Black Friday / Cyber Monday — breaking last year's record."
"Maybe you should have taken a look at TypeScript..."
Wired's subheading argues that Ruby "survives on affection, not utility. Let's move on." Are they right? Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments.
Is Ruby still a 'serious' programming language?
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Cultivated Cream of the Comedic Cat Crop Made of 27 Meowing Memes
Dec. 7th, 2025 11:00 amicanhascheezburger_feedCats don't just do comedy - they embody it. They're the floofy philosophers of foolishness, the tiny toe-bean jesters roaming our homes with an air of sophistication… right before falling off a countertop they absolutely meant to fall off. Truly, they are the cultivated cream of the comedic crop: elegant in theory, hilariously unhinged in practice.
Ask any cat parent and they'll confirm that their feline friend is a walking, meowing contradiction. One moment they're perched like a regal meowsterpiece - perfect posture, half-closed eyes, whiskers poised for a Renaissance portrait. The next moment, they're tearing around the living room at mach speed because their own tail "looked suspicious". High art meets chaotic slapstick, and we are merely the witnesses.
There's the dignified loaf who chooses to sit in a box two sizes too small, insisting it's avant-garde interior design. The "intellectual" kitty who studies the mysteries of the universe by blankly staring at a wall for twenty minutes straight. The self-proclaimed comedian cat who bonks their head on the doorframe and looks offended at the door.
This is the essence of cat comedy: intentional or accidental, refined or ridiculous, cats are always serving their funniest selves. And we - devoted feline fanatics - clap at it like the good audience members we are. After all, when the world gets too serious, a little meowing madness is exactly the cultured humor we need.
26 Merry Catmas Memes to Sleigh Your Spirits With Seasonal Silliness
Dec. 7th, 2025 09:00 amicanhascheezburger_feedOnly three weeks until Catmas, feline fam! We hope your bells are jingling and ring-ting-tingaling, too because it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you. That's all our original words, no, don't look it up or Google it. Remember, not everything you read on the internet is true.
But in all seriousness, we're pawsitively pumped for Santa Paws to come. We know that it's a stressful time - the end of the year, mandatory family time, traveling, buying presents, and kids being on break from school, but we're here to bring those vibes back up and get you in the hissterical holiday spirit. How else can we do that except with some festive "Merry Catmas" memes?
If there's one thing we love more than Christmas, it's cats. And if you're reading this, you probably feel the same way. Shake off that stress and fill yourself up with pawsitivity from all these cute cats celebrating Catmas in the only way they know how - with pure sass and silliness. They may pretend like they don't like Christmas, but we all know they do. Even if it's just to accomplish their purrsonal mission of taking down the Christmas tree every year. Everyone needs a goal, right?
The holiday spirit is in the room with us, and it's full of cattos. Enjoy these feline funnies and have a meowy Catmas!
icanhascheezburger_feedIt's finally cold outside. Cold and festive. This is one of our favorite periods of the year for the obvious reasons and for the less obvious ones. Like the fact that this is the best time of year to cuddle under blankets with our cats. We're cold, they're cold, and the two best sources of heat in the house are the blankets and the humans, so we become their favorite napping spots. Of course, as fun as it may be to be inside when it's cold, this is also an important time to keep an eye and an ear out, because outside, there are no blankets for lost kittens to hide under.
And the kitten in this story… considering the cold and the injuries that she had, would not have survived the winter out there alone. Heck, we're not sure she would have survived for a couple more days. But she lucked out. The kitten was found by a dog, and this dog, confused and excited, alerted his pawrents, and they gave her the second chance that she deserved.
C&L's Late Nite Music Club With Freddy Jones Band: 'In A Daydream'
Dec. 7th, 2025 04:00 amcrooks_and_liars_feed
The Freddy Jones band was formed by two friends, Wayne Healy and Marty Lloyd back in 1990.
Former Loyola University classmates Healy and Lloyd created the band in the early Nineties and quickly became a fixture on the college circuit. Encouraged by the positive reaction to their live show, they quickly dropped out of school and hit the road in a dilapidated old van.
"It really wasn't that tough of a decision for me," says Lloyd. "I was majoring in communications by day, and playing music around town at night. Realizing that I was cheating all aspects of my life by not concentrating on any one thing, I decided to do the band full-time." Luckily, the dropouts eased their parents' fears by releasing a self-titled indie album that went on to sell more than 10,000 copies -- just enough to attract the attention of Capricorn Records. Six years, four albums, and an AOR hit later (1993's "In a Daydream"), the Joneses have carved themselves a nice little niche and amassed a loyal and sizeable Deadhead-like following.
The band is celebrating their 30 year anniversary of “In a Daydream.”
New Jolla Phone Now Available for Pre-Order as an Independent Linux Phone
Dec. 7th, 2025 05:34 amslashdot_feedJolla is "trying again with a new crowd-funded smartphone," reports Phoronix:
Finnish company Jolla started out 14 years ago where Nokia left off with MeeGo and developed Sailfish OS as a new Linux smartphone platform. Jolla released their first smartphone in 2013 after crowdfunding but ultimately the Sailfish OS focus the past number of years now has been offering their software stack for use on other smartphone devices [including some Sony Xperia smartphones and OnePlus/Samsung/ Google/ Xiaomi devices].
This new Jolla Phone's pre-order voucher page says the phone will only produced if 2,000 units are ordered before January 4. (But in just a few days they've already received 1,721 pre-orders — all discounted to 499€ from a normal price between 599 and 699 €). Estimate delivery is the first half of 2026.
"The new Jolla Phone is powered by a high-performing Mediatek 5G SoC," reports 9to5Linux, "and features 12GB RAM, 256GB storage that can be expanded to up to 2TB with a microSDXC card, a 6.36-inch FullHD AMOLED display with ~390ppi, 20:9 aspect ratio, and Gorilla Glass, and a user-replaceable 5,500mAh battery."
The Linux phone also features 4G/5G support with dual nano-SIM and a global roaming modem configuration, Wi-Fi 6 wireless, Bluetooth 5.4, NFC, 50MP Wide and 13MP Ultrawide main cameras, front front-facing wide-lens selfie camera, fingerprint reader on the power key, a user-changeable back cover, and an RGB indication LED. On top of that, the new Jolla Phone promises a user-configurable physical Privacy Switch that lets you turn off the microphone, Bluetooth, Android apps, or whatever you wish.
The device will be available in three colors, including Snow White, Kaamos Black, and The Orange. All the specs of the new Jolla Phone were voted on by Sailfish OS community members over the past few months. Honouring the original Jolla Phone form factor and design, the new model ships with Sailfish OS (with support for Android apps), a Linux-based European alternative to dominating mobile operating systems that promises a minimum of 5 years of support, no tracking, no calling home, and no hidden analytics...
The device will be manufactured and sold in Europe, but Jolla says that it will design the cellular band configuration to enable global travelling as much as possible, including e.g. roaming in the U.S. carrier networks. The initial sales markets are the EU, the UK, Switzerland, and Norway.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Oxford's Term Of The Year: 'Rage Bait'
Dec. 7th, 2025 02:30 amcrooks_and_liars_feed
Roger J. Kreuz, University of Memphis
Which terms best represent 2025?
Every year, editors for publications ranging from the Oxford English Dictionary to the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English select a “word of the year.”
Sometimes these terms are thematically related, particularly in the wake of world-altering events. “Pandemic,” “lockdown” and “coronavirus,” for example, were among the words chosen in 2020. At other times, they are a potpourri of various cultural trends, as with 2022’s “goblin mode,” “permacrisis” and “gaslighting.”