pride-commons

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i thought my laptop was on its last leg because it was running at six billion degrees and using 100% disk space at all times and then i turned off shadows and some other windows effects and it was immediately cured. i just did the same to my roommate's computer and its performance issues were also immediately cured. okay. i guess.

so i guess if you have creaky freezy windows 10/11 try searching "advanced system settings", go to performance settings, and uncheck "show shadows under windows" and anything else you don't want. hope that helps someone else.

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the original leeroy jenkins video was posted may 11th 2005… 10 years ago today… yowee

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chicago pope tweets

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Goodluck Pikachu

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our new job launched its mandatory ai transcription program designed to streamline our workflow and not only does it melt down the moment it has to transcribe non-white customers but it keeps hallucinating the existence of a mysterious boy named dorian who shows up in every third call summary

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I love the thought of the new avengers showing up in doomsday with bob in tow and everyone else being like

“who the fuck is that”

“bob”

“why is he here”

“he’s our friend”

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collecting posts of this type

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GUYS I FIGURED IT OUT

Clint in the vents and that’s his whole personality because he wasn’t fleshed out in the movies → Ava in the walls and that’s her whole personality because she wasn’t fleshed out in the movies

Thor eating poptarts and overusing proper words because English isn’t his first language and he’s the comedic relief → Alexei eating Wheaties and overusing proper words because English isn’t his first language and he’s the comedic relief

Natasha pranking and laughing at everyone from the sidelines because fanon decided she’s just silly like that → Yelena pranking and laughing at everyone from the sidelines because canon decided she’s just silly like that

Bruce being a sweet, soft-spoken, unassuming guy but also the most fucking unhinged monstrosity if you catch him on a bad day → Bob being a sweet, soft-spoken, unassuming guy but also the most fucking unhinged monstrosity if you catch him on a sad day

Steve being handed the de facto title of goody two shoes leader despite being the LAST person on board with this → Bucky being handed the de facto title of goody two shoes leader despite being the last person on board with this

Tony being a big-mouthed asshole that’s secretly haunted by his past mistakes which involved publicly supporting the US military via PR stunts as a weapons manufacturer → John being a big-mouthed asshole that’s secretly haunted by his past mistakes which involved publicly supporting the US military via PR stunts as a weapon himself

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"The state, which has long ranked worst in the US for child wellbeing, became the first and only in the country to offer free childcare to a majority of families

There was a moment, just before the pandemic, when Lisset Sanchez thought she might have to drop out of college because the cost of keeping her three children in daycare was just too much.

Even with support from the state, she and her husband were paying $800 a month – about half of what Sanchez and her husband paid for their mortgage in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

But during the pandemic, that cost went down to $0. And Sanchez was not only able to finish college, but enroll in nursing school. With a scholarship that covered her tuition and free childcare, Sanchez could afford to commute to school, buy groceries for her growing family – even after she had two more children – and pay down the family’s mortgage and car loan.

“We are a one-income household,” said Sanchez, whose husband works while she is in school. Having free childcare “did help tremendously”.

...Three years ago, New Mexico became the first state in the nation to offer free childcare to a majority of families. The United States has no federal, universal childcare – and ranks 40th on a Unicef ranking of 41 high-income countries’ childcare policies, while maintaining some of the highest childcare costs in the world. Expanding on pandemic-era assistance, New Mexico made childcare free for families earning up to 400% of the federal poverty level, or about $124,000 for a family of four. That meant about half of New Mexican children now qualified.

In one of the poorest states in the nation, where the median household income is half that and childcare costs for two children could take up 80% of a family’s income, the impact was powerful. The state, which had long ranked worst in the nation for child wellbeing, saw its poverty rate begin to fall.

As the state simultaneously raised wages for childcare workers, and became the first to base its subsidy reimbursement rates on the actual cost of providing such care, early childhood educators were also raised out of poverty. In 2020, 27.4% of childcare providers – often women of color – were living in poverty. By 2024, that number had fallen to 16%.

During the state’s recent legislative session, lawmakers approved a “historic” increase in funding for education, including early childhood education, that might improve those numbers even further...

When now-governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced her candidacy in late 2016, she emphasized her desire to address the state’s low child wellbeing rating. And when she took office in January 2018, she described her aim to have a “moonshot for education”: major investments in education across the state, from early childhood through college.

That led to her opening the state’s early childhood education and care department in 2019 – and tapping Groginksy, who had overseen efforts to improve early childhood policies in Washington DC, to run it. Then, in 2020, Lujan Grisham threw her support behind a bill in the state legislature that would establish an Early Childhood Trust Fund: by investing $300m – plus budget surpluses each year, largely from oil and gas revenue – the state hoped to distribute a percentage to fund early childhood education each year.

But then, just weeks after the trust fund was established, the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic.

“Covid created a really enormous moment for childcare,” said Heinz. “We had somewhat of a national reckoning about the fact that we don’t have a workforce if we don’t have childcare.”

As federal funding flooded into New Mexico, the state directed millions of dollars toward childcare, including by boosting pay for entry-level childcare providers to $15 an hour, expanding eligibility for free childcare to families making 400% of the poverty level, and becoming the first state in the nation to set childcare subsidy rates at the true cost of delivering care.

As pandemic-era relief funding dried up in 2022, the governor and Democratic lawmakers proposed another way to generate funds for childcare – directing a portion of the state’s Land Grant Permanent Fund to early childhood education and care. Like the Early Childhood Trust Fund, the permanent fund – which was established when New Mexico became a state – was funded by taxes on fossil fuel revenues. That November, 70% of New Mexican voters approved a constitutional amendment directing 1.25% of the fund to early childhood programs.

By then, the Early Childhood Trust Fund had grown exponentially – due to the boom in oil and gas prices. Beginning with $300m in 2020, the fund had swollen to over $9bn by the end of 2024...

New Mexico has long had one of the highest “official poverty rates” in the nation.

But using a metric that accounts for social safety net programs – like universal childcare – that’s slowly shifting. According to “supplemental poverty” data, 17.1% of New Mexicans fell below the federal “supplemental” poverty line from 2013 to 2015 (a metric that takes into account cost of living and social supports) – making it the fifth poorest state in the nation by that measure. But today, that number has fallen to 10.9%, one of the biggest changes in the country, amounting to 120,000 fewer New Mexicans living in poverty.

New Mexico’s child wellbeing ranking – which is based heavily on “official poverty” rankings – probably won’t budge, says Heinz because “the amount of money coming into households, that they have to run their budget, remains very low.

“However, the thing New Mexico has done that’s fairly tremendous, I think, is around families not having to have as much money going out,” she said.

During the recent legislative session, lawmakers deepened their investments in early childhood education even further, approving a 21.6% increase of $170m for education programs – including early childhood education. However, other legislation that advocates had hoped might pass stalled in the legislature, including a bill to require businesses to offer paid family medical leave...

In her budget recommendations, Lujan Grisham asked the state to up its commitment to early childhood policies, by raising the wage floor for childcare workers to $18 an hour and establishing a career lattice for them. Because of that, Gonzalez has been able to start working on her associate’s in childhood education at Central New Mexico Community College where her tuition is waived. The governor also backed a house bill that will increase the amount of money distributed annually from the Early Childhood Trust Fund – since its dramatic growth due to oil and gas revenues.

Although funding childcare through the Land Grant Permanent Fund is unique to New Mexico – and a handful of other states with permanent funds, like Alaska, Texas and North Dakota – Heinz says the Early Childhood Trust fund “holds interesting lessons for other states” about investing a percentage of revenues into early childhood programs.

In New Mexico, those revenues come largely from oil and gas, but New Mexico Voices for Children has put forth recommendations about how the state can continue funding childcare while transitioning away from fossil fuels, largely by raising taxes on the state’s wealthiest earners. Although other states have not yet followed in New Mexico’s footsteps, a growing number are making strides to offer free pre-K to a majority of their residents.

Heinz cautions that change won’t occur overnight. “What New Mexico is trying to do here is play a very long game. And so I am not without worry that people might give it five years, and it’s been almost five years now, and then say, where are the results? Why is everything not better?” she said. “This is generational change” that New Mexico is only just beginning to witness as the first children who were recipients of universal childcare start school."

-via The Guardian, April 11, 2025

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i love the conclave. what do you mean the entire world has tv cameras trained on the chimney of an old italian palace waiting for days or weeks until the color of the smoke changes and we find out who’s been elected as the next supreme dictator of catholicism

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We just knew.

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To be a fly on the wall during the Vatican Conclave Watchparty

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Best of luck to the internet pundits and keyboard activists scrambling to fit the India-Pakistan shaped conflict into the israel-Palestine hole and freaking out over which team to support 🍿

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Do you know how fucked up your team has to be for Bucky Barnes to be the most stable member

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oh my God????😭😭😭