17 responses to “Saturday morning market.”

1. 

   alex said on June 28, 2025 at 10:49 am

   I’ve been harvesting my garlic scapes all week and making food items to squirrel away in the freezer, compound butter and pesto so far.

   Has anyone else noticed that Facebook has gotten weird lately? My feed is suddenly being flooded with strange posts that are only tangentially related to my interests, but they seem to be deliberately mis-identifying things and baiting me to call bullshit. For instance, I’ll get posts featuring photos of vintage automobiles but often with the incorrect year, make or model, and sometimes all three. And I also see a lot of cars that are either PhotoShopped or created with AI purporting to be a certain year, make and model but these bear no resemblance to the actual vehicle or to any real vehicle whatsoever.

   I get the feeling that these posters aren’t genuine auto enthusiasts but are doing some kind of phishing for God knows what.

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2. 

   nancy said on June 28, 2025 at 11:06 am

   It’s engagement farming. There are a shitload of AI-generated posts claiming this or that pro athlete made some enormous gift to a charity or poor child or whatever. You click, you like, you comment, and someone else rings a cash register.

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3. 

   Deborah said on June 28, 2025 at 12:23 pm

   I quit Instagram after deciding I wanted to remove Billionaires from my life, but I read about something on Bluesky recently about someone I used to follow on Instagram so I tried to look at it but I had to have an account to access it, so I got a new account and I decided to look up some of the accounts that I missed following. But I noticed that all kinds of weird things were going on, I’d follow someone and then they would disappear from my feed and accounts I hadn’t followed were showing up and the there began to be weird crap showing up that seemed glitchy and irrelevant. Things had changed for the worse while I was away, for sure. I guit Facebook ages ago and wild horses couldn’t get me to go back.

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4. 

   Dexter Friend said on June 28, 2025 at 1:19 pm

   I received a text today wanting to hire me to “write content” , promising from $50 per diem to $500 per diem. All this for “between 20 and 50 minutes of your time a day.”
   The last time I had a paid writing gig was during my senior high school year when I got $10 per sports story from the local town newspaper. That’s like $100 in today’s dough.
   Today, one click into the trash.

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5. 

   Julie Robinson said on June 28, 2025 at 1:31 pm

   For the most part Instagram is for following Broadway shows and actors. Facebook is for keeping in touch with far-flung family and friends. What I’ve noticed is how people who I don’t know or aren’t famous that show up in my FB feed. Usually the posts are chatty and assume knowledge of them. I just scroll on by.

   Monday morning at 7:30 D is supposed to have a procedure, and yesterday afternoon we had a MyChart message that the location is out of network, and we have to sign a statement that we’ll pay whatever they charge. It’s taken two months to get this arranged, including insurance authorization. The doctor’s office gave us a scheduling number, and to my surprise we were told the most recent appointment was six weeks out and an hour away. I don’t know why I was surprised; healthcare is so hard to get and insurance seems to mean nothing.

   Long story short an hour on the phone and everything’s okay. Probably a clerical error. He was supposed to have a different procedure earlier and we couldn’t get authorized for that one. It was a day that required ice cream.

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6. 

   tajalli said on June 28, 2025 at 1:33 pm

   Recently someone I follow suggested going to the site and flagging it as “fake” so the algorithm becomes trained to identify this crap as such. I’ve been circumventing the whole business by going directly to the few sites/people I follow so whatever is primed to show there I never see.

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7. 

   Jakash said on June 28, 2025 at 3:14 pm

   “… a decaying America,” indeed.

   I thought I’d done pretty well dealing with the disintegration of America, psychologically, but in the middle of the night I was awake for a fair amount of time freaking out about this fucking Supreme Court.

   A couple weeks ago, I read an article somewhere about how maybe Amy Coney Barrett will surprise the fascists and actually be a guardian of democracy. And it’s true that her voting record so far is not as bad as some of the others. Put that together with the ole “John Roberts cares about his legacy and won’t just do what Il Douché wants him to” bullshit and maybe there was a sliver of hope for the future.

   Uh, turns out it’s about as much of a sliver as there is of the moon on the night of a new moon.

   We’ve witnessed the result of a decades-long enterprise of rich people controlling the media after dispensing with the “fairness doctrine,” Ronald Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment — “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican,” the orange felon’s long-time motto “Deny, deny, deny,” the dyed-in-the-wool sexism, racism and xenophobia long characteristic of much of the populace of this benighted nation, combined with the willingness of Democrats and Independents to NOT vote for the only candidate that has a chance to win in support of most of what they want.

   “Money is speech.” “A corporation is a person.” And here we are.

   The vaunted “checks and balances” that we always heard about just don’t seem to have a chance at all when the Supreme Court and Congress are in league with the fascist and think it’s okey-dokey for the president to be above the law.

   “A republic, if you can keep it.” Well, we did for a while.

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8. 

   Deborah said on June 28, 2025 at 4:48 pm

   Beautiful day in Chicago, cool and breezy, then tomorrow we’re back in the steamer.

   This is cool, Budapest had a huge Pride parade turnout to protest Orban’s Government after he put a ban on it. Amazing crowd in the photo, gift article https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/world/europe/hungary-orban-gay-pride.html?unlocked_article_code=1.SU8.lHzt.USAqKJ7CDZFj&smid=url-share

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9. 

   Mark P said on June 28, 2025 at 7:46 pm

   I was watching a clip from The Sand Pebbles a few nights ago, when the San Pablo was steaming up the river to rescue Candice Bergman from the Chinese who were attacking westerners. As the boat approached a barricade of sampans, the captain ordered the battle flag, the American flag, to be raised. The camera showed various crewmen looking up at the flag, and to be honest, it was a stirring sight. But now I can’t look at an American flag without thinking about how far we have fallen, and how ashamed I am to be from a country that elected Trump. It pisses me off that the MAGAts have stolen any sense of patriotism from decent people.

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10. 

    Dorothy said on June 28, 2025 at 8:22 pm

    Too damned many ads on both sites so I scroll past or mark them as irrelevant just to drive them crazy. I have a huge family and it’s efficient to see pics of great nieces and nephews and see how much more beautiful they’re getting. My IG is mostly quilters and fabric and knitting and hand sewn bags and dogs that make me smile or cry and occasionally something about books or movies or theater.

    Time to go start reading our book club’s July book “The Let Them Theory”. Anyone else read it yet? Thoughts? For some reason I’m dreading reading this one. I very nearly skipped it, but then I caved and bought it a few days ago. I’m not sure why my gut is telling me it’s going to bore me silly.

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11. 

    Deborah said on June 28, 2025 at 9:01 pm

    Yeah Dorothy, I looked that book up and agree, that wouldn’t be a book I’d think about reading. On the other hand the book club my husband and I participate in chose a book that I wouldn’t have been drawn to, but it turned out I loved it. So who knows, give it a shot.

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12. 

    Jeff Gill said on June 29, 2025 at 7:26 am

    We spent a goodly chunk of yesterday in 1825; it has been interesting in preparation for this bicentennial event, of the groundbreaking for the Ohio and Erie Canal, to look at our country 200 years ago. It really was a hot mess in many ways, yet so familiar at unexpected turns. Plus our actual governor today, in personal conversation with him & his wife, seems sincerely angry about the moves against the Haitian community in our state; he’s done some things on a personal level to help them, had some ideas for what local folk could do short term, and I will be watching with interest to see how much follow-through in practical terms he shows politically. Anyhow, I’m the tall guy waving his arms around dressed in neutral black, as I channel various historical figures from 1825 at the podium (like former governors Thomas Worthington & Jeremiah Morrow, Thomas Ewing who would become the foster father of William Tecumseh Sherman, plus local dignitaries leading what would become a series of 24 toasts at the end of the program, back when drinking whiskey was considered a standard life skill).

    https://www.newarkadvocate.com/picture-gallery/news/local/2025/06/28/ohio-erie-canal-bicentennial-celebrates-200th-anniversary-in-newark/84402607007/

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13. 

    Dave said on June 29, 2025 at 9:49 am

    Would it be so simple to set ourselves free from the drama and judgments of others in today’s time, I’d read that book in a minute but I don’t know how to set myself free from this disintegration. Every day, I want to write our senators from this backward state and tell them that they ought to feel ashamed of themselves each and every day from the moment they wake up so how do I set myself free from that, I know I’d be spitting in the wind.

    Jeff, where’s your top hat?

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14. 

    Sherri said on June 29, 2025 at 3:00 pm

    My sanity preservation project continues to go well. I’m in Atlanta, where I competed in USAPL Raw (as opposed to Equipped) Nationals this morning. I won my age/weight class, and set a new American record in squat, at 135 kg (297.6 lbs)!

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15. 

    Deborah said on June 29, 2025 at 4:03 pm

    Wow, Sherri, good for you, I can’t even imagine being able to do that. Cool.

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16. 

    Sherri said on June 29, 2025 at 4:20 pm

    Fortunately for my husband and I, we are not flying out of Atlanta. We’re renting a car tomorrow and driving up to Tennessee to visit family. Not so fortunately for my coach, she was planning on flying out of Atlanta tomorrow, and her flight has already been cancelled. Atlanta is still dealing with flight delays from a massive thunderstorm with hail that hit Friday evening; we got in just ahead of the storm. And thunderstorms have popped off every evening since, though nothing to compare to Friday. They had to evacuate the tower briefly because of high winds and then inspect a bunch of planes for hail damage.

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17. 

    Deborah said on June 29, 2025 at 4:34 pm

    We’re scheduled to fly out of Chicago on Friday morning to fly to NM 4 days earlier than we originally planned because of the ungodly heat and humidity here. Hope we don’t face delays but at least we’ll be in an air-conditioned terminal while waiting, never thought I’d look at lengthy sitting in an airport gate area as a positive.

    It hasn’t been as bad today as expected. It rained earlier in the day, totally unpredicted, which increased the humidity but the temps stayed in the low 80s. Thank god. Have spent some of today sitting in the air-conditioned laundry room of our building which is usually one of the hottest spaces. Compared to our space now, it’s heaven.

    I’m definitely now one of the oldsters who have become heat intolerant. Never again putting myself through this, as I’ve said before.

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