When I hear about his executive orders, I can’t help but picture him dressed as Dolores Umbridge hanging her rules on Hogwarts walls.

If I had any semblance of graphics skills, I’d make a meme out of it.

Seconded. The US can no longer be trusted. God speed, and I wish you the best.

-us

Dolly Parton is urging Republican Gov. Mike Braun of Indiana to reconsider getting rid of her popular “Imagination Library” program, which provides free books to children ages 5 and under.

“We are hopeful that Governor Braun and the Indiana Legislature will continue this vital investment by restoring the state’s funding match for local Imagination Library programs. The beauty of the Imagination Library is that it unites us all—regardless of politics—because every child deserves the chance to dream big and succeed,” her representative said in a statement.

Indiana Republicans have cut the statewide program’s required matching funds from the new budget despite it being “hailed as helping to raise Indiana’s child literacy ranking from 19th to 6th place nationwide” and only costing the state $4.1 million over the last two years.

“It was a disservice to remove it,” says Democratic Indiana Rep. Maureen Bauer.

Most telling is that the state’s Republicans, who included school vouchers for wealthy families in the budget, didn’t bother to look elsewhere for savings.

According to Rose Meissner, president of the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County, the matching funds needed equate to just $1 per month for every child in Indiana.

Parton has run into this kind of ghoulish right-wing behavior before.

In 2022, a Kentucky Republican state senator tried to censor Parton’s library as a part of the fascistic right-wing move to censor children’s education. But after getting an earful from a few million Parton fans, they quickly backtracked.

The Imagination Library, founded by Parton in 1995, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year and sends out more than 1,000,000 books every month to 21 states and 5 countries. To date, the program has given more than 270,000,000 free books to children around the world.

The idea that the GOP would take away children’s books is unconscionable—but not surprising.

It’s been a long while since I looked, but I remember it being a thing in tails to specifically not resize your browser window or only have it full screen to match a ton of other fingerprints.

Plus since it was a live distro that reset on every reboot it would only have the same fonts and other data as other people using tails. Honestly, I hate that all that info is even available to browsers and web sites at all.

A lot of smart devices are just an esp that basically does that. The zigbee and z-wave stuff isn’t even internet connected. A usb dongle connected to a PC running smart home software locally controls it.

It’s weird that so much has sprung up around personal homes when businesses had bacnet for years and years. Most of that stuff is wired up with basic analog inputs and outputs.

Personally, I like hardwired everything and would like to see more PoE stuff come out rather than wireless. I hate dealing with batteries because some people can’t deal with running low voltage wires.

Same. My iot vlan can’t talk to my main network. If it weren’t for firmware updates, I’d probably null route that whole network when it tries to go out to the internet.

As an aside, electro convulsive shock therapy is still done. It’s weirdly been proven useful for the treatment of some disorders. But as far as I know, it’s now done with full consent.

But now, as back then, no one really truly understands the full mechanism that causes it to suppress symptoms.

California. And I’m not entirely sure. The emails went to my mother, so I didn’t hear too much about it until they terminated our contract.

Oh yea. I’m angry and upset that any acts of defiance will be used as justification for the indiscriminate persecution of entire sections of society.

The systemic marginalization and abuse of vulnerable groups will lead to acts of violence. Which will lead to more marginalization and abuse.

The only way to prevent this is to break the system and embrace these groups.

As a gross oversimplification analogy, but one that any parent should be able to understand. The more you try and control a teenager and suppress who they are the more they will act out and rebel.

And it’s so fucking weird to me to see all this hate. I grew up around migrants, I’ve worked closely with trans individuals and non binary folk. I have never seen the violence or hate or any of the problems the conservative hate propaganda speech about these people.

Because they truly are just people who want to live their lives and be who they are. They all have dreams and aspirations. They want to provide for their families. They want to love each other and be loved in return. They want the same for you and me. They don’t have any agenda to do harm.

Is everyone perfect, no. Do some people cause issues? Sure. But that has nothing to do with race or sexual or gender identity. People in general can be shitty, and you’ll find them in all walks of life.

As an parallel, I was watching PBS’s American Experience about the American Coup in Wilmington, NC in 1898. They shared articles from white supremacists which sounded so eerily familiar to the rhetoric spewed on Fox News and other right wing media outlets. It’s such a tired playbook, but it’s so frustrating how effective it is.

I’ve complained about gun culture being the biggest issue leading to gun deaths before. I’m not a huge fan of gun control as a lot of the left discuss it and my issue with labeling gun laws “common sense” causes a dissidence in people heads where anyone disagreeing not having common sense.

But the rhetoric of “fuck around and find out” and “come and try that here” underpins a thought process that guns are an acceptable solution to problems. And not just acceptable, but on equal footing with other solutions such as running away, defusing or de-escalating the situation, discussions, and compromises. It’s where you see things like Kyle Rittenhouse or “You’re Fucked” being inscribed on the AR used in the murder of Daniel Shaver in Mesa, AZ by the police.

Whereas I believe guns are the final solution to a problem. And imo, one that we all should be reticent to use but ultimately have available to us. They are to be used as a last resort to threats against life and liberty.

The gun culture, mixed with the propaganda of everyone everywhere being a potential threat to you is a leading cause of gun violence.

They are a scape goat. It doesn’t matter if they exist or not if they can sell the narrative.

Crime could be at record lows but they’ll say “Crime is so high, we need to send in police until crime comes down.”

They know full well it’s a lie, but they know enough people won’t double check them and take them at their word. In their minds crime is at an all time high instead.

Only one man would dare give me the raspberry!!!

My father got us kicked off our ISP for downloading music from random public trackers.

I’ve been on private ones for years and never gotten a warning.

If anyone knows about lobotomies, it would be the Kennedys. Just look at Rosemary Kennedy.

I have some things. I just got a roll of tpu to try and print a new drain plug for something that they don’t offer replacement parts on.

But I’ve found I don’t need another organizer or knick knack anymore. And personally, I’m not a huge fan of plastic. If I can get something in wood, metal, glass, or ceramic I’d much rather do that.

It’s great for when I need it. I just don’t need it often.

We all are. The left and the right.

We have all been told from different sources who or what to be mad about.

Some were so mad about contrived issues they voted in someone who campaigned on destroying the federal government.

Others are pissed off that that person who was voted in is destroying the federal government.

The outrage machine literally is why the fascist pig is in the Whitehouse in the first place.

What you might be asking is why we aren’t rioting in the streets. Just know that some of us are 4 times as far from our countries capital as London is from Berlin. In a blue state, who would I be protesting to? The people who already agree with me?

I have a 3d printer. Honestly, it’s mostly junk that gets printed. I like the idea, but the utility isn’t there. It’s a solution in search of a problem.

But I’ve made a few neat things. My own design for cabinet and drawer hardware and some custom knick knack souvenirs for a gig I work on each year to give to the crew.

What I want is a large library of 3d model replacement parts for things like my car, but they haven’t been made available so I’d have to model them myself and I’m not that good.

Honestly, this is probably people forgetting the size of the country.

The people who deserve the guillotine are in Washington d.c. the vast majority of the country is very, very fucking far away. California to Washington DC is 4 times the distance from London to Berlin.

4,495 kilometers away.

If we were all within a 4 hour drive of our capital, we could riot or protest as an entire country where the people in power are. But asking the entire USA to protest at once is an enormous undertaking. People are just so fucking far away from the people making the decisions and doing the harm.

We are so broke as a country living paycheck to paycheck people can’t take a week off work to go to a protest and no one is organizing the travel of all these people to the capital. We should have groups organizing buses from every corner of the country to Washington and building some infrastructure for people to live and camp indefinitely causing every politician in Washington to know our opinion and demand them to work for us again.

What the fuck did people think would happen to all the cost savings that doge is supposedly doing? You think that money was just going to sit in government bank accounts or something?

As an American, yea. We deserve that. I’m sorry. We’ve failed Ukraine and the world.