Funny enough the city and especially the horseshoe curve were prime targets during the cold war.

As someone whose family is from Altoona, let me say that the abomination that is that pizza is not widely available in the city (a number of people in my family didn’t even know of it’s existence until the last decade or so) and most locals find it as baffling and disgusting as the rest of us. I’m also unsurprised that someone there would rat him out in hope of a reward, that city is the corpse of what it used to be, now stuffed to bursting with low-wage retail and healthcare jobs. It’s also a conservative bastion, go figure.

Just over half of those who voted said yes, there’s still a lot of us who voted against this and watched in horror as the remainder proceeded to fuck us over. From those of us who voted against this: we tried our best and hate this as much as the rest of the sane world. Good luck trying to salvage things out there, it’s going to be increasingly difficult for us to act openly against this soon. If you can, put the thumbscrews to us in whatever way you can. We’ll suffer, but then again we’re already going to be.

Agreed, there’s no easy geographical divide, making this all the more messy. I’d guess that such a partition would result in three countries (Northeast, South&Central, and West), but it would likely take a very bloody war first. I wish I knew how we could do it sanely. It’s a pipe dream, I know, but one that I’d like to believe is possible.

As an American, I’m in agreement with that in concept. Partition would be a harrowing process though, as people scramble to go where they feel they belong. I’m not sure such a process could happen without another civil war.

He’s caught in a catch-22 with that idea; if he uses his expanded powers he may well spark another civil war, but if he doesn’t, we face possible (perhaps even likely) conversion to a fascist dictatorship. I’d honestly prefer breaking up the country to the alternative.

Fair, I had forgotten about that!

Side benefit: mid-day is once again at 12:00, instead of being at 13:00 DST. Not an issue for some, but it’s annoying for me to know that the sun’s local apex is an hour later than it should be.

Adding to this, I surmise that the inevitable comparisons to the triumvirates of republican Rome would not have gone over very well. I wonder if that was brought up at all when it was brought to the floor for discussion.

I don’t work in IT/Tech at all, but I’ve been an enthusiast since I was young, at first piggybacking off of my dad, then developing my own interests as I got into high school and college. I started self-hosting because I found it interesting and as time progressed I saw the benefits of operating things locally. I only host things within my own network though, because I’m not yet comfortable with how to safely set up external access.

While I know you’re being funny, for those unaware, the snakes being referred to with St Patrick were a euphemism for the non-Christian beliefs in Ireland.

Teacher here; this is the first thing I do on day one with new students! You want to build a classroom community of mutual respect; failure to do so makes for a hostile classroom and a wasted year.

Let me pop in as a high school teacher in the US. I make decent pay, but it took me over a decade climbing the pay ladder to reach this point. It’s only been in the last five years that I’ve made enough to afford the mortgage on a house (well, prior to all of the rate hikes, but that’s another issue entirely). But there’s another problem: You’re expected to put in 10% of the value (even with first-time buyer incentives) as a down payment (I last looked with any seriousness in '22). I have yet to be able to put away 5% of the average costs in my region, much less 10%. Every time I start building back up, other costs drain most or all of that within a year or two. Unless the housing market bursts big time, I’m not likely to be able to afford a home anytime soon. Note: I would rather keep renting than take a variable-rate mortgage; the last three years have seen previously affordable mortgages with variable rates go sky-high.

On the hardware from the early '00s in my collection I’ve had good results from AntiX and Q4OS.

It took about 25 systems of searching to find my first one; I also found the updated ice world foliage in that same system, pretty cool stuff!

When our best friends were getting married and we met at the rehearsal dinner. Her best friend had been trying to get us to meet for years (our work schedules and lives in general always kept us from meeting). Within two months we were dating and have been together ever since.

High school teacher (Latin)

My first was SUSE followed shortly thereafter by the initial release of Fedora Core. Lots of distro hopping and tinkering later, I run LMDE these days as my daily driver and I distro hop on the other computers in my collection.

It’s my daily driver; the benefits of mint with the stability of a Debian base.

Interesting, my ear cushions are still in decent shape (I’ve only had them about a year now). I bought a replacement set early on just to have in storage, but I’ve yet to need them.