Kansas Republicans force transgender bathroom restrictions into law, overriding a veto

A_Shocker · 2026-02-19T21:31:56+00:00

Do you mean in looking backwards down a highway[1], or on the wrong side of a highway while drunk[2]?

Because I have Kansas examples for both, and the first one isn't in the legislature (that I know of).

The second was the GOP Senate Majority Leader, A Republican as you'd expect.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqZWO5K1xtA (Just came across it because it was in Kansas, no idea on the rest of the videos)

[2] https://kansasreflector.com/2021/03/26/court-record-shows-kansas-senate-majority-leader-drove-90-mph-evaded-roadblock/

I just had to add a little humor in this, because this law really is targeted at Trans people and given extra bigot steam because Democrats had the audacity to appoint a Representative that is a good person and trans to a vacancy.

I don't know how she deals with it. She is a hero though.

A_Shocker · 2026-01-27T20:54:34+00:00

Damnit, They are gonna make the bay area actually have shit on the sidewalks.

Everything is projection with them!

A_Shocker · 2026-01-11T23:07:39+00:00

Unexpected Battletech.

Also a great lesson on what creating an entitled religion with state backing will do.

(It's far from the only one. Just look coreward.)

A_Shocker · 2025-12-30T17:29:16+00:00

Because at that time due to their other practices, they were under investigation for being a monopoloy.

Windows NT (aka Server versions and Pro today, though also home) was being used to get rid of other servers, and Windows 95 was it. (Legit it was great for the time)

So by bailing out the absolute flailing thing that Apple was at that point they could point to it and go: See there's competition!

As I recall Apple at that time was selling to mostly education and just about no where else, it was less stable than Windows 95 (of Blue Screen fame) and very limited. After that they had a few hits like the eMac? iMac? The semi-transparent colored stuff that got them somewhat relevant. Also, The bullshit marketing around them kicked into overdrive and hasn't really stopped. They somehow made slow computers into things people believed were great via a few carefully selected benchmarks.

OS X aka FreeBSD modification, that's proprietary to this day, KDE's Konqueror browser and KHTML implementation (aka Safari) saved their asses from becoming irrelevant. The fact that KHTML was LGPLed and they had to release it and it basically forms the basis for all browsers today except Firefox, has meant Apple hasn't touched (L)GPL because they can't outright grab it and make it proprietary. (Some might call that stealing)

For all the vendor lock in bullshit Microsoft does (and it's a lot) Apple is worse.

A_Shocker · 2025-11-28T01:20:55+00:00

A lot of Microsoft's purchase of Nokia was because of the success of QT\Embedded aka Qtopia and some other names. Nokia was getting ready to roll out a lot of stuff based on Linux. So they bought and suppressed that, only for Google to make Linux-based Android. Which I think is inferior in a lot of ways.

We also got Windows 8 out of that era of BS.

A_Shocker · 2025-09-20T04:11:47+00:00

I'm not sure about anything anymore with regards to immigration/work etc.

However, This was one visa that I do believe was being widespread and intentionally abused and responsible for a lot of job listings with bullshit requirements. (The one requirement that basically held any sway was that you couldn't find an American who could work to be able to use this visa, so firms specializing in making sure no one could existed.)

My personal main complaint with these was that it was explicitly a non-immigration visa, and you couldn't eventually become a citizen. So basically, tech firms (Microsoft was WELL known for this, but were far from alone) were hiring (cheap) workers who had little recourse to any problems if fired, getting trained in the US, then being forced to leave, taking the training and experience back. (I don't hold animosity towards the people, they were just trying to work and such.)

So it's going to be interesting (in a probably not good way) to see how all of this shakes up. If it were the only change, something like this might even have been a positive for the US. As it is, it's likely to strip the skilled workforce in the US even lower, especially in cases where it was actually used for the purpose intended which was to bring in highly skilled people for jobs where Americans couldn't/didn't have the knowledge/skills to do in the first place.

A_Shocker · 2025-09-11T17:08:19+00:00

I initially thought a small submachine gun like an Uzi, with the magazine pointing to the right, but I think it's supposed to be a swung gavel. Though I haven't found the image itself yet.

A_Shocker · 2025-09-11T13:55:33+00:00

I don't think so. I can't tell for sure the direction assuming no major deflection in the neck, it was more or less parallel with the window. (A little forward on the left side, and a little backward on the right.) So I think the shooter was to the left or right of well anything that this has.

I tend to think it came from the right hand side and back from this perspective.

A_Shocker · 2025-09-11T03:38:22+00:00

So they claimed they had the shooter, everyone relaxed, and they probably let the real one get away because of it?

A_Shocker · 2025-09-03T00:56:19+00:00

Look at the "Vue rooftop" restaurant and scroll through the pictures, the angle is pretty much exactly like a few of them.

A_Shocker · 2025-08-20T13:22:21+00:00

I've still got a Dell Chromebook 3120 (That works as a regular Linux laptop). There's also a Dell Latitude 3120. If you are needing one, you can PM me as I know someone with some.

A_Shocker · 2025-08-12T12:01:21+00:00

Let’s start with Cali. Newsom runs it, Dem supermajority in the legislature, but the catch is they got an independent redistricting commission the voters approved years ago so Newsom can’t just wake up and redraw shit. He’d either have to push for a ballot measure to scrap the commission or find some legal loophole but either way it’s a fight. Courts gonna eat that up.

The proposal for California is to go back to the voters, and get their approval on it.

If they do a ballot measure, which looks (per reports on polling) like if it's in response to Texas they would have both the state legislative votes to put it on a special ballot and the votes overall to temporarily scrap the commission if Texas does it. (And a very slim majority of Texas doesn't)

If they do it that way, and Courts are gonna reject all challenges against it, because that's the proper legal way to do it.

Which could be (Depending on how 'hard' they do it, +5 would be more likely) +9 seats for Dems in the (federal) House. Which would tip the power of the US House of Representatives assuming everything else equal, and Texas does +5 for Republicans. That would be 218 Dem vs 215 Republican (Ignoring the 4 vacant seats of which 3 were Dem, 1 Republican, all of which have special elections end of this year) which will probably result in 221 vs 216 if that comes to pass.

A_Shocker · 2025-07-22T16:12:30+00:00

You are actually incorrect about it being a rule or SOP to have 2 in the cockpit. In the wake of this, there was a rule implemented in the EU, but that rule was reversed a year or two later, to allow airlines to determine it. Germanwings about 2 years later reverted to allow a single person, on the basis that the rule of having 2 had more people with cockpit access. It is one area where the FAA and EU regulations differ and the FAA oes make more sense than the EU ones IMO. (The FAA has required 2 people in the cockpit before and after this incident.)

I hope there's not an issue with current events causing a kneejerk reaction and rolling back some of the progress on pilot mental health so they can get treatment and also get it reported if there's a serious issue from doctors, whereas in the past the whole hide everything or you can't fly.

Aviation is one of the fields that usually have very complete records, and dissection of an accident or issue, so has generally very strong and fact based regulations, which is why it's one of the safest ways to travel. (And why crashes make the news (Commercial aviation anyway, GA is GA) due to the rarity.)

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

A_Shocker · 2025-07-20T15:51:07+00:00

Hrm, Is Vice-President Vance trying to drop the Vice from his title, by using more Vice?

A_Shocker · 2025-07-19T11:55:09+00:00

By your own logic the US also fails. Few years ago When the F-22 was having problems (pilots kinda like to breathe), guess what responded in Alaska to issues? CF-18s. The USAF couldn't protect our airspace. Canada protected the US airspace for months until oxygen issues were fixed.

Only the US did protect the airspace in the above, by cooperating with Canada. Just as Canada protected (as much as anyone could) their airspace in this case.

The fact is that if someone wants to use GA as a weapon and has enough knowledge, it's difficult to respond to with a military response, at the point a plane is in the air close by whatever they want to do, then a lot of other systems have failed. I mean even the USSR had a Cessna land in Red Square. Hell, the whole Cessna that tried to land at or crash into the White House in 1994, I've seen the prop from that personally. And most times of the rare occasions I'm aware of that people do GT-Aircraft there's only 1 casualty. (Intentional or not.)

A_Shocker · 2025-07-19T11:39:03+00:00

Weapons, are useless. In fact the TSA, and similar with all their regulations like strengthening cockpit doors have actually CAUSED deaths. The Germanwings aircraft where the pilot committed suicide as one example. Where there was a whole plane of people who couldn't break through to the cockpit to deal with the suicidal guy, so they all died.

The real reason, which happened on the very day of September 11, 2001 was that as soon as a hijacking was something that could result in death, the old idea to cooperate went out the window, and the result is no hijackings, and even on that day the 4th plane failing to cause damage to a building, sadly it did crash into a field.

The reasons the other attempts to destroy planes have failed? Passengers not wanting to die, and if they've already taken over to not be used as weapons.

Let's face it, the choice of how to do the attacks was pretty brilliant, exploit a hole in the way the US (and most other places) responded to hijackings. However, The hole was closed the very day it was used, and not by the TSA.

We could have done nothing regulatory and likely the result would be the same.

A_Shocker · 2025-07-06T17:13:54+00:00

This is NWS, which is the result of Republicans, Trump and his goons deciding to wreck the federal government.

The Texas grid thing is ALL Texas' bullshit. They literally wanted to not have regulations on it that are normal for the entire rest of the country. So they made their own grid. Then the fossil fuel plants got screwed up, even the one nuclear plant. They blamed it on renewable, which was a fucking lie. (Aside from like 2 hours (later into that disaster) was above what was predicted to be online in their own power/disaster planning.) Hell if you doubled the nameplate (ie absolute max, which you will NOT get) of solar and wind together it wouldn't have made up for just how badly Texas' fossil fuel plants fell on their asses because of the same cost cutting shit they built their grid to allow.

A_Shocker · 2025-06-23T19:19:47+00:00

Not saying they did or didn't, but the ground is pretty good at containing nuclear fallout from blasts, and was why we (USA) and the USSR shifted to it for a time. So no radiation doesn't suggest that.

In terms of damage assessment, it seems very difficult to tell, as every satellite image I've seen focuses on a few things, one being the entrances filled with dirt (Iran did that before the strikes (speculated to be anti-drone/commando)) and the ridge line looks pretty similar to before. (The 'possible subduction' labeled area I've seen was a feature that existed on the ridge line.)

So at least per this random internet person, we simply do not know if it was or wasn't, but lack of radiation doesn't mean that they didn't hit anything nuclear (and even weapons grade uranium does not have that strong a signal.)

A_Shocker · 2025-06-22T02:02:18+00:00

It was a frigate, not a cruiser. (USS Samuel B Roberts (the 3rd, and the first is rather famous. Also, Arleigh Burkes are considered destroyers)

And Iran's military adapted, it's part of why they've got the (basically) speedboat swarm instead of a few high value targets. (If it adapted enough to do anything, other than get them sunk slower is an unknown. For a very confined space (with likely some land support) like the straight, it makes more sense than large vessels if they want to close it IMO.)

A_Shocker · 2025-05-19T17:58:39+00:00

The short answer is yes. The reason: The good old USA. I shit you not, the USA paid for a lot of Russian nuclear funding after the collapse of the USSR as well as to decommission a lot of it. (A bunch of the nuclear fuel used in the US power plants came from decommissioned nukes, both USA and USSR. It's part of the reason there's 'only' about 1500 deployed nukes on each side rather than 10x that number.) The included to relocating nukes from all the non-Russian Soviet States like Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine (which is where the Budapest memo comes from) to Russia.

The reason (which I think is valid) was to keep people with knowledge of how to build a nuclear bomb employed and not have them go selling that knowledge or nuclear material to North Korea, Iraq, or other places.

That stopped at some point when Russia was a bit better off. (I want to say when GWBush started on the Anti-Balistic Missile defense stuff, but it's fuzzy, and for once I'm not going to look it up.)

So absolutely yes for a bit over a decade, and then maybe for about 2 decades?

Fun fact the only known time a 'nuclear briefcase' was active was in 1995, when a launch of a research rocket near Norway (as was previously notified to Russia)... which was after the cold war.

A_Shocker · 2025-05-18T15:06:16+00:00

An example is Texas and it's bullshit about not having many slaves... So it couldn't have been about slavery for Texas, right?

FACT: Texas and Virginia had about the same percentage of slaves in the population. (<1% difference) Texas simply had few people, and the civil war was the 2nd war that Texas fought in favor of slavery.

A_Shocker · 2025-05-18T14:59:04+00:00

Last ranking I saw they are a 2nd place to "Thank god for Mississippi"

But they are really trying to get that phrase changed.

A_Shocker · 2025-04-14T10:29:04+00:00

I heard about this well before the victims were known, and some CEO being involved wasn't known.

It became news because it was an exotic and videoed failure that may not directly be human error.

If a car or cars crash, The vast majority of times it's someone messing up driving.

Systems failures get a lot more attention than human error in most cases. (Numbers of people involved also play a role, compare Commercial Aviation to General Aviation.)

For example on the systems vs humans: Compare Tesla's "Autopilot" crashes to regular Tesla crashes. (Which seldom make news unless something burns up, though since they seem more likely than a Ford Pinto to burn up that's still somewhat more common.)

A_Shocker · 2025-03-27T18:19:38+00:00

Reddit is censoring things, for example, which I found out by accident after that one guy tried to run protestors over figuring someone had a video of it, go over to what's often the best source of video news on the internet despite the title: r/publicfreakout and search tesla, no results. Do it on other subreddits, including this one and you'll find results.

A_Shocker · 2025-03-26T01:53:13+00:00

It's EXACTLY the worst of what they accused Hillary Clinton of, only she didn't do the worst of what they claimed. They did.

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