The Minnesota ones are particularly interesting. The Democrats had a one-seat advantage in both chambers of the Minnesota legislature. The assassin specifically targeted one Democratic member of each chamber. The Minnesota House is now tied, and the Senate will be tied until Hoffman is able to work or (or Minnesota allows it, I’m not sure) is about to designate someone to vote for him.

I thought most people weren’t protesting in DC?

“Politically motivated assassinations”? Should we bring up the comparative list of politically-motivated extremist incidents in the US and see which side is enacting most of the violence?

There were a lot of them today!

Keep some dry food available at all times, so they can snack as they please, but feed them wet food a couple times a day for their main meals: dry food is harder on their kidneys and increases their chances of diabetes in later age. (Both kidney and diabetes issues are manageable with care, but it’s much easier to avoid them if you can!)

Figure out their favorite flavors, including ‘odd’ flavors like duck and venison. Those flavors may change over time, so verify favorites once a year or so. You’ll want at least one, preferably two, “best” flavors for each cat. Then do not feed those flavors to the cat, except to verify they still like them. When it’s time to give them medicines, you want flavors that they don’t eat everyday and that will definitely pique their interests.

If your cat ever needs appetite stimulants, get the transdermal versions. There are two: mirtazapine and ciproheptadine. Mirtz is more commonly used, but it makes some cats very agitated and meow-y. For those reasons, I tend to avoid it: I’m giving appetite meds to the cat because it’s feeling poorly, and I’d like to know that any odd behavior is due to their health issues, not debate myself over whether it’s a health issue or a medication side effect. Ciproheptadine is less common but has less side effects; you should be able to get it made at a compounding pharmacy.

To use: wear surgical gloves, put a dose on your finger, and gently massage it onto the inside of their ear. Their appetite will perk up in about an hour. Alternate ears, and clean the inside of the ears with a damp cotton ball every few days, to avoid medication build up.

If you have other meds to give, pull their regular food, then give them the appetite stimulant. Wait until they’re hungry, mix the meds into their regular food and feed it to them.

Don’t give churu’s or similar gravy as a regular treat; you want to be able to use them to mix meds into.

Get them a cat tree for the living room, someplace they can be tall. Arrange furniture so there’s something for them to sit on at most windows. If you can put beds in a couple of their most-favored places, that would be great!

They’re going to be cautious in a new environment and with new people. Ask if you can bring something from their old home to your new one, to help them settle in: the blanket they slept on (don’t wash it!), something like that. Find out what food and litter they had in the old place and start out using those at your place so they’ll feel a bit better settling in, then slowly transition both over to whatever it is that you prefer.

Put them into one room to start and give them a couple days to settle before slowly introducing them to the rest of the house, especially if you have young children, dogs, or other pets.

They’ll likely take some time to truly warm up to you; be patient.

At first, don’t just bend down and pick them up or bend down and pet them: their instinctive reaction is that something is coming out of the sky for them. Instead, stand a couple feet in front of them and dangle your hand where they can see it. They’ll consider, approach, sniff, then likely brush your hand. This is the signal that it’s okay to touch. Eventually they’ll adjust to you and you won’t have to do that, you can just bend over and touch, but at the start it just makes them tense, especially in a new location with new people.

Probably other stuff, but I don’t remember.

the slain lawmaker as State Rep. Melissa Hortman of Brooklyn Park and her husband, Mark, while state Sen. John Hoffman of Champlin and his wife, Yvette, were injured. Both lawmakers were members of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party. […] The assailant, who is still at large, allegedly impersonated a police officer.

My support and sympathy to the families. Absolutely no surprise at any of that news.

I speak English. And, as James Nicoll said,

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

I speak some Spanish and some Dutch, but I don’t know if I borrow many words from them that aren’t “normal” borrow-words.

So, face shields are clear shields that cover your face. You’ll see really thin plastic ones in doctors sometimes (they were common during covid), and there are heavier ones for welders and such. Cops often wear them as part of their riot gear get-ups.

Thing is, the medical-type shields aren’t going to very useful during the LA protests, and the higher-grade ones that would be useful are pretty expensive to be just handing out to people. And then you come to this line in the article

along with a broadcast clip from Fox News appearing to show a man providing masks to protestors from the back of a pickup truck.

So - masks. He was providing some kind of masks to people - surgical, N95, carnival, Halloween - hell, little ballroom masks on sticks or thin cloth Zorro masks. But I’m pretty sure that the prosecutor will decide the charges against him are overstated and drop the charges.

It’s mostly a tactic to get this guy off the streets for a bit because he was prepared more than they liked and was helping other demonstrators potentially hide their faces, and to give anyone else with similar ideas reason to pause before they do it themselves.

This can only end well …

A slight chance of showers, then showers likely and possibly a thunderstorm after 2pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 88. Chance of precipitation is 60%.

The weather doesn’t sound that bad.

Just seven of 50 surveyed GOP lawmakers are planning to actually attend the president’s birthday festivities over the weekend, reported Politico. Source

Oh, now that sounds good!

Oh, cool, more people to block, thanks!

Boo! :(

Those things that project images on walls and things - be nice if we could project images either in front or behind him, less likely to cause issues with the FAA, more likely to get media coverage.

I don’t see any cats in this picture.

^^/s

Yeah, I suspected you were a troll. Blocked. Goodbye.

Fuck spez, fuck his not-covert support of Trump, misogyny and the alt-right neo-Nazis, and fuck him blatantly trying to profit from my comments and submissions.

Well, that’s a shame … /s

This is really cool - thank you for sharing!

I do this when a company is doing something I want to encourage. I have a friend who’s deaf but we go to open-captioned movies, and I always stop by customer service to thank them for doing those showings. My cousin is immunocompromised, and I stop by the customer service desk at the grocery store to thank them for continuing to provide the cart wipes.

Apparently there was some school of teaching for a while, where the teachers were emphasizing getting your ideas down on paper quickly, without regard for spelling, spacing, paragraph-ing, punctuation, verb tense, etc. I ran across it when I was trying to find out why there was this generation of fanfic writers who had interesting concepts but couldn’t write to any kind of standard - and who were extremely resistant to any suggestions. Some of the concepts sounded really interesting, too, but it was entirely too much work to try to parse the story.