Mostly red states where they’ve rolled back state level protections against pollution. Some blue states too since the fed is allowing many companies to essentially ignore pollution regulations.

And that greater selection of things that count as furniture includes humans. My cats are particularly fond of their warm-blooded furniture when it’s chilly.

One thing that has always bothered me about Terminator. Why would Skynet put the “brain” in the thing’s head? It’s the least armored part of the robot. It would make more sense to put the processor in the torso where it would be much harder to damage. It’s not like terminators are limited by signal time across biological neurons, which is why animals have the brain near the sense organs. Transmission times from eyes in the head to a brain in the torso along fiber-optic lines would be irrelevant.

The headline is talking about the weather. Meteorological summer is what applies. Why would they reference astronomical summer when they are talking about the weather?

I have to disagree. Yes, the economy is bad and his decisions on tariffs and political decisions have been disastrous. But his decision to attack Iran (without a declaration of war, to be clear) has resulted in countless innocent lives lost including the students at an indiscriminately bombed Iranian girls middle school. All those pointless deaths put the Iran decision far ahead of everything else he’s done in office in the ranking of pure evil.

For meteorlogical purposes, summer runs from June 1 to August 31

For some reason there’s a “?utm_source=fedi-share” tacked on the end. Try this link

Plus there is probably some percentage of people who will just pay a fine rather than losing time at work to go to trial. That may have been what he was hoping for.

Don’t order live animals via the mail. Consider all the cuts to the USPS since Trump’s first term. It is simply unbelievable that shipping a live animal via USPS is considered humane. Day old chicks are shipped all the time and are considered to be in the same category as food or produce. Many have always died during shipping because the process is not designed to handle live animals, but since Trump’s first term it has gotten far, far worse.

Under current policy, chicks are classified as perishable goods within the U.S. Mail system and handled in the same logistical category as items such as food or plants. This distinction matters. Because they are treated as parcels rather than live animals, they are not subject to the animal welfare standards required for other forms of live animal transport.

In fact, in 2020, in Maine alone, 4,800 baby chicks arrived dead after Trump’s postal cuts kicked into high gear.

The USPS has been allowing live animals to be sent through the mail since 1918. But with the current Postal Service crisis, there has been a huge spike in the number of chicks that are dying on the journey. In recent weeks, 4,800 baby chicks that were sent through the mail arrived dead to recipients in Maine alone. In other parts of New England, several other farmers have also reported receiving hundreds of dead chicks in the mail.

Meanwhile in California, workers at a large mail-sorting facility in South Los Angeles “…fell so far behind processing packages that by early August, gnats and rodents were swarming around containers of rotted fruit and meat, and baby chicks were dead inside their boxes,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “This month, one worker said, she found a box with air holes in a pile of packages. Instead of hearing the gentle sounds of baby chicks, she heard nothing.”

If you have any compassion for living animals, do not ship them via USPS.

I’ve been fortunate to have never had to deal with psychological issues personally but I’ve had friends that have. I’m glad you seem to be doing well now. Interestingly, I am currently taking Duloxetine for back pain. The original dosage was too strong for me, it knocked me out for hours when I took it. Now I’ve cut the dosage in half and only take it at bedtime when being knocked out is a plus. No nightmares, though, fortunately.

I very rarely have nightmares in the classic sense. For just over two decades, I owned my own business and it was a very stressful job. I’ve moved on now, but during the final few years before I sold it, I would have what I called work-dreams. Basically, it was like a really bad day at work. The absolute worst possible, yet realistic, work disasters I could imagine would occur in these dreams and I would wake up as stressed as if they had actually happened. Luckily, I was eventually able to self medicate with tiny doses of cannabis gummies.

By the way, psychiatrists are not the only ones who fail to mention side effects. I have a number of medical issues I’m being treated for with a variety of drugs. I’ve taken to looking up all of them when they’re prescribed so I know what to watch out for. Most of my physicians don’t mention possible side effects unless they are very common ones. I suspect that they worry that people will be more likely to suffer the side effects if they know about them due to a version of the placebo effect so they just don’t bring it up unless asked. I always ask now.

This seems a little more than just him being susceptible. The LLM actively used his mental health diagnosis to manipulate him.

But perhaps most alarming to Lines, ChatGPT’s memory feature seemed to build a psychiatric profile, allegedly parsing inputs related to his mental health conditions and then using that sensitive information to maximize his engagement. As one of Lines’ attorneys, Matthew P. Bergman of Social Media Victims Law Center, explained in the press release, “OpenAI didn’t just ignore Michael’s disability—it used it against him. After he disclosed his bipolar diagnosis, the system incorporated that information to draw him deeper into harmful interactions instead of steering him toward safety.”

As you say, as with any severe psychiatric disorders, the patient has to want to get better, which includes even realizing that something is wrong.

To be clear, with many psychiatric disorders, the disorder itself can influence the patient to not want to get better. For example, a patient who is responding well to treatment but stops taking their meds because their condition makes them believe that the meds are the problem.

Yeah, without good and bad, life would be just blah. I consider that a huge flaw in the universe and if there is a divine being out there and I ever meet him/her/it, I will complain about it.

“And he who made kittens put snakes in the grass.” Bungle in the Jungle - Jethro Tull

Whether you believe in a He who created the world or not, there’s no denying that there is more that enough evil to balance the good on this spinning globe.

Personally I think that, in a desperate attempt to save humanity, his own major intestine was trying to leap straight up through his neck and throttle his brain but got stuck in his neck causing it to burst violently. Much like what happened to Grunthos the Flatulent.

It is actually an old book from the '70s by humorist Erma Bombeck.

Probably because the news service doesn’t want to potentially get sued. The same reason they often use ‘allegedly’ when talking about people accused of crimes.

Also, though they do it here in the states, it’s still wrong to release the names and images of people accused of crimes. People should not have their name and face plastered across the internet merely because they’ve been accused. Being accused of a crime is not the same as being convicted of a crime. Why should someone have their life potentially ruined because they are accused of something. Lots of people are wrongly accused and never convicted. We should at least wait until a conviction before publishing such information.

You’re right, of course, but don’t interrupt my fantasy. And let’s be honest, he couldn’t buy or sell anything if ICE grabbed him, sent him to a shit-hole facility in some random state and refused to allow him access to a phone to call anyone. Damn… I’m getting close.

Does Musk really want to bring up his apparently illegal activities in that era considering the current ICE climate regarding those who have a history of immigration violations?

Atlanta immigration attorney Charles Kuck says Musk stating that he had a J-1 visa makes it clear he worked illegally, given the restrictions that would have only allowed work in connection with his academic program.

“So clearly, he’s admitting now that in fact, he did work illegally and violate his status. The only question is at that point, what did he do to fix his status violation?” Kuck says.

Imagine ICE grabbing Musk and treating him like they treat anyone else and then deporting him to some random African nation with a history of enslaving people.

You should add, swimming (and fully submerging) with his grandchildren in raw sewage.

In one of the photos from Sunday, Kennedy is seen fully submerged in the water, with his grandchildren swimming, in spite of an ongoing National Park Service advisory against coming in contact with the water in the Washington, D.C., park “due to high bacteria levels.” The same notice says swimming and wading are not permitted due to the health risks.

…

A microbial source tracking report published in 2022 by the D.C. government said that ambient water monitoring for Rock Creek showed “chronic elevated levels” of E.coli. “Fecal coliform” bacteria stemming from sewage is also deposited into Rock Creek, the Potomac and other tributary waters from combined sewers during storms according to a 2002 report from the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority.