I think it’s worth pointing out that you don’t necessarily get high crime levels in whole countries where everyone’s poor together. It’s any sort of poverty seen directly alongside extreme wealth (i.e. economic inequality) that’s been shown in studies to contribute to crime, along with numerous other societal ills.

For the letter or spelling something out, I’ll always say “zed.” I think for the most part I only say “zee” if I’m using acronyms that are either specific to US organizations or that both originated there and are still considered to be tightly associated with that country (like if I need to refer to some product from a US company, though none come to mind at the moment).

¿TacoGatotaGocaT?

As long as she’s harshly critical, it’s a perfectly valid use of “blasts.” It’s just not the particular dictionary definition many of us would have preferred, apparently. Convenient sentence phrasing like “blasts the heads” does make me think the writer is wanting to create a certain image though. 😄

*Love this, except technically I think that’s a “bombs Lebanon” in the middle (a condition of the ceasefire was for Israel to stop flattening Southern Lebanon and parts of Beirut).

Double Matrix all the way, oooh my god. (It’s starting to look like a Triple Matrix!)

There isn’t only one reason for that to happen. I have two old smartphones around. Both are no longer usable with any worthwhile mobile service in Canada. The first (and oldest - originally mine before becoming a hand-me-down to a relative) went out of use after the elderly person who was using it had it active for a year or two but then stopped bothering with it due to his illness keeping him at home and preference for larger screens in general. The other I’d still be using (still use it for some things!) if I could. I have always used my computers, phones, etc. as long as I could get away with but for #2, I had to get a newer (but used) phone to keep service after the end of 3G in Canada. The new phone is definitely nicer in some ways but I wouldn’t have changed phones if I had a choice. 🤷🏾‍♀️

Vance had a visit with the last pope at the Vatican, right before he died. At the time, Francis was trying to get him to acknowledge biblical teachings to love your neighbour (and I think that ICE was the antithesis of this), and not the vaguely dystopian stuff Vance was pushing about only only offering respect/kindness/compassion to the people closest to you.

I wouldn’t mind protective, citizen-first regulation like data privacy laws (instead of the current route of surveillance and harvesting our data for inevitable abuse by data brokers or worse), as well as protections against sudden profit-driven EULA changes and other unethical business practices.

“Antifa” branding was embraced by anti-fascist soldiers of WWII. That’s a bit of a while ago now!

My first experience with it was when I learned a couple of decades ago that not all skinheads were nazis and that there were in fact anti-fascist skinhead punks who called themselves “Antifa.” To be honest, some of them openly bragged about beating up nazi skinheads so I suppose there was some violence involved. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump heard about those folks and they’re the ones he means, even though they don’t totally own the idea of “Antifa.”

Here, these are the first links I can find (in place of the videos I heard it from). It’s about a meme Trump posted of himself (There’s also a difference between his version shown at the link and the original which I can’t find - his has a demonic figure up top where there were only shadowy images of soldiers)
And then this…
Trump Responds to Backlash Over Meme Depicting Him as Jesus: ‘I Thought It Was Me as a Doctor’ | Video

edit - posted this in a rush a few hours ago, but I’ve seen the before image again now and the original had the soldiers up top with angel wings and Trump’s version ditched the wings except new darker and higher-angled (more bat-like?) ones on the new demon-like figure that’s in the lead. Is somebody is doing this on purpose?

If you watch the video of this, Trump keeps emphasizing “Door Dash Granny’s” (on her shirt) husband needs cancer treatment. That could be scripted or she could be a real Dasher that got paid some (probably very small) payoff to do this. Either way it’s just a photo op where he tries to play up how his Big Bill throws pennies at poor people by not taxing tips (which from what I’ve heard have often been stolen not just by restaurant managers/owners but even through apps in some cases).

I think the silver lining to this is that whatever they do from here can’t be written off as concessions to avoid a non-confidence vote. They own everything from here, including whatever the floor-crossers do next. Perhaps Carney announcing “AI for all” is going to be the start of their downfall if they don’t stop ignoring what most Canadians want prioritized.

I have an older Aura that isn’t allowed library books. :/

Yup, and just to clarify on the typo above, she’s *pro-conversion therapy. 🤢

Seems their AI lego music videos have also been gaining quite a following.

The limited scope isn’t representative of the US public, it’s representative of news cycles.

Costa Rican Spectacled Owl: effortless style that lasts a lifetime

…but morale can remain low as always?

I’m sure amateur and professional historians that specialize in that era of US history are interested, but definitely not as much as we all are in a certain other set of files.