Neither is okay. Super PAC expenditures cannot be made “in concert or cooperation with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate, the candidate’s campaign or a political party”

While his super PAC has already raised $130 million, it can’t run his campaign. Campaigns rely on many continuous small donations which DeSantis is just not pulling in. Mega donors too seem uncertain on DeSantis, and justifiably so given that he has been trailing Trump by 30% points in the national polls for a few months now and isn’t closing in. No one wants to fund a loser.

Video if you wanna suffer through his voice (or Twitter).

A California church deacon allegedly sexually abused numerous boys on religious mission trips under the guise of inspecting their genitals for “concerning” moles—helping protect the children, he told them, from the ravages of skin cancer.

But beware of drag queens folks

@politicus on kbin. There is also @USpolitics. This magazine should allow for politics from all over. Especially so if you plan to allow discussion threads revolving around general political themes instead of specific stories, since you will likely draw in more participation from non-Americans as well.

Yeah, it’s an other “discourse has gotten so bad” and “both sides do it” un-think piece.

Maybe read the whole thing first. It’s just an article pointing out notable examples of ‘nasty politics’ and how voters receive it in polls.

Btw, you missed out this gem of Republican buffoonery

Edit: Also surely you notice the irony of your comment calling an article you didn’t read an ‘un-think piece’

What is this beef between the mayor and the council?

From an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article

Five of the seven members of South Fulton’s city council sued to throw Mayor Khalid Kamau out of office — in part, for allegedly recording closed-door executive sessions for his “personal benefit.” The 98-page lawsuit says Kamau’s conduct prevents the council from effectively governing. During executive session at a November 2022 meeting, council members discovered Kamau was recording it on a cell phone, the suit says. During a Facebook Live broadcast in December, Kamau said he would continue to do so and release those discussions to the public. He has since refused to stop recording executive sessions and further threatened to use the recordings to sue the City Council and or its members, according to the filing.

In addition to seeking Kamau’s removal from office, council members want an injunction or restraining order to keep him from recording executive sessions and making those discussions public. “To be clear, the City Council has only ever used its executive sessions as authorized by the Georgia Open Meetings Act, which makes it unclear how, or why, the Mayor would seek to use these recordings in a lawsuit against the City Council,” the request says.

Georgia law allows public officials to discuss property transactions, potential litigation and employee matters in private. Council members say they can’t effectively do so under the threat of being recorded. “In short, the Council Members are being held hostage by the Mayor; forced to choose between either betraying the City’s confidence and allowing its confidential information to be recorded and disclosed, or simply not addressing these important matters at all,” the suit says.

Did the council have something to do with the trespassing/burglary charges?

No, but the majority of the council members want him removed from office, and the person taking over for now is one of those members. So I assume they’re happy. Good ol’ political drama

I see you’ve got it! Here’s a guide to kbin if you need

Watched a few episodes of Criminal Minds and The Blacklist. They’re great for sure, but they are episodic. I’m in the mood for a serialized show.

Will check out Bones tonight.

From the bill

Texas cities have passed burdensome local ordinances, creating a patchwork regulations across the state. These policies are better left to the employer, and if necessary, the state and federal government. Uniformity and consistent policy gives employers and employees greater clarity and flexibility.

It’s a move aiming to centralize control of the state.

the purpose of this Act is to provide regulatory consistency across this state and return the historic exclusive regulatory powers to the state where those powers belong.

Is this the fOrMiDaBlE iNtElLiGeNcE you referenced in your anti-LGBTQ+ ad, Ron? That lost you millions of dollars worth of business to pander to a bunch of internet trolls that probably aren’t even old enough to vote? sigh

It’s a video. You can view it from kbin itself by clicking on the icon I’ve marked in this image

Edit: Works on mobile as well

While I understand the fediverse may pose a learning curve, please note it does not refer to a forum, which is why there are introduction pages. As for Reddit being straight forward, it’s been developing for about 18 years now. Kbin in comparison is about two months into development.

I mean hey find me a dino that isn’t cool. Washington’s got a beautiful beast for sure.

Idaho too

From the space.com article:

Dark matter and dark energy are believed to make up most of the universe, but we can’t see these phenomena in wavelengths of light. Rather, we can track the dark universe through its effects on other objects. (Gravitational lensing is one example, when a massive object bends the light of a distant object behind through the force of gravity, bringing otherwise faraway stars or galaxies into sharp focus.)

Cosmologists — scientists studying the history of space — seek to understand how the dark universe behaves to chart the effects of time on our cosmos. The mergers of galaxies, the expansion of the universe and the movements of individual stars are all subject to the forces of dark energy and dark matter.

The Euclid space observatory, which is designed to seek out invisible dark matter and dark energy, is expected to separate from its rocket 40 minutes after liftoff and will then make a distant journey to the sun-Earth Lagrange point 2, which is roughly 1 million miles (1.5 million km) away from our planet on the opposite side of the sun. Lagrange points are relatively stable orbits where satellites use a minimum of fuel, and Euclid’s destination is a popular location: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope also orbits at L2, for example.

See the image feature from NASA here -> nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2023/hubble-checks-in-on-a-galactic-neighbor

The highly irregular galaxy ESO 174-1, which resembles a lonely, hazy cloud against a backdrop of bright stars, dominates this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. ESO 174-1 lies around 11 million light-years from Earth and consists of a bright cloud of stars and a faint, meandering tendril of dark gas and dust.

This image is part of a collection of Hubble observations designed to better understand our nearby galactic neighbors. The observations aim to resolve the brightest stars and basic properties of every known galaxy within 10 megaparsecs. A parsec is a unit used by astronomers to measure the vast distances to other galaxies – 10 megaparsecs translates to 32 million light-years – and makes astronomical distances easier to handle. For example, the nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri, is about 1.3 parsecs away. In everyday units this is a staggering 25 trillion miles (40 trillion km)!

The program to capture all of our neighboring galaxies was designed to use the 2-3% of Hubble time available between observations. It’s inefficient for Hubble to make back-to-back observations of objects that are in opposite parts of the sky. Observing programs like the one that captured ESO 174-1 fill the gaps between other observations. This way the telescope can move gradually from one observation to another, while still collecting data. These fill-in observing programs make the most out of every last minute of Hubble’s observing time.

Monochrome infrared imaging, wavelength of 3.23 microns color mapped to orange hue. Source (pg. 2)

An excerpt:

Methane gas absorbs almost all the sunlight falling on the atmosphere at this picture’s specific infrared wavelength (3.23 microns). As a result, Saturn’s familiar striped patterns aren’t visible because the methane-rich upper atmosphere blocks our view of the primary clouds. Instead, Saturn’s disk appears dark, and we see features associated with high-altitude stratospheric aerosols, including large, dark, and diffuse structures in Saturn’s northern hemisphere that don’t align with the planet’s lines of latitude. Unlike Saturn’s atmosphere, its rings lack methane, so at this infrared wavelength, they are no darker than usual and thus easily outshine the darkened planet.

See the official press release by SETI institute here -> seti.org/press-release/new-image-james-webb-space-telescope-reveals-astonishing-saturn-and-its-rings