Communick News

Source: https://mastodon.social/@twothangs/115482051056579555

Matthew Brennan, a.k.a. @twothangs@mastodon.social, is an artist who makes paintings upon request of two things combined in one. The request here was "Calvin and Hobbes" and "alter egos".

Republicans appear determined to destroy the Affordable Care Act, but what will go in its place? It’s a question the party has struggled to answer since the ACA passed. Remember Trump’s first term promise to “repeal and replace” Obamacare that never came to fruition?

Since the government shut down a month ago, the party has refused to publicly discuss a plan, even as ACA subsidies expire at the end of the year, forcing Americans to pay astronomically higher monthly premiums. In New Jersey, some premiums will rise by more than 175 percent. One family’s premiums will spike 300 percent. Across the board, premiums are expected to increase by an average of 26 percent for a typical ACA plan, a recent KFF analysis revealed.

The Republicans’ so-called health care plans are so secret, in fact, they won’t share them with members of their own party. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who called out House Speaker Mike Johnson last week for not disclosing the party’s plans during a GOP conference call, said during an appearance on Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher: “Mike Johnson, for a month now, cannot give me a single policy idea.”

Quelle surprise. We don't even have concepts of a plan anymore!

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/49088835

Content Warning: SA, pedophilia

So, when I was 13, I dated this 33 year old named Jake. I thought he was a roleplayer because he always showed me this young teen boy when I saw pictures "of him" on his small Discord server. Since I thought he was roleplaying, I told him my name was Rose and that I was 24.

He was all like, "Oh, that's cute~" and being overall flirty with me.

Then I showed him my face so he asked "How old are you really?"

I told him I was 13 but my OC (original character) that I was roleplaying as was 24, and told him my real name.

He continued to date me for a little while longer, showing me pictures of this teen boy and acting like a teen.

He then got scared and said "Yeah, we need to talk. I really shouldn't be talking to kids so bye."

He also told me he missed his ex who was 20-something, so that's when I started to realize something was up.

His ex tried to talk to me, saying he was "tired of Jake's bullshit" and then blocked me.

Jake never blocked me but I got a new account and lost his contact information.

Anyway, Jake was always flirty with me, liking my posts, calling me cute, and inviting me to his Discord where he would send photos of the teen boy, but later blamed me and said that I "made him date me" and "groomed him".

Did I? I mean, I lied about my age but I eventually told the truth and he led me to believe he was a 14-year-old or a boy otherwise close to my age due to the photos he sent.

I'm disgusted with the thought that he flirted with some 14-year-old boy, potentially, and got his photos. I'm also disgusted with the thought he could have done this to someone else using my photo(s) and pretending to be a 13-year-old girl.

But when my friend went to confront him once, he acted normal? He was like "Oh hi!" "By the way, tell Rose I said hi!" and even told him about how he was unlabelled but thought he liked his ex after breaking up with him AGAIN.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/49039282

“Trump, he’s had it with these people, because he knows they’re playing politics,” said the second person. “Nobody thought it was going to last this long.”

Trump and his top aides thought that unpaid federal workers, closed and limited federal facilities and threats of ever-more job cuts from Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, would be too much for Democrats to handle

“I don’t know what’s wrong with them,” he said of Democrats Friday. “They’ve never done a thing like this. They’ve become crazed lunatics. All they have to do is say, ‘Let’s go. Let’s open up our country.’ And everything snaps back into shape. So there’s something wrong with them... It’s their fault. Everything is their fault. It’s so easily solved.”

Just hit pg 179 of the "remastered, full-color edition" of Mark Z. Danielewski's "House of Leaves" and I need to gush about it somewhere. Obviously some (mild) spoilers on my end, but I'd appreciate no spoilers in the discussion below.

I went into this mostly blind. I knew it was a horror novel, experimental; that it had inspired several cool "non-Euclidean" video games, and I knew it was about a house that's "bigger on the inside". I was also prepped for weirdness, as it's often included in weird/horror fiction lists alongside the likes of Lovecraft & "The King in Yellow".

Honestly, I was ready to ditch this, but now I'm fully invested.

None of my friends have read it, so I had to release some excitement somewhere. Thanks for reading.

Without spoiling anything, have you read / enjoyed House of Leaves? What's your favorite "experimental" book?

Crossposted from https://slrpnk.net/post/29666121

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/29676368

A 28-year-old person in Orange County who earns $35,000 a year will see the monthly cost of the typical silver-tier plan rise from $130 to $290, according to estimates from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation. The typical family of four with a household income of $85,000 would see their monthly cost go from $489 to $901.

These increases are happening in order to pay for Trump's tax cuts for the wealthy.

People dependent on the ACA/Obamacare marketplaces are typically less wealthy than the local median. Florida household median income by family size is:

• 1 person - $65,801
• 2 people - $81,109
• 3 people - $93,983
• 4 people - $107,712

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/38217713

As many as 1,500 “ideological immigrants,” including 127 Americans, have applied for temporary residence in Russia in the last year.

Two years ago, Derek and DeAnna Huffman were desperate to leave Humble, a suburb of Houston. Their three daughters, they believed, were being brainwashed by public school and mainstream media to support LGBTQ rights. American culture in general no longer offered white people the same opportunities as other races, they said.

The couple yearned to live in a place that shared their "Christian values" and where they "weren't going to be discriminated against" as white, politically-conservative Christians.

So in March, the Huffmans became the first family to move to a community planned for fellow English-speakers some 30 miles west of Moscow, a project they had been following online run by long-term American expat and former Kremlin-sponsored RT host Tim Kirby. The family is among a small but growing number of Americans who have moved to Russia because the United States, in their opinion, has become too “woke."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/38235376

Two-thirds of Americans say that the country is "pretty seriously off on the wrong track," while just under a third say the country is moving in the right direction, according to an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel.

Overall, Americans seem unhappy and anxious, with a slim majority saying the economy has gotten worse since President Donald Trump took office and majorities saying that both major parties and the president are out of touch. A majority of Americans are also growing increasingly concerned over the government shutdown.

Carney's finance minister has been promising to deliver "generational investments" in this budget

but at the same time, Carney has warned that his plan to transform the economy will involve "sacrifices." These investments and sacrifices are distributed according to a peculiar logic.

For example: Carney has been publicly wringing his hands over the $10 million he claims Canada Post "loses" every day. In their analysis of that framing,The Breach pointed out that this number (an unusually high estimate) is tiny compared to the $169 million the military spends daily. That hasn't stopped Carney from slashing the postal service's activities, all while promising an extra $9.3 billion to the country's armed forces by March.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/38234451

Rural US towns reel as policies like tariffs cause global manufacturing companies to reconsider major investment projects

A host of Trump administration policies – tariff measures and the end of clean vehicle tax credits worth thousands of dollars to car buyers – are causing multinational manufacturing companies to consider pausing hundreds of millions of dollars in future investments, a move that would hit small, majority-Republican towns such as Jeffersonville especially hard.

Moreover, a raid by ICE immigration officers on a Hyundai-LG battery plant in Ellabell, a small town in south-east Georgia in September that saw more than 300 South Korean workers detained and sent home has sent shock waves through places like Jeffersonville and the C-suites of international companies alike.

Two-thirds of Americans say that the country is "pretty seriously off on the wrong track," while just under a third say the country is moving in the right direction, according to an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel.

Overall, Americans seem unhappy and anxious, with a slim majority saying the economy has gotten worse since President Donald Trump took office and majorities saying that both major parties and the president are out of touch. A majority of Americans are also growing increasingly concerned over the government shutdown.

I'm a little out of the loop on TV's. I mainly PC game, but have a few consoles as well. My question is, what is a TV made today that just has the lowest possible input lag? I don't give a crap about quality or any of this 1440p (i?) stuff (stopped caring many years ago. I still watch VHS tapes on my CRT's). All I care about is input lag because it ruins the gaming experience for me.

Currently have a shitpile Insignia that is so bad, you can't game on it (even racing games) and it's so slow that video and audio often get out of sync on it and it needs a factory reset. It was free so i've been using it but it's just upsetting me now. I'm wiling to drop $500-800 on an enjoyable gaming TV if something like that exists for that price. Something 40" or so is just fine with me. For reference the newest console on it would be a Xbox 360. I don't play anything older than PS2 on modern TV's as CRT's are better in every way for old consoles.

Otherwise, I'll just go back to all CRT and projector TV for consoles.

thanks yall!'

Edit: i also didn't clarify, but I'd really like to not use a smart TV. I really hate them. I just want a TV to be a TV if possible, or have the least possible amount of features.