some white people sure put a lot of energy into making sure we don't rename shit named after Confederate generals. Did you know that Robert E. Lee was a scout during the Mexican-American war and saved lives?

Man, I had some lady go off on me on a friend's post, saying that I need to study this country's history before I open my mouth, and we need to stop waving PC flags (I did NOT reply that she seems okay with waving Nazi flags), there are more important things to discuss than war heroes who have been dead for 100 years, and this isn't real.

When I replied that white supremacy is very real and is a very real danger, her response devolved into an unpunctuated ASSCAPS wall of text that culminated in "BUT I HAVE ALOT MORE EDUCATION THAN YOU DO I AM SURE SO I AM NOT GOING TO READ THIS ANY MORE WHY DONT YOU SHUT UP". (I swear to god that is an exact quote.)

I feel bad for my friend whose post this occurred on. It's awful to see your friends reveal their total batshit ASSCAPS crazy.

If there's an actual PC flag, I need to buy one. On a stick. So I can then beat people with it.

Or a pointy stick, for jabbing.

Jesus, now this guy is saying that Lee never had evil intent, and he doesn't want to see that attributed to Lee 150 years later.

Riiiiiiight. The guy who led the fucking Confederate Army didn't have any evil intent. Fortunately, this is on a friend's FB page, so I screeched at him. Politely.

Timelies all!

"S, get the duck out of your mouth!" - Actual thing I said. (No, he didn't remove it from his mouth. He's been chewing on my rubber ducks for a while. Toddlers...)

(Here's why I don't usually post: by the time I can come back, the conversation has moved on...)

(Hi, -t!)

The nice thing about pinhole projection is that you don't even have to make anything. Look at the shadow of your interlaced fingers, or a colander, or tree leaves. Eclipse projections everywhere!

I totally get the concerns, but lack of exposure is why people don't get science, argh.

I totally get the concerns, but lack of exposure is why people don't get science, argh.

Totally, that is what is so frustrating!

The dancing rings thrown by the annular eclipse through tree leaves are one of my favorite visual memories. I was trying to explain the interlaced fingers method of pinhole projection to the guys who were renting us the car (the one guy kept saying "but you can't look right at the sun? I kinda want to now" so I hope he doesn't do that at least). I did show it to some of my coworkers last time we had a partial during work hours, but that was a tiny sliver missing and they were not so impressed.

My eclipse glasses, which I ordered a week ago with two business day shipping, are still listed as "preparing for shipment" on the tracker. I'm pretty sure I will not have eclipse glasses for the actual eclipse.

A local disability group (which is very informal -- we have almost no actual organization beyond "Guy who's mostly in charge because it was his idea to have a local chapter") is trying to put together a statement on Charlottesville. We're all discussing edits. There was some actual discussion about several points, and edits made, and I appreciate all of that discussion, but there are also a bunch of grammatical errors, and I pointed them out, and those were not changed. And I can't really point them out again without looking like an ass, but one of them is really annoying me. (Most of it is misplaced commas, but there's one sentence with the wrong verb tense.)

Ugh to both of those, Hil.

I'm trying desperately not start anything in the next 20 minutes so I can just cleanly leave when my 8 hours are up and get to vacationing. Maybe I'll straighten up the papers on my desk.