Comma-la (as she tells us to pronounce it), or even Com'la (as it is traditionally pronounced)

• https://theconversation.com/its-comma-la-insisting-on-mispronouncing-kamala-harriss-name-is-racist-144523
• https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/kamala-harris-name-how-to-pronounce-pronunciation-indian.html

Hrm. No one has mentioned the decline of middle class wages.

I remember in the ... late 70s/early 80s my mother would drag us to the mall nearly every weekend. She was there to buy clothes. She always wanted something new and she wanted to try on at least a dozen items before buying one or two. I was thrilled when I was old enough to go off to the record store and/or hobby store while she did that. Earlier, I begged to go the the toy store, but was typically refused. Later, I was at the book store getting paperback scifi.

I don't think people have as much disposable income as they did then. I don't know many people who can buy as much frivolous stuff as my folks used to. I guess I could technically buy stuff all the time, but I want to save fore retirement. My folks had pensions. I have to put it away myself.

They aren't complaining that he had a black son, but that he's an "undercover Democrat" because he's stated that he learned about racism from the kid, saying things like, “Michael being a Black American, and Jack being white Caucasian. They have different challenges,” he said. “My son Jack has an easier path. He just does.”

Further, there was a question as to if the kid was real since there are no photos. That led to the new clarification:

Speculation about whether Michael was a real person prompted Johnson’s office to clarify. “When Speaker Johnson first ran for Congress in 2016, he and his wife, Kelly, spoke to their son Michael—who they took in as newlyweds when Michael was 14 years old,” said Corinne Day, Johnson’s communications director, in a statement first reported by Newsweek. “At the time of the Speaker’s election to Congress, Michael was an adult with a family of his own. He asked not to be involved in their new public life.” Day added that Johnson “maintains a close relationship with Michael to this day.”

So if we are to believe him, there are no photos because that is the way the now-adult kid wants it.

Everybody screenshot and archive that amazon page before they edit it!

Edit: I couldn't archive.org to capture it, but this should work: https://archive.ph/pqXje

It's because of the electoral college. Most states give all their electoral college votes to whomever wins the state rather than dividing the votes equitably. This means Pennsylvania -- a swing state -- will go either all-red or all-blue. The state has a lot of fracking, and a lot of people making money off it, so Democrats are trying to appease pro-fracking to get votes.

The people getting harmed by fracking are stuck without anyone on their 'side', but will presumably be more likely to vote blue because that side favors more regulation and pro-environment stuff. Note that all Harris said was she wouldn't ban fracking. She didn't say she wouldn't make it difficult to do. My guess is any attempts to make it cleaner will get crushed by Congress and the Corrupted Supreme Court that has sided against Unions, workers, citizens, and the planet -- all to favor of their sugar daddies. So even if the next President wants to do something about fracking, it would be a hard to actually do anything.

I had never heard the particular sentence, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus” as a phrase, but seeing the video, there did not seem to be any hostility in her voice nor actions. The article says:

In the church, he said, to rebuke is to cast out a demon, or keep a demon from using a person to do something bad. The phrase can be said casually, though, in response to someone’s misbehavior. When Massey says it, her voice is louder and clearer than it has been before, but she doesn’t sound angry. It’s the tone of voice that you might use while saying: For goodness’ sake, this is really getting ridiculous.

That fits with her actions: totally non-confrontational, but with the mildest of chastisements.

I'm going to be repeating this whenever this ad blitz is mentioned because it is MUCH WORSE than you think. America PAC is partially funded by Musk and his old pals at Palantir. They sell data and analyses of it. You might get registered to vote if your state is a solid red or blue, but CNBC reports (archive):

[...] users who enter a ZIP code that indicates they live in a battleground state, like Pennsylvania or Georgia, the process is very different.

Rather than be directed to their state’s voter registration page, they instead are directed to a highly detailed personal information form, prompted to enter their address, cellphone number and age.

So that person who wanted help registering to vote? In the end, they got no help at all registering. But they did hand over priceless personal data to a political operation.

“What makes America PAC more unique: it is a billionaire-backed super PAC focused on door-to-door canvassing, which it can conduct in coordination with a presidential campaign,” Fischer said. “Thanks to a recent FEC advisory opinion, America PAC may legally coordinate its canvassing activities with the Trump campaign — meaning, among other things, that the Trump campaign may provide America PAC with the literature and scripts to make sure their efforts are consistent.”

The America PAC raised more than $8 million between April 1 and June 30, according to FEC records. It has received donations from veteran investor Doug Leone, cryptocurrency investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and a company run by longtime venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, according to FEC records.

They also quote the NYT in saying Lonsdale is one of Musk's political confidants -- which is interesting because he's at Palantir which was you'd think of as his buddy Peter Theil's gig. Again, Palantir sells information, so in all likelihood they are going to take that input to figure out exactly how to target people to 'vote Trump' using the very information the public gave them for free!

You're telling me not to clean my ears with swabs???? I'm sorry, but I will swear forever that they are intended for the ears. The only issue is that the makers don't want to get sued if anyone hurts themselves. I mean, c'mon, the Japanese use both ends of these in their ears! You want me to start doing that?

more | info

For folks who don't get to the page until it is scrubbed (which might not happen, but I expect it will), you are quoting from the "Editorial Reviews" section a quote by "Senator JD Vance"! 🫢

One of -- if not THE -- primary causes for attraction is proximity. If you see someone often, you are much more likely to become attracted to them. Family members and 'unavailable' people such as those already married are typically, but not uniformly, excluded.

After that, we tend to be initially attracted to pretty people with symmetrical features, good health, and of a similar social status (we are also attracted to those of higher social rank, but they will tend to self-select themselves to be less frequently proximate as well as rejecting overtures from potential mates of lower status). That still doesn't matter as much as frequent exposure to someone. Ideally the exposure occurs when you are both in a good mood. Bad moods make for less attraction. We also like people with whom we share common interests, habits, and so on, such that more similar people are more likely to become attracted to one another.

So, yeah, 'friends' are generally going to trigger psychological cues of attraction in any group. Most everyone has to deal with such feelings and quash them when appropriate. Some people have a hard time dealing and either pursue when that makes them creepy or they fail to respond when the feeling is mutual.

They already did! The 'presidential immunity' ruling they recently made basically said that if a President does it, we (SCOTUS) will decide if it is an official act, and if it is, then the Prez is blameless, but if we say the act isn't 'official' then WE will tell you the Prez is a baddie.

It's not just us humans, chimps trade meat for sex: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/chimps-behavior-sex-news-animals

Yale taught monkeys about money, and yup, they traded money for sex. From archive of NYT article:

Further proof that the monkeys truly understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex immediately traded the token in for a grape.

In case anyone just wants to see the pic:

from: https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/images-trump-secret-service-smiling-after-shooting-are-fake-2024-07-14/

That'd require the child be home, first. Mom was worrying because he hadn't come home from the bus and no one was picking up the phone at the school or the bus company. I'm going to guess that getting into the house would have been noticeable because calling the cops was not mom's go-to move -- and they proved her prioritization correct by being useless.

It further notes that scientific agencies such as NOAA are “vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims,” so appointees should be screened to ensure that their views are “wholly in sync” with the president’s.

do we want flood-risk predictions sponsored by a flood-insurance company, or heat advisories from an air-conditioning conglomerate?

The agency is home to one of the most significant repositories of climate data on Earth, which includes information on shifting atmospheric conditions and the health of coastal fisheries, plus hundreds of thousands of years’ worth of ice-core and tree-ring data.

Eliminating or privatizing climate information won’t eliminate the effects of climate change. It will only make them more deadly.

Tell people 2025 would do this. No federal weather means local counties would have to pay Big Business for tornado/hurricane warnings. We'd pay more for fish because fishermen can't get data unless they pay. Plane schedules become even less reliable AND cost more because the government stops tracking upper level wind speeds.

Look: we want people who get a salary for doing accurate work rather than people who get paid to say whatever the bossman want to hear. Ask people to imagine how it would work if Google, NBC, Amazon, and Fox each sunk the money for trying to replicate the existing infrastructure and then sold pieces of it to paying customers -- such as Allstate, CBS, and Delta Airlines. Everyone else would have to HOPE they were getting complete data and have to wonder what was missing. Noticing record highs and lows would become proprietary and forbidden from broadcast in a way akin to being disallowed from referencing "The Superbowl" unless you pay for a license. How's any of that going to make things better?

P.S. This article is posted to several communities, so I'm reiterating this post repeatedly.

They're saying three locations so far, but I'm only seeing details for two: Schemengees Bar and Grille (restaurant) and Sparetime Recreation (bowling alley).

Scrolling through different news channels, the only update I've heard in the last 45 minutes is the count update from 16 to 22.

They've released an images of the shooter and of his vehicle, a Subaru Outback (kinda silver/white).

Three links to the same story: letter recommends referring to all students as “they” and “them” to avoid “gendered pronouns” like “he” and “she.”

• https://scoop.upworthy.com/teacher-maliciously-complies-with-dont-say-gay-bill-to-use-they-them-pronouns-for-all-kids
• https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dont-say-gay-he-she-sabotage-teacher-letter-moms-for-liberty-florida_n_62489f02e4b0587dee6a3a1a
• https://news.yahoo.com/memo-circulated-florida-teachers-lays-234351376.html

'Unrelated' Aftermath:

• https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2023/11/03/florida-teacher-fired-for-using-gender-neutral-title-mx-in-class-materials/
• https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2023/12/13/teachers-florida-pronouns-lawsuit/

I was hoping daily beast's source link had more info, but no. I even looked for the full article and it is equally devoid of details. From apnews :

A local law enforcement officer climbed to the roof and found Crooks, who pointed the rifle at the officer. The officer retreated down the ladder, and the gunman quickly fired toward Trump, the officials said. That’s when U.S. Secret Service gunmen shot him, the officials said.

Honestly, I don't blame the office for not getting pointlessly shot. I hope the officer immediately messaged the situation, but it was probably too late.

In fact, one of the news sites last night showed the shooting from an angle where you could see the anti-sniper to Trump's right (left side of TV screen) as the shots came in.

I'd swear I could see the anti-sniper's recoil hitting BEFORE Trump was shot. Don't quote me on that, though. I'm not an expert.

Are you trying to greenwash fracking??? Industry never cleans up. There's no profit in it. You would hear them advertise their 'commitment to nature' if they rescued one tree or bunny from their own contamination. When you hear nothing, they are continuing to wreak havoc.

I'm not a doctor, so don't take my word for it, but I've heard the same as robolemmy. To be a bit less abstract, my understanding is you eat enough so that your stomach will digest normally instead of just handling the medicine as a tiny bit of something caustic. A granola bar should be fine, but you might do better with a slice of bread or something a tad easier to digest. Then again, I don't think it matters all that much.

tldr; Vox talks about multi-party systems where coalitions of many groups (not just two) can join together to defeat anti-democratic candidates -- but then thrusts the U.S. in the mix as if it is comparable, and it is not. It is just another lazy commiseration, "Woe is us! Woe is us! Throw Joe Biden under the bus! We don't like Trump! We say it loud, -- but another change is not allowed! We'll only fight with our own kind. So right moves forth. And left? Behind."

chunks FTA:

In particular, the winning parties in both the UK and France won by realizing that the nature of their systems required that they sacrifice some specific candidates in order to defeat the right.

Unlike France and Britain, the United States only has two viable choices on offer: the center-left Democrats and the radical right Republicans.

Biden can’t count on help from other parties to boost him the way it helped Labour or the NFP; polling suggests he actually does slightly worse when third parties are on the ballot.

In their systems, the French and the British had a strategy for addressing their problems: sacrificing marginal legislative candidates in service of the greater good of defeating the right. But in the American system, sacrificing marginal candidates won’t be enough to overcome the effects of general public discontent and anti-incumbent sentiment.

Here, the ticket is defined by the president — a man increasingly seen as too old for the public to trust in addressing their concerns. Defeating the right might very well require the center-left in America to make a more radical kind of political sacrifice: a change at the very top of the ticket.

FU, Vox! The comparison is invalid. This COULD have been an article on why the U.S. needs to change its voting system, but instead it was just another take-down of Biden. removed about Biden and wringing your hands about Trump is EASY. Worse, it is stupid and LAZY. We already know the anti-Biden arguments. We need an alternate playbook. Something like a 2025 plan for the left where as soon as a Congress can do it, they pass new laws invalidating the idea of 'Presidential Immunity', taking back rights that the Courts have revoked, and fixing what has been broken by years of deregulation and underfunding (fund the IRS, fund health/food/safety inspectors, and pay them through tax rates of America's Golden Age of the 50s/60s).

The vast army of Georgia poll workers report for duty only about three days a year and get paid about $7.25 an hour. Every time we come in, the rules have changed, so we train for eight hours to learn the new protocols. Election day itself, including set-up and break-down, starts at 5:30 am and ends at 9:00 pm, two hours later if you’re a manager delivering the ballots to the regional office. Most of us are retired, and many are elderly (read: not tech-forward).

And poll workers are not perfect. One of them puts on a sweater and inadvertently obscures her name tag (not allowed). Another shows a new person how to work the check-in station (not allowed). Another tells a nonprofit they can set up their food hand-outs inside the building so as to stay out of the rain (not allowed). And at some point during the 15 hour work day, all of you find yourself accidentally socializing with one another (also not allowed). Likewise, the clerks are socializing with the voters (you guessed it: not allowed), which, worst case, is akin to being smothered in grandmas.

This sounds very like my experience back when I used to work the polls. We all did the best we could and we all knew a fair chunk of the voters, so chatting was frequent.

From https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/inflation-higher-biden-rising-pay-makes-rcna158569 :

"Cumulative wage growth since the start of the pandemic has outpaced price growth across the wage distribution, but the most wage growth has been among lower-wage workers," Bank of America economists wrote in a note to clients Tuesday. "This is likely because labor shortages have been the most acute in blue-collar sectors. While recent wage growth has been distributed more evenly across the distribution, the large cumulative wage gains for lower-income consumers since 4Q 2019 have buffered them against the inflation shock."

I admit that every time I buy groceries, I am shocked by the prices. The thing is: I don't blame the President for it. I blame lax regulation that has allowed monopolies to take over everything and pay workers as little as possible -- particularly by misclassifying them as contractors. I also blame the Supreme Court for ruling in favor of the rich and powerful instead of the the citizenry and/or the institutional expertise within the government (EPA, NIS, etc.).

I'm frustrated that it seems the only people who can garner enough attention to get elected are ALL saying nice things to their base, then creating legislation and/or voting to take power from governmental regulators and experts and just let big businesses so whatever they want -- which ALWAYS boils down to stripping as much money and power as they can from the populace.

Have some links:

• https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/18/market-discipline/#too-big-to-care
• https://www.vox.com/scotus/357554/supreme-court-sec-jarkesy-roberts-sotomayor-chaos
• https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/06/chevron-doctrine-supreme-court-ruling

Italics highlight cuts for brevity. Full transcript at: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-11-5-23-white-house-deputy/story?id=104633936

ABC showed a clip of Rep. Ken Buck, a Republican from Colorado.

REP. KEN BUCK (R-CO): Our nation is on a collision course with reality. And a steadfast commitment to truth, even uncomfortable truths, is the only way forward. Too many Republican leaders are lying to America, claiming that the 2020 election was stolen.

After that:

STEPHANOPOULOS: He said that you're one of those leaders who has been unequivocal in saying it was a clean election, that Joe Biden did not steal the election.

Your response?

SCALISE: Well, Ken, I’ve worked with, on a number of issues, including getting spending under control, getting our economy back on track. He's talked about that 2020 election as well.

-- It goes on with no direct response.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Can you say unequivocally the 2020 election was not stolen?

SCALISE: What I’ve told you, there are states that didn’t follow their laws. That is what the state constitution – the U.S. Constitution requires. You know, I've seen in my own state where we had to send our elections commissioner to jail years ago for fraud and corruption. And we cleaned up our act in our state. Every state ought to follow the laws that are on their books. That’s what the U.S. Constitution says.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s not what I asked. I said, can you say unequivocally that the 2020 election was not stolen?

SCALISE: Look, Joe Biden’s president. I know you and others want to talk about 2020. We’re focused on the future.

-- Again, it goes on with no direct response. There are several rounds of this.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I know that every single – I know that every court that looked at whether the election was stolen said it wasn't, rejected those claims. And I asked you a very, very simple question. Now I've asked it, I think, the fifth time that you can't appear to answer. Can you say unequivocally that the 2020 election was not stolen?

SCALISE: I told you – I told you there were a handful – there were a handful of – there were a handful of states that didn't follow their laws.

-- Scalise continues for a while, still without a direct answer.

There was one more round of this before the end of the segment and Scalise never said "yes" or "no". Per Ken Buck's lead-in, Scalise showed himself to be one of the problem people in Buck's party, and if he can't be truthful on this, how can we trust anything he says?

Reminds me of a piece that is gone -- but the below rephrase comes from here: https://mstdn.social/@ZhiZhu/109502665651546617

"The Paradox of Tolerance disappears if you look at tolerance, not as a moral standard, but as a social contract.

If someone does not abide by the contract, then they are not covered by it.

In other words: The intolerant are not following the rules of the social contract of mutual tolerance.

Since they have broken the terms of the contract, they are no longer covered by the contract, and their intolerance should NOT be tolerated."

We already had the Expanded Access Program (thank you ACT UP) and we don't want a repeat of thalidomide babies like we had before there were strong protections on how drugs get tested.

So now we have Expanded Access (EAP) with FDA oversite and Right to Try (RTT) without that oversight. Having both is confusing for everyone and most people don't know which covers what. From Journal of Law and the Biosciences (they only sampled 17 neuro-oncologists from 15 different academic medical centers):

Many physicians described having difficulty in distinguishing between RTT and EAP or demonstrated misconceptions in their responses. A physician with knowledge of both pathways spoke about his colleagues generally: ‘I don’t think a lot of people understand the difference between expanded access and Right-To-Try’ [Participant 1]. The confusion resulted in conflation with the different features between EAP and RTT including structure, intent, and processes of these pathways. In response to our question ‘Have you provided a drug through Right-to-Try?’ one clinician erroneously replied, ‘I think most compassionate use is under that category’ [Participant 2]. Another drew a rough equivalence between the two despite the absence of FDA oversight for RTT: ‘I guess the way I try to think about Right-to-Try is like compassionate use.

Why not vote (D)? The Rs plan on contesting the voting everywhere all the time, and if the last round was any indicator, they will even contest in places the win, so.... IF the goal is to take votes from Trump, it would probably be better to show that even in fire red areas, there are still some cool blues.

From different source, but I added the emphasis : https://www.thedailybeast.com/workers-say-murder-suspect-samuel-haskell-hired-them-to-dump-body-parts-in-los-angeles

Concerned that something wasn’t right about the scrap removal, the men pulled their truck over about a block away from the Haskell residence and peered inside the bags.

They returned to Haskell’s home to dump the bags in the driveway and return the money, NBC reported, adding that, “The worker said they told Haskell they didn’t want to be involved, and Haskell tried to pass the body parts off as Halloween props.”

“God was watching over us,” the hired hand said, adding that the men feared for their lives.

The workers said they tried to report what they encountered to police but the California Highway Patrol directed them to the Los Angeles Police Department, which told them to leave and call 911 outside.

Happy to help!

Oh, I shoulda linked to a first-hand source where she herself wrote "comma-la" as the pronunciation (no particular accent on syllables). It is in her book, and also towards the bottom of this piece has that excerpts from her book: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/book-excerpt-kamala-harris-truths-hold/story?id=60234101

I'm not old enough to remember him personally, but I do remember the 80s when FM Rock stations still played The Doors and Led Zeppelin incessantly. Back then, there was a syndicated radio show that -- for one episode -- broadcast interviews with the surviving band members. I distinctly remember the tone of voice (though not the exact words or quantity) of one of them saying, "I saw him take threee huuundred micrograms of acid" (at some location). Sounded angry and astounded just on the retelling. I think that's also where I heard bandmates talking about Jim pleading out to a possession charge and being required to do public service announcements instead of going to jail. He was a jerk about it. The PSAs were grouped as "Speed Kills" and he was supposed to hammer that home, but was ruining each take, saying things like (but not exactly cuz I don't remember), "Speed kills. Smoke pot, instead!"

From my personal view of his music, we had all The Doors albums in my house when I was growing up, so I'd heard them all. For reference, we also had Simon and Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, some Beatles, Rolling Stones, and other stuff like that.

I think Jim Morrison had a tight band behind him and wrote some decent lyrics. I think 'Light my Fire' was over-played and other songs should have gotten more attention. I do, however, appreciate that each band member got to solo on that, and the song's greatest weakness is that those solos get cut for airplay. It isn't even that the solos deserve special attention, but the song is too short and repetitive without it.

Is the statement at the bottom of the article new or did the earlier posters simply miss it?

... One of Best Friends’ recommendations for due diligence within the adoption process was to focus on the shelter’s existing system, Chameleon, which pulls information related to animal welfare cases. This includes animal abuse and animal cruelty cases. Checking MyCase was discouraged, as its use was problematic and could lead to biased, inequitable vetting of potential adoptees.

This story does not have enough detail, so I looked for more.

First, I looked up Best Friends and they are firmly no-kill to the exclusion of all else. I am guessing the 'Chameleon' referenced is this CMS, but I could be wrong. If that is the software, it looks like there is a way for people to add notes about specific animals, but it isn't clear if you can enter notes about specific people. It certainly doesn't look like it has a way of automatically checking police records for criminal records. It does suggest you can enter these types of 'field' data:

• Calls for service
• Citations
• Bite reporting
• Field staff dispatching
• Shift control and tracking
• Laptop implementation
• Case photos

I'm guessing MyCase is this free Indiana-specific portal.

Now: if they aren't talking about the free MyCase link I found, then perhaps they are using software that charges the Animal Shelter for each search. I can see getting fired for incurring costs that aren't in the budget. Alternately, perhaps 'Best Friends' is giving them funding based on the shelter NOT rejecting any adopter ever for any reason -- or at least thinking that is a condition based on this statement from the Best Friends 'who we are' page:

We’re making sure that everyone has the same access to loving pets and that every adoptable pet has access to the comfort of a foster home instead of a kennel in a shelter. 

-- note that the above is meant to foster diversity and its links to their diversity page (which seems focused on income disparity), but that quoted bit COULD be read to mean 'everyone gets a pet, no matter what'.

I would think it incumbent on all employees to create notes/warnings about known abusers and have that be a flag if they come back to adopt, but I do see a case for allowing people to re-adopt an animal they voluntarily gave to the shelter because they had gone through a patch where they couldn't afford to feed it, but now they can. Others might argue that this is abuse or that the owners don't deserve a pet, but it is clear that Best Friends thinks that refusing such people is discriminatory.

That doesn't mean that the particular abuse getting uncovered with MyCase was simply surrendering a pet until people got on their feet. Mostly, it just feels like there's a bunch of stuff going on that no one reported.

Came here to say that. Barring a few contrarians, EVERYONE likes both watermelon and fried chicken. I know vegetarians who will admit that fried chicken tastes fantastic, even if they no longer eat it.

I also wanted to link to some info about the "Coon Chicken Inn" chain -- founded by a white guy, of course.

• http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/coon_chicken.htm

• https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/links/essays/chicken.htm

off topic piece on collectors' racist items

Uuhh, I do the same as Schmidt and leave the food out. It works fine NOW, but let me tell you about when it failed. I've had different cats for decades and never had a problem until my current cat, who was listed at the shelter as 'shy'. They told me she'd escaped people multiple times and they'd only managed to get her out of the walls the previous day (after she'd been hiding in them for over a week). She was adult, but small and thin and harboring a deep hatred for being confined (she isn't 'shy', she's extremely willful). We brought her home and she immediately found a hiding spot behind the oven, near the food and water that was out for the finicky older cat. For the first week, the only way we knew the new cat was still in the house was because we'd wake up, find the cat bowl empty and a big pile of cat vomit on the floor. We'd clean up the vomit, fill the bowl, and generally leave the kitchen alone as much as possible. After that initial week, the cat figured out that there would always be food. She would not starve. She did not need to gorge, and gorging was not comfy. Eventually she came out and accepted her new 'family'. She continued to over-eat a bit too much for several months, but she settled on a chunky weight and has stayed at it for several years now.

Now I have a theory: I suspect that cats who experience food insecurity are far more likely to gorge themselves, and may never stop as long as they suspect their food supply is limited. If you want to test that theory with your own cats, I would be interested in hearing the results.

Long ago I remember an argument in favor of rule #30 "There are no girls on the internet" which I will paraphrase:

The internet gives anonymity and if you have something of value to say, it should be able to stand on its own regardless of one's weight, sex, religion, preferences, location or such. If you have to chime in that you are a girl, then you are either FBI (see rule 29) or looking for attention, but with nothing valuable to add. If you have nothing to add, then we go to rule 31 (show pics of your tits or get out).

Now, the reality is that such sentiment is sexist and ugly, but there is a general truth to the concept of an idea standing on its own merits regardless of source. Current social pressures lead to the behavior in question in that we've been somewhat conditioned to think that a) computers are for boys (this has become far less of a stereotype since smartphones became a thing), and b) veganism is unmanly/stupid (I don't understand why this still has traction, either, given Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Lewis, and a bunch of butch people are vegan).

rules of the internet (some NSFW) ::: spoiler SPOILER : 24-34 These are from an older version on archive.org:

24. Every repost it always a repost of a repost
25. Relation to the original topic decreases with every single post
26. Any topic can easily be turned into something totally unrelated
27. Always question a person's sexual prefrences without any real reason
28. Always question a person's gender - just incase it's really a man
29. In the internet all girls are men and all kids are undercover FBI agents
30. There are no girls on the internet
31. TITS or GTFO - the choice is yours
32. You must have pictures to prove your statements
33. Lurk more - it's never enough
34. There is porn of it, no exceptions

the list after a decade of changes :::

Look, I don't know if JD Vance had sex with a couch. I don't even know if JD Vance had sex with couch cushions. But yes, I've heard that JD Vance did not WRITE that he had sex with a couch in his book. I don't know if JD Vance wrote he had sex with a couch somewhere else, though.

John Oliver called Vance's staff to ask and they hung up on Oliver, which was reported as 'not a "no"', so I had been thinking, 'ya know? maybe that JD Vance guy really is a couchfucker, who knows?' But here you're saying he's denied it? Or partially denied it? Well I don't know what to think now, but I guess it is safer to presume JD Vance having sex with a couch is probably more legend than fact. Certainly, JD Vance having sex with a couch isn't something you'd want to discuss in polite society or political debate because we've no proof and a possible denial.

I believe the main issue is that it doesn't get 'clicks' these days because everyone already knows about it. "Dog bites man" doesn't get as many clicks as "Man bites dog" and all that. Still, a quick search brought up a couple articles from the last 12 months that weren't stifled:

• https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/produced-water-midland-pollution-18561991.php

• https://www.texastribune.org/2023/10/31/texas-oil-gas-fracking-wastewater-spills-railroad-commission/

• https://www.cleveland.com/open/2024/05/fracking-waste-wells-owned-by-an-ohio-senator-are-leaking-the-state-paid-13-million-to-clean-it-up.html

• https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2024/04/30/athens-co-fracking-leak-inaction-show-the-dire-public-health-dangers-of-ohio-regulatory-capture/

• https://www.denver7.com/news/front-range/erie/an-erie-oil-well-surrounded-by-homes-leaked-toxic-chemicals-as-cleanup-continues-neighbors-fear-health-risks

• https://www.alleghenyfront.org/rager-mountain-equitrans-gas-leak-fine/

tangential: https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2024/09/12/methane-emissions-much-higher-than-gas-industry-targets-study-says/

You don't see them. You are on the ice and so are they. They hunker down and purposefully cover their nose with their paw when you look in their direction. When you look away, they creep closer until your head starts to turn again. They don't want you don't see the little black spot getting closer and closer. If you are lucky and looking around while you are out on the ice, you will see a little black spot disappear. If you do. GET OUT NOW. If the spot was big enough to notice, the bear is probably close enough to charge. I hope your snow machines are close and ready to go.

NYC Mayor. Not sure what fire alarm thing you mean, but he did recently say some migrants might have to sleep on the street because a building didn't have working fire alarms ... but you probably meant something else.

Edit: try this article?
https://abc7.com/eric-adams-nyc-mayor-fbi-phones-campaign/14040972/

Washington state and New Jersey specifically allow certain types of euthanasia, but I'm not sure how illegal it is -- or any 'suicide' is -- in different places. Is euthanasia a crime in your state? Is (attempted) suicide?

Murdering someone **else ** is a crime, so it is nice to have laws specifying how a person can legally help someone without being charged with murder.

The U.S. has historically not 'punished' suicide as much more than a misdemeanor, if at all. From PDF paper from 1962:

As stated by a leading authority on criminal law^30^

When a man is in the act of taking his own life there seems to be little advantage in having the law say to him: "You will be punished if you fail." ... What is done to him will not tend to deter others because those bent on self- destruction do not expect to be unsuccessful. It is doubtful whether anything is gained by treating such conduct as a crime

England, on the other hand, was very hostile to suicide until it was decriminalized in 1961 (paper is too old to mention current status):

A person who committed suicide was punished at common law by burial in the public highway with a stake driven through his body and by forfeiture of his goods and chattels to the king.' Attempted suicide was apparently punished like any other misdemeanor.

Note that teachers have an open lawsuit. Specifically:

• 1. The initial letter was signed, "Thank you, Mx. XXXXXXXXXX"
• 2. Florida teacher fired for using gender-neutral title Mx.
• 3. That teach and two others challenged the law in federal court, arguing the state’s laws on titles and pronouns is unconstitutional.