Communick News

In November, Ohio residents will have an opportunity to vote on Issue 1, a constitutional amendment that would finally abolish the state’s extreme partisan gerrymandering. Voters will not, however, be informed of this fact on the ballot. Instead, the Ohio Supreme Court’s Republican majority ruled Monday that the amendment will be described in egregiously misleading terms on the ballot itself, with ultra-biased language designed to turn citizens against it. Incredibly, a proposal that would end gerrymandering will be framed as a proposal to require gerrymandering, a patently false representation of its intent and effect. The court’s 4–3 decision marks yet another effort to subvert democracy in Ohio by Republicans who fear that the citizenry—when given a voice on the matter—might dare to loosen their stranglehold on power.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/09/ohio-supreme-court-voter-fraud-gop.html

Money that was supposed to fund educational trips for children without homes instead paid for vacations that New York schools staffers took with their families around the country, including a visit to Disney World, according to a recently released investigative report.

Investigators recommended firing employees after finding that the head of the Queens Students in Temporary Housing (STH) program, meant to reward hardworking unhoused students with educational excursions, was telling her staff they could bring their families instead. (Temporary housing status is for students living in shelters, cars, parks or abandoned buildings, according to the New York City Public Schools website.)

Staff families weren’t joining the trips under a misunderstanding of the rules, independent investigators wrote. In one instance, STH Queens regional manager Linda Wilson allegedly told her staff: “What happens here stays with us.” She denies saying it. ...

Makes it very clear that Vance knows that what his doing is evil, but he's weird enough to decide to do it anyways.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20410864

I've got a large collection of e-books, but I've always just read them on my phone. Finally broke down and bought a proper e-reader with the nice e-ink display. Why didn't I do this forever ago?

It's got a backlight, but using it under a lamp with reflected light is just so much easier on my eyes and feels more like a paper book. I also haven't read a book written on dead trees in a good minute, so sitting under a lamp just brings back a missing piece of the experience I didn't even know was gone.

I also just can't get over how "fake" the display looks. Fake is usually not used to describe something positively, but in this case, it's a huge praise. The text and book cover images just look like they're printed on a sheet of paper and slipped inside to make the device look functional...like a movie prop. Turning the backlight on diminishes this effect somewhat, though (which is another reason I prefer to leave it off).

I also love that I can just set it down and not worry about coming back to a dead battery, lol. The reader app on my phone is set to prevent it from going to sleep or turning off the screen, so sometimes I'll set it down to go take care of something else, forget, and come back to a nearly dead battery.

To everyone who has recommended these gizmos to me, I finally get it. I know I said reading books on my phone was good enough, but I was wrong.

Snapchat is reserving the right to put its users’ faces in ads, according to terms of service related to its “My Selfie” tool (formerly “AI Selfies”), which allows users and their friends to create AI-generated images trained on their selfies.

Users have the option to opt out of this by toggling off a “feature” in the app called “See My Selfie in Ads,” but according to 404 Media’s testing this feature is on by default.

r*ddit

Billie Eilish is the latest high-profile entertainer to back Vice President Harris’s White House bid, urging her fans to “vote like your life depends on it.”

“We are voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz because they are fighting to protect our reproductive freedom, our planet and our democracy,” Eilish said in a video posted on social media on Tuesday.

“We can’t let extremists control our lives, our freedoms and our future,” Eilish’s brother and longtime collaborator, Finneas O’Connell, said in the message shared with the “Lunch” singer’s more than 7 million followers on X.

“The choice is clear,” the post said.

Pagers carried by thousands of Hezbollah operatives exploded within a short period Tuesday, injuring nearly 2,800 people and killing nine. The explosions spread across Lebanon in areas where Hezbollah had a heavy presence. A Hezbollah official said many fighters had such devices, speculating that malware might have caused the devices to explode.

Pathetic fucking cowards. Big talk but no fucking balls. If you're not willing to repeat what you said to his face then you need to hep your Russian cock sucking hole closed in the first place.