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Cake day: July 21st, 2023

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  • I mostly agree with you about the looking bad and not tasting good, but I have made the “Meat Hand” before and that was just as good as normal food if you like meatloaf. Just make your recipe of choice but form into a hand shape, top it with a little cheese before baking, and cook on a sheet pan, then transfer into mashed taters. Looks great/horrifying, hard to mess up, and tastes like regular food. Plus ketchup makes “blood.”. Options fingernails are just onion slivers and the wrist is the onion core/center part.

    Pic below isn’t mine, but mine came out looking just as good.




  • Congress Set to Avert Government Shutdown as House Measure Passes

    Compromise keeps government funded until mid-November, while omitting Ukraine and border provisions

    The House passed a measure Saturday to extend government funding through mid-November. It includes $16 billion in disaster relief.

    WASHINGTON—Congress was on the verge of averting a government shutdown Saturday, after the House passed a measure with broad bipartisan support to extend funding through mid-November and sent the matter to the Senate.

    White House officials said President Biden supports the measure and will sign it as soon as possible. The surprise breakthrough upended expectations that Congress was too divided to pass anything in time to keep the government from partially shutting down at 12:01 a.m. Sunday. But a delay in the Senate in quickly taking up the measure late Saturday raised the possibility of more twists in the drama.

    The House voted 335-91 for the funding measure, which includes $16 billion in disaster relief but omits aid for Ukraine. It also excludes border-security measures sought by Republicans. The margin exceeded the two-thirds majority needed to clear the bill through the House, which considered the legislation under special procedures requiring a supermajority of votes. All but one Democrat voted in favor of the measure, while nearly half of Republicans voted against it.

    “It’s easy to be a conservative that wants to do nothing,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) said after the House vote. “But I believe America wants to find the conservative that can make government work efficiently, effectively and accountable.”

    In reaching for a compromise, Republicans argued that the party had exhausted its options after dissident conservatives derailed an earlier plan, and said that the only choice now was to pass a bill extending funding at 2023’s $1.6 trillion annual rate through Nov. 17. That squares with major components of the approach being taken in the Senate, except that the Senate version includes an emergency $6 billion for Ukraine.

    Some Democrats had worked to rally their members against the legislation, arguing against omitting aid for Ukraine and saying that Republicans had pulled a fast one by advancing a bill that they said would enable a pay raise for members of Congress. But Republicans moved to fix the cost-of-living increase matter and questioned why Democrats would be willing to shut down their own government in the name of supporting Ukraine.

    The move to advance the legislation marked a major turnabout for McCarthy, who had spent months trying to appease a dissident flank that rejected his every offer. McCarthy advanced spending bills that at a net $1.471 trillion for fiscal 2024 were widely seen by Democrats as breaking his debt deal with President Biden. McCarthy then revised his approach, offering to advance bills with even steeper cuts while also saying that any stopgap measure must simultaneously provide for new restrictions on migrants. They rejected that as well.

    “I have tried for eight months,” McCarthy told reporters. “It took me a long time to finally get the appropriations bills on the floor; they were delaying. I tried yesterday with the most conservative stopgap funding bill you could find,” he said. “I couldn’t get 218 Republicans.”

    McCarthy dismissed opposition from conservatives who have threatened to oust him as speaker. “If somebody wants to make a motion against me, bring it. There has to be an adult in the room,” he said after the vote.

    White House officials and some Democratic lawmakers cast the vote as a victory, noting that the bill excluded the deep spending cuts that conservative House Republicans were pushing, reductions that would have slashed budgets for a range of domestic programs.

    Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois, the lone House Democrat to vote against the short-term measure, said it was because the bill didn’t include funding for Ukraine. “Putin is celebrating,” he told CNN. “We got 45 days to fix it.”

    Headed into the possible shutdown Sunday, federal government agencies have been alerting employees and laying out plans to bring nonessential government programs to a halt. Roughly 1.5 million civilian government workers wouldn’t be paid during a shutdown, while 800,000 employees deemed essential would continue working, according to the White House budget office. That number could change if a shutdown dragged on.

    Just getting to the vote Saturday contained hours of drama. The House was stuck in a suspended state after House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D., Mass.) made a motion to adjourn, saying that Democrats needed time to read the bill because “we have serious trust issues.”

    Republicans said that Democrats were stalling to give the Senate time to clear the last big roadblock to passing its own stopgap measure—a bid to give that version the best chance at being enacted into law.

    “If we win this vote, this is the bill that will be signed into law,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R., Neb.) “If they can delay this until after the Senate vote, the Senate vote is going to become law. This is what this is all about. It’s nothing about them wanting to read it.”

    In the Senate, Democratic leaders instructed the sergeant at arms to round up absent senators so that they could speed up a pivotal vote. Republicans said that Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D., N.Y.) pulled a fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building earlier Saturday, which Republicans said was his attempt to stall the vote in the House. His spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. And Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.), moving to delay the vote, stood up on the House floor to speak.

    “Strap in because this may take a while,” Jeffries said, taking advantage of a special privilege available only to leaders, known as the “magic minute,” to bust through normal restrictions on lawmaker speeches. Normally, lawmakers would have to stay within their party’s remaining debate time—which for Democrats had been six minutes.

    House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries tried to delay the House vote to give the Senate’s stopgap measure an edge.

    Critics of a short-term deal said McCarthy gave in too easily.

    “Total capitulation,” said Rep. Bob Good (R., Va.), who has indicated he would be open to supporting an effort to oust McCarthy as speaker. “He has failed to do anything that he’s promised to do, including passing a bill that got every Democrat vote. Every Democrat vote!”

    President Biden had declined to meet with McCarthy, urging the speaker to stick to the budget deal both parties agreed to earlier this year. The agreement set top-line spending levels for the coming fiscal years. The White House has excoriated House Republicans for bringing the government to the brink of a shutdown, warning of wide-ranging fallout.

    Most routine federal food-safety inspections would cease in a shutdown, national parks would close, new small-business loan applications wouldn’t be processed and a supplemental nutrition program for women and children would run out of funding within days. Smithsonian Institution museums could close after Oct. 7. Many essential services—like the mail and the delivery of Social Security checks—would continue.

    Federal agencies, with White House guidance, are required to figure out what operations can continue under an 1884 law called the Antideficiency Act that says it is illegal for the U.S. government to spend more money than Congress granted for that fiscal year. That law grants exceptions for safety and property protection. Presidents have taken differing approaches to national parks during prior shutdowns.


  • WSJ Article

    This article seemed to have done better details about the drama going on in all this. Here are some tidbits since it’s paywalled. Give me a minute and I’ll get the white thing for anyone interested, because to hell with NewsCorp.

    The House voted 335-91 for the funding measure, which includes $16 billion in disaster relief but omits aid for Ukraine. It also excludes border-security measures sought by Republicans.

    Republicans argued that the party had exhausted its options after dissident conservatives derailed an earlier plan, and said that the only choice now was to pass a bill extending funding at 2023’s $1.6 trillion annual rate through Nov. 17. That squares with major components of the approach being taken in the Senate, except that the Senate version includes an emergency $6 billion for Ukraine.

    Some Democrats had worked to rally their members against the legislation, arguing against omitting aid for Ukraine and saying that Republicans had pulled a fast one by advancing a bill that they said would enable a pay raise for members of Congress. But Republicans moved to fix the cost-of-living increase matter and questioned why Democrats would be willing to shut down their own government in the name of supporting Ukraine.

    Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois, the lone House Democrat to vote against the short-term measure, said it was because the bill didn’t include funding for Ukraine. “Putin is celebrating,” he told CNN. “We got 45 days to fix it.”

    “If we win this vote, this is the bill that will be signed into law,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R., Neb.) “If they can delay this until after the Senate vote, the Senate vote is going to become law. This is what this is all about. It’s nothing about them wanting to read it.”







  • I don’t block too many things, because there can occasionally be news related to a topic I have no interest in that is still interesting. Like I have no interest in sports, but if there’s something big like a scandal or arrest or some great play it mistakes, it’s fun to catch that stuff.

    The main things I outright block are anything NSFW that is definitely not for me, but mostly it’s just about all of the meme communities. The amount of material those groups churn out is overwhelming and so many just seem so low effort. Things like programming humor generally don’t bother me much, but most are just meh.



  • Honestly it was better than I expected. If Ramaswamy wasn’t there, I really wouldn’t have minded it that much. He just came off so sleazy to me. Christy said something along the lines of he was the ChatGPT candidate. If you had an AI make a young, slick, influencer-looking MAGA Republican, it probably would look a lot like him. He was very Trump-like in behavior, talking over people and saying purposely ignorant things. The rest were plain vanilla Republicans closer to what we used to get, except Desantis, and Scott to a lesser extent.

    If either the Bush presidents seem bearable at this point to you, the rest of the candidates were as tolerable as Reps get. More just Crap Original Strength instead of Crap Ulta Plus Xtreme.


  • I wasn’t familiar with Ramaswamy before, and part of me wishes that I still wasn’t. That guy is a whacko even in that stage and most of them told him so, which was about the only highlight. Audience cheered waaaay too much for comfort at some if the things coming out of his mouth including being the only one to explicitly claim climate change is a hoax. The others never said if they believe in it or not, they let Ramaswamy take the attention off that.

    Christie did his Trump bashing, but doesn’t seem to have improved on any of his it beliefs. Mostly blamed libs for NJ problems. Did have a bit of fun when they asked him about aliens though.

    Haley was, well, not a pleasant surprise, but it’s amazing how a few years can really affect who is “moderate.” She went for the throat regarding Putin, had a moderate, respectable for a Republican view about abortion rights, and called out China, and also a few fellow candidates for making up stuff.

    Pence was about how you would expect. Got everyone to admit he did the right thing ignoring Trump on Jan 6. Otherwise nothing new from him. Still says he would support Trump as president.

    Desantis did his anti woke crap and took credit for the federal aid Florida got after emergencies. Pretty much promised to make the US into Florida. Repeated a few times how he’s going to serve Biden “back to his basement.” He didn’t get much more attention than anyone else, so no new momentum for him.

    Others were pretty much a snooze other than talking about using the military on the southern border. Won’t be dedicating any extra of my time to those guys. That’s about all I remember. Only half paid attention through most of it, I don’t swing that way, but I’ll hear them out.


  • Top for me have to be the combo of Aniyomi and WVC.

    Aniyomi is a Tachiyomi fork that adds anime extensions. Tachi is great as is, but after Anyme shut down, I needed something to watch and track anime with MAL integration. Plus if you read manga, I’d assume you watch anime too. App and extensions receive regular updates.

    WVC aka Web Video Caster. Chromecast any video. I have watched soooooo much stuff on my TV through this. Great controls and features, frequent updates, and they’re on Reddit to talk to directly if you have issues or feature requests. Great team of people and wonderful app. First premium app I bought.

    Bring! is a close third. Works on Android and iOS so me and SO can both share a shopping list every since Google screwed theirs up. Was great when Google Assistant was linked to it, but Google broke that too. Still a great app though. We get notifications when the other person adds an item in case one of us is running errands already.


  • I read the Wikipedia summary of the coup fallout. It seems Prigozhin was cooperative to turn all legit businesses and paramilitary equipment over to Putin. His former media outlets turned on him and painted him as a traitor, but he still cooperated. I feel it’s unlikely to be a mutual plot to fake his death, they’ve executed other people for far less than a public coup though. He may have thought he was getting some kind of lieniency, but I think they’re toast.