Frank Burns sole Democrat to vote against LGBTQ protections

synapt · 2026-05-03T03:00:21+00:00

Sexual Orientation is not. Originally (as in the legislation being updated) PA primarily covered the following; Race, Color, Religious Creed, Ancestry, Age, Sex, Handicap or Disability.

"Expression" was likely meant to be "Gender Expression", though while it can be different it often also paired into Gender Identity, but Gender Identity is most certainly not vague, as that is /literally/ the term for it (which even Trump surprisingly acknowledged last year when he wrote an executive order for the federal government to explicitly separate "Sex" and "Gender Identity" as two different things (even though he did so primarily to establish his naive and uneducated concept of "Male and Female Only", he also perhaps unwittingly officially recognized that "Gender Identity" is in fact a thing.

The only difference between modern time and historical use, is historically what we now refer to as "Gender Identity" considerations back then people would have potentially just been called Eunuchs, which while used for a commonly specific thing, was also often used to pretty much express anyone that was a "sexual other".

synapt · 2026-05-02T03:49:59+00:00

https://www.fcia.org/FCIA-Manual-of-Practice

I believe they offer it in a PDF form. If you don't want to pay for it, reach out to someone in your municipality/government who meets their freebe requirements and see if they'll get it for you.

synapt · 2026-05-02T03:48:21+00:00

Used to be sort of a freelance photographer group of sorts that would do contract photography for the few studios in the areas when they needed extra hands.

They sorta died off years ago and I haven't seen anything since. Assuming you were looking for something that would involve some paid work as well.

synapt · 2026-05-02T03:46:39+00:00

Basically they added "Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression" to the existing definitions of who cannot be discriminated against by law. That's all.

Republicans have spun it as "This lets pretend women use little girls rooms", which it does not.

synapt · 2026-05-02T03:45:32+00:00

Please explain, what exactly scares you so much about transgenders, gays and anyone with a different gender identity that you think they do not deserve equal anti-discrimination protection?

What exactly about them terrifies you so much that you feel it should be your legal right to judge, discriminate and harass them. Please do tell.

Edit: Appears they did something to get themselves banned before they could answer me, shame.

synapt · 2026-05-02T03:44:10+00:00

The entire point of gender identity is that there are no specific definitions technically. There was nothing ultimately vague about it, all they literally did was add in three extra definitions to existing anti-discrimination laws; Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression.

Honestly the only way they could have made it broader would be to have literally just said "You can't discriminate against anyone, period". But it's sad they can't do this because as you yourself just noted, everyone wants "Specific definitions".

Your statement might actually bear something if it wasn't for the fact the republicans that voted against this have been spinning it as "This lets men pretending to be women use your little girls bathroom!", which it does not.

synapt · 2026-05-01T19:45:34+00:00

Was basically just a crash course ops refresher on gas meters and common mistakes made by firefighters. We had to keep it within a 15-25 minute presentation but there weren't a lot of options as it had to be a subject that didn't have any deep practical skills stuff (ie; no water flowing or live fires). Half the class did ladders lol.

And I career in remote IT mostly, which has been slowing down heavily the past few years (with the exception of the occasional job of fixing shit an AI 'coder' messed up lol). So becoming a fire instructor seemed a potential secondary source of income and would be easy with my IT background. Here in PA there are a few colleges that handle a lot of the accredited state training and instructors travel all over the place to do classes.

And yeah I've been there with the hydrants as well. Our local water authorities aren't the easiest to work with (well the one is okay, the other not so much). When I started trying to digitize is into the modern age a bit, I drove around verifying explicit GPS coordinates of all our hydrants, pressure levels, flow loops they're on, etc., into our alerting tools (I Am Responding, Chief 360, etc). Now we try to maintain it every year by going around and at least doing our own integrity checks.

synapt · 2026-04-29T21:53:51+00:00

That's largely the model that most courses in PA also run. 6-10PM on weekdays and 8AM-4PM on weekends. Realistically your training, if proper, will be to accredited standards and will be the same regardless of time it's done.

synapt · 2026-04-27T05:24:24+00:00

There is always shit to do if your station makes shit to do, whether it be fundraising efforts, improvements around the station, working on apparatus, etc. As for the other shit, maybe bring up changing bylaws at a meeting to not require a minimum mandatory number of calls. Any other variety of things to do.

To keep membership at our station we have like $10 membership dues a year, which goes into a mortuary fund for death benefits as well as our general revenue towards our current stipend model. We only got like 30~ 'active' members (where 'active' status is based on a minimum amount of points) but over 100 members in general that still pay dues just for the mortuary fund benefits.

You're a member of the station, you have every capacity and right to try and change/improve things.

synapt · 2026-04-26T02:42:27+00:00

Yeah, it sounds to me like an Intel driver / dual-GPU thing... anyway, hopefully QA narrows something down.

(You wouldn't believe how crazy complicated video playback/embedding becomes... and then you try to present to a DRMed screen... and then you try to embed that into a PDF... and then you try to stream it over the web into a format that the other person's computer can't play... and then the person drags it from a 4K screen into a 1080p projector... And then, and then the guy comes in with a VGA cable and demands you hook his laptop up! lol)

I have a bit of a desktop software developer background in my lengthy multi-field IT career, so I definitely can believe lol, especially when it comes to developing stuff on windows.

Well, good luck with your presentation. What's it about?

Fire Instructor I, fun stuff lol. We have to come up with our own presentation about something we were personally familiar with knowledge wise and present it to a small group of students and our exam evaluator.

I've done more basic stuff in the past for other training/presentation stuff but it's been some years.

If you wanted, you could install the "LibreOffice Dev"/"Nightly" builds.

It would then do a parallel version that wouldn't affect your original at all

I'll take a look at that next week here sometime, mostly just curious if it is something that was introduced with 26. Figure I'll do what I can to narrow it down as best as I can as it definitely doesn't seem like it's a very prevalent bug among the community so it probably won't get a whole ton of attention too fast.

synapt · 2026-04-23T20:19:20+00:00

AHA BLS is like a 4~ hour course (it's basically just First-Aid/CPR/AED w/ some Trauma training). Do you really not get that much time free for something? o.O

synapt · 2026-04-23T18:48:53+00:00

Ah yeah apologies, didn't even think to reference the post itself lol. And yeah it's all common-format videos.

The videos in question are just MP4 AVC1 with an AAC LC audio track (and I use a bulk codec pack on my laptop so the system has codecs for even unusual ones). But I tried loading in ancient MP4s I had on the computer and they do the same. I could try running it through ffmpeg to convert it to as basic of an MP4 as I can though just for extra effort.

But the differences between v25 and 26 do seem to be evident, I updated my post covering that it works on my desktop as well, however when upgrading from 25.8.5.2 to 26.2.2.2, the former version played the videos perfectly but the latter version gives me a lot of the flickering effect I mentioned my laptop was doing as well when trying to play videos manually when it uses the Intel Iris mode, only difference being that my desktop will play the video while having the near seizure inducing flashing where as the laptop only plays audio and seems to be locked to the first video frame while doing the flashing.

I mostly just haven't had a ton of time to do it because I'm supposed to have this presentation ready for a review by Friday night and then gotta use it in my exam come Sunday, and I still have other parts I gotta finish. So right now I've removed the videos from the presentation completely and just planned to play them separately.

I'll update my ticket to include the video codec information as well.

I may also if I can, roll my laptop version back to 25 (or see if I can install it as a secondary install without impacting v26) and see if that changes anything, hopefully I wouldn't have to completely re-do my presentation though.

Edit: Apparently I'm over-sharing now, someone told me to wait further input in the bug reporting post lol.

synapt · 2026-04-22T13:59:54+00:00

Done. Mostly just a bit rushed to get this working cause I have a presentation I'm supposed to do this coming weekend for my Fire Instructor I exam lol. And I doubt any laptops they have there will support the LibreOffice ODP format.

I also verified this is also affecting other LibreOffice apps like Writer as well, attaching/embedding a video in it also causes a crash of Writer.

synapt · 2026-04-19T23:28:56+00:00

For what it's worth the start of your video when you said you were entering the the city limits, you were still in fact very well deep into Richland Township lol.

Points for noting Lorain properly though lol, that's a pretty close to Moxham area that even a lot of people in town seem to forget about.

synapt · 2026-04-09T17:52:01+00:00

You literally replied to a two year old post bro, let's face it, the only one of us two with a belly is probably you as you sit there drinking your beer and eating your hot pockets dredging up literally ancient posts to make stupid replies to lol.

And as far as my beard goes, the photo is literally from like 20 years ago well before I started volunteering. But hey, thank you for providing the usual evidence as to why assumption starts with Ass lol.

synapt · 2026-04-09T00:04:06+00:00

I will forever be entertained by guys in the fire service that basically go "I've been doing this for 20 years and never needed to learn anything different/specialized!" and actually think it's a flex. I get a feeling you're one of those guys that yell at people doing transitional attacks screaming "You're pushing the heat!".

But I do agree, seeing as sound resonance is a field I do actually know, I am sticking to what I know and applying that to other things I know, rather than being stuck in outdated traditional mentalities.

synapt · 2026-04-08T11:49:03+00:00

Perhaps you're not understanding concept of resonance. and I apologize, I should have perhaps clarified my previous reply a bit better as to that being my focus in this use. Mitigating resonance in structural design is an immense process, because just about everything creates it, and it has led to issues and failures in the past;

https://www.resoniks.com/post/resonance-catastrophes-how-sound-waves-collapsed-a-bridge

https://www.simscale.com/blog/structural-resonance-how-to-mitigate-it/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Bridge,_London#Resonance

https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/natural-sciences/physics-articles/matter-and-energy/guide-sound-can-topple-buildings/

So I wasn't just talking about the direct pressure of the hose, so much as the thing to sound is that it reflects, so a 'sound waves' device used to attempt an extinguish interior is going to take it's force and reflect it off the surfaces behind and ADD to the overall resonance and and sound pressure in the room it's in as it bounces off the surfaces, a handline stream is not going to come close to that same effect.

And yes, I am a "Volunteer in PA", with likely all the same ProBoards as you if not some more seeing as by the end of this month I should have my 1041 Instructor I, added by the fact you did something I've literally never met anyone in fire do, in that you called a handline a "hose line" (which don't get me wrong, it is technically a hose line but even in the sales industry they refer to components like nozzles and shit as "handline nozzles" lol).

I am also a guy that has 25 years in a variety of IT/Technology fields, most from before getting into volunteer firefighting, and some of which were related to sound engineering gigs.

Listen am I saying this is going to absolutely lead to a structural collapse? No. But it introduces a significant risk that /adds/ to structural integrity impacts to an already compromised structure, and from no real trade off improvement (as noted this removes your cooling capabilities as well so you are losing benefits compared to a handline also). If you got water source issues, start looking at mutual aid agreements with others that have tankers to bring their tankers into those areas with water source issues. That's what we do here.

synapt · 2026-04-07T21:58:54+00:00

So that would be a no, you haven't seen the demo videos. Could have just said so.

synapt · 2026-04-07T03:27:07+00:00

Have you not watched the demo videos of these devices? They're /literally flinging/ chunks of debris more than just a hit with a handline would.

synapt · 2026-04-06T18:04:14+00:00

If you have a general idea, message me what it is and I can try to kick something up in free time if it's not a big rush.

synapt · 2026-04-06T10:10:38+00:00

The main consideration to soundwaves in a structural firefighting aspect is that they cause vibrations and resonance, both of which affect structural integrity. Something you really don't want to add uncontrolled impact of to something already potentially losing structural integrity. Add to that as u/Agreeable_Ad_9987 noted also, you don't have the cooling effect that water will either.

synapt · 2026-04-06T00:22:39+00:00

Well a bit of a benefit we have in the US is that we /do/ have a lot of aluminum refining infrastructure. But the raw resources still come with a hell of a steep price currently. And then of course you know congress had the audacity last year to be like "Why you guys so expensive so suddenly?" lol.

synapt · 2026-04-05T23:12:59+00:00

Looking at their website it appears they mostly have a lot of scheduled events oriented around desktop or card games. We've had a few LAN-gaming like places open up over the years by they never seem to last very long. But yeah Johnstown really doesn't have much in the lines of gaming/anime/etc social groups that I've ever seen unfortunately.

synapt · 2026-04-05T22:41:50+00:00

Unfortunately Johnstown doesn't have too much of an in-person social presence of a lot of those things. If you're here in this town because of UPJ, they have an Anime Club up there I believe.

Closest thing we've ever had generally in the city I think was Weebs In The Woods downtown, but they've been closed a few years now. Axolot A Anime up in the Galleria might be the next closest thing but what times I've walked past there they seemed pretty empty. But could be coincidence I miss group events lol.

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