Which bit? The part about the toilets is definitely true. There's a technicality that they were likely talking about the combined toilet + water fountain but that's still pretty Not Great on the sanitary scale

Overcrowding and shitty maintenance is real

> Republican states behind the lawsuit seeking to strike down Obamacare unexpectedly seek a delay in next week’s oral arguments, saying they aren’t ready to address the 5th Circuit’s question on whether the blue states and U.S. House have standing to defend the law

lol

tfw you gotta try to puzzle up way they don't have standing to defend the law but you totally have standing to challenge it

Which seems like it's possible, I imagine? But you gotta figure someone almost shot the foot there

I don't understand why things keep getting dumber 🤔

I know the "win a dinner with a candidate" thing isn't new but this seems like an awfully specific and weird thing?

He got the tanks 🤷‍♂️

Campaign manager, finance manager, and spokesperson out of the Hickenloop

> Trump told reporters Monday that the tanks will be stationed outside the Fourth of July celebration but has not given details on how they will be used.

yeh having tanks stationed outside just sitting there doesn't give the right message

Yeah...

Unless they can load fireworks in the cannons...

> US officials didn’t know Ivanka and Jared were going to be in Trump-Kim meeting, haven’t been briefed

Okay I believe they hadn't been briefed but they should have known tbh

🤔

A deal which, additionally, no longer exists in any meaningful way

buhh they're now violating an agreement we already set on fire see I told you

Later they'll pull out a photocopy and go "AH HA we got you, the ol' double bluff reverso"

office of john bolton: twirling moustache

Weird that he printed that out and sent it to the press but

@TimStone "oh but they were violating the deal before the deal even existed so there was no point in making the deal" is how i reads the highlighted part

they are trying to imply that it is well known that they do, did, and are developing weapons

there is no evidence for this

@TimStone My guess is that they meant to say "before the deal's dissolution"

i.e. "retroactively we say they already violated it so it was OK for us to stop upholding our end"

@murgatroid99 I wouldn't just assume competence from the US government...

@murgatroid99 I think they're saying that they've always been in violation of the terms of the deal so Obama shouldn't have signed it because there was no point

Which is of course not true but 🤷‍♂️

(Like that they don't have to prove Iran was in violation now because…they always were, obviously, everyone knows that)

> At least 23 people are dead as India's largest city, Mumbai, is hit by the heaviest rain in more than a decade

This following Chennai basically drying completely up

> A young Arctic fox has walked across the ice from Norway's Svalbard islands to northern Canada in an epic journey, covering 3,506 km (2,176 miles) in 76 days. "The fox's journey has left scientists speechless."

> 10 Medical Myths We Should Stop Believing. Doctors, Too

"Peanut allergies occur whether or not a child is exposed to peanuts before age 3", nods, "Fish oil does not reduce the risk of heart disease" nods, "A lifelike doll carried around by teenage girls will not deter pregnancies" n …wait what?

Yeah

@TimStone A... pregnancy phylactery?

@TimStone what...?

Oh it's that thing sitcoms make episodes about

I didn't realize that schools actually did that

Yeah, apparently a non-zero number of people gave teenage girls lifelike dolls to remind them how much of a burden a child would be?

Which raises all sorts of questions

@TimStone Probably by the same people who think woman are just breeding chambers. Just ya gotta get married first.

Somehow I feel like teenage pregnancy doesn't happen since girls think "This will be easy!"

realityworks.com/products/realcare-baby

Or, uh, because of any reason that involves planning.

It's a thing

In Ohio this was an option for extra credit in like

8th grade health class or whatever

public school

ohio is an abstinence only state afaik

which as it turns out does not work!

I still like my explanation of pregnancy phylacteries.

@Unionhawk Of course it is

> Political ads in 2020 expected to hit over $6 billion

This implies that they're getting a significant return on that and I'm not sure that says anything good about the electorate!

we're already getting menacing "IF MEDICARE FOR ALL HAPPENS THEN: YOU WILL DIE WAITING TO SEE A DOCTOR" ads

well both menacing and sad piano

you know the vibe

Trump was apparently swayed not to bomb Iran in part because of that time we "accidentallyed" an Iranian commercial airliner, something he had apparently not heard about before?

@TimStone again just reinforces Trump was bullshitting when he asked how many people, Iranians, would die and when told 150 he thought it a drone wasn't worth 150 lives

@TimStone which party? the GOP? is that comparable to last time or is Trump funnelling a huge sum from his companies into the campaign

Just collectively

Again, this is not necessarily candidate ads, probably

@Memor-X I mean this is kind of related to that but I'm kind of amazed he hadn't heard about it since he was, like, alive when it happened

I imagine P4AHCF is going to get in on it

and or, is already in on it

(they uh, obviously expect to get ROI in the form of their industry not being eliminated)

@TimStone yeh but i see him as a huge narcissist so if it's not about him he doesn't give a shit

Not at all, thankfully, because my word

i'm glad we didn't do it. the most we had was looking after eggs

though it was everyone, not just the girls

Oh, talking about the fake baby and you had to take care of it.

I had totally missed that reference.

I've only ever heard of it being bags of flour or something, and I don't know anyone who actually did it

Yeah it's a thing

I always assumed it was one of those American things

There are so many things that I don't know whether TV made them up or they're just done in the US

@Ash oh i can imagine. wait i don't, there's an episode of Mrs Brown's Boys with one. she ended up just taking the batteries out

@Ash and it being high school there would ofcause be a bunch of little shits who wouldn't be mature enough in either stage of that huh?

> The menu for the Water Bar in Park View lists more than 40 waters, including a $25 bottle harvested in the mountains of Chile. It might be the beginning of fancy water in D.C. dcist.com/story/19/07/01/…

@Unionhawk they probably all come from the same tap downstairs

@Ash capitalism gone too far

there are things that can be made and sold to people, but not all of them should

@Unionhawk This reminds me that either Arizona or New Mexico is having water problems because Saudi Arabia purchased land to grow hay that they ship back overseas, which is essentially exporting water.

Capitalism probably went too far when the primary focus was maximizing shareholder's returns, illegalities, immorality and unethical behaviour and all.

Why do fancy imported water when you can instead do fancy imported giving me $25

Mars Water, harvested using new Elon Musk Tech that collects Ice from Mars and melts it under the Martian sun - $1,000

@Memor-X (May or may not be irradiated)

@Yuuki well if it glows, sell it as Mars Water Quantum, it worked for Nuka Cola

China is forcing foreign visitors to install an app that steals your texts et al

Ah, specifically people visiting the region where they're doing the mass human rights abuses, it seems

Hmm how much you think this nonsense costs?

@TimStone What could possibly go wrong

Also: way more than is lost to fare skips

100%

@Unionhawk Incidentally

Ways and Means has finally sued for Trump's tax returns

MARTA gates please don't attack me when I'm in Atlanta

That reminds me, I've been meaning to read up more on the single use plastic ban for my province. Or country... One of the two.

ah it's all of Canada okay: pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2019/06/10/…

Everyone is super angry about water bottles, but I'm pretty sure that's not considered "single use" since they can be recycled. Never let the facts get in the way of your anger though.

> ban harmful single-use plastics as early as 2021 (such as plastic bags, straws, cutlery, plates, and stir sticks) where supported by scientific evidence and warranted, and take other steps to reduce pollution from plastic products and packaging

> work with provinces and territories to introduce standards and targets for companies that manufacture plastic products or sell items with plastic packaging so they become responsible for their plastic waste.

Here's hoping this stuff continues. I'm really worried if the conservatives win come the fall they'll just roll back all the green energy programs, and instead like, I don't know, start burning forests or something.

Pence has been recalled to the White House for some reason, cancelling an event he was supposed to headline in New Hampshire

Including the carbon tax. Everyone wants to fight climate change and pollution, so long as they don't actually need to do anything.

PEI has already put in a ban

> As of July 1, shoppers in P.E.I. won't find many single-use plastic bags at the checkout counter. The Island is the first province in Canada to ban single-use plastic bags.

> New poll shows majority in favor of replacing private plans with a single-payer plan, once they hear they can keep their doctor. Which, obviously, they can!

You know somewhere out there there's someone pushing the narrative that Medicare for All involves putting all existing doctors in a blender or something

It's almost like people don't actually care about their plan!

"If my doctor gets paid I can keep my doctor?" shocked_pikachu.gif

And we actually have standing to promise "you can keep your doctor" because we aren't trying to preserve a system that makes networks a thing in the first place!

@TimStone I like how they keep insisting there's no need for concern about this recall despite the guarantee it's going to be something really dumb and thus concerning

> Officials here trying to downplay any sense of crisis and insisting nothing wrong with @POTUS

@TimStone this could be anything from a major issue to nothing at all. Not sure what to make of it yet

stares into camera

@TimStone yep this is some weird shit

i hope it will be more eventful than the SETI shutdown that turned out to be a pedophile investigation

It probably is nothing particularly consequential. I was about to joke that Trump was demanding he stick around to get fitted for his Uncle Sam costume for Thursday but then I remembered Trump doesn't care about tailoring

@Wipqozn plastic straw bans are ableist and hurt disabled people without fixing the environment

Uhhhh actually?

rest of single use plastics can go but leave the straws

oh goddammit are we wardeccing

@TimStone It has to be Iran

I was going to say, is this a question or is there about to be follow up with like [breaking: we are at war with iran](twitter/watch?v=kfV)

> 14 Sailors Die on Secretive Russian Nuclear Submarine

did the trump admin break a russian sub?

@TimStone This is reportedly what the Putin thing is about, not sure what everyone else is doing

Gotta be aliens 🤷‍♂️

@TimStone "pence come here, help me pick out a card to send to putin"

:50891122 this organization doesn't exist

TOO LATE

But yeah

> Due to a cloudflare outage, we're getting bad data from our providers, which is showing incorrect crypto prices. Calm down everyone, Bitcoin is not $26.

lmfao somewhere a techbro definitely peed themselves

> Kellyanne Conway on #FourthofJuly celebrations: "The public is welcome to come and celebrate our great country, the greatest democracy, the Constitution, all the Amendments... I'm not going to allow you to politicize it."

stares directly into the camera

tfw serial Hatch Act violators call for not politicizing something

> In 2017, Kentucky received $40 billion more from the federal government than it paid in taxes. That’s about one-fifth of the state’s G.D.P.; if Kentucky were a country, we’d say that it was receiving foreign aid on an almost inconceivable scale

(the article is actually about how the left isn't really radical at all, mostly, but I didn't know Kentucky was receiving that much aid)

(which who cares if they are except for Mitch McConnell's entire existence)

is that to the state or is that the state and the people within

It's combined federal assistance programs, so the latter

and by the people within I mean all the rube goldberg contraptions of like "if we give this solar startup a lot of money, they'll go out of business and not provide any jobs for the people of eastern kentucky so we'll build a prison instead"

which is roughly speaking actually a thing

place based initiatives

thank you tedx whitesburg

or wherever that tedx was

There's so much to unpack in that Trump rambling about homelessness but my personal takeaway is that he 100% thinks cops walking the beat is still exactly like Office Dibble from Top Cat

There's some news about a number of mining companies self-insuring their own mine cleanups and now that they're going bankrupt to avoid the actual cleaning up part.

> QAnon believers are making JFK Jr. masks to wear to the Fourth of July, where they're convinced he'll reveal himself and team up with Trump to arrest Democrats

rubs temples

> Government has dropped conspiracy charge against Scott Warren, but will retry on the two harboring charges

They've apparently offered a misdemeanor plea

But since all he did was Not Let People Die, 🤷‍♂️

@TimStone I don't understand these people. Or well, any conspiracy theorists.

@Wipqozn The chemtrails can make it hard to think sometimes.

@puzzlepiece87 Apparently

I'm sure there's some actual SCIENCE! behind conspiracy theorists, but I'm not familiar with it.

Ted Cruz is very mad online at Nike and looking for shoe recommendations, any ta…Oh no Adidas, not like this

@TimStone Oh, I thought this was going to be Adidas -> really popular in Russia -> Russia's weird relationship with the GOP.

Kinda disappointed that it's not nearly so clever.

The administration has begun printing the Census without the citizenship question

Gallagher has been acquitted 🙄

After losing the 100 Years War you'd think England could have done better in 100 minutes, but no. They will come to Rooney this loss - they won't Sheeran other day in this tournament.

America with 1 more Thames left to play, but serious injury concerns as Rapinoe never played and LaVelle was forced to Brexit with a hamstring injury.

USA fans continue to have a good RAF; the team is Meghan America Great Again.

@GodEmperorDune I believe those are just listed as examples. The law hasn't actually been enacted with any details or anything yet. However, a lot of companies have started switching over to paper straws here. Although I've heard those might have issues compared to plastic, but I'm really not sure what.

@GodEmperorDune PEI plastic bag ban is actually completely unrelated to that law. IT's just a thing PEI started doing independently of that federal law.

@TimStone when are people going to learn that automatically tweeting things from the crowd is never going to end well

chuckles Never

Also Trump has made a nomination to the Fed and it's someone who sounds like they might be remotely qualified?

Uhh so apparently Andy Rubin is accused of having cheated his wife out of money while running a sex ring?

@Wipqozn Although this seems to cover it fairly well. Still, I don't agree that we shouldn't look into alternatives of plastic straws. They do contribute to global pollution waste, although it's a small amount. It's just that it can't be the only action we take, but this law is doing much more than considering banning plastic straws.

And of course we shouldn't ban them if we can't come up with such an alternative.

@Ash I..know?

Sorry, maybe you didn't look at my link, but that's actually what my link contained.

I was replying to say "yeah okay I just rad read into this now, but I don't think we should just drop the issue. but should look into it more"

Which is what that link actually says oo

> The focus must shift from banning straws to pressuring the manufacturers and corporations to create an environmentally and disability friendly alternative. Even better, environmental and disability groups should work together to come up with more impactful ways of improving the environment.

Sorry that may have come across as more harsh than I intended, upon a reread. Just seems like you completely misunderstood that specific message.

(because obviously before that specific message I wasn't fully aware of the issues with paper, which that page covered)

@TimStone i read that as amanda waller tbh

she'd fit in with the trump admin

@Wipqozn the problem is that what will likely happen is that plastic straws will be banned, disabled people will die, and the alternative research won't be funded or done

disposable plastic straws are just extremely good at what they do AND being cheap on top of everything else

@GodEmperorDune OKay I'm sorry but no, "disable people will die" is extremely hyperbolic and doesn't help at all.

@Wipqozn unfortunately its not hyperbolic

Yes, if we just banned plastic straws and did nothing else.

@Wipqozn yes, which is what is likely to happen

I don't agree with that

the only reason it hasn't happened yet in the US is because conservatives have become anti straw ban, but it's more of a business interests/triggering the libs thing than a "straw bans are ableist" thing

Honestly I'm not going to have this conversaation. There is no conversation if your stance is just "we shouldn't consider single use plastics at all, because that might else putting in a plastic straw ban without fully considering it or putting in alternatives"

Like you're already assuming the worst is going to happen, and stating it as fact.

Re: paper straws; problems range from- Straw becoming mush if you don't down your drink within minutes. To the food-safe adhesive holding it together is wheat/gluten based - WHOOPS celiac.

@Wipqozn my original thoughts on this were "ban all the single use plastics you want, just leaves straws alone"

@Ash but you just said you can't seperate straws from the single use plastic ban, unless I'm misunderstanding you, in which case I apolozigie for both the misunderstanding and my harshness.

@Ash yeah, policymakers pushing the plastic bans don't seem to understand this point at all

@Ash Then we should make sure this one doesn't if we can't come up with a suitable alternative by 2021.

@GodEmperorDune OKay just you only focused on the straw part, which is just listed as an example, and not anything else.

Sorry I know I'm heated, and likely typing before I think, but the general sentiment around banning single use plastics is just "It'll be hard, or have problems, so we shouldn't even bother" and that's just the impression I got from your responses.

I mean you've clarified now, and I appreciate that, but that's just the impression I got.

@Ash extremely this, 10000000000%

I mean I personally also find it really frustrating that we're just zoning in one one potential issue with this plan to enact a law.

Just seems like we're constantly look for the negative in everything here

Okay no, sorry, I'm going to remove myself from this conversation, because I'm clearly too agitated to discuss this right now.

@Wipqozn the problem is like Ash mentioned, the impact on disabled people tends to get overwhelmed, which is why allies are told to push back fiercely on this one specific thing with the straws

@GodEmperorDune Overlooked == overhwelmed?

Except assume I can type

Not trying to be cheeky, just making sure I understand what you're saying, since I've misunderstood a few other things.

@Wipqozn yeah sorry, good catch

@TimStone wont it be funny if he does reveal himself and go "you all are fucken stupid for following this man"

typing while trying to take a phone call scrambled me up

i think we are all on the same side here

@GodEmperorDune Okay, in which yes I understand why people would push back so harshly.

@GodEmperorDune I'd say we are, I just think we have differing levels of confidence on how well this will be implemented, which is the main source of the friction.

@Wipqozn yeah i have lost some confidence in the trudeau govt's environmental policies since they went ahead with the pipeline

i HOPE they do it well, i fear they will not

the cities and states that have done plastics bans here have in the US have not implemented it well

@GodEmperorDune My feelings are somewhat mixed on the pipeline. I wish it never went ahead, but I think it's a case of "IT's too late to stop it now" (it started under harper). There's just so many jobs in Alberta tied up in oil, and the province is already started to struggle due to pipeline delays sooo I don't know. They're planning invest profits back into green energy, which is good, but it's just something that should've happened ages ago.

Basically I think the pipeline is a lot "look how fucked of a situation harper left us with". There was no way to handle that which wasn't going to cause massive issues. Just a case of pick your poison.

So yeah, I just hate everything about the pipeline situation, since there is no good answer to it now. The only good answer was for Harper to have not started it to begin with :/

@Wipqozn sure, but my understanding is that they didn't advertise it as "sorry, harper stuck us with it" or "we need the jobs" as much as "this really isn't THAT bad for the environment" which really chafes me

@Wipqozn yeah this is like the wars in afphanistan and iraq

@GodEmperorDune Oh yeah they've definitely been trying to playing politics game with it, which is frustrating.

@GodEmperorDune Yeah, another great example of the same thing.

A lot of times the biggest impact of a political leaders actions don't really start to take effect until After they leave, the good and the bad. Not always of course, but it happens a lot. Then the following party gets all the blame or credit, because politics.

@Wipqozn if we take the time to figure things out before enacting them, this is how ALL their actions should be

but humans are very bad at this

@GodEmperorDune Very

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