America's largest remaining antebellum plantation, Nottoway Plantation in Iberville Parish, Louisiana, has burned to the ground. The cause is still under investigation but Parish President Chris Daigle says the building is "a total loss." In recent years, the plantation had been rebranded as Nottoway Resort, a luxury hotel described on its website as "restored to her days of glory." Sharing a video of the burning building on Facebook, a local man named Brad Gordon wrote: "If you don't understand why Black Americans are celebrating the symbolic dismantling of this monument to bondage and generational oppression — well, today, we simply don't care." Here's more from @AxiosNews.

flip.it/3.fpec

#BlackHistory #BlackMastodon @blackmastodon #USHistory #USNews

Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper was first published in 1962 and was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1963. It’s not hard to understand its popularity: The titular “Fuzzies” are an adorable alien species, the story travels along at a good pace, and the clash between big business and the little band of pro-Fuzzy prospectors and naturalists is entertaining and ultimately satisfying. But the book is also thought-provoking in its exploration of what it means to be sapient and how humans interact with other sapient species.

As one character notes, “Anything that talks and builds a fire is a sapient being, yes. That’s the law. But that doesn’t mean that anything that doesn’t isn’t.”

The Fuzzies are silken-furred, large-eyed, and doll-sized in appearance and curious and childlike in their behaviour. They arouse in their first human friends a protective (and possessive) instinct, particularly in Jack Holloway, who has the honor of being their first contact with homo sapiens. Jack is in his seventies, living out in the wilds of Zarathustra and mining for valuable sunstones. There are hints that he’s come to the planet to escape some messy mistakes (and possibly a drinking problem), but he’s an intelligent, if idiosyncratic, character with a formidable reputation who takes great delight in interacting with his visitors, Little Fuzzy and family, and they quickly make themselves at home with him.

However, Zarathustra is a class-III uninhabited planet owned by the Zarathustra Company, which is farming, mining, and settling the planet at an incredible (and lucrative) rate. Should a sapient native species be discovered there, the planet would be reclassified and the company’s ownership would be made void. So when the first news of Jack’s visitors reaches the company, they’re quick to send their own scientists out to disprove any claims of significant intelligence.

The picture of Fuzzy intelligence is built up by degrees within the story, largely through Jack’s interactions and observations, but human treatment of the potentially sapient race remains questionable throughout the book. They are intelligent tool-makers capable of surviving in a dangerous eco-system in which they appear to be food for a number of larger predators (not least of which are the imaginatively named “damnthings” and “harpies”). They are inquisitive, and it is thanks to this quality that they learn that humans (as represented by Jack) are generally a safe bet—Jack gives them food, new tools, and toys and tolerates them bedding down in his cabin, so what’s not to like? They are treated, however, like little children at best and, at worst, like pet dogs. Early on, even Jack catches himself putting a bowl of water down for Little Fuzzy “as he would for a dog” and instead supplies a cup. There is an element of consternation in almost every interaction between humans and Fuzzies, perhaps more so because the argument for their sapience occurs at the same time that Fuzzy dolls and hats are being made and people are owning and naming their Fuzzies as if they are the “fur-bearing animals” that the company claims them to be.

Little Fuzzy remains an entertaining story that encourages the reader to question how humanity sees and behaves towards other intelligences. Since 1962, we have been surprised again and again by what we have learned about the intelligence of the animals we share our planet with, from elephants and octopuses, to crows and bees—reminding us, hopefully, to continue to challenge our assumptions and justifications.

This book is now in the public domain and can be read for free on the Internet Archive’s Open Library or Project Gutenberg websites.

Mayri Cooper

seattlein2025.org/2025/05/16/f…

#HBeamPiper #LittleFuzzy

The initiative calling for the ban of "conversion therapy" in the European Union has collected enough signatures (around 1 180 000 as I type) 🎉

But you still have till the end of today, May 17, to add your signature and support putting an end to hateful practices that have been described as torture by the United Nations.

Wouldn't that be a suitable thing to do on the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia?

eci.ec.europa.eu/043/public/

#IDAHOT2025 🌈

European Citizens' Initiative

Give your support !

^{eci.ec.europa.eu}

Hey, 90s kids! Your bedroom is now in a museum!

(Prague's National Museum, if you want to make a complaint.)

Saturday.
With only 4 workdays left until we fly off on our weeklong vacation to a hopefully warm Greek island, the wife opens one of her underwear drawers and pulls out her 2nd generation Victor Reader Stream.
"Can you make sure the books I want are on here for the holiday," she asks?

"Ah," I say. "I'm getting a memory. It's very faint ... hang on ... thinking, thinking ... Yes. it's deja vu."

WE had the exact same conversation before jetting off to Malta during last year's vacation (I hesitate to call them annual, as we've only had 2 in a row for the last 15 years).
Not only the exact same conversation but the exact same books, as she didn't crack a single one open during the entire fortnight we were away last year.

Victor's battery has long-since died, of course. DO I even have a Micro USB cable that does data to hand? The one I've just plugged in seems to only do power. Bloody thing.
Unless there's some key combo for USB mode I'm missing. In the old days I'd whip the SD out and do it native, but neither of our new laptops has an integrated reader.

At Eurovision, Swedish-speaking Finns are representing Sweden

The three members of KAJ, the band selected to represent Sweden in the 2025 edition of the music contest, hail from a Swedish-speaking minority on Finland's West coast.

In a context of hostility toward this second national language and rivalry with their Scandinavian 'big brother,' this is a notable event in Finland.

mediafaro.org/article/20250517…

#Finland #Sweden #Eurovision #EurovisionSongContest #Europe #Music

#Iceland tested a reduced workweek 2014-2019:

”A pair of trials covering 1.3 per cent of the Icelandic workforce revealed that slashing weekly hours led to better employee #wellbeing, with less stress and burnout, while #productivity stayed the same or improved. The positive results sparked union pressure in Iceland, and now 86% of Icelandic workers either work shorter weeks or have the right to ask to do so.“

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Edit: The initial source was misleading, so I replaced it and adjusted the quote. Also see: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-d…

Iceland’s shorter working week has been a huge success – and it’s changed my family’s life

For 90% of working Icelanders, a 36-hour week means less stress, more job satisfaction and time to enjoy life beyond work, says teacher María Hjálmtýsdóttir

^{María Hjálmtýsdóttir (The Guardian)}

Thought this was funny.

#selfemployed #Humor

Only one thing on everyone’s mind? The genocide being carried out by Israel against the Palestinian people? No? Oh, a song contest sponsored by Israel that Israel is using to whitewash its genocide. Ah, my bad, sorry.

Enjoy your entertainment.

#eurovision #EU #europe #europeanValues #genocide #israel #ethnicCleansing #apartheid #settlerColonialism #esc2025 en.osm.town/@opencage/11452243…

OpenCage 👉🌍 (@opencage@en.osm.town)

Attached: 1 image Are you ready for the most fabulous, glitzy, glamorous #geoweirdness thread of all time? 🕺💃🎤 Here in Europe there's only one thing on everyone's mind this week: the annual Eurovision Song contest.

^{OSM Town | Mapstodon for OpenStreetMap}

cbc.ca/news/canada/postal-serv…

Canada Post is not a for-profit company.

We have to reject it being framed that way.

It is a taxpayer-funded crown corporation providing an essential public service to all of us.

#cdnpoli #canada #privatization #canadapost #elbowsup #canlab

That feeling when you create a free #anonymous email account with Tuta Mail 😎

#madeineurope #privacymatters #eu #tuta #tutamail

#Catima 2.35.0 is out!

This release lets you further tweak the barcode size in the fullscreen view and slightly improves barcode finding reliability when scanning or loading a barcode from an image or PDF file. It also fixes a crash when trying to load a pkpass file without a barcode in it.

Coming soon to an app store near you :)

github.com/CatimaLoyalty/Andro…

#Android #OpenSource #IzzyOnDroid #FDroid #GooglePlay #GitHub

Release 2.35.0 · CatimaLoyalty/Android

Add ability to choose barcode width in fullscreen view Remove confusing import from app function Various scanning fixes Fix crash when loading a pkpass file without barcode

^GitHub

První plnohodnotný volební program pro sněmovní volby je tu .. a je od hnutí STAN

Priority i kompletní program najdete na jejich volebním webu starostove.cz/program, také ve formátu PDF

A také už i na Programech zde:
programydovoleb.cz/volby/snemo…

🗳

Volební program - Starostové a nezávislí ve sněmovních volbách 2025 - Programy do voleb

Pročtětě si kompletní volební program od Starostové a nezávislí najdete na nestranném přehledu Programy do voleb.

^{Volební program - Starostové a nezávislí ve sněmovních volbách 2025 - Programy do voleb}