Trump said future operations will be nationwide “but primarily in those Blue States where CROOKED DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS” are in charge, Trump said, namechecking California, Illinois, Minnesota, Maine, and New York.

Perfect. I appreciate it!

It is far from the end of the USPS’s problems. I did not intend to sound like I was discounting anything else you said. IIRC, they’re still the only entity required to fund themselves, and with declining volume, they can’t reduce service, but also have no power of their own to raise the price of mail. Right wingers have been trying to crush them for a long time, and it’s impressive they do what they do despite those efforts.

The postal workers union also seems to be struggling a lot, which can’t help things if all the workers are unhappy as well. I really feel bad for the USPS as it’s one of the few gov institutions that no normal person really seems to have anything against and they provide a valuable service for every American.

They need to fully fund their employees retirement health benefits 75 years into the future

This should have been done away with in the 2022 Postal Services Reform Act, signed by President Biden.

The specific part of that reform addressing this was the USPS Fairness Act, which since there is a bunch of news about it failing to be passed so many times, because looking up something called a Fairness Act is so generic a term, and because the US diverged from a path of sanity, I can’t find out if this is being enforced currently or what the heck the deal is, but that requirement is at least not supposed to exist anymore.

Our boxes also look like a postal box, just with a very narrow drop slot.

I think all ours are indoors at libraries and district courthouses.

There were some lawsuits here about people forgetting to date the ballots and I think that is why there’s a person there now to supervise drop offs.

Last year was noticeably different though with all the signs out front and people were stuck waiting as everything was being looked at during busy times because we didn’t have many drop off sites for how many people live here and they’re only open during business hours.

We got emails when our ballots have been received and then again when they’re counted.

I went back and reread it, and it says there’s an exemption if you all live in the same household. So I think if you live with your parents you can be designated for both of them, but if they live separately from you, you could only do one.

County drop box rules

Please be advised that you are only allowed to return your own ballot, unless you have a disability and a completed Authorized Designated Agent Form accompanies the returned ballot.

And then from the agent form:

Who can be a designated agent?

The person you designate as your agent is only allowed to serve as a designated agent for ONE voter, unless the additional voter(s) live in the same household as you (the voter named in this form

Last time I voted, they had signs all over the grass saying “One Person, One Ballot” and someone was guarding the box and checking envelopes.

It doesn’t feel like much effort is made to help us understand them. All their accomplishments in science, math, and medicine barely get mentioned at least when I was in school. We got Mesopotamia, and that was about it. I don’t think we even covered what actual countries this is today.

As you said, the only real news I ever hear about is of conflicts, not the reasons for them, just that they’re going on. Europe and America have screwed around with them ever since oil was found, so no wonder why there is so much instability.

Can you do that in other states? In Pennsylvania we can only return our own and, if you get designated by another person by filling out a form, and even then you can only be one person’s designated person.

I don’t know much at all about the Middle East, but it seems as though they’ve contributed a lot to the modern world for a very long time, and I don’t get why anyone would treat them as lesser people. All the religions and various groups of different people living there have all seemed to be treated very poorly for one reason or another, despite them often being the allies of Europe or the Americas. Governments just can’t seem to stop meddling.

Appreciate you getting me caught up. Sounds like every bridge will continue to be burned behind this administration. 😖

The God Squad met most recently in 1992, when it granted an exemption for logging that would have harmed the northern spotted owl. (The request for the exemption was ultimately withdrawn.)

Only when the last renewable energy project has been canceled, the last owl has died, and the last whale been poisoned will we realize we cannot live in a dead ecosystem.

After looking them up, the PMF is aligned with Iraq, though not their official military, and they were allies to the US fighting the Islamic State, but since they are funded by the Iranian gov and are mainly Shia, even though they have been good allies to America in the past, they’re now being attacked unless the Iraqi gov disarms them.

While being funded by, and formerly sworn loyal to Iran, it sounds like Iraq legitimized them in 2016 into a still mainly independent, but now non-politically aligned force under supervision of the Iraqi supreme military leader. This is why they have been doing things such as guarding the US embassy in Baghdad as mentioned in the article.

Despite seemingly following the rules and agreements with them, they’re still “too-Iranian” for the US leadership and this was a series of “warnings” to give up their weapons to the official Iraqi military? That seems to make this whole story make sense, at least in line with how the US government seems to operate these days. Have I got the gist of it now? Thank you for your help.

So I’m a bit confused since I’m not familiar with many of the factions involved…

The US attacked bases, not on the Iraq-Iran border, but in central Iraq. There’s been no Iranian ground troop movement in other countries yet that I’m aware of, so whom exactly was the US supposed to be attacking?

I’ve caught one in the gums before. Don’t recommend it.

I at least did it to myself though. I’d feel bad if it got somebody else. I pitched that brush right in the trash.

I’m not super in the know about how all this stuff works, but it’s the result of how federation works.

You made your post on feddit, hit send, and then it flows out to every Lemmy host federated with feddit. So once you toss a post out there, it’s now out there in (insert number of federated servers) different copies stored individually on those hosts.

Now you decide to delete. That can be prioritized or handled differently based on the version of Lemmy each host is running.

I got a reply notification saying you replied to one of my comments, but when I clicked the notification, it said you deleted it.

I am even less clear about how deletes are handled, but it’s saved my butt before when I’ve accidentally deleted one of my own posts. There must be some type of buffer time between when a delete request is received and when it is actually purged.

If you hit the reply button on a deleted post, you will sometimes get to read the stored post! I can’t see your deleted comment now, so that’s what makes me think there’s a built in delay, but I obviously could read it fine yesterday to reply to what you said.

You can do it on any deleted comment. I like finding deleted down voted comments and trying this “trick” to see what things people try to hide from the record.

I’m sure I’ve if the instance communities or maybe one of the privacy ones could give you much better details, but this is my for dummies like me version.

If you’re unaware, people can also look who upvotes/downvotes. It’s not available to most people in Lemmy itself, but there’s an online tool that posts the info since it’s technically public, just obscured by the UI.

So a lot of Lemmy falls under the old “once something is on the Internet, it always is” thing. Once you post or vote, it doesn’t always just go poof when you ask the computer to make it go away.

Aww, you didn’t have to delete that. I believe you’re technically correct, since proper spaghetti is an extruded pasta.

I like all noodles, so I ignored the technicality.

Lol I did think of that, but I still thought most people’s mouths would need a break, and the second that noodle stops moving and trips the gag reflex, all chaos could break loose! That’s potentially a lot of night to have change course on you! 😧

I use a number of things on this github repo of FOSS audio tools.

Things I can recommend:
Vital (wavetable synth)
Dexed (clone of Yamaha DX7, uses sysex preset ibraries)
Dragonfly Reverb (great free reverbs)

Things I need to check out more:
VCV Rack (modular synths)
Neural Amp Modeler (guitar impulse loader)

I don’t even think you’d need a special pot. A fresh noodle into enough water you can provide gentle agitation without whacking the noodle excessively, slide it out the pot into a colander, and then again gently slide onto plate. If you want more even saucing, I’d go from colander back into a pot with some sauce on bottom, then pour more sauce over top, and out to plate to get a more even coating without having to pull the noodle through sauce. You could even hand form the noodle with a bit of work. Roll noodle dough into a sheet and make alternating cuts like this and then smooth out the bends.

To me, the real trouble with a long noodle is: then what? Would you slurp a 100 ft noodle in one go, stopping for breaths?

I love SeriesGuide for tv and movies. It shows upcoming episodes, so when a series comes back after a long break, I know a few weeks in advanced it’s coming back. Has some good categories for finding new movies as well. Being linked to trakt and IMDB to get reviews or actor info is helpful as well. Great frontend for trakt.

For anime and manga I use MyAnimeList and Anilist through Aniyomi. It auto updates the episode/chapter as you go now.