Yup, just an excuse for many to be outraged. If the shooter was the most liberal dude on the planet, that’s not a reason to go after anyone deemed ultra-liberal, whatever that means anymore. Biden/Kamala is as far left as a communist or social democrat to these kinds of people, but as we see, those 3 groups don’t get along from a leftist perspective.

Plus the shooter was like 20 years old. How deep is your political ideology at 20? If his family is MAGA as nobody seems to dispute, he’s been raised Republican more than he’s had any chance to form any real opinions, so the excuse is really flimsy for either side to be placing much blame politically.

As unbiased as I can be, if you liked Kirk, it sucks that he was killed. But you know who did it, and you caught him and he admitted it. That’s more closure than most people who have loved ones murdered get. He broke a law, murder, everyone seemingly agrees is a no-no. Punish the dude according to law, the end. Any more than that, and you’re using it for your own selfish purposes.

Yeah, I know there’s been a lot of told-ya-sos, but he tricked enough of us. I’m still glad he’s there rather than Oz, but I hate all these shit people running such a good chunk of the state. PA is pretty cool, and even a lot of the MAGAs I know aren’t usually the worst people, I just hate when they get the power to back up their dumbass talk. I just think we deserve better as a state. But I guess pretty much every state is in a similar mess right now…

I pretty much only knew the name and that he was a right wing propagandist like a Rush Limbaugh or Tucker Carlson or the like.

The vast majority of people I don’t think really loved or hated him as actively as they are doing right now. This is just a moment for both sides to radicalize over what they see as either proof the conservative haters are all violent and need to be dealt with in kind, or for those that do want anti-conservative violence to call it “a good start.”

I feel he met an end that isn’t really much of a surprise, as he encouraged “his people” to oppress others and/or yo provide extreme reactions from his opposition. He encouraged violence, but it backfired on him.

Never paid him much mind before and not planning to start now. I am worried about what unrelated people are going to suffer the vengeance for one random person’s actions.

My feelings on the public’s general reaction is it’s a more extreme version of what happens when a celebrity dies that most people probably already thought died years ago. People talk like they were the greatest thing ever when they either never watched the movies before or hadn’t seen them or thought about them in ages. They’re just fired up as an excuse for attention or to push an agenda.

But as I said, never listened to the guy, so I may be a little off, but he was filed under radical conservative in my mind and that was good enough for me.

We should really get do-overs on our votes when people misrepresent how they are going to vote. The Fetterman I’m getting is quite the opposite of the one I was sold…

On the upside, the CR is dead for now, no thanks to Fetterman.

Guardian

The Republican-controlled Senate has failed to pass a short-term funding bill that would prevent a government shutdown at the end of the month.

Earlier, continuing resolution (CR) cleared the House, but ultimately stalled in the upper chamber – unable to reach the 60 votes needed to overcome the filibuster.

Democrats remain resolute that they will continue to block any bill if it doesn’t include significant amendments to health care provisions. Today, senator John Fetterman, of Pennsylvania, was the lone Democrat to vote for the GOP-drawn CR. While Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Rand Paul of Kentucky, joined their colleagues across the aisle and voted no.

It’s a $6.2 billion merger between Nexstar and TEGNA that is at stake.

Nexstar already has an almost 40% reach across the US. They’ve been sucking up to Trump this year because they want to merge with TEGNA, which would give them access to 80% of the country. To do this though, regulations need to be dropped to allow them to exceed limits that have been in place for decades to prevent this level of media control. This is the quid-pro-quo for them, as Colbert was for the Paramount merger.

(Source)

As Deadline’s Dade Hayes reported, the merger “challenges decade-old limits on control of local media” as the new company would control 265 local TV stations across 44 states and the District of Columbia, representing about 80 percent of American households. This would far exceed the current limit of 39 percent, which has been in place for the past three decades through both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Making his intentions crystal clear shortly after Trump’s 2024 electoral victory that he sought an end to the broadcast station ownership cap, Sook declared in November that he hoped GOP control of government would help usher in an expansion of his company.

SSA is just part of the package. DOGE’s “services” are in exchange for special privileges for Elon’s companies. Removing regulations, worker protections, limits on what can go on in his company town, oversight for whatever nonsense Boring Company gets up to, and so on.

Exactly. They made it very clear that these were just things they felt were obstacles slowing them down from doing as they pleased.

For all the controversy DOGE has generated, its time at the Social Security Administration has not amounted to looming armageddon, as some Democrats warn. What it’s been, as much as anything, is a missed opportunity, according to interviews with more than 35 current or recently departed Social Security officials and staff, who spoke on the condition of anonymity mostly out of fear of retaliation by the Trump administration, and a review of hundreds of pages of internal documents, emails and court records.

The DOGE team, and Bisignano, have prioritized scoring quick wins that allow them to post triumphant tweets and press releases — especially, in the early months, about an essentially nonexistent form of fraud — while squandering the chance for systemic change at an agency that genuinely needs it.

They could have worked to modernize Social Security’s legacy software, the current and former staffers say. They could have tried to streamline the stupefying volume of documentation that many Social Security beneficiaries have to provide. They could have built search tools to help staff navigate the agency’s 60,000 pages of policies. (New hires often need at least three years to master the nuances of even one type of case.) They could have done something about wait times for disability claims and appeals, which often take over a year.

They did none of these things.

I have a real hard time believing there are any good people in DOGE.

The people they talk to in this article, and the people NPR have interviewed all like to talk like they were there to bring in sweeping good changes.

But when everything before these people signed up for these jobs was so public, about Musk and Trump and their highly visible opinions of these agencies and how they felt about them, how any reasonable person could think this is the type of change that would be implemented is beyond me.

They all come off as people with no capability to read the room or to understand they’re being used by evil people. They might be good IT people or programmers, but if accounting knowledge or any experience with an agency or what it does isn’t a requirement or even a consideration when you are coming in as a “reformer,” that should raise red flags.

I don’t trust any of these people, and I no longer have faith in any of the data they hold or share being secure. I think everyone should get a new SSN if/when sanity returns to the agency. There is no way this important information was held securely with people this sloppy and of poor judgement in charge of it.

I get a lot of enjoyment from having so many of you to share all I learn with.

It does still try to hit me with political ragebait, but I ignore all that.

Comments are total shit no matter the subject. Even reading the comments for the rescue I work at, at least half of it is people telling us we’re the worst people on Earth. 🙄

Some basic Google sleuthing shows he’s a centrist and hasn’t made a public political donation since the 90s and that was $5000.

He has the second largest private personal charity, Dalio Philanthropies, which seems to dabble in a bit of everything.

Private charities don’t thrill me, because it can be a huge source of dark money and it still maintains the charity owner’s personal will and keeps their personal influence level high instead of just donating money to be used however the people receiving donations feels is best.

This link gives a little more specific insight to what he participates in, but it’s still fairly vague. He’s basically trying to do the Gates/Buffet give it all away by the time you die thing, so it’s probably as good as one can expect from a hedge fund guy.

I very valid question with a very valid answer.

I’m sure Meta dislikes my use case, as I’m basically a data miner. I have a profile that I haven’t contributed to in probably 5 years or so, I don’t post or upload. I was going to delete my account around the time I moved over here to Lemmy, but I started posting to the Superbowl community as it was fizzling out already. I shared what handful of photos I had, but I soon ran out.

I started getting stuff from various sources like Flickr and eBird and the news, but I started getting really interested in wildlife rehab. As charities, Facebook is still the way to go to promote charities since it’s free, widespread, and easy and quick to use. When every penny, second, and view counts, what beats Facebook for that?

Now my feed is basically nothing but animal rescues and wildlife photographers (and increasingly AI) and I curate (steal) the good stuff and bring it to you all here without Zuckerberg getting his mitts on your data and the original source still gets all the credit.

Doing that and seeing the positive stories lead me to volunteering at my local rehab this year and it’s been lifechanging. So there is still some good that can be taken from it if one puts in the effort, but you still shouldn’t because it’s Meta and they’ve got the ick. So let me do it for you. I’ve already taken the hit and shared enough stuff, so now I’m going to siphon their stuff like they want to do to us, but I do it to promote wildlife rescue.

It’s not like any of the rescues particularly love Facebook that I’m aware of, they just want people to exist and know they need volunteers and money. Photographers want to promote their work or sell prints or their guided tours. I pass all that info along to you guys so you can find them on whatever platform you want. It’s not like I want to take any credit for it, I want you guys to support them, but if you guys won’t touch Facebook, they lose out. But I’ve dedicated hundreds of dollars and 100+ hours this year because of my sharing content, one or 2 of my subs have become volunteers, and hopefully a handful of others have kicked in something to their local rescues.

So Facebook can still provide some stuff, at the cost of privacy, but if I can extract the good and leave the bad behind for my 5000 subs, I feel that’s me doing something good.

Most likely YouTube, Lemmy, and Facebook. After that is assorted pirate streaming sites and whatever Tachiyomi sources I have. I give a little education and entertainment, I take a little education and entertainment…

Unfortunately I spent more time watching him for anatomy lessons than taking his fitness advice! 😂

Guy seems very legit, gives away so much help and info for free, good sense of humor. I love seeing the internals of movement on the skeleton, especially things like impingement, and then the demos with his body or an assistant so you see what you’d see watching yourself do movements. I’m glad to see he’s still doing his thing.

I always enjoy your support!

Yeah, it may be more than coincidence since it started this year. I try not to worry about things beyond my control, but it’s been hard to look anywhere lately and not see something dark.

I’ve had to learn how to deal with things in healthy ways since “getting better” and this may just be the hardest situation I’ve come on since then.

Some of my stressors should be going away soon, and I have a few vacations coming so perhaps relief is near.

I’ve always liked the way the Athlean-x channel demonstrates anatomy and solutions with both a static model and his more average bodied assistant. He doesn’t dumb things down, but still explains and demonstrates them in a way where you feel you understand, even if you can’t grasp all the fancy vocabulary.

He has this video on scapular winging, and a bunch more about basic posture correction exercises which may help you.

Before I was diagnosed, I tried the Zoloft my brother wasn’t taking, and that kinda put me in a numb cloud. I dealt with things better but it smashed down the good stuff too much so I gave up on that.

Tried a girlfriend’s free sample pack of something that wasn’t working for her, and that worked pretty well. Just leveled me out. It was harder for me to get frustrated and angry, and I just had a better baseline feeling. That was fairly early internet, so we had no clue what the pills were, so when they were gone, they were gone.

I don’t know how much any of that would have helped because I was still around my family, which was the prime source of my depression.

About 9 years ago, I hit a low point in life and decided to deal with this in an appropriate manner after realizing I’ve had depression for about 20+ years. Doc gave me Lexapro and said it would take 2 weeks or so to kick in.

I swear the next day I felt like a new person. The doctor said it doesn’t work that way, but I felt what I felt. Maybe I was just bone dry on serotonin and just a little bit was a shock to the system, who knows.

It didn’t make anything better, I want to be very clear on that. Before the pills, my insides were like a sponge. Anything that happened to me would soak in and get held onto. Bad stuff from my past, my own self esteem issues, any perceived slight someone gave me, whatever, it was all soak into my head and stay there until I blew up or panic attacked, etc.

What happened with medicine is now like I had an emotional raincoat. Most of that stuff would still hit me, but it would run off instead of soak in. The intrusive thoughts were there, my stressors were still there. But I could deal with them as they came up. I wasn’t still trying to get out from under a pile of them every time another hit me.

I could still get sad or depressed for no reason, but it felt like something I could handle instead of that being the only thing I could be. And that got better with time.

This year, I’ve been having problems again so I’m going to need to check in soon to discuss if I need to change something. I’ve been feeling slightly depression more often, I’m low on energy, and I’m losing interest in a lot of things I enjoy. There’s no real new stressors I’m aware of, so I’m not sure what’s going on.

I feel I’ve had a luckier time than many with medication, but even so, it isn’t a silver bullet, it’s still a chronic condition. Working meds just get you to the same starting line as “normal people” for you to deal with your day. You’re still running the same obstacle course every day, but you’re not starting way behind. Hope that was some help.

That makes sense. Thank you for explaining it. I’ve only played with Hyundai’s and Subaru’s smart cruise and lane assist, and it doesn’t take long to know it’s nothing like what I’d picture FSD to be. My car is a 2008, so I’ve only got basic CC.