• 0 Posts
  • 59 Comments
Joined 11 months ago
cake
Cake day: December 19th, 2023

help-circle
  • Your state likely has a web page designated for election results, so you could get information straight from the source for everything you voted for in your state and see which way your state goes for the presidential election. Your county website may also have a page to show whether any propositions were accepted or rejected.

    I’m not sure about a better source to see where all 50 states’ results are reported. Maybe Balllotpedia has something that updates. I’m not sure the federal government would have something because the official results won’t happen until January 6 when a joint session of Congress reads and counts the votes from the Electoral College (who doesn’t vote until December 17).


  • That’s not true in TX cities. I’ve lived in DFW, Houston metroplex, and Austin and have never had less than 15 polling places. They might not be next door to your work, but they are within a few monute drive.

    TX was also the first state to allow early voting and mandates that polls are open at least 9 hours the first week and at least 12 hours the second week and final day of voting. That’s the minimum, not maximum. There were also polling places open on the weekends.

    That said, I have heard (although haven’t researched it) that some very rural areas are more difficult to vote in with only a couple polling places in the county. So that could be the case if you live in the middle of nowhere, but you’ll pass polling places on your way to/from work. Just think of it like you would a doctor appointment and put it on your schedule.

    TX is pretty purple and is turning more blue each cycle.

    2004: Kerry lost by ~1.9 million votes 2008: Obama lost by ~990,000 votes 2012: Obama lost by ~1.2 million votes 2016: Clinton lost by ~800,000 votes 2020: Biden lost by ~640,000 votes

    In 2020, had just 3.5% more of the registered voters cast a ballot for Biden, he would have won. That’s about how many people voted each day of early voting in this election.





  • They left out Weathertop.

    When Bugs runs into the Nazgul, he goes into Nazgul drag and seduces the Witch King. He steps around the corner, drops a handkerchief, and calls out yoohoo at the Nazgul, who all start drooling and tumbling over themselves to pick up the handkerchief. Bugs walks passed them, giving each one a little attention and in the process ties their shoes together. After making it around all of them, he drops the handkerchief again and all the Nazgul fight over it, while Bugs zips off the tower leaving his drag clothes behind. One of the Nazgul realizes they were tricked and they all trip over their shoes tied together.






  • It’s definitely been getting worse. The written directions aren’t always accurate. Exits sometimes have the wrong label. Lanes are missing on the highways when they merge and separate.

    I’ve also seen a similar thing with routes not always showing up or giving bad directions. It attempted to take me through a school bus barn and even through someone’s yard once.


  • They were at it at least a year before the 2016 election cycle. I believe it was the CIA that said Russia was the one that created the Jade Helm scare in 2015 through social media influence.

    Jade Helm was the name of a training operation of the US military in central TX near Temple. The Russians created a bunch of posts claiming that Obama was taking over local Walmarts and emptying them of all merchandise to use as prisoners for his political opponents. They even drew diagrams of the insides of the stores with the holding cells and everything. So great was the Russian influence that Abbott (who is still Governor of TX) ordered the TX National Guard to watch the training exercise and make sure that the US military wasn’t storming homes and taking prisoners.




  • I can remember a time that after a search, you’d just have a list of links. No extra boxes on the side or even an images tab, just the list of links. At the bottom of the page was the word “Google” and there would be more O’s, as they were links to other pages of results.

    If there were sponsored links, it didn’t say so and you’d end up with different sites at the top of the list. So I don’t think way back there were.


  • Oh that’s true, my headphones with noise canceling were also over-the-ear. I found that turning on the noise canceling worked great and brought down the sound of a lawnmower really well by playing sound waves opposite the waves of the motor to cancel each other out. I wasn’t thinking about another pair of ear buds.

    The wireless headphones that I was using went around your head and didn’t pump the sound directly into your ear, but were supposed to use some bone conduction. I’m not sure if that’s part of the battery issue that I saw. I just know that my phone itself would die before the end of my shift if I was using Bluetooth headphones (provided the headphones didn’t die first) and I would still have battery left after using wired earbuds.


  • I’m confused how your pro #2 has to do with wireless headphones, as you could find much cheaper wired headphones with noise canceling even 20 years ago. I’m not sure about pass-through, but I imagine that’s more of a feature now because of technology upgrades.

    I even used those wired headphones while mowing the lawn with noise cancelling and could hear the music without having to crank the volume to max. I think there might have even been an EQ button with different settings pre-made (however weren’t customizable to my knowledge). Not sure whether that’s also just because of the technological process now or not.

    I’d say battery life is another con for wireless headphones, both for the headphones themselves and the device being used. I have worked a job where we’d have some shifts as long as 10-12 hours and with wired headphones, I’d still have 20-30 percent of the phone battery left, even if I had been listening to YouTube videos with the brightness all the way down. However, with the wireless headphones either my headphones or my phone would die before the end of a long shift like that and I’d be stuck without my music for the last 2-3 hours, even just listening to music with no video.



  • The US isn’t any more concerned about sexual orientation now than any point in the past. Back in colonial times, it wouldn’t have been safe to be anything other than straight with all the hyper religious colonists. They were even forcing their gender conformity and the straight sexual orientation on the Native Americans. Baron Friedrich von Steuben got a pass for being gay, probably because he was the one in charge of training the troops for Washington. 100 years ago, you could be killed on the street for being anything other than straight or denied jobs. The Lavender scare of the mid century brought this more to light. The AIDS crisis that started in the 80s and bled through into the 90s and 2000s as new medicines were being invented, further brought negative light to sexual orientations outside of straight. The cause of all of this attention to sexual orientation has been the religions brought over by colonists.

    In recent years, sexual orientations outside of straight are finally being seen in a positive light with Lawrence v TX (2003) legalizing same-sex relationships and Hodges v Obergefell (2015) legalizing same-sex marriages. In Bostock v Clayton County (2020) legal protections against job discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity were finally put into place over 70 years after the start of the Lavender Scare.

    The attention to sexual orientation has always been part of North American history. It has just changed from acceptance with the Native American peoples to hate, death, and intolerance under the colonists, to a more accepting present day. With some of the positive news in recent years, it can be easy to forget (if you’re surrounded by progressives in a blue state) that the hate of sexuality injected into North America in the 15th Century still has hold over large portions of the population today.