Yeah I saw the public broadcasting defunding one. To be honest, I lost track of all the things going on because I’ve been so focused on Social Security, Medicaid, and HUD because anything that happens to them affects me in some way more than anything else being on disability and in HUD housing.

I imagine once things come up in the Supreme Court we’ll see a flurry of activity regardless of their decisions

St. Upid

I was born and raised as a Catholic, did my time in Catholic school until I graduated high school. Too many years later (more than I care to admit) and several different beliefs later I still automatically don’t see the abbreviation and see the “Saint” instead. It was ingrained in my damn DNA.

I was like… Saint Upid? huh? Then it hit me and I almost busted a gut laughing so hard.

No, only states do. Although territories have members in congress, they can’t vote on any legislation. They have a government set up by Congress and pretty much oversee themselves with no ability to influence elections or laws in the states. The last territory to become a state was Hawaii. Territories are land grabs, statehood comes after that.

Canada would unfortunately be a land grab for the resources and nothing else for Trump. It would be ravaged and the people of Canada would suffer greatly for it without an ounce of ability to do anything about it.

I don’t think Trump is actually running the white house anymore. Watching the project 2025 checklist, it’s far too complete for Trump to be able to dictate any of it.

What bothers me more is that it’s been stuck at 42% complete for what seems like a month. Things have taken a nose dive compared to the first couple of months. Makes me wonder if we’re going to go from 42% to 80% with martial law all at once soon.

The military preys on the poor and desperate. It brain washes those that don’t know fully what they are getting involved with.

Exactly this. In 96/97 I was supposed to have gone to college and fucked that whole thing up and had to look for a job. I was having a really hard time trying to find a job and thought about the military.

Out of the blue I got a phone call from one of the military recruitment centers (you’re lucky I remember this at all, let alone what branch) telling me about military service since I had turned 18. I told them I was hearing impaired and wear hearing aids as well as legally blind in one eye. I was told I was not a good candidate and would be denied despite my willingness to take the offer since I couldn’t find a job fresh out of high school.

This comment connected this memory of that call and the Iraq War in a way I hadn’t thought of before – I no doubt know now that if I had been accepted into the military I would have gone to Iraq in 2003. At this moment, I am grateful that I have an unusually heavy burden of medical issues when I normally don’t find much to be positive about in life.

Thank you for this unintentional reminder.

So right now I’m not in a financial situation that I can even possibly think about donating.

My general issue with FOSS is the guilt trip I go on when devs plead for donations – that’s MY issue, not any of the dev teams – but it plays a part in not using FOSS as much as I would like. I don’t want to sell my soul, but that’s about all I have to give right now so free ad-supported services and software are where I tend to lean to these days.

However, I am trying to put as much focus on supporting less shitty humans and buy locally whenever I can now. I didn’t realize the views of the devs of Lemmy until a few days ago and I’m a little concerned to be even using Lemmy as a whole as it shows some level of tacit support for the devs and their beliefs. If they weren’t open about it, obviously this wouldn’t be an issue but since it’s out in public it’s an issue.

I swear I have a point to all this…

Is Lemmy funded just by direct contributions from users or do instances take extra money from their donations and funnel it down to the main project?

If anyone is familiar with the various 12 Step programs, this is pretty much how those main programs get funded. The local meetings take donations that pay for the rent and any other expenses and then donate left over funds to the main service organization while keeping a reserve for emergencies.

If I were in the position to donate, I would feel much better donating to Lemmy.ee rather than the main project considering their views on certain political issues. I would not be directly donating, but if the instance donated extra funds I might be ok with that. It just feels different for some reason.

Trump has said that although he was “confirmed at a Presbyterian church as a child, I now consider myself to be a non-denominational Christian.”

Uhhhh…he’s not even Catholic? That’s kinda a prerequisite for THE LEADER OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH!

He’s completely trolling, right? I mean it’s gotta be cover for something happening that he wants to distract people from. He can’t be that stupid that to think he can actually be Pope…can he?

Yeah I have the AirPods Pro and have tried out the transparency feature, specifically because Apple has been floating the idea around that these could technically act as hearing aids and I’m looking for alternatives that might be cheaper now that I’m on disability.

It reminds me of when hearing aids first came out when I was a kid, only not quite as good. But you get the idea with the frequencies and also background noise. Go into a loud coffee shop with them on and try to carrying on a conversation with someone only using the transparency feature.

For someone with slightly declining hearing it might be ok. For me I have mild-to-moderate hearing loss and I have to use an actual hearing aid, not a hearing device which is what all these “hearing aids” that are cheap are. I have to order them through an audiologist and they are not cheap and barely covered by insurance (most of which won’t cover them if you don’t use THEIR cheaper brand). But hey, at least they’re kinda covered now. For 40 years or so of my life it was all $4,000 - $6,000 out-of-pocket every 5-7 years depending on how long they lasted and if they could be repaired.

So it’s the plague’s empty toilet paper section only store-wide? Great…

I wear hearing aids and air dryers annoy the hell out of me because they’re so loud. Almost as much as leaf blowers annoy me.

Hearing aids don’t have the ability to filter noises so it’s like plugging a microphone into headphones and trying to carry on conversations. Mine can now reduce loud noises a little bit so they don’t damage my already horrible hearing further but that wasn’t the case when I had them as a kid and air dryers started getting more popular, that shit hurt.

Meme cleverly disguised to find out who the cat lovers are

You know, with all the crap going on in the U.S. right now I’m ok with the watermark

Prince made this statement way before Matrix did

I put Amazon in the same category these days

Laws don’t mean shit anymore and stopped doing so when a convicted felon got elected as President. Well it doesn’t mean shit for rich people.

I’m driving. I lose my brakes and can’t slow down as if my gas pedal is stuck (unstoppable force). I’m on a road that stops at a T intersection and there’s a concrete wall to keep people from going straight when they are moving vertically towards the T intersection (immovable object).

The car just goes right through the concrete wall with no damage?

Replace the concrete wall with a wooden fence. Technically the fence is immovable, but the car is going to smash right through that thing.

So is this about clarifying what exactly the objects are? I’m not smart enough for this one and am so confused…

This is a complete upheaval of the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment of the Constitution per Wikipedia’s entry on Separation of church and state:

Jefferson and the Bill of Rights

In English, the exact term is an offshoot of the phrase, “wall of separation between church and state”, as written in Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802. In that letter, referencing the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Jefferson writes:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.[6]

Jefferson was describing to the Baptists that the United States Bill of Rights prevents the establishment of a national church, and in so doing they did not have to fear government interference in their right to expressions of religious conscience. The Bill of Rights, adopted in 1791 as ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States, was one of the earliest political expressions against the political establishment of religion. Others were the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, also authored by Jefferson and adopted by Virginia in 1786; and the French Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen of 1789.

The metaphor “a wall of separation between Church and State” used by Jefferson in the above quoted letter became a part of the First Amendment jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court. It was first used by Chief Justice Morrison Waite in Reynolds v. United States (1878). American historian George Bancroft was consulted by Waite in the Reynolds case regarding the views on establishment by the framers of the U.S. constitution. Bancroft advised Waite to consult Jefferson. Waite then discovered the above quoted letter in a library after skimming through the index to Jefferson’s collected works according to historian Don Drakeman.[30]

As an atheist that agrees more with Buddhism and Paganism than any organized religion this infuriating. I went to Catholic Church and school for 18 years of my life, I know what it’s like to be “forced” to believe in something you don’t.

Are they going to keep records of who goes to what churches and arrest people if they don’t go to the correct church at the correct time and day?

I don’t give a shit what anyone believes as long as they are not an asshole, that’s their own business. I’ve had people try to shove their religion on me and it’s not fun. If I had the financial means to leave this country I absolutely would now even if I was a Christian and went to church every Sunday.

This is REALLY freaking dangerous and scary on top of all the REALLY freaking dangerous and scary other bullshit Orange Man and his Disciples of Dumbasses have been doing since January 20th.

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I have Walmart+ because getting groceries from the store to my apartment via bus…is not as fun as I thought it would be. Luckily since I’m on some government assistance programs I get it for half off. Paramount+ is included in the sub, so I’m using that.

I also use Pluto.tv / Tubi / etc since they are free. Along with Hoopla, which my local library offers for free. I’ve also got an HDHomeRun setup with an antenna to catch the local channels OTA and stream it to my laptop since I don’t have a TV.

At one point I had Hulu/Disney+, Max, and BritBox all at the same time and I just couldn’t. Especially with Hulu, I’m paying for the service and have to be subjected to ads? This is not the cord cutting revolution I was promised! I’ll put up with the commercials if it’s a free service to a point.