Spokane burns its ordinary trash. It also accepts plastics and other “recyclables” at an every-other-week curbside pick-up, using a separate bin, just as you’d expect. Then they burn it. Yes, just like the trash. But wait, they do the burning at a facility they call the “Waste To Energy” plant, so that makes it all OK.
It’s all a big expensive greenwashing game, but everyone seems perfectly fine with it. La di da di da.
A “quick haircut” sort of place (kind of a barber, sort of , but super-high-volume and just one worker, the owner) that I’ve been using for a while now has a super-annoying dark-pattern in their payment flow. They book appointments, and take in-person payments using Square. After your cut, when you’re paying via their hand-held kiosk with a card, the screen shows you a bunch of huge “tip amount” buttons, and it’s implied that the customer has to choose one of them, while the provider looks on, in order to finish the transaction and leave (probably not true - they’ve already got your CC info by that point). Guess which button is highlighted/pre-selected and front-and-center! That’s right, 20%. If you want to select another tip, or no tip, you have to select another button while she watches you do so. The owner lists all prices on her square website, and it’s those prices you think you’ll be paying when you book an appointment online, but she still feels the need to be tipped. You KNOW that the provider/barber has configured Square to present that UI to the customer. Not quite the same as the restaurant fees scam, but it’s actually more manipulative though, in my view.
The US is very fond of prison forced-labor (slavery) as well, and the general population doesn’t really care. In fact the general population most likely thinks the slaves (prisoners) suffering slavery is just a case of them getting what they deserve.
Yep, same.
The AF also contaminated the groundwater in a large residential area just west of Spokane, WA adjacent to the Fairchild AF base. Until recently they seemed to be accepting at least partial responsibility but I wonder if that’s now going to come to an end. It’s not generally a wealthy area, lots of apartments and discount stores and has what I think of as a “military town” vibe. Apparently residents are largely dependent on PFAS-loaded well water and if the AF tells them to FO and be happy they’ve got anything to drink, they’re screwed unless some other entity with deep pockets will come in and clean up. https://ecology.wa.gov/about-us/who-we-are/news/2024-news-stories/feb-21-west-plains-sampling-for-pfas
It’s difficult for Vetrini to see the rhetoric espoused by right-wing media and not feel hurt. Since going viral, Vetrini has been subject to vulgar and offensive comments from people who disagree with her perspective.
“Those comments are really hard to deal with, mentally. The hardest part is my dad feels the same way as these vitriolic commenters,” she said.
But she still recognizes the qualities in her father that remind her of Walz. Those are what keep her maintaining a “complicated” relationship with him.
After her TikTok went viral, Vetrini called her dad to tell him about it – hoping to hear it from her first rather than a news show.
“He responded exactly the way I would predict he would respond. Which was to remind me that socialism will ruin America,” she said.
I don’t understand: how would prohibiting LE from “administering” a rape kit to a raped minor “deny the state evidence” of who did the raping. Wouldn’t LE still know who the rapist was, independently of whatever medical care the victim received?
I don’t know what’s in a rape kit but I’m guessing that there might be something that could (with luck) prevent conception in a female child who’s raped. Idaho Christofascist Republicans WANT rape victims who get pregnant as a result of the rape to be forced to carry the fetus to term. That’s how they exercise power and control over women, and that’s one of the main things that they get off on in life. This news post is absolutely repulsive but nothing surprises me about that Christofascist hellscape called Idaho anymore.
TF. This scum should be rotting in some damp airless dark cell for at least 2x that term. Please tell me he won’t be eligible for parole, or have access to the internet while on the inside.
Where’s the list of names of the AGs who took the grift?
Going to hell would be letting this guy and the US soldiers willfully performing this massacre (‘we were only following orders when gang-raping your daughters and bayoneting your infants and old folks and anyone else who didn’t look like a good American and burning down every house in sight’) off way, way, way too easy. I invite everyone to check out the Wikipedia page on the My Lai Massacre, including, if you can stand it, the gruesome photographs taken by US photographers while it was happening and of the aftermath. And don’t miss the verbal quotes of the soldiers while they were having their fun, rapey, civilian-slaughtery holiday. This voanews article seems to leave out the additional cruelty of the US troops taking the murdered Vietnamese and dumping them in the village’s wells, just to make sure all the water supplies were poisoned. American cruelty at its finest. And of course, the one perp, Calley, who actually gets called to account for his deeds, just a little, for show purposes, gets just a slap on the wrist, because American military people = “good guys”, “heroes” even, by definition, always.
"Calley was court-martialed and convicted of murder in 1971 and was initially sentenced to life in prison. He only spent a few days in jail before President Richard Nixon ordered him to be transferred to house arrest. His sentence was eventually reduced to 10 years in prison before he was freed on bail and granted parole in 1974.
A few days in prison was what he got, for mass gang rapes, mass murders, and covering it all up. He should have been handed over to the S. Vietnamese villagers to face real justice.
And to cemeteries. Some of the cemeteries here are enormous and they keep them watered and green despite the fact that we’ve had hardly any rain for months and the cems get just a handful of visitors per day.
Absolutely, bring it. These LARPer pussies need to learn a lesson, one they’re not getting from video games, firearm manufacturers, and their imbecile Discord blabberings. So funny to think that THEY think that everyone but them is quaking in fear of their ‘civil war’ talk and vague threats of violence. Nobody’s afraid of them at all, nobody respects them at all, and that’s not going to change, period.
Tnx for the heads-up OP. I need to get some Forever int’l stamps (currently $1.25/ea IIRC) if they’re going up too.
When Arizona passed the legislation that allowed for private school vouchers, the program was projected to cost $65 million in 2024 and $125 million in 2025. But the most recent estimates put that cost at a staggering $940 million per year, more than 1,000 percent of the initial estimate.
The Christofascists won’t be satisfied until every school is a 100% Christian-run, 100% taxpayer-funded, stone-age-war-god-ideology fascist brainwashing center.
Same. I’ve had two used Dell laptops over the years, running Linux, and no major problems other than the batteries going bad. The most recent I’ve had for 10+ years now and it’s still going strong. Pretty sure it’s an ex-corporate machine if that makes any difference.
I swear he comes across as even more senile each and every day. But …
The rich would support this - they can only consume so much after all, and most of that would be discretionary. No more income taxes on vast incomes, stop buying imported shit, huge win for them. The chowderheads supporting Drumpf would probably be enthusiastic about such an idea too - imagining their small paychecks without that hated tax deduction box and imagining no more paying every year for that scary tax return software. And then, they lose their jobs because countries that we export to retaliate with their own tariffs. Prices on pretty much everything goes through the roof (because even domestic products have foreign supply chains), and most of the cheap shit they used to be able to afford (like electronics from China, bulk foods from overseas and (fast-)foods made with it) they can’t afford now.
Meanwhile, with the economy crashing, federal receipts (both tax and tariffs) dry up and it’s Government Shutdown time. All working according to the Plan. Grandma and Grandpa lose their incomes and health care and have to move in with unemployed, impoverished JimBob and the wife, which is darn near intolerable what with all the hillbilly kids being home all the time now that the schools have been shut down. Kids that are wailing about being hungry all the time just like the oldsters.
It would be fun to see what carve-outs to the tax/tariff policy they’d have, to try to keep the MIC funded. Borrowing is of course the preferred way to fund it, but nobody’s going to be touching the bonds issued by an actively collapsing national government.
“Bloomberg reported the memo indicated a “newer” first officer was flying at the time and inadvertently pushed forward on the control column.”
So, is this another “pilot tries to crash the plane” incident? It’s hard to imagine how a pilot could “inadvertently” shove the controls forward, especially at that altitude when both would totally dialed-in to flying the plane and doing their checklists and whatnot (vs. say, getting up to go to the toilet or something). Fortunately, “the event was addressed appropriately as we always strive for continuous improvement” said SW, so now I feel better.
Oh don’t be such a baby.
Ah yes, the fumes. That “Waste To Energy” incinerator is west of town in the area known as “West Plains”, near I90, near the airport, and not far from Fairchild AFB which these days is a locus of refueling operations and other support functions. Huge, 4-engined planes coming and going all day long. Long ago the AF firefighting ops polluted the groundwater there with PFAS chemicals and much of it is no longer fit to drink. Between that, the air pollution from military and civil air operations, and whatever comes out of the stacks at the W2E plant, I have to imagine the denizens of the area have evolved some powerful pollution-resistant genetics. Or maybe they just die young from cancer and respiratory and neurological diseases. Fortunately it’s a pretty low-income zone (think ‘typical military town’ - old skool Bremerton-ish) so all that disease can just be blamed on personal poor decision-making (like the decision to live there). A shame really, West Plains now has a ginormous Amazon warehouse that the residents could slave at (in addition to the super-Wally’s and the casinos) if they’d Just Say No to cancer and all those other tempting diseases.