@89th said in That backwards Louisiana again: empowered teachers to hold students back who aren’t passing literacy tests One of the things I have hear about US schools is that they do a lot of "social promotion". So, someone will get promoted to the next grade level even if they really didn't meet the standard.

The one and only time I drove between London and Paris was before they finished the Chunnel. The ferry was depressing.

@Mik said in ZOMG! Trump is Killing the U.S. Defense Industry: The government needs to be less a driver of American commerce. Seems like defense would be the exception. You want them selling to ISIS and the cartels?

Fucking teatotalers.

This is good news. I suspect that certain senators that were given reassurance by Kennedy feel like they were lied to and don’t want to make the problem any worse. I’m looking down your way, Jolly. Reached by phone, Dr. Weldon, who learned of the decision last night, said he had been told by a White House official that “they didn’t have the votes to confirm” his nomination.

Bring back pay phones! [/oldman]

Sure, blame the government employees. All hail DOGE!

Yes, the south leads the country in murders.

@blondie I was initially going to use foam but a friend of mine, a plumber, recommended the fibreglass batting in HD garbage bags -a fraction of the cost of that amount of spray foam, no risk of a mess and equally as efficient at retaining heat. I think the whole exercise cost around $25 for all the material and I was done in a half hour and set the tub back into the drain. Another friend of mine once got it in his mind he could increase the efficiency of an old plastic Coleman camp cooler by drilling a few holes in the lid and sides then spraying foam into the air space between the outer and inner walls and lid. He said he saw it done on YouTube. Good thing he did it outside on his concrete patio. There was foam everywhere but where he wanted it. Cooler ended up in the garbage. Wasted two aerosol canisters of foam. He had no acetate for clean up either. Luckily I had a gallon of toluene in my garage that I gave him to clean the mess to his patio back door steps. Around the base of our back door we had an issue of mice getting into the house in the fall. Five years ago I replaced the door and casing. I managed to seal the area under the step with foam mixed with fine steel wool. Haven’t seen a mouse in the house since then.

https://www.doj.state.or.us/media-home/news-media-releases/appeals-court-lifts-hold-on-measure-114-ruling-that-oregon-gun-law-is-constitutional/ Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield issued a statement today, after an appeals court lifted the hold on Measure 114, a step forward in allowing the state to put critical gun safety protections into action. and Measure 114 includes three common sense gun safety laws: First, it requires a permit to acquire guns. Permits are available to those who pass a criminal background check, complete a gun safety course, and who are not a danger to themselves or others. Second, it closes the “Charleston Loophole” that currently allows firearm transfers to proceed if a background check takes more than three days. Finally, it restricts magazines that can carry more than ten rounds of ammunition. Even with today’s decision, the law will not go into effect immediately. Procedural rules give the challengers 35 days to seek further appellate review of the decision. Eventually, the US Supreme Court will have to make a decision.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/cockpit-voice-recorder-survived-fiery-philly-crash-but-stopped-taping-years-ago/ Cockpit voice recorders are amazingly hardened bits of tech. They are often kept in the back of the plane, so as to better survive a crash, but their audio comes from a microphone usually found on the instrument panel above and between the two pilot stations. The utility of this recording does not come just from what the pilots might say; the sound of a stall warning indicator or landing gear retraction or engine noise could each allow investigators to infer things about the flight's last moments. The NTSB eventually found the cockpit voice recorder of the Learjet 55, which was inside the impact crater and buried "under 8 ft of soil and debris." The unit was pretty beat up—or, as the government puts it, displayed "significant impact-related damage as well as liquid ingress." So NTSB sent the device to its Vehicle Recorders Laboratory in Washington, DC, hoping to salvage some of the audio. After "extensive repair and cleaning," technicians were able to listen to the tape... and they found to their chagrin that it contained nothing related to the accident. In a preliminary report on the plane crash, released last week, NTSB investigators said that "the CVR did not record the accident flight and during the audition it was determined that the CVR had likely not been recording audio for several years." Even the most hardened, comically over-specced devices can fail—and sometimes it's not even the fire, the impact, or the "liquid ingress" that brings them down. Still, NTSB is not out of options. The Learjet contained another important piece of tech: an Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS) computer. The device may contain crash data in nonvolatile memory, and it has been shipped off to its manufacturer to see what, if anything, can be recovered. [image: 54307169990_aecc3f6d50_o-scaled.jpg]

I will trade myself for her. LOL Has to include a cottage in Dingle or Galway however.

@jon-nyc Yes he is, but he probably has reason to be worried. President Trump says someone is bad - automatic 20-30% vote for the opponent, regardless of what the truth is.

Interesting. Never heard of that before. But I am not sure that the middle class is collapsing. I have not really seen signs of that. I have hear that the "wealth gap" is getting larger and larger however.

He does seem to be a savvy operator.

@Jolly said in The Latest Car Technology Is Starting to Drive People Nuts: @Mik said in The Latest Car Technology Is Starting to Drive People Nuts: I wish they'd put lane warning on semis. One just about ran me off the road Monday night. They don't need one. You moved, didn't you? Quickly, yes.

@Klaus 55555555555 …. I need to pee .. I’m laughing so hard