Ashe

No this is honest. I travel a lot for work and I feel like I see more Trump signs in CT than I did in KY. Not to say that there aren't more Trump supporters in KY, but they are a LOUD minority

These people are genuinely insane. The locals in CT act genuinely surprised when they get any pushback against their Christo fascist asses. There's one guy who has been sitting out on Rt-6 that I make sure to flip off every time I see him and every time he makes a big stink. I know I'm far from the only one doing it though

My company hired an AI person and I was sure to tell him I stripped the registry values from my computer. I'm an admin sooo

And yet we don't want our posts to be fed into AI slop, nor do we want independent hosts to pay for the massive amount of traffic generated by a massive corporate entity to trying to consume data en masse.

The gay Republican I know is also deep in denial. Sad to see in all honesty

I'll take the bear in case you were wondering too.

Care to explain what an awful choice that is?

Source?

Facts don't care about your feelings etc etc

I remember NiCad batteries still being used in power wheels toys as a kid. For all I know they may still be, but the battery advancements have been particularly amazing.

I used to be a POS tech. It's such a gross, mismanaged walled garden.

Currently I spend a lot of time advising against pop ups like that :^)

The propaganda works though. People outside of the US struggle to see, and believe that the US has its own damning problems. 2 years ago I got close to a Romanian bartender while traveling. She told me about how she held scorn for her sister, who moved to the US despite having been warned against it.

What happened to her sister is what so many of us are victims of. Debt trapping, stalled wages, poor access to medical care and financial incentive to not seek care. Not to mention the poor quality food that wears you down.

As a result, she has had to send money to both her sister and Mom, and had to cancel several contract terms and vacation seasons off to care for her Mother. Her sister couldn't help due to being in debt, and at risk of losing her job if she were to travel, regardless of the emergency.

It's a cruel system that bundles up as an image of living free. The marginally higher standard of living has a lot of cracks, but they're hard to see until you're living with them.

It works for some, I'd caution even trying it though. If the bag scales are enabled, the weight discrepancy will flag it. Depending on how sensitive it is and jaded the workers are they may just press the bypass without a care.

Alternatively, imaging scanners (non laser based) tend to have the option of "produce assurance" where the image of what was scanned/keyed is compared against the average entry. Too big of a discrepancy will flag and force manual verification.

Shitty in the interim for sure, but it's nice knowing how disruptive it's getting. I outright tell work places I will not go. I also have brought up the embarrassing but truthful act of needing to look up bathroom laws for places I travel to. A lot of coworkers after meeting me realize just how absurd it's gotten; and how transphobia affects them even.

I hate having to be the trans representative for so many people, but the fact it's had a noticeable affect on people's viewpoints is nice at least.

I have some friends in Florida; one moved there recently in part against his better judgement. He told me I'm welcome to stay with him if I ever were in the area. I had to tell him it's not only dangerous but outright illegal for me to. I'm not risking a fraud charge for having changed my gender marker.

So yeah. Their loss, and they're starting to feel it.