#website localization testing

[superbpeacestranger]

Software Localization Testing

Verify that the application supports multiple languages and character sets.

Ensure proper rendering of characters and text in different languages.

https://www.crestechsoftware.com/services/non-functional-quality-assurance/globalization-testing/

[lordsmerchantco]

Why Some Websites' Structured Data Cannot Be Detected by Google Rich Results?

Table of Contents Introduction Understanding Structured Data How Google Rich Results Work Common Issues with Structured Data Detection How to Fix Structured Data Errors AI Overview: Enhancing Structured Data with AI Featured Snippets & AEO Optimization GEO Targeting for Local SEO Impact FAQs About Structured Data and Google Rich Results People Also Ask (PAA) People Also Search…

[grantihare]

someone needs to make a service where u can pay someone to navigate medical call phone trees/transfers because i am. v close to losing it and just saying fuck it the spinal fluid can stay in my skull atp lmao

[comicreliefmorlock]

This is probably the best time to find local Pride organizations and drop a donation (if you can) or volunteer to help out at Pride events.

Trumps anti-DEI crusade is causing businesses to drop progressive agendas for fear of government retaliation.

[anistarrose]

Please don't tune out when you get to the non-partisan section of your ballot this November. First off, where state Supreme Court justices are elected, Republicans are trying their darndest to elect candidates who will destroy reproductive freedom, gut voting rights, and do everything in their power to give "contested" elections to Republicans. Contrast Wisconsin electing a justice in 2023 who helped rule two partisan gerrymanders unconstitutional, versus North Carolina electing a conservative majority in 2022, who upheld a racist voter ID law and a partisan gerrymander that liberal justices had previously struck down both of.

Second, local judicial offices will make infinitely more of an impact on your community than a divided state or federal legislature will. District and circuit courts, especially, are where criminalization of homelessness and poverty play out, and where electing a progressive judge with a commitment to criminal justice reform can make an immediate difference in people's lives.

It's a premier example of buying people time, and doing profound-short-term good, while we work to eventually change the system. You might not think there will be any such progressive justices running in your district, but you won't know unless you do your research. (More on "research" in a moment.)

The candidates you elect to your non-partisan city council will determine whether those laws criminalizing homelessness get passed, how many blank checks the police get to surveil and oppress, and whether lifesaving harm reduction programs, like needle exchanges and even fentanyl test strips, are legal in your municipality. Your non-partisan school board might need your vote to fend off Moms for Liberty candidates and their ilk, who want to ban every book with a queer person or acknowledgement of racism in it.

Of course, this begs the question — if these candidates are non-partisan, and often hyper-local, then how do I research them? There's so much less information and press about them, so how do I make an informed decision?

I'm not an expert, myself. But I do think/hope I have enough tips to consist of a useful conclusion to this post:

Plan ahead. If you vote in person, figure out what's on your ballot before you show up and get jumpscared by names you don't know. Find out what's on your ballot beforehand, and bring notes with you when you vote. Your city website should have a sample ballot, and if they drop the ball, go to Ballotpedia.

Ballotpedia in general, speaking of which. Candidates often answer Ballotpedia's interviews, and if you're lucky, you'll also get all the dirt on who's donating to their campaign.

Check endorsements. Usually candidates are very vocal about these on their websites. If local/state progressive leaders and a couple unions (not counting police unions lol) are endorsing a candidate, then that's not the end of my personal research process per se, but it usually speeds things up.

Check the back of the ballot. That's where non-partisan races usually bleed over to. This is the other reason why notes are helpful, because they can confirm you're not missing anything.

I've seen some misconceptions in the reblogs, so an addendum to my point about bringing notes on the candidates: I strongly suggest making those notes a physical list that you bring polling place with you. Many states do allow phones at the polling place, but several states explicitly don't — Nevada, Maryland, and Texas all ban phones, and that may not be an exhaustive list. There may also be states that allow individual city clerks to set policies.

You should also pause and think before you take a photo of your ballot, because even some states that don't ban phones still ban ballot photographs. But whether it's a photo, or just having your phone in general — in an environment as high-risk for voter suppression as the current one, you don't want even a little bit of ambiguity about your conduct. Physical notes are your friends.

[reasonsforhope]

"Calling it “a fridge to bridge the world,” the Thermavault can use different combinations of salts to keep the contents at temperatures just above freezing or below it. Some vaccines require regular kitchen fridge temps, while others, or even transplant organs, need to be kept below freezing, meaning this versatility is a big advantage for the product’s overall market demand.

Dhruv Chaudhary, Mithran Ladhania, and Mridul Jain are all children of physicians or medical field workers in the [city] of Indore. Seeing how difficult it was to keep COVID-19 vaccines viable en route to countryside villages hours outside city centers in tropical heat, they wanted to create a better, portable solution to keeping medical supplies cool.

Because salt molecules dissolve in water, the charged ions that make up the salt molecules break apart. However, this separation requires energy, which is taken in the form of heat from the water, cooling it down.

Though the teen team knew this, it remained a challenge to find which kind of salt would have the optimal set of characteristics. Though sodium chloride—our refined table salt—is what we think of when we hear the word “salt,” there are well over one-hundred different chemical compounds that classify as salt.

“While we did scour through the entire internet to find the best salt possible, we kind of just ended up back to our ninth-grade science textbook,” Chaudhary told Business Insider.

Indeed, the professors at the lab in the Indian Institutes of Technology where they were testing Thermavault’s prototype were experimenting with two different salts which ended up being the best available options, a discovery made after the three teens tested another 20, none of which proved viable.

These were barium hydroxide octahydrate and ammonium chloride. The ammonium chloride alone, when dissolved, cooled the water to between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius (about 35 to 43 degrees Fahrenheit) perfect for many vaccines, while a dash of barium hydroxide octahydrate dropped that temperature to below freezing.

“We have been able to keep the vaccines inside the Thermavault for almost 10 to 12 hours,” Dr. Pritesh Vyas, an orthopedic surgeon who tested the device at V One hospital in Indore, said in a video on the Thermavault website.

Designing a prototype, the teens have already tested it in local hospitals, and are in the process of assembling another 200 for the purpose of testing them in 120 hospitals around Indore to produce the best possible scope of use and utility data for a product launch.

Their ingenuity and imagination won them the 2025 Earth Prize, which came with a $12,500 reward needed for this mass testing phase."

-via Good News Network, April 22, 2025

[ralfmaximus]

Recall is designed to use local AI models to screenshot everything you see or do on your computer and then give you the ability to search and retrieve anything in seconds. There’s even an explorable timeline you can scroll through. Everything in Recall is designed to remain local and private on-device, so no data is used to train Microsoft’s AI models. Despite Microsoft’s promises of a secure and encrypted Recall experience, cybersecurity expert Kevin Beaumont has found that the AI-powered feature has some potential security flaws. Beaumont, who briefly worked at Microsoft in 2020, has been testing out Recall over the past week and discovered that the feature stores data in a database in plain text.

Holy cats, this is way worse than we were told.

Microsoft said that Recall stored its zillions of screenshots in an encrypted database hidden in a system folder. Turns out, they're using SQLite, a free (public domain) database to store unencrypted plain text in the user's home folder. Which is definitely NOT secure.

Further, Microsoft refers to Recall as an optional experience. But it's turned on by default, and turning it off is a chore. They buried it in a control panel setting.

They say certain URLs and websites can be blacklisted from Recall, but only if you're using Microsoft's Edge browser! But don't worry: DRM protected films & music will never get recorded. Ho ho ho.

This whole debacle feels like an Onion article but it's not.

Luckily(?) Recall is currently only available on Windows 11, but I fully expect Microsoft to try and shove this terrible thing onto unsuspecting Win10 users via Update.

Stay tuned...

[so-i-did-this-thing]

If you are going through the Florida Name Change website, be very, very careful to double check against the forms and procedures on your county clerk's website. God bless the name change website folks, but a lot of the content is out of date and/or poorly written.

When I did my name change 2 years ago, the Florida Name Change website had the wrong forms, resulting in my name change request getting rejected and me having to re-file and get re-fingerprinted. It wasted about $20, a few weeks of my time + some PTO from work.

Honestly, you are best off bringing everything Florida Name Change spits out to your county clerk in person to make sure you have all the steps correct. The order of getting fingerprints and then requesting a hearing is not very clear on the name change website, so ask the clerk - they will spell everyone out for you (though you will likely be sent to another department, as things like name changes involve both the clerks and the legal department). Fingerprinting can especially be confusing because you need to be issued a reference nunber so your prints get sent to the county for your background check.

If this is overwhelming and/or you need financial aid, check if your local lgbtq center offers name change services - there might be a pro Bono service where someone will help guide you through all the forms. I believe some counties also waive or lower the filing fee if you can demonstrate need.

Hey, trans Floridians -- you need to watch this bill. It would require your driver's license to use your gender assigned at birth. With the unofficial ban on Florida birth certificate changes (the department of vital statistics has quietly shunted all requests into legal limbo since early 2023), it's clear the state wants to document us out of existence and force people out.

I strongly recommend all trans people get passports asap, as you can still self-ID there.

https://myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Bills/billsdetail.aspx?BillId=79902

[hillbillyoracle]

Now is the Time to Start Masking Again

If you stopped paying attention to COVID with the release of vaccines, you've missed a lot.

COVID is airborne.

Long COVID impacts 10% of people infected by COVID (though this is beginning to look like a low estimate). Risk of Long COVID goes up with each reinfection. Long COVID is worse than initially reported.

Bisexual and trans people are more likely to develop Long COVID.

Black and Hispanic folks are more likely than White folks experience more symptoms and health problems from Long COVID.

***COVID and Long COVID has much more in common with HIV and AIDS than the flu (28:19 - 38:30 of linked video)***

The Basics

[WEBSITE] You Have to Live Your Life

[ZINE] What's Up With COVID and How to Protect Yourself - 2024 Edition

[FAQ] r/ZeroCOVIDCommunity's FAQ and Resource List

"This is great and all but it's overwhelming. TL;DR?"

COVID is airborne. Long COVID is much more common (and serious/debilitating) than previously thought.

Mask with an N95 or better in all indoor spaces and outside when close to others. Improve your indoor air quality by opening windows and using fans/air filters.

Rapid tests are prone to false negatives so make sure to retest in 48 hours after exposure and/or when you develop symptoms. Isolate in the meantime. Consider upgrading to a NAAT (PlusLife, Metrix) or PCR (Lucira) if you have the money.

Things for you to do today:

buy some N95s or request some from a local mask bloc

open a window more often and/or buy an air purifier

buy the best COVID tests you can afford

Basics in Video Form

If you have limited time, watch the videos with * first. They will cover the basics in about 20 minutes.

*VIDEO: COVID is Airborne [2:53]

*VIDEO: What the latest research tells us about long COVID's most common symptoms [5:58]

*VIDEO: FDA warns of false negatives with at home COVID Tests [2:19]

*VIDEO: How to Stay Safe(r) at Home [10:35]

--

VIDEO: The Astounding Physics of N95 Mask [6:08]

VIDEO: Mask Fit 101: Seal [4:07]

VIDEO: Mask Fit 101: Qualitative [3:49]

VIDEO: Mask Fit 102: Quantitative [5:04]

VIDEO: How to get [and give] FREE Masks [6:07]

VIDEO: Try this DIY indoor air purifier for cleaner air [4:22]

VIDEO: Why is EVERYONE more SICK [54:55]

Want to Get Involved?

Join your local Mask Bloc

No local Mask Bloc? Consider starting one

Talk to the people in your life about COVID

Print quality zines and spread them in your communities

Push for COVID Conscious changes in your spaces.

[littlesunshine123]

Low-budget activities for regressors

Play games online- Several websites online have games for kids, including cool math games, webkinz, pbs kids, and roblox.

Watch shows- Websites like PBS kids and YouTube have plenty of free content for kids.

Check out items from the library- Everyone knows libraries have books, but did you know many libraries have items such as CDs, DVDs, magazines, audiobooks, online recourses, and some even have passes to local places, games, or toys! You also might be able to print out coloring or activity sheets for cheep or free.

Sing or listen to music- Nursery rimes are great, you can even do motions to songs like itsy bitsy spider or wheels on the bus.

Have a dance party- With yourself, your friends, or your stuffies!

Color- Coloring supplies are generally pretty cheep. You can find free coloring pages online, or just color on paper. Coloring is also popular amongst adults, so you can ask for coloring supplies as gifts. (Brands such as Coco Wyo make "easy coloring books" that are "socially acceptable" for adults, but could be used for regression.)

Little snacks/food- Since you need to eat anyway, you may as well have "kid friendly" snacks and food when you have the chance.

Thrifted/garage sale items- Toys, books, games, dvds, and kid themed home goods from thrift stores and garage sales are often pretty cheep. (I recommend this over going to stores like dollar tree or five bellow, because you may only be able to get a couple of items, and these items are often are low quality and could break easy, while second hand items have stood the test of time.)

[monstersholygrail]

Ok, after reading a good share of your stories I can't help but think about how humans who enjoy petpl4y and how the free use city would work as someone who doesn't have much luck finding people into the same thing...

First of all, thank you for reading any of my stories at all, ever, even in the slightest. Much appreciated. Secondly, please please elaborate bc that sounds super interesting. The first thing that came to mind for me was like speed dating in FUC but for kinks.

A local bar in Free Use City is known throughout the city to host these sort of fun little events. One of their most popular is Speed Kink Dating.

The way it works is that you sign up for the event on their website. They have you fill out a long survey full of your preferences and what you’re looking for in a partner. But most importantly, they have you submit a full life of your kinks and if you’re open to trying any new ones.

After the sign up deadline ends, they compile the sheets and run it through their systems. Matching up similar preferences and interests but also by their kinks. They then assign people with each other in their similar groups and organize it all by table number. The attendee will get an email explaining which table they will be starting at and rotation they’ll follow after.

It all runs like clockwork. Everyone moving throughout the tables, talking about their kinks and why they’d be a good match together, and seeing if they have any sort of connection. Of course, this is not a perfect system where everyone finds someone. But most of the time, many people will as least find a sexual match if not a romantic one. But many romances have blossomed from this event as well. Leading to its infamy.

In collaboration with the bar, the brothel next door then opens its door for these new matches at a discount price. Allowing these new matches to test their connection and see if it can turn into a long-time thing.

Those nights moans and screams of ecstasy fill the brothel and pierce through the musk-scented air. Matches performing pet play where they sit like good little dogs, humping their new owners legs and eating them out like they’ve been starving and are finally being fed a good meal. Others tied up and fucked for hours on end, forcing orgasm after orgasm out of their match till they pass out in a pool of their own cum.

Even some matches walk into other rooms of matches who are willing. Some wanting to watch while others want to be watched. The sight of such intense passion making everyone there drop with arousal.

The day after everyone is practically glowing. And it allows for even more people in Free Use City to go out and speak highly of this bar’s event. Of course it never fails to intrigue. And the next time another one of these events pop up on their home page it just brings in more and more people who sign up.

[vaadazen-codes]

How To Get Started Making Visual Novels

Wanna make a visual novel? Or maybe you've seen games like Our Life, Blooming Panic, Doki Doki Literature Club, etc. and wanna make something like that? Good news, here's a very basic beginners guide on how to get started in renpy and what you need to know going in! Before you start, I highly recommend looking at my last post about writing a script for renpy just to make it easier on you!

LONG POST AHEAD

Obviously, our first step is downloading it from their website

thankfully, its right on the home page of their site. Follow basica program installation steps and run the program. I highly recommend pinning it to your task bar to make it easier to access.

From there, you're met with the renpy app, it's a little daunting at first but let's talk about what all these buttons are for.

Projects

This part is simple, it just lists the current projects in the chosen directory. You probably won't have any in there of your own. You should still see Tutorial and The Question!

Both of those default projects are super helpful in their own ways, i highly recommend testing out the tutorial and playing around with it just to get comfortable with some of the basics.

Create New Project

The first step to actually making your game into a game!

You'll be met with a prompt letting you know that the project is being made in English and that you can change it. You can click Continue.

From here, you'll be asked to input a project name! Put in your games title, or even a placeholder title since this Information can be changed later! (this is also the title the folder will be in your file browser, be sure to name it something you won't overlook)

Now we get to choose our resolution!

If you have no idea what to choose, go for 1920x1080! This is the standard size for most computer monitors and laptops, but it will still display with moderately decent quality on 4k monitors too!

You can choose 3840x2160 as well. This is 2x the measurements of the default, with the same ration. These dimensions are considered 4k. Keep in mind, your image files will be bigger and can cause the game to have a larger size to download.

Now we get to choose our color scheme!

Renpy has some simple default options with the 'light mode' colors being the bottom two rows, and the 'dark mode' colors being the toop two rows.

You can pick anything here, but I like to choose something that matches my projects vibes/colors better. Mostly because depending on how in depth you go with the ui, it minimizes the amount of changes I need to make later.

Click continue and give it a minute. Note: If it says "not responding" wait a moment without clicking anything. It can sometimes freeze briefly during the process.

Now we should be back at our home screen, with our new project showing. Let's talk about allll that stuff on the right now.

Open Directory

This just opens that particular folder in your local file explorer!

game - is all the game files, so your folders for images, audio, saves, and your game files like your script, screens, and more.

base - this is the folder that the game folder is inside of. You can also find the errors and log txt files in here.

images - takes you to your main images folder. This is where you wanna put all of your NON gui images, like your sprites, backgrounds, and CGs. You can create folders inside of this and still call them in the script later. EX: a folder for backgrounds , a folder for sprites for character a, a seperate folder for spirtes for character b, etc.

audio - Takes you to the default audio folder. This is empty, but you can put all your music and sound effects here!

gui - brings up the folder containing all of the default renpy gui. It's a good place to start/ reference for sizes if you want to hand draw your UI pieces like your text box!

Edit File

Simple enough, this is just where you can open your code files in whatever text/code editor you have installed.

Script.rpy - where all of your story and characters live. This is the file you'll spend most of your time in at first

Options.rpy - Contains mostly simple information, like project name and version. There aren't a ton of things in here you need to look at. There is also some lines of code that help 'archive' certain files by file type so that they can't be seen by players digging in code however. Fun if you want to hide some images in there for later or if you just dont want someone seeing how messy your files are. We've all been there

Gui.rpy - where all of the easy customization happens. Here you can change font colors, hover colors, fonts, font sizes, and then the alignment and placement of all of your text! Like your dialogue and names, the height of text buttons, etc. It more or less sets the defaults for a lot of these unless you choose to change them later.

Screens.rpy - undeniably my favorite, this is where all of the UI is laid out for the different screens in your game, like the main menu, game menu, quick menu, choice menu, etc. You can add custom screens too if you want, but I always make my own seperate file for these.

Open Project - this just opens all of those files at once in the code editor. Super handy if you make extra files like I do for certain things.

Actions

last but not least, our actions.

Navigate Script - This feature is underrated in my honest opinion, it's super handy for help debugging! In renpy you can comment with # before a line. However, if you do #TODO and type something after it, it saves it as a note! You can view these TODO's here as well as easily navigate to when certain screens are called, where different labels are (super great if your game is long, and more. It saves some scrolling.

Check Script (Lint) - also super duper handy for debugging some basic things. It also tells you your word count! But its handy for letting you know about some errors that might throw up. I like using it to look for sprites I may or may not have mispelled, because they show up in there too.

Change/Update GUI - Nifty, though once you start customizing GUI on your own, it isn't as useful. You can reset the project at any point and regenerate the image files here. This updates all those defaults we talked about earlier.

Delete Persistent - this just helps you delete any persistent data between play throughs on your end. I like to use it when making a lot of changes while testing the game, so that I can reboot the game fresh.

Force Recompile - Full disclosure, as many games as I've made and as long as I've been using Renpy, i have never used this feature. I searched to see what it does and this is the general consesus: Normally renpy tries to be smart about compiling code (creating .rpyc files) and only compiles .rpy files with changes. This is to speed up the process since compiling takes time. Sometimes you can make changes that renpy don't pick up on and therefore won't recompile. In these cases you can run force recompile to force it. Another solution (if you know what file is affected) is to delete that specific. rpyc file.

The rest of your options on this right hand side are how you make executable builds for your game that people can download to extract and play later!

Sorry gang! that was a whole lot of text obviously the last button "Launch Project" launches an uncompiled version of the project for you to play and test as you go! Hang in tight because my next post is about how to utilize github for renpy, so you can collaborate easier!

[operationandre]

Zero Day Victim Headcanons

(some information is taken from movie and website. others are exactly what the title says: headcanons. if you don’t agree, that is okay!)

Melissa Baker

- Senior

- She was the co-captain of the cheer squad at the school.

- She was shot in the stomach by Andre while sitting at the entrance of the school with friends. Her friends cradled her body in their arms until the cops arrived.

- She was always really nice. Freshmen looked up to her. She was the “mom friend” to everyone she encountered.

- She had a job at a local family-run restaurant. She was that waitress that always had a smile on her face. She could sit and talk with customers for hours.

- She was struggling with her physics class that semester and had gotten her first A in the class in first period on the day of the shooting. The graded paper was still sitting in her backpack as she was shot.

Chelsea Castro

- Freshman

- Her favorite color was pink. The color covered her childhood bedroom walls as well as her casket.

- She didn’t know her way around the school very well as it was only her first year. She only knew the way to her few classes. When the shooting started, she didn’t know where to run and hide.

- She was an only child and grew up “too slow” instead of “too fast.” She was always acting younger than she was but knew when to stop being too childish.

- Her favorite book series was Harry Potter (and she was very, very into it). In her last minutes, she naively prayed that she could have a spell or a potion to fix her pain and injuries.

- She was shorter than most of her classmates and often wore shoes that added an inch or two to her height.

Carmine Dibiano

- Junior

- He was born out of the country like Andre, except he was born in Italy instead of Germany.

- He called his parents during the shooting and died whilst on the phone with them.

- He was part of the stoner group at school, along with Cal. He often dressed in band t-shirts and loose pants. He honestly always thought Cal looked cool even though they never really spoke as Cal kept to himself.

- His favorite band was Motörhead. He would listen to their music nonstop.

- He would visit Italy every summer. He stayed with his grandparents for weeks at a time down in Southern Italy.

Megan Donner

- Senior

- She was in an advanced mathematics class with Andre and sat a couple seats behind him.

- She had a younger sister and brother that she drove to school every day.

- She was actually very friendly with the two boys. She wasn’t one of their friends, really, but they had spoken a couple times before and were always civil.

- She was shot by Andre. He shot her in the arm at first and then steadied his arm to hit her in the chest. She dropped instantly.

- She had been on track to graduate with an Honors diploma from Iroquois. Her parents would be given the diploma not even a month later.

Victoria Evers

- Sophomore

- She was the girl Andre made fun of for falling. (“Oh, oh, I’ve fallen! Oh no!”)

- She wasn’t even supposed to be out of class. She had finished her English test early and left the room to use the restroom. She was in the middle of walking back to the class when the shooting started.

- She had long black hair and always wore it in a low ponytail. Her mom loved playing with her daughter’s hair and made sure it looked perfect for her visitation.

- She was part of the school’s student council. She was the treasurer for the sophomore class.

- She was hit by one of Andre’s bullets in her calf before getting shot in the spine by Cal.

Greg Kupra

- Senior

- He went to prom with Cal a couple nights before the shooting. He actually tried to get along with him before and during the dance but ended up just making fun of him with the rest of the group when they were heading home.

- He tried to say “Hi” and shake hands with Cal when he first got in the limo but was ignored (shown in the movie).

- He saw Andre first and knew Cal was the second shooter, but he didn’t want to believe it.

- He’s been good friends with Rachel, Josh, and others in that group since he was little. They all attended his funeral.

- He loved to write. He had been writing a zombie apocalypse based novel for a couple years before he died. His parents found it and published it for him.

Brent Pearlman

- Senior

- Brent was on the track team with Andre. He did long distance running instead of sprints like Andre.

- He tried to escape after being wounded by Cal, thinking he could get away after Andre recognized him. Both Andre and Cal gunned him down until he dropped.

- He went through high school doing workouts with Andre. They both saw one another grow up. Andre didn’t bat an eye at him dying.

- He loved Nascar. His father used to watch it with him until Brent passed. His father could never watch races again.

- Brent was a studious kid. He had gotten a track scholarship to the University of Connecticut and needed to keep his grades up in order to keep it.

Sarah Pilar

- Freshman

- She was shot point blank in the face while screaming and hiding under a table (shown in the movie).

- She was in the choir at school. Her voice was classified as a soprano, and she was looking forward to auditioning for the lead in the next year’s school play in fall.

- She had an older sister who was also a student at Iroquois. Her sister was a senior and wanted to run to Sarah when the shooting started. She never made it to her in time.

- Her locker was always perfectly clean and decorated. She even had that patterned wallpaper for it that you can get from the store.

- She had just gotten braces. Her teeth got blown out of her head before they could be fixed.

Leon Stetz

- SRO officer

- He ran around protecting children before encountering the shooters.

- He has two daughters at home. His last thoughts were about them. He had braided their hair that very morning.

- He was a big movie fan, especially horror movies. He really liked IT (1990) and the Exorcist (1973).

- He used to be a cop on the force but decided to move to the school when his daughters were born because he knew he could protect them there.

- He exchanged rounds with both of the boys before being fatally shot by Cal.

Chris Thomas

- Sophomore

- He was the person on the other side of the pillar from Greg who just stared at Andre without saying anything. He was shot in the head multiple times (shown in the movie).

- He had always known he would die young. He was already planning the end of his life and had finished his notes the night before the shooting.

- He never really spoke to anyone other than teachers when he was asked questions by them. He kept to himself, which got him bullied a lot.

- Football is one of his biggest passions. He used to play on the middle school team but quit before high school when he started getting depressed. He still watches the sport, though.

- He was bullied by the same people that bullied Andre and Cal. His treatment was a lot worse, though.

Omar Walters

- Senior

- He was the guy who died in the library and was made fun of by Andre until Cal made him move on. When the boys returned, he was deceased.

- He played snare in the school’s marching band. He was the section leader. His family never got rid of the drum set in his room.

- He was shot in the side and bled out in a chair until he ultimately fell over (shown in the movie).

- His phone was one of the phones used to call 9-1-1. In the movie, you can see Andre notice that it’s on and mess with it.

- He ended up saving multiple lives. He distracted the boys from getting to a bigger group of kids that ran through the library before him.

Jason Zuffoletti

- Junior

- He was the first person that was shot. He was sitting on the steps of the school and was shot by Cal as they were entering.

- Brad Huff was a really close friend of his. They were both on the same wrestling team.

- He had a date planned with his girlfriend for the night of the shooting. The moment he saw the boys with guns pointed at him, he knew he wouldn’t make it to the date.

- The entire wrestling team dedicated all of their victories to him the next school year. They’d all pray before meets and say that Jason was watching over them.

- Jason is a middle child. His brother had enlisted in the Army, and his sister was still in middle school. They were both devastated at the loss of their brother.

[smoov-criminal]

hey i just got 50 free respirators and 4 covid tests from my local mask bloc, this website has a list of all active mask blocs across the world (most are in the us but there's also entries for canada, the uk, france, ireland, australia, aotearoa (new zealand) and chile), there's 163 of them so if you're in the us there's a pretty good chance there's one near you. check this out if you or anyone in your community needs masks and can't get them, and honestly even if you can afford it you should check it out anyways so there's more demand

[contemplatingoutlander]

How Trump is reshaping reality by hiding data

Curating reality is an old political game, but Trump’s sweeping statistical purges are part of a broader attempt to reinvent “truth.”

Trump appears to be turning the federal government into its own 1984-style Ministry of Truth.

This is a gift 🎁 link so there is no paywall to read it. Below are some excerpts/highlights.

By Amanda Shendruk and Catherine Rampell | March 11, 2025 The Trump administration is deleting taxpayer-funded data — information that Americans use to make sense of the world. In its absence, the president can paint the world as he pleases. We don’t know the full universe of statistics that has gone missing, but the U.S. DOGE Service’s wrecking ball has already left behind a wasteland of 404 pages. All sorts of useful information has disappeared, including data on:

[...]

[See more under the cut.]

Three cases of legerdemath and other tricks up Trump’s sleeve

Deleting data isn’t the only way to manipulate official statistics. Trump and his allies have also misrepresented or altered data. Here are a few examples: 1. Incorrect data

Witness DOGE’s bogus statistics on its supposed government savings. The administration counts as “savings” some canceled contracts that had already been paid in full. Some canceled expenses were created out of whole cloth, such as $50 million supposedly spent on sending condoms to Gaza. 2. Misrepresented data

One of Trump’s favorite charts on immigration is riddled with errors. For one, it does not show the number of immigrants entering the United States illegally, as he claims, but the number of people stopped at the U.S. border. Similarly, when Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was recently asked how much DOGE funding cuts might reduce economic growth, he suggested that the agency might decide to change how economic growth is calculated so that the usual GDP report strips out government spending altogether. This would be an abrupt change to the standard GDP methodology that has been used around the world for nearly a century, but it would certainly make the DOGE cuts look less painful. 3. Altered data

When data doesn’t tell the story Trump wants, he fabricates it. In what became known as “Sharpiegate,” Trump notoriously altered a map of Hurricane Dorian’s path in 2019.

Likewise, before Jan. 30, a National Institutes of Health website documenting years of spending data included a category called “Workforce Diversity and Outreach.” That line item is now gone — even though the money was, indeed, spent.

Taking cues from authoritarian illusionists

Such actions are straight out of authoritarian leaders’ playbooks. Research suggests that less democratic countries have been more likely to inflate their GDP growth rates and manipulate their covid-19 numbers. Statistical manipulation is also more common in countries that shun economic openness and democracy. [...] To be clear, efforts to rewrite reality via statistical manipulation often don’t work. If anything, China’s data deletions reduced public confidence in the country’s economic stability. (No one hides good news, after all.) The Trump team’s efforts to suppress nettlesome numbers have similarly eroded trust in U.S. data. Only about one-third of Americans trust that most or all of the statistics Trump cites are “reliable and accurate.”

Meanwhile, missing or untrustworthy data lead to worse decisions: Auto companies, for example, draw on dozens of federally administered datasets when devising new car models, how to price them, where to stock and market them and other key choices. Retailers need detailed information about local demographics, weather and modes of transit when deciding where to locate stores. Doctors require up-to-date statistics about disease spread when diagnosing or treating patients. Families look at school test scores and local crime rates when deciding where to move. Politicians use census data when determining funding levels for important government programs.

And of course, voters need good data of all kinds when weighing whether to throw the bums out. Many of us take the existence of economic or public health stats for granted, without even thinking about who maintains them or what happens if they go away. Fortunately, some outside institutions have been saving and archiving endangered federal data. The Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine, for instance, crawls sites around the internet and has become an invaluable resource for seeing what federal websites used to contain. Other organizations are archiving topic-specific data and research, such as on the environment or reproductive health. These are critical but ultimately insufficient efforts. At best, they can preserve data already published. But they cannot update series already halted or purged.... Some private companies may step in to offer their own substitutes (on prices, for example), but private companies still rely on government statistics to calibrate their own numbers. Much of the most critical information about the state of our union can be collected only by the state itself. Americans might be stuck with whatever Trump chooses to share with us, or not.

[followthebluebell]

Any advice on how to find local and reputable cat breeders? Websites? Keywords? Things to look out for?

I'd start at a cat show, tbh. It's a good way to meet people in the community, meet their cats personally, and really just talk to them. Cat breeders love to talk about their animals, so you'll learn a lot.

But this is pretty unrealistic for a lot of people. :/ That's a lot of travel time, possibly time off of work, not to mention it's fucking exhausting. So let's be a bit more realistic.

You want to figure out what breeds you're interested in first and learn as much as possible about them. You want to know what health problems they've got, if there are tests for said health problems, and what you're potentially getting into.

Once you've sorted out your breeds of choice, make your way over to TICA's website. Just being listed here isn't a guarantee of a good breeder or anything; it's just a list of breeders who SUPPOSEDLY follow TICA's guidelines. Not all of them do; it's not like anyone actually checks on these things.

And this is why you've really got to research your breed beforehand: you want to be able to ask the breeder, "Hey, I know sphynxes have heart problems; do you do frequent scans for HCM and can I see the results?" or "progressive retinal atrophy can be a problem in bengals; do you do genetic tests for it and can I see the results?" or "maine coons can get hip dysplasia; do you have any OFA scores I can see for your cats?" Just whatever the health problem in your breed is, don't be afraid to ask about it and ask for scans, tests, etc. You want to be able to personally see them.

A good breeder will be able to provide tests and scans and be more than happy to let you take a look at them.

Ideally, you'd be able to meet the cats in their home. At the very least, meeting the mother is a good sign. You might not meet the sire, because a lot of breeders do not want to keep their tomcats on site due to the smell, conflict, and lack of space for multiple cats. Or they may have used artificial insemination. I don't think that's particularly common in cats (at least compared to dogs), but it's a thing that happens.

Red flags:

Insists you feed a particular type of food (raw, Paw Tree, etc)

Tells you to avoid vaccines/deworming (your new kitten should have AT LEAST 2 FVRCP vaccines by 14 weeks old and a deworming)

Refuses to do tests or refuses to show you the results

Won't show you a pedigree

Says their cats are immune to FIP

Offers to sell you an unaltered kitten (especially in the US)

Selling kittens too young (8 weeks is absolute MINIMUM legally; I'd prefer to see kittens with their mothers until they are 14-15 weeks). Some bad breeders will try to use the line 'the mother is rejecting the kittens' or 'they're already using litter and eating solid food'.

Pressure to buy immediately

Not allowing you to interact with the kitten

Not showing the cats in shows

Too many litters in a single year or has kittens always available -- it's a sure sign that they're mass producing cats

Breeding multiple breeds -- typically, a breeder will be very focused on just one or two breeds.