I mean if you want to block all the users that actually participate here on Lemmy then I guess you can, not sure what the point of that would be though.
Probably not but Merrick Garland ain't going to do anything about it so what does it matter?
I mean they're also really shitty cars. As much as the muskrat as poisoned the image of the company, I think a lot of the loss and sales is due to other competitors having caught up and being higher quality.
In that corporations can gain so much power there's no difference between them and a state?
I mean won't that just encouraged Israel to engage in its National pastime, murdering journalists?
“Do you think God stays in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he’s created? …here on Earth?”
Well that quote from the professor is true and it's fairly easy to find. I'm surprised you hadn't heard it before.
As for the troll part I mean come on. Of course that's why he's doing it. He's been bothered by the McDonald's thing for months. Donald Trump doesn't care about reaching out to people. That's not how even an iota of how his campaign is run. He's entire campaign is based on attack, insult, panic, and fear. Let's not be gullible here.
Which ones are you objecting to specifically? Other than McDonald's potentially hiring felons thing I don't think any of those is even close to questionable.
It's basically a Russian tradition
Just for your edification, nobody thinks it's clever when you play dumb about a very obvious implication you were making. It's not smart not clever and not funny just tiresome.
I don't think you could really say they're changing the nfl, I'm watching the game right now and I don't think there's a single one anywhere on either team. In fact other than maybe one or two players I don't think I've seen anyone wearing them at all this year.
I've been curious about this, since the United States and South Korea are both still at war with North Korea and the latter is sending troops into Ukraine, doesn't that mean that it's an active combat zone for both of us? Seems like all the pretext you would need to move troops into the area.
Man I wouldn't tie your job competence to the performance of Russell Wilson if I were you Mike.
Is thinking about the themes and Messages in literature really where you draw the line? That's a bridge too far?
Man those BBC ones are pretty good actually, they got as far as the Silver Chair I think.
Moldova accuses Russia of meddling ahead of its elections and EU referendum
"Moldovans will be asked on Sunday to decide whether EU membership should be designated a strategic goal in the country’s constitution, a move that would further distance the former Soviet republic politically from Russia. The EU referendum coincides with Moldova's presidential election, where the country’s pro-Western leader Maia Sandu is seeking a second term against a field of mostly pro-Kremlin candidates. Both votes will take place against a backdrop of Russian meddling, including evidence of vote buying and disinformation, according to Moldovan authorities. The Kremlin has denied the allegations.
The European Commission accepted Moldova's candidacy to join the EU in 2022 and opened accession negotiations in June this year. The EU has pledged almost $2 billion in economic support for Moldova to help the country accomplish the necessary reforms to achieve membership, and improve infrastructure badly in need of an upgrade.
While various opinion polls over recent months show that most Moldovans support EU membership, residents in predominantly Russian-speaking regions like the north, or Gagauzia in the south, still favor stronger ties with Russia over EU membership."
Mortgage rates were supposed to come down. Instead, they're rising. Here's why
"You might expect that mortgage rates would be falling right now after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a half-point last month.
Instead, mortgage rates jumped higher. The latest data from Freddie Mac showed that the average 30-year mortgage rate had increased to 6.4%, more than a quarter-point higher than it was two weeks ago.
The news is probably an unwelcome surprise to the folks who had been hoping for lower interest rates to finally come off the sidelines and start shopping for a home.
Here’s what’s going on — and what it means for those trying to buy a home now."
An invisible detonator and wafer-thin plastic explosives turned batteries into bombs
BEIRUT, Oct 16 (Reuters) - The batteries inside the weaponised pagers that arrived in Lebanon at the start of the year, part of an Israeli plot to decimate Hezbollah, had powerfully deceptive features and an Achilles' heel.
The agents who built the pagers designed a battery that concealed a small but potent charge of plastic explosive and a novel detonator that was invisible to X-ray, according to a Lebanese source with first-hand knowledge of the pagers, and teardown photos of the battery pack seen by Reuters.
To overcome the weakness - the absence of a plausible backstory for the bulky new product - they created fake online stores, pages and posts that could deceive Hezbollah due diligence, a Reuters review of web archives shows.
The stealthy design of the pager bomb and the battery’s carefully constructed cover story, both described here for the first time, shed light on the execution of a years-long operation which has struck unprecedented blows against Israel's Iran-backed Lebanese foe and pushed the Middle East closer to a regional war.
Swing state map: Polls move in Trump’s direction, but the race remains tight
"Former President Donald Trump once again appears to be in the driver’s seat in this presidential election.
When looking strictly at the polls, Trump now has the edge in two states and the other five most closely watched states are toss-ups. At the end of August, Vice President Harris had leads large enough in three of the seven states for them to lean in her direction, according to an NPR analysis of polling averages at the time.
Now, Trump has taken over the lead in an average of the polls in the seven swing states for the first time since Harris got in the race."
The Texas Tribune and The Associated Press visited five locations along the 1,254-mile span to separate the facts from the political narrative during a heated election year.
"As midnight nears, the lights of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, fill the sky on the silent banks of the Rio Grande. A few months ago, hundreds of asylum-seeking families, including crying toddlers, waited for an opening to crawl through razor wire from Juarez into El Paso.
No one is waiting there now.
Nearly 500 miles away, in the border city of Eagle Pass, large groups of migrants that were once commonplace are rarely seen on the riverbanks these days.
In McAllen, at the other end of the Texas border, two Border Patrol agents scan fields for five hours without encountering a single migrant.
It’s a return to relative calm after an unprecedented surge of immigrants through the southern border in recent years. But no one would know that listening to Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump talking about border enforcement at dueling presidential campaign events. And no one would know from the rate at which Texas is spending on a border crackdown called Operation Lone Star — $11 billion since 2021."
South Alabama defeats Northwestern State 87 - 10.
Game summary of the South Alabama Jaguars vs. Northwestern State Demons NCAAF game, final score 87-10, from September 12, 2024 on ESPN.
Yes you read that correctly. 87 point. In a football game.
Just Make It A Punt
Seriously. I'm watching these new kickoffs and it's just silly. Like I'm not against the concept but it's so clearly almost a punt. It's it's just a hair away from it. Just make it a punt it'd be so much simpler.
Allred’s sharp divergence from Beto O’Rourke’s more active campaign style has stirred dissent among some Democrats. His allies say it’s working.
>Allred’s sharp divergence from Beto O’Rourke’s more active campaign style has stirred dissent among some Democrats. His allies say it’s working.
>Six years after Beto O'Rourke’s electrifying Senate campaign set the standard for Texas Democrats seeking statewide office, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred is taking a completely different approach in his own bid to oust U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.
>Allred, a third-term Dallas congressman, has been far less visible on the campaign trail, opting for events with smaller and more curated audiences in the major cities and select suburbs, rather than the casual town hall-style rallies O'Rourke held in every corner of the state. And instead of O’Rourke’s unapologetic liberal stands which activated legions of young voters, Allred has adopted a more calibrated message aimed at winning over moderates. He’s running ads that portray him as "tough" on the border and willing to work across the aisle, while keeping his distance from his party's standard-bearers, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
>Allred's sharp divergence from O'Rourke's more active and freewheeling style has stirred dissent and even signs of panic among a segment of Texas Democratic activists who say Allred should be holding more rallies, small-dollar fundraisers and other publicly accessible events. The more buttoned-up approach, they argue, is unlikely to inspire the sort of grassroots energy that helped O'Rourke build a juggernaut volunteer turnout operation and come within three points of ending Texas Democrats’ statewide drought
Students’ scores in a test that gauges their English skills have been low since a redesign introduced computer scoring.
"English-learning students’ scores on a state test designed to measure their mastery of the language fell sharply and have stayed low since 2018 — a drop that bilingual educators say might have less to do with students’ skills and more with sweeping design changes and the automated computer scoring system that were introduced that year.
English learners who used to speak to a teacher at their school as part of the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System now sit in front of a computer and respond to prompts through a microphone. The Texas Education Agency uses software programmed to recognize and evaluate students’ speech.
Students’ scores dropped after the new test was introduced, a Texas Tribune analysis shows. In the previous four years, about half of all students in grades 4-12 who took the test got the highest score on the test’s speaking portion, which was required to be considered fully fluent in English. Since 2018, only about 10% of test takers have gotten the top score in speaking each year."
Future Texas therapists must complete internships to start their careers, but there’s not enough providers to mentor all of the students.
"It was early 2022, and Kiany Casillas was in a panic. It had been two years since she and her newborn daughter had followed her husband from California to the Texas Panhandle, and during that time, she had enrolled at Texas Tech University Health Science Center to pursue a career as a psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner.
Casillas is considered the perfect student for Texas Tech’s online program because she lives in the rural city of Dalhart, an hour and a half northwest of Amarillo, and is willing to work there when she graduates. However, a year had passed, and Casillas and the school had yet to find a supervisor for her necessary clinical hours, and the deadline was fast approaching.
“I was anxious, nervous, and baffled. How can I help people if nobody is willing to help me? You know, I was just kind of sad,” Casillas said.
Supervised clinical hours are considered an essential part of the mental health field. They allow students to learn on the job while the supervisor, known as a preceptor in the medical field, assumes the risk of liability. However, only a limited number of mental health providers seem willing to take on this responsibility."
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who is facing off against Allred in his reelection campaign, has worked to tie Allred to Harris’ political record.
"On a recent appearance on MSNBC, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred was asked how Vice President Kamala Harris’ presumptive rise to the top of the party’s ticket was affecting his campaign in Texas to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.
Allred’s response was polite, but muted: “Vice President Harris was a member of the congressional Black Caucus and I’ve known her for some time and I support her nomination.”
That five-second comment was all the time Allred spent discussing Harris. He quickly pivoted for the rest of the seven-minute segment to attacking Cruz for blocking bipartisan border security and immigration bills, opposing abortion access and leaving the state for Cancun when millions of Texans had lost power in their homes in 2021.
Harris’s impending nomination has injected the November election with renewed enthusiasm among Democrats, who are hoping the historic nature of her candidacy as a woman of color could also boost down-ballot candidates. But in Republican-dominated Texas, Allred — who has been running his campaign as a centrist — is not flocking to her side."
Gov. Greg Abbott has spent the duration of the hurricane on a pre-scheduled trip to meet with foreign diplomats in Asia, leaving Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick as acting governor.
>Texas is receiving federal aid for Hurricane Beryl later than needed because state leaders were slow to request an official disaster declaration from the White House, President Joe Biden told the Houston Chronicle Tuesday.
>With Gov. Greg Abbott out of the country on an economic development trip in Asia, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has served as acting governor amid the storm, making him responsible for putting in the state’s request for aid.
>A White House spokesperson told the Chronicle that officials had tried multiple times to reach Abbott and Patrick, and Biden said he only connected with Patrick Tuesday, after which he issued the disaster declaration. Beryl came ashore on Texas' Gulf Coast early Monday morning, bringing heavy rain and winds that wreaked havoc over Houston and other parts of southeast Texas.
After the Amarillo City Council balked at such an ordinance last year, residents collected signatures for a ballot measure.
>Amarillo residents will vote on a so-called abortion travel ban in November, one of the few times Texas voters will have a say on abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.
>Supporters of the measure, who gathered 6,300 verified signatures to petition for approval of the ordinance, submitted their request to city officials to have it placed on the Nov. 5 ballot after the Amarillo City Council rejected it last month, per local rules.
Here are the nonfiction books NPR staffers have loved so far this year
>We see you, hard-core NPR readers — just because it's summer doesn't mean it's all fiction, all the time. So we asked around the newsroom to find our staffers' favorite nonfiction from the first half of 2024. We've got biography and memoir, health and science, history, sports and more.
Biden says the next president may get to name two Supreme Court justices
>LOS ANGELES – President Biden on Saturday night said he expects the winner of this year’s presidential election will likely have the chance to fill two vacancies on the Supreme Court – a decision he warned would be “one of the scariest parts” if his Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, is successful in his bid for a second term.
The group announced Wednesday it raised $120 million in capital to start a stock exchange in Dallas this year.
A group of financial firms and investors is planning to launch a Texas-based private market stock exchange and offer traders an alternative to the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.
The group, which includes BlackRock, Citadel Securities and about two dozen investors, raised approximately $120 million of capital to create the Texas Stock Exchange, which would be headquartered in Dallas. They are now seeking registration with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to operate as a national securities exchange later this year.
“Texas and the other states in the southeast quadrant have become economic powerhouses. Combined with the demand we are seeing from investors and corporations for expanded alternatives to trade and list equities, this is an opportune time to build a major, national stock exchange in Texas,” said James Lee, founder and CEO of TXSE Group.
Resuming the bonfire was “not in the interest” of Texas A&M, said school President Mark Welsh III.
After a monthslong review, Texas A&M University decided not to bring back the student bonfire tradition it discontinued 25 years ago after a deadly accident, President Mark Welsh III said Tuesday.
For decades, students built a 60-foot bonfire every year ahead of football matches between A&M and the University of Texas at Austin. The tradition was suspended after tragedy struck in 1999, when a stack of logs collapsed in the middle of the night, killing 12 people and injuring dozens, some severely.
Welsh said reviving the tradition would not be in the best interest of the university.
“After careful consideration, I decided that Bonfire, both a wonderful and tragic part of Aggie history, should remain in our treasured past,” Welsh said.
Missouri joins other red states in trying to stamp out ranked choice voting
>ST. LOUIS — Five states have banned ranked choice voting in the last two months, bringing the total number of Republican-leaning states now prohibiting the voting method to 10.
>Missouri could soon join them.
>If approved by voters, a GOP-backed measure set for the state ballot this fall would amend Missouri’s constitution to ban ranked choice voting.
Missouri joins other red states in trying to stamp out ranked choice voting
>ST. LOUIS — Five states have banned ranked choice voting in the last two months, bringing the total number of Republican-leaning states now prohibiting the voting method to 10.
>Missouri could soon join them.
>If approved by voters, a GOP-backed measure set for the state ballot this fall would amend Missouri’s constitution to ban ranked choice voting.
Andy Kim upended New Jersey politics. Now he’s on track to become a senator
>Andy Kim couldn’t rest one evening last September.
>“I didn't get a single minute of sleep that night,” he recalled in an interview with NPR, “I really felt like I had to do something and really show people that, you know, when there's these problems in our politics, that there are people who want to step up and try to fix it.”
>The problem was his fellow New Jersey Democrat, Sen. Bob Menendez. Last fall, Menendez was indicted for the second time on corruption charges. The news might not have rocked most voters in New Jersey — where as many as 80% of its residents said they viewed the state’s politicians as at least “a little” corrupt, according to a May 2023 Fairleigh Dickinson University poll.