I hope your aunt is feeling better quickly, Laura.

and shot with a rubber bullet at the Portland protest last night.

One, I am appalled that military federal forces are being used to harass, threaten, arrest and assault citizens.

Two, those "less than lethal" police weapons that are blinding people and causing fractured skulls are like saying that people who are discharged from ICUs and hospitals recovered from COVID-19. Many are left with serious morbidities. Or die from a stroke.

I hope your brother is okay. I'm proud he went to the protests as well. That's what our country is supposed to protect.

meara, the whole thing reminds me of the Spider Robinson story where someone claims PCs are masculine because you "Press Enter" but Macs are feminine because you "Touch Return".*

Yikes, -t! Hope your brother is OK.

Teppy, now I'm remembering that Veronica Mars line about, "Some of us are just....Asian". Good grief.

• Or something like that, it's been decades since I read the story. My brain's long-term retention algorithm is weird.

He also said there were a surprising number of people using squeaky toys as part of the call and response which I did not expect but I can kind of see how that would be useful. Saves your voice, makes noise.

Brilliant. Here I've seen vuvuzelas.

And I'm glad he's OK. It is scary.

At a coding level they are actually different keys that do serve slightly different functions. I deal with this when I'm programming automation systems and I have to send the information formatted in hex, I have to very specifically send a carriage return and a line feed in order to get some equipment to process commands correctly. To be fair it is a pretty fine distinction, similar to what we deal with in audio where the concept of reversed polarity and 180 degrees out of phase are treated as equivalent, when they actually are not truly the same thing from an electrical perspective. One impacts the time domain the other does not.

meara, the whole thing reminds me of the Spider Robinson story where someone claims PCs are masculine because you "Press Enter" but Macs are feminine because you "Touch Return"

Hah! I read a lot of Spider Robinson in my youth, but don't remember that one! I'm perfectly willing to believe there is or was a difference...but it's not labeled as such on my keyboards except my MacBook (where it says return, and then above that on the same key is written enter). On my external keyboard and my work PC laptop, only enter keys. So I think it's rather needlessly pedantic to claim the answer is wrong based on that. Sure, in some cases it might be used differently and have consequences, but as an answer to a crossword puzzle? ....OK, I guess if anyone is going to be pedantic its NY Times Crossword Puzzle do-ers.

I mean, there's a reason I said NERD FIGHT in my post. winkysmiley.icon

Squeaky toys are great because the don't require shouting or blowing into something to make noise. The more noise you can make without projecting your voice, the safer the protests are so long as people are taking appropriate safety measures.

Dang, my brother just told me he got tear gassed and shot with a rubber bullet at the Portland protest last night. I'm actually still glad he went but yikes, another thing to worry about.

oh, -t, I hope he's okay.

I am thinking ahead to what's going to get me out in the streets. I will keep going to local BLM protests, but they are low-key and non-violent here. I can't help but thing this shit is going to keep getting worse and we're going to need to get out there before November to get that gluttonous toad out of the white house.

Alas, I do not have my full-sized keyboard to see how the keys are labelled. My laptop definitely just says "Enter" but from that write-up is actually Return? I don't know. I think I understand the reverse polarity vs 180 out of phase thing better (and I don't really understand that but I think at one point in my life I would have...)

Scary to think about for me.

I would think. I'm glad he is okay.