I took this photo of our house just a moment before walking across the street to our neighbors’ house for a socially-distanced barbecue on their front lawn. It was just a few of us from the street, and it was a lovely way to spend Sunday evening.
I love this neighborhood.
This rider was seen cruising Lil’ Nas X style on Saturday in V.M. Ybor, an eight-minute drive south of where we live.
Note that he’s wearing a toque/knit cap. That’s because it was a relatively brisk 27° C/80° F that day.
Hey Tampa Bay! Are you a looking for a nice office that you can take on the road with you? If so, you might be interested in this little gem that appeared on Facebook Marketplace this afternoon — something the seller calls “2020 The Mobile Workspace”, and is willing to part with, for the sum of $9,600.
From the seller’s description:
Mobile Office built for 1-2 people with all the luxuries of a normal office while still has the full accessibility of 6FT x 12 FT of interior space for storage/transportation of your business needs. This also accommodates a standard queen sized bed with room to spare.
This trailer can run interior lights, refrigerator, TV, laptop charger, stereo, and sink COMPLETELY on solar/battery (off-grid). Refrigerator runs off of 12V so can run 24/7 if parked in sun.
Here’s what it looks like when you open the rear gate doors:
And here’s what you’ll find inside:
It’s a pretty decent-looking workspace:
The seller listed these features:
Here’s a view of the top of the rig, where the solar panels are located:
Here are more views of the office:
This might be a good portable office for a field engineer, construction manager, or general contractor. Maybe you’re a digital nomad living the RV life and need a little extra space in which to work (if your RV has the towing capacity). Or perhaps you’re in sales or marketing and need a portable showroom. Or maybe you’re trying to work from home and it’s too small for you to set up a home workspace.
Interested? You can contact the seller through their Facebook Marketplace posting.
I took this picture after having a couple of friends over for socially-distanced drinks in our front yard on Saturday night.
The temperature was a lovely 24° C (75° in Herr Doktor von Fahrenheit’s old-timey system), we had groovy jazz organ playing on the porch sound system, the company was excellent, and the string lights made our corner lot look so cheerful that we got compliments from the neighbors. (They’re also perfectly timed for Diwali!)
It was a lovely evening all ’round.
Since it’s now probably stuck in your head too, you might as well just hear the whole thing:
With Twitter and Facebook adding fact-checking notices to posts on their social networks, and with the recent election not being called in Trump’s favor, you may have noticed some conservative friends and family announcing their joining (or even outright switching to) Parler, a relatively new social media platform that bills itself as an unbiased and “free speech” alternative.
Here’s the opening paragraph from the Wikipedia entry on Parler:
Parler is a United States-based microblogging and social networking service launched in August 2018. Parler has a significant user base of Trump supporters, conservatives, and Saudi nationalists. Posts on the website often contain far-right content,[9] antisemitism,[12][discuss] and conspiracy theories.[15] The site has been described as an alternative to Twitter, and is popular among people who have been banned from mainstream social networks or oppose their moderation policies.[16][4][17] The site markets itself as a “free speech” and unbiased alternative to mainstream social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. However, journalists and users have criticized the service for content policies that are more restrictive than the company portrays, and sometimes more restrictive than those of its competitors.[3][18][19][20] As of November 2020, the site had more than 4 million users.[21]
I maintain accounts on major and minor social media platforms, so I decided to check in on Parler to see if it was really as bad as word on the ’net had described.
Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer: Here’s a quick sampling of posts I found, simply by clicking. I didn’t enter any search terms or specifically seek out anything other than election-related hashtags. Within a minute, I was deep in neck-deep in white nationalism.
An election-related hashtag led me to this post, which presented the author’s definition of “real Americans”:
Here’s a post featuring the triple threat of swastikas, MAGA, and QAnon:
There’s one user who’s particularly obsessed with miscegenation…
…and here’s the full image featuring the “propaganda to push race mixing” that had them quite upset:
Here’s the same user, who’s added the #Miscegenationischildabuse hashtag…
…and this is what they’re up in arms about:
And finally, there’s this user or group, who just decided to go full Nazi:
To anyone signing up for Parler because they feel that Facebook and Twitter aren’t serving them well: While they have their problems, Parler has other, bigger problems, some of which are by design.
I’ll close with this observation made by Dr. Jens Foell a couple of years back:
As we say in Germany, if there’s a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 Nazis.
— Dr. Jens Foell (@fMRI_guy) February 14, 2018
Here’s yet another collection of pictures to help you start your week! Remember, it’s been a great week for these sorts of pictures, and you’ll find more here:
Once again, you’ll find more pictures here: