I've said this before, but Musk just never grew beyond adolescence. [Tesla models S3XY! 42069 amirite! Ligma! Tesla fart noises! hahahahaha!] Which is a real problem because he was raised as a socially-ignorant rich white boy in full-apartheid South Africa.
This country is so fucked. We have a blatant criminal running for president with half the country too stupid or incapable of believing the facts and actually getting his ass in jail, all because he has an R next to his name. Our government is completely deprived of doing anything positive or good for it’s people. We’re going to spend the next 50 years walking a fine line between fascism and democracy, with all our energy spent on trying to stay on the democracy side, while the citizens of the US suffer the consequences. I hope I’m wrong but with this stupid MAGA cult so high up the chain of the government, it’s hard to see a bright future.
In the country’s defense, those assholes literally ran the government from the highest level for 4 years and gave up power were forced to give up power after their term ended. We have a pretty robust system. I am concerned that so many people are so stupid to be hoodwinked by him and his ilk, but the system was built to withstand this type of shit…at least for a single time.
Meanwhile Biden and democrats have been out there with things like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Bill actually helping Americans. If you think that the government isn’t capable of doing positive or good for it’s people anymore, you haven’t been paying attention. It may not be sweeping, and only barely enacted, but a lot of good has been done recently.
The rail road workers got everything they wanted and more. The admin followed up even if the media fell off. They also just raised the construction workers minimum wages on federal contracts.
Did you ask him to take the blinders off because you wanted a second set for yourself?
Wowee you are really drinking that kool-aid aren’t you?
The rail road workers got everything they wanted and more.
Sick leave? You know that crucial safety issue of staying home when you can’t perform your job. How about the skeleton crews the rail companies run giving inspectors a total of 2 minutes per car to do mandatory inspections? All these issues labor was raising before the national disaster of East Palestine.
The admin followed up even if the media fell off.
Do you even know what you are championing in this statement? “CSX was the first to grant paid sick days to several of its unions and has now granted sick days to 61% of its 17,089 unionized employees.” OH boy 10k people got 4 days of sick leave, what a joke. That’s bread crumbs. It’s nothing to celebrate, that’s what the rail companies want to diffuse the public pressure.
labor is a fight and that's all there is to it.. people have to fight before anyone will stick their necks out.. my grandpa was a coal miner "back in the day", and he had a great job because they went on strike when it was needed.. and they took care of scabs.. they didn't fuck around..
It’s the illusion of positive change. The government is basically playing tug-o-war with the people. We have positive change, then the next guy comes and wipes it all away, and we’re back to square 1. Look at women’s rights, LGBT rights, basic human rights, etc. We thought we were safe yet here we are fighting the same fight as 50+ years ago. We’re moving backwards! People can’t afford to rent/buy homes, the environment is burning to the ground, food is expensive, education is not only expensive but apparently wrong now too? I mean, how did we get here? We were all tricked into thinking Obama becoming president meant the country was moving away from it’s ugly, racial, past. We got lazy. Then Trump gets elected and it all came rushing back x10. Now we’re back to making progress again? The ultra rich have the government under their control and we’re all just here for their entertainment. We fight against each other for basic scraps when it comes to human decency and for what? We need sustained, positive change that lasts longer than 1-2 presidential elections and we need it now. Trump may be an idiot, but plenty of wanna-be fascists saw his mistakes and will learn from them. The next time we get a Trump 2.0, democracy will die. We cannot afford that to happen, which is why I said we are walking a fine line between democracy and fascism. And until we get actual progressive movements that last, I don’t see our government doing us any good.
the only thing i'd argue with is the outlook.. it might not be so grim, just because there is a ton of really easy work out there for aspiring young lawyers. lots of really simple corruption to prosecute and make heroes of an entire generation of Bobby Kennedys.. in the Supreme Court itself no less.. talk about a chance to make your name.. eager young attorneys live for that kind of shit.. we'll see..
Well yeah they were winning, usually you have to arrest the people who are winning first because it would be awkward to try to arrest someone while they're getting their ass beat.
It seems like in this case they arrested most of the people involved on both sides, that first black guy that they put in cuffs they only did right after he clocked that lady in the jaw like 3ft in front of a police officer.
I like how you specifically point out the one blow a black person in the fight made that was fucked up and completely ignore the fact that the white pieces of shit started the violence. Very telling.
The white boaters clearly started everything but the only arrest I’ve seen as well was the guy who went all WWE with a folding chair on a woman who was already on the ground, right in front of the cops
I’ve seen an article that said the 3 dudes who started it were arrested but I haven’t found anything about chair guy. Hope you’re right that was fucked. She’d just gotten her shit kicked in properly she didn’t deserve the chair.
I just heard on the news that not only was chair guy not arrested, they don’t know who he is and police are looking for him. I want to say it was David Muir’s World News Tonight but I’m not 100% on that as I was in another room and only sort of listening
I completely understand subduing all active threats until you figure out what happened and who is actually a threat but the comment I replied to only mentioned one person and I was pointing that out.
He doesn’t pay his own legal bills though… He has reneged on paying for arbitration he forced hundreds of prior employees into after he didn’t pay them the severance he agreed to. reuters.com/…/twitter-stalling-hundreds-ex-worker…
In short, he didn’t pay his employees, he didn’t pay his fees when they came to collect, and he won’t pay anyone’s legal bill either.
However, some conservative and Republican lawmakers denounced them for interfering with consumer choice and placing undue burdens on businesses. Under former President Donald Trump, the Energy Department scrapped them in 2019.
Conservative in your bed room to inspect your genitals, but your light bulb are out of reach.
they aren't "Conservative", they're just cowardly bullies and ignorant fucking trolls.. they don't deserve any fancy names..
you have to actually understand governance and be good at it to consider yourself Conservative.. these people are morons and ignorant fascists, who destroy everything and steal whatever isn't nailed down..
While opposed by many conservatives, the Bill was signed into law by conservative ( GW Bush). Go figure . Also Intresting to me is the members of the Senate that didn’t vote on the bill: Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Hagel, McCain, Obama .
I am going to assume that you are not American, so you are ignorant about how our laws work. The DOE is enforcing parts of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act that were amended by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which I mentioned in my previous reply.
Amends EPCA to prescribe energy efficiency standards for general service incandescent lamps, rough service lamps, and other designated lamps.
So yes, the DOE is making rules but it can’t makes rules in a vacuum. It is directed to do so by the bills signed into law by the President of the United States (or in some cases just by Congress if a veto is overridden). In 2019, the Trump administration’s DOE blocked the rule that was going to be implemented. In 2023 the Biden administration’s DOE enforced the rule. None of this could happen without congress.
I will say that incandescents still have a specific use case in entertainment. Newer fixtures are LEDs, but stage/film is largely comprised of community theaters and indie projects that can’t afford to pay $500 per light to upgrade to LED. Because a lot of fixtures need to be completely replaced, instead of simply swapping out an incandescent lamp for an LED.
Basically, LED’s fucking suck at dimming. They’ve gotten much better in recent years, but they’re nowhere near incandescents. If you need a slow gradual dim over two or three minutes for a stage effect (like the sun setting during a play) incandescents can do that easily. The dimmers will have distinct “steps” (because they’re digitally controlled, and are 8 bit, so they only have 256 “levels”), but the thermal inertia in the lamp’s filament will smooth out those distinct steps. For example, going from 246 to 245 isn’t immediately noticeable, because the filament just slowly cools and dims as the voltage drops slightly. It naturally smooths out the dim curve. But LEDs don’t do that. When you drop from 246 to 245, you get a distinct “jump” when the light immediately shifts from one intensity to the next. Even small steps are immediately noticeable, because there isn’t any thermal inertia to smooth out that dim.
So we don’t use LEDs on voltage dimmers. Instead, we dim them electronically. This comes with its own set of problems though. For starters, it means you’re installing an entire control unit, instead of simply replacing the lamp. This is a retrofit part that attaches onto your fixture and replaces the standard lamp socket. (For reference, the right image is the standard lamp housing, and the left is the LED retrofit.) But if your fixtures are super old, (as is common with lots of churches and community theaters,) they probably aren’t going to fit the LED units that are on the market because lighting fixtures aren’t universal. So now you need to replace the entire fixture, instead of installing a retrofit. And that’s obviously even more expensive, because now you’re buying entire fixtures. And when even smaller theaters will have 50 or 60 lights, that $500 retrofit quickly begins to add up. Especially when you consider that the vast majority of theaters are non-profit, and will need to fundraise to buy them. So you suddenly have a bunch of small non-profits and churches looking at mid-five figure bills just to keep their lights on. Larger spaces are looking at bills closer to six figures.
Next, there’s the issue with color. LEDs have historically been really bad at something called CRI. That’s basically a measure of how well you’re able to distinguish individual colors in the light. Incandescents emit photons at everything in the visible spectrum, so they actually have really great CRI. They tend to bias towards warmer colors, but cool colors are still acceptable. But anyone who has used early LEDs knows how “washed out” they can make things look. This is because LEDs have historically been hilariously awful at CRI. They’re usually monochromatic, meaning they only emit light in a very narrow bandwidth. So everything outside of that narrow bandwidth gets lost. Even the “white” LEDs have historically just been a combination of several monochromatic emitters. So you can see things that are red, green, or blue, but anything else in between looks faded. Or it’s a “full spectrum” emitter that has major dips in certain spots. This is obviously horrible for something like film, where actors and directors tend to complain when your lights make them look sickly and pale in every shot.
It also complicates the setup slightly, because now every single fixture needs both a power and a data cable, when previously they only needed power. Lights are controlled via a protocol called DMX, and previously you could simply run DMX to your dimmers to control everything. But now each individual light needs DMX. Not a huge issue for permanent installs, but for a tour that is setting up and taking down their lighting rig multiple times per week, this extra labor time to set up and run data quickly begins to add up. And as someone who has had to troubleshoot plenty of systems, every single fixture is now a potential point of failure for your lighting rig.
New builds should absolutely be planning on using LEDs going forwards, and they have already been working on that. Pretty much every theater or church built within the last 5 years has LEDs. But before that, the dimming/color issues with LEDs made them untenable for use on stage. So anything older than that still has incandescents. And the ban has actually caused a run on supplies, with theaters/churches/film studios/etc scrambling to stockpile incandescent lamps while they’re still available, just to postpone the inevitable $30k-$90k bill to upgrade to LEDs. And ironically enough, the entertainment lamps have historically had a carve-out exception to the law. But lawmakers have repeatedly threatened to close that loophole. So every time it makes the headlines again, there’s another mad rush for lamps as every single theater, church, and film lot scrambles to refresh their stockpile.
Some good points. Indulge my rambling a bit. I did a little work in the nightclub biz, remember DMX, the lighting protocol not the rapper; used to love changing the patterns, especially like the slow, down-facing strobes, made everyone look like an old cartoon.
In an equitable, cultured society, theater and stage arts get all money needed. In America I think many theaters sit empty six days a week, and I hate to see it, but nice things cost money and if the money isn’t there…
In America I think many theaters sit empty six days a week,
You’d be surprised. I work in a mid-sized theater. We had nearly a thousand rentals last year, and most of them weren’t open to the general public as ticketed events. We have three main rental spaces, so that comes out to roughly one rental per day, though there are obviously some days we’re empty and some days we’re at full capacity. But my point is that you’d only really be aware of the publicly ticketed events, because those are the only ones you’d have access to. Theater spaces are popular for all kinds of events, not just plays and concerts. There are a lot of corporate events that happen throughout the week, for example. But you wouldn’t notice those, because they’ll tend to happen while you’re also at work and they’re not announced anywhere because they’re private events. Those big corporate events where the sales team wants to circlejerk about hitting their quarterly targets in front of a big PowerPoint presentation? Those need a rental space that is equipped to handle them. We just had a recording session in our main hall, at noon on a Thursday. There are weddings, banquets, parties, luncheons, classes, etc that all need space to host their events.
Right, now imagine that you have an incredibly fragile ego, you peaked in highschool, and you perceive yourself as being above others because of your station in the police force.
I’m not shocked it happened. Just disgusted. He’s the animal that should be behind bars, not enforcing the law.
So how can we continue to pretend we have rights when these “rights” can be taken away from us at any time, on the whim of an evil police officer or judge or DA, and we are turned into chattel slaves when they do? We don’t seriously have rights if we actually can be legally turned into chattel slaves at any time for any reason.
Careful. You’re edging into the “small government” territory that sounds great but really means less food safety and building inspection and similar services, and more stuff taken private. It’s not what we want for sure.
It’s better than you and me paying for them, as taxpayers. If they’re in prison, the least they can do is work some kind of job to repay their debt to society, especially if they’re in prison for violent crimes.
You mistake my point, these people lately aren’t the toughened criminals that it effects. It’s people actually trying to change and stay out of jail/prison who catch lifelong debt and a reduced ability to repay that debt thus incentivizing returning to crime.
It’s a stupid fucking idea and their stay there is repaying the debt to society if you want them to make the state money then fucking garnish. People who endorse the prison system either haven’t looked into it or just aren’t willing to see reality.
Read the article. They’re paying for bottled water. They have access to regular tap water, but some people are saying the tap water in these very old prisons isn’t fit for drinking.
I don’t think the article specifically says, but most prisons in the U.S. are privately owned. I can only imagine that’s more the case in Texas than it is the nation as a whole.
There’s an excessive perception that the US prison system is privately run. As terrible as the concept is, it is not as widespread as people think… however the US prison population is gigantic, so it still isn’t very small.
“While the United States represents about 4.2 percent of the world’s population, it houses around 20 percent of the world’s prisoners.”
Good for the woman who was attacked to maintain composure. That must have been really hard. From the article:
Spring said she understood it was critical that she remained composed even while being attacked.
“I wanted to make sure I acted appropriately so that I could keep my job because the script could have been flipped at any time if I had retaliated,” Spring said
It’s so heartbreaking that the bolded part is systemic racism. Like she can’t defend herself because that terrible white woman would have pretended to be the victim? Fuck all of that and fuck that white girl.
That’s the Republican method of operation. Accuse your opponent of doing what you are doing. When you point out that it’s their guy doing it, they just claim you are the one lying. Their base is so deeply programmed they believe it.
Childhood indoctrination is a very powerful thing to be able to break away from. When you’re told every day to do exactly what the pastor says Jesus wants you to do from the point that you are able to understand the “do this or else” concept, it’s hard to shake that off even if you feel it’s wrong.
Yup. It’s very difficult, it can even be deeply traumatizing for some. You can get shunned by your own family. You can get cast out from the only community you know.
It’s not only you are told every day, it is like that when you are born into it. It has always been like that, it bacomes the cornerstone of what you will go from.
You are born into a family that practices that religion. The people closest to you insist the religion is true. Every week they take you to a stage performance where the audience all insists the religion is true and they performers not only insist it’s true but are treated as a great authority on the truth of the religion.
You are put into youth groups and formal education programs where additional authorities instill in you the constant insistence that the religion is true. You join the local Boy Scout troop and they all insist it’s true. You go to a school run by the church. The entire class of students collectively insist the religion is true.
Some religions, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, send church members and their families to canvas neighborhoods, knocking on doors, delivering the “good news,” failing to convince anyone, and coming to the conclusion over time that the rest of the world just doesn’t want to see the truth that you’ve become convinced of because literally everyone in your life constantly reaffirms that the religion is true.
The most successful indoctrination runs deep and is pervasive.
Yup, and in my experience, it’s strongest in Catholics. Like my wife hasn’t been to church or practiced anything in probably 20 years, but a lot of the tenets are deeply rooted in her, most notably guilt (and guilting other people, especially her family)
Probably why Catholic girls are some of the most wacko and most fun in a particular regard. All that repressed emotion.
It ain’t stereotyping, it’s experienced-based analysis. Catholic girls (from around the world, not just the US, nor of a particular ethnicity or nationality) tend to operate similarly in the regards I mentioned. Not to say it’s a bad thing either (quite the opposite on that last bit), it’s just apparent that their Catholic upbringing had deeply rooted effects on some behavioral patterns that were common amongst those girls I’ve known.
I have no idea why it’s taken so long for women to leave the Abrahmic religions.
Leaving a religion often results in shunning and the loss of ones entire social network; for many vulnerable people (like women caught in a patriarchal cult) this is a cost too high to bear.
It’s a culture cultivated specifically to make it difficult to leave.
But “basket of deplorables” was beyond the pale. Not to mention “smokey eye.”
Edit: What the fuck?
And in delivering that last bit about the tampons, it should be noted that Trump instructed the crowd to have any children in the room cover their ears, as to not be exposed to the word “tampon.”
He’s got the same logic as my sister did when she was 13 and a super sheltered Christian who still fully believed the mythology.
She went to our mother to try and get me to stop watching a cartoon because it very lightly touched on the fact that women have menstrual cycles. And by that I mean “a girl started her period and had to deal with that for about five minutes” in an episode of braceface
I never once got any sort of “coming of age” talk from either parent, but by then I already knew something happened every month that cause women pain and bleeding in their stomach and pants, respectively, and no idea why. The fact that they used tampons and pads seemed logical to me, as they absorb things. Like putting a bandaid on a cut.
My tiny child mind was not broken by these things.
By your logic your tiny child mind was not broken. By their logic you have been forever scarred by this knowledge as if you had eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
fucking idiot can’t even comprehend that anyone giving him a platform to flap his greasy jowls is literally them doing him a favor. fuck, i can’t wait until i never hear about this incompetent shitheel ever again
Trump is a weird, scared, old man. He belongs in the dementia ward of a nursing home, not on the campaign trail. If conservatives were capable of shame they’d realize how embarrassing nominating this doddering old weirdo for the Presidency truly is.
Edit: anyone trying to claim he’s not demented gets blocked. I have no patience for that bullshit.
I agree with the sentiment here but trump doesn’t belong in a dementia ward. He does not have dementia, anyone watching him speak / interact with people can tell. It also diminishes his roll in all the absolutely terrible shit he does / spews everyday. Make him take full responsibility for his actions, dont blame even a second of it on dementia…its not fair to folks / families who have gone thru that disease.
Edit: these upvotes better not be trumpets who are too dumb to see I’m not defending their daddy. To be clear I’m just saying we should not pin his bullshit on a mental disease, its not fair and gives him an out.
I had several people who work with the elderly tell me he had early dementia signs in 2016, and he’s only declined since then, so I’m not sure what you’re taking about. He’s already sundowned a few times.
And it is absolutely not over, to be clear. Not only will they push this shit again the moment the election is over, given a Trump victory, they also have ongoing open recruitment efforts to hire loyalists into positions throughout the government - “properly vetted and trained personnel” to enact their (already worked out and published) policy.
It’s amazing they put this out in the first place. The Heritage Foundation has been putting out the reports in this series for decades, but this is the first one where they went full mask off on conservative policy. They really thought they won and “real America” would love it with Trump cruising to victory.
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