Rest in peace to Gene Shalit, a man whose Kermit the Frog interview went absolutely off the rails in 1984.
Nobody has interviewed a Muppet like this since.
@foster_revkim@YehudaJFriedman@AustinFranco123@nypost Just pointing out, Kim, that YOU went after Yehuda, not the other way around. I'm assuming this situation doesn't actually involve you. You're getting very emotionally involved for someone who doesn't know either party.
@olivercampbell I am SO SORRY. Having just HAD surgery, and being in recovery right now, this is CLOSE TO MY HEART and my heart is ANGRYYYY. 🤬🤬 PLEASE tell us what happens! Let us know what you need! ❤️🔥
@barrybutler9@NHLBlackhawks@NHLNetwark@NHL And most of those ~2 million people were on my Metra train that morning. 😱🫣 Yes I speak hyperbole but it was standing room only (and wall-to-wall #blackhawks jerseys) from LIBERTYVILLE all the way into Union Station.
Tried to log into my bank this morning
Not a new bank. My bank. The one that has my money
First it wanted my password
Wrong
Tried the other one
Wrong
Reset it
"New password cannot match any of your last 24 passwords"
That is every password I have ever used
Created a new one that I will forget next week
Then it said "please verify you are human"
I am human
I have a mortgage
I paid $52.18 for bread, milk, and eggs last week
Only a human would do that
But the bank was not convinced
"Select all squares with traffic lights"
Nine squares
Three had traffic lights
One had the edge of a traffic light pole
Maybe two pixels of yellow paint
Stared at it for a full minute
Selected it
Wrong
"Select all squares with stairs"
Two squares had stairs
One had a ramp
Is a ramp stairs
A ramp is the opposite of stairs
I selected the two obvious ones
Wrong
It wanted the ramp
I am a CFO
I've fired people with more due process than this
But I cannot pass a test designed to keep bots out of my own checking account
"Click and hold until the image stops moving"
A jigsaw puzzle piece floated across the screen
Held it
"Verification failed"
Held it for thirteen seconds
My finger cramped
"Success"
Then a new screen
"Your account has been locked due to suspicious activity"
The suspicious activity was me
Trying to access my own account
Called customer service
The phone menu had ten options
None of them were "your website thinks I am a robot"
Thirty-seven minutes on hold
The same fourteen seconds of smooth jazz
Looping
Every ninety seconds a voice told me my call was important
It did not sound important
Finally a man answered
"Thank you for holding, my name is John"
That man's name was not John
We both knew it
I did not press the issue
John asked for my mother's maiden name, my first pet, and the street I grew up on
He unlocked the account in forty seconds
Forty seconds
The bank trusts John more than me
And John does not exist
Final tally
Nineteen minutes of captchas
Thirty-seven minutes of smooth jazz
One man who was not named John
To access money that is mine
At an institution that emails me every single day asking if I want a home equity line of credit
My wife walked in
She said "what are you doing"
I said "proving to a computer that I'm not a computer"
She said "are you winning"
I said "I just spent an hour deciding if a ramp is stairs"
She said "that sounds like something a computer would do"
She wasn't wrong
She usually isn't
Plz fix. Thx.
Sent from my iPhone
@ThoJuanita@lyndseyfifield Is she directly responsible for Trump? She's talking about her own experiences here. Why are you holding her responsible in some way for Trump's behavior?
Also, thus speaks a woman who has never had a relationship with a narcissist abuser. Take all the seats, please.
@sporttinggoods@lyndseyfifield This is about HER OWN EXPERIENCES. apples =/= oranges. If your local store cheats you out of $10K, will you be just as angry about Amazon cheating all their customers? Good grief.
@MustachedMarcel@lyndseyfifield No ... He's running for the power it will give him. You can't trust a narcissist to do anything for altruistic motives. It's always about what's in it for them. Look up the stats.
@Quilter6561@lyndseyfifield Thus speaks someone who has obviously never known, much less been in a relationship with, a true and abusive narcissist. Until you have, please take ALL the seats.
@lance_corporate How about those of us for whom the script is flipped? Where the wife has to be the breadwinner, and our husbands are sending the "ok" texts? Your description isn't pointing at me - it's describing him. I get that we aren't the norm, but you're making some pretty big assumptions.
@Benedicta_Bee Someone else posted, and they're correct -- it's Carolyn Rupp. She's actually the choreographer and teacher at Pineapple Studios in London. Her IG has all sorts of videos, and they're all just a JOY to watch. 😍
https://t.co/y6bKCsPDw0
@icecreamtzvt @TravisFrankW96@wil_da_beast630 "they" are Christian nationalists who are using the Bible as justification for their antisemitism. You're giving them FAR more grace than they deserve. They aren't trying to make a cogent and logical argument -- they're trying to avoid the truth of His Jewishness.
@W0DEHOUSE@kangminlee@micah_erfan@grok It's not IN the Constitution. "Congress shall make no law respecting the ESTABLISHMENT of religion, or PROHIBITING the free exercise thereof" means that the State can't create an official religion, or stop people from worshiping. But "separation" was from a letter by Jefferson.
There’s this never-ending debate about whether em dashes, semicolons, and colons have become signs of AI writing. As a result, many of us writers have stopped using them—swapping them for commas or reshaping sharp, effective sentences into something blander—to avoid suspicion.
But AI was trained on the best of us. On millions of published works by real authors. It learned from our voices, our rhythms, our punctuation. And now we’re acting as if those marks somehow belong to machines.
They don’t.
Those tools were ours long before AI existed. Our teachers taught us how and when to use them, years before anyone imagined generative AI. So let’s take them back. Let’s use the full range of language with confidence. The em dash, the semicolon, the colon—they’re not signals of artificiality. They’re signs of craft.
#WritingCommunity #writerslife
@BenSasse Praise God for the hope we have in His Son. Thank you for this beautiful, heartbreaking message. "The LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace." I'll be praying for you.