Heard. Still; points for doing something to push back against the attacks on our beloved neighbors.
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Youâd be against Canada taking over the US?
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I, for one, welcome our maple syrup overlords, eh!
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Coooooooooo-rooo-cooo-cooo-coooâcooo-cooo-coooooooo!
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Over 100 reported dead; no comment so far from Texas governor or other state officials, no official remarks yet from Trump administration.
(source: Border Report)
Ronald Johnson, the United States Ambassador to Mexico, thanked Mexico and [Mexicoâs President Claudia] Sheinbaum for what he called âdisplays of solidarity and support in the wake of the floods that have caused disasters in Texas.â
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ron Johnsonâs message to Mexicoâs president expressing gratitute for Mexico sending help for flood victims in Texas.
âThrough Secretary de la Fuente of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE), I thank the Mexican government for its expressions of solidarity and support following the floods in Texas,â wrote Johnson. âOur people have always been united in the moments that matter most, guided by respect, empathy, and shared commitment.â
Note: The Mexican rescue team âarrived in Texas after receiving a formal request from the nonprofit search and rescue organization Texas EquuSearch.â (So, not from Texas government.)
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Democratic governor vetoes anti-trans measure passed by Republican legislature
âMy faith teaches me that we are all children of God,â Gov. Josh Stein said as he vetoed the measure.
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Should not be notable that someone did the right thing, but here we are.
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The GOP bill doesnât explicitly name Planned Parenthood; rather, it states that any nonprofit that offers abortion servicesâand received $800,000 or more in revenue from Medicaid payments in 2023âis barred from receiving federal money. Most abortion providers arenât even close to meeting that $800,000 threshold, so Planned Parenthood argued that the bill was a backdoor attempt to target the organization for its abortion rights advocacy, thereby violating its freedom of speech.
âThe Defund Provision is a naked attempt to leverage the governmentâs spending power to attack and penalize Planned Parenthood and impermissibly single it out for unfavorable treatment,â the organization said in its lawsuit. âIt does so not only because of Planned Parenthood Membersâ long history of providing legal abortions to patients across the country, but also because of Planned Parenthoodâs unique role in advocating for policies to protect and expand access to sexual and reproductive health care, including abortion.â
The Defund Provision places a one-year ban on Medicaid funding (the original wording of the bill was a 10-year ban). Talwaniâs ruling only applies to Planned Parenthood, but they maintain theyâre really the only organization affected by it.
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A 2023 study by the Brookings Institution, meanwhile, found that without significant numbers of immigrants coming to the U.S. in the future, the countryâs population would plunge by more than 100 million people this century.
Yeah, about that immigrationâŚ
I think it is safe to say that, for now, at least, the risk of destroying the planet by overpopulation is in decline. Lots of other risks to keep track of, though.
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I donât know it was ever actually a risk, anyway, just a classist, racist argument by people scared of those they felt they had the right to dominate. Itâs never about elites having âtoo many childrenâ, it was always about poor people and colonized people, who were largely POC.
But I heard that last night and thought that they were diminishing the racist angle way too much.
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I have no doubt that racists are into âpopulation control.â Goddam racists are into way too much of our shit!
Still, Iâve been freaked out my whole life by disappearing woods and wetlands, their being bulldozed and filled in for more and more and more housing and businesses. Iâve seen plenty of it here in Michigan 
D was telling me the other day how much of the wild lands around his old neighborhood, places he used to see turkles and deers, are now either all built up, or have construction going on. He said the traffic congestionâs awful, too. Heâd been living almost an hour N of Detroit in one among a cluster of smol towns. We passed thru them to go to our (on/off) riding lessons over 10 yrs during 1976-1996, so we got to see the changes that were taking/had taken place out there. They were semi-suburban and semi- and truly rural in '76. When we started again in the '90s, someone had built condos on the farmland that had been next to the stable just N of our riding school. (Hope theyâd warned potential residents about the manure piles.) At least 1/4 of the farms were gone, and most had sold off at least some of their land for development. Itâs now mostly suburban - with ugly, crowded stroads - and semi-rural, with little thatâs actually rural.
The small town N of our riding school has also been changing and growing, of course. Wonder how long itâll be before they meet in the middle.
The empty lots in my neighborhood, which once offered space and protection for pheasants and their phamilies, are getting built on. Canât remember the last time I saw or even heard a pheasant.
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Honestly, I think how we let sprawl happen is a choice, not an inevitability, even with ever more people in the world. I think there is a way to balance ensuring everyone has a home and we care for our planet and our wild places, too. I donât believe itâs an either/or.
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A German tourist had been lost for almost a fortnight in an area that even the locals think of as âthe middle of fucking nowhereâ. No water sources, no food, no tracks, just miles and miles of chest-high scrub. A couple of days ago they found her car, broken down miles from the nearest thing which might be even charitably described as a track, let alone a road, let alone a road which might have traffic on it.
The search was ramping up, but it was widely considered increasingly bleak, given how the weather out there gets down to freezing overnight at this time of year.
Then, yesterday afternoon, someone found her walking on the edge of the national park, basically healthy.
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At least it wasnt the height of summer.
I looked up the town. The border between agricultural land and the bush is quite stark. The name of the road amused me
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