Haha jokes on the kid! My grandmother would buy all sorts of crap only use it once then give it to my mom. My mom has it piled away in a store room and when she goes, I’ll add it to my hoard collection. (Were not super hoard-y and can still walk and use all my furnature, etc, we just cant bring ourselves to throw away things that work, in case we need or want them one day / possibly sell them as collectables, even though they’re worth nothing now…) when I go, the kid will inherent 3 generations of crap. Sucker!

Thank goodness someone explained that to me. I was startong to wonder if she was some sort of technology expert, or something.

Where I grew up in rural texas: these are current times as I still go there regularly to visit.

Convenience store: 10 km down a major highway

Market: 20 km

The nearest Walmart : 58 km <-- this used to be the only option until they built … The nearest chain grocery: 21 km

Train: 60 km (Amtrak)

Park: 8km. Down a road with a 60 mph (96 km/h) speed limit. But definitely walkable.

Bus stop: ??? There is no public transportation in the town of under 2000 people. Google maps won’t even give me a suggestion so…I have no idea. Does a greyhound count?

Library: 21 km

The only things I see that have a visa logo on it, are those prepaid cards. Out of all the cards I’ve ever had, bank or credit, I’m pretty sure only 1 has ever been visa, and that was like 15+ years ago, everything else is, or has been MasterCard.

Right. I dont know why everyone assumes its a dead body.

Are you actually referring to 1971?

Theres a link to the other article, in this article. Says Kristin Houser wrote it…although you may have a point about the rest.

Syphilis can hang out for something like 30 years. Maybe they were on a break, or he got infected before they got together.

Wow! Thank you for such a detailed answer. Even without some weird law, it’s good information to have, and with a little elbow grease, it sounds completely doable. And if it keeps people from getting in trouble / protects privacy, I’m all for it!

I find this interesting. Does one just install software and buy a domain? I would assume theres somewhere you have to register with in order to federate. I mean, if theres no one to go after, this would be a nice work around. At least, until theres a site for every Texan that figures it out.

I think semi public would be like setting your facebook profile to private. It shows your name, and basic details, but doesn’t show all your posts or interactions.

Edit: haha, you kinda answered this somewhere else as I was typing.

Or, like, not allow registration for under 18s at all, I suppose.

Problem is, one would still have to find a way to verify the registrant is over 18.

Its getting more dystopian by the week. I would say day, but a lot of brains don’t move that fast here.

That’s the vibe I’m getting. No problem.

This is a fair view. I’m not sure anyone has gotten that far, especially outside the country.

Heres an article about a similar bill in Utah, that hasn’t gone into effect yet.

What’s not clear from the Utah bill and others is how the states plan to enforce the new regulations.

I mean if the general consensus is that it doesn’t apply, then, cool.

Maybe someone is better equip to answer this question. As far as I understand, it is up to the social media company, as it is operating in the state. Sort of the way the corporate office of a national grocery store can be sued.

https://www.texaspolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023-05-BillAnalysis-HB18-Updated.pdf

First, it prohibits digital service providers from entering into an agreement with a known minor unless they have verifiable parental consent.

It seems its up to whomever is registering the account. If the person is under 18 they see a scrubbed version, of the person is over 18 they have full access. I’m not sure an ISP has control like that. I could be wrong.

I know with pornhub, the ISP didn’t block the site, pornhub itself did.

Someone can correct me if im wrong, but, pretty sure its any social media. Similar to what happened with pornhub.

According to the Texas Office of the Attorney General, this new law will primarily “apply to digital services that provide an online platform for social interaction between users that: (1) allow users to create a public or semi-public profile to use the service, and (2) allow users to create or post content that can be viewed by other users of the service. This includes digital services such as message boards, chat rooms, video channels, or a main feed that presents users content created and posted by other users.”

Iol, I have no idea why this popped up on your feed either.

So, no. No resolution. We’ve never found anything, in or around, that could remotely be used in this manner. We could never replicate it.

I do understand where your coming from. I do, also, understand where everyone else was coming from as well. It seemed pretty wild, even to us. I admit, I was slightly suprised at the mental illness suggestions, but not totally taken aback. I expected people to think more along the lines of what you’ve brought up. That I’m trying to use a device like this, on someone else. Which I wasn’t and I’m not. Nobody really stood to benefit from this. There was no large sum of money, we all got along for many years, and we were always on relatively good terms. It was just thier mental decline that made them act in ways we really never expected.

Some type of conformation bias may possibly be the closest reason, second to it just really happening, and we did consider that, but it just got way to specific way to many times. Hell, at the beginning of the whole mess, they made some off handed comment that they were “a little psychic,” lol, So who knows. We really thought it was the radio, but like I said, we couldn’t replicate it. I just thought I would try my luck and see if anyone might have had some answers.

I will add that, a friend did get me some CO2 detectors. Mostly cause they noticed there werent any fire detectors either. They haven’t gone off yet, so…

This person was really close to us for a really long time. I may have changed some “names” for privacy reasons, but the situations and conversations are truly the way it all played out. In the end, they never came back and everything was left in limbo. We never got another change to recreate the situation and we never got any answers. I do admit, we haven’t made a huge super thorough sweep of the place. We figured that anything being used that frequently would be easy enough to find. The place has just been left, mostly as is, just like everything else that came out of this crazy situation. I wish there was something more final to offer, but there just is not. Maybe one day, when we finally get brave enough to clean it out, proper, and we’ll stumble across something. But until then, its just one of life’s mysteries, I guess.

I remember this time when a hot air Balloon operator, in the area, crashed the balloon into some power lines and 16 people died. Some people had to be identified by dental records. While he was a registered pilot, his company wasn’t registered with the state.

Don’t fuck with Hot Air Ballons people.

This is disgusting. Hopefully this whole thing fails before Texas can enact the law.

As for teachers still being underpaid, that is the point. They are trying to gut public schools. All the teachers will need to make the switch to a private school, eventually, because that’s where the demand will be.

The state will continue this voucher program until the majority of people have moved their children to private schools. Public schools will be left in a state of disrepair once they loose funding for every student that makes the switch.

The private schools will gradually raise tuition so that parents are paying as much as they can afford, even with the voucher. After everyone has move thier child over, they will discontinue the voucher program.

If the parents want their child to continue in a school that does any good, they will pay out thier ears. Everyone else will end up paying a huge chunk of thier check to send their child to whatever mediocre school is within their budget, or else they will have to go back to public school, which is now a underfunded shitshow.

Edit: some spelling

I’ve never gotten 12ft.io to work on a nytimes article.