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If you ever need to make a similar trip again, EZ Pass is a significant cost savings over PA's toll-by-plate system, like 40 or 50 percent less. They mail a transponder to you when you set up an account, so not this is not useful information for today.

Gaughan, county object to AI used in vacancy ruling A pair of senior Lackawanna County judges were persuaded by artificial intelligence generated in response to a flawed and leading prompt about home rule charters when they ruled in May that the cou…

Two judges asked a chatbot (Gemini) a question about home rule governments. They included the chatbot's responses in their ruling, which is now being appealed due to their use AI. Is this widespread? Why isn't this national news? This seems terribly dystopian.

The front of a tulip skirted wrap dress made out of a heavy cotton Lycra fabric with red poppy flowers and green leaves and stems on a peach background. The bodice and skirt seam is almost pattern matched. The hem goes from one side of the bodice, all the way down and around to the other side of the wrap skirt. It took an entire bobbin to hem it and approximately a million hours, or maybe it just felt that way. The background is a white door and a small section of dark wooden bannister railing is visible on the left. Pattern is Marsha Wrap Dress from Rad Patterns

The back view of the same dress against the same background, described in previous photo. Dress is size small with only a minimal FBA. Fabric wrap dress ties visible on left.

It’s been a while since I shared a sewing project as I’ve mostly been making undergarments, but I have really been enjoying wearing this.

Scranton police charge Bolus with hit-and-run during ‘No Kings’ protest SCRANTON — City police have charged Bob Bolus in connection with a hit-and-run collision Saturday downtown while he was driving his pro-Trump tractor-trailer with a suspended driver’s license…

"Bob Bolus did a hit and run with a suspended license at the No Kings protest" unfortunately has to be one of the most Scranton sentences ever written.

A neck gaitored man in a grey collared shirt pacing our block stopped dead in his tracks and stared when he saw me through a window last week. Look out for your neighbors. It feels like we are, for the thousandth time, standing on the precipice of something very bad.

Two large decorative outdoor signs remain at my local Aldi, with 2 small bits of trash next to them on a mostly empty shelf. One has a beach scene. The other, which made my day, says “Well, hello there unshine” as there is a large tag completely blocking the “s” of the word “sunshine”.

Well, hello there UNSHINE

Thanks for highlighting this.

Wayne County community rally amid ICE raid at restaurant Newswatch 16's Emily Kress spoke with people in the Honesdale community who are shaken after watching three restaurant employees get detained.

"It's really hard to fathom that the guy making my pizza for 25 years is a gangster and a terrorist, and the person who shows up in an unmarked car wearing a mask and body armor comes to take him away is somehow the good guy"

Red rose bush on the left, pink rose bush on the right in a weedy flowerbed next to a white porch railing. Both are absolutely overloaded with blooms, the pink one is so weighed down that it is bending over and covered a concrete walkway in front of the flowerbed.

Time for a trellis, I guess. These rose bushes were a half dead collection of sticks 9 years ago, all we’ve ever done is add compost a few times & mulch.

There was an article last year in Flaming Hydra about the sad, poorly made breads shared on social media by "tradwives" (the photos have haunted me ever since). This very much feels like the salad equivalent, ewww.

DEP Invites Comments On Proposed Alterra Energy LLC Thermochemical Plastics Recycling Plant Air Quality Permit Application For A Location In Luzerne County [PaEN] tinyurl.com/5n7smmcd

A summer guide to free museums and sites in Pennsylvania These Pennsylvania museums boast exhibits centered on shoes, arthropods, Renaissance art, and more — all for free. Start planning your next day trip.

Savor every bit of art, history, science and culture that you possibly can while so many people in power want you to believe you don't deserve it. www.spotlightpa.org/news/2025/05...

Disability, chronic illness, neis folks, what is the 2025 deductible for dual eligible Medicare and Medicaid enrollees? I hate asking people for information that one should be able to find easily, but web searches and government websites are both apparently useless and impossible to navigate now.

Bresnahan campaigned on congressional stock trade ban; now he trades freely WASHINGTON — Last March, when Rob Bresnahan, Jr., a wealthy business executive, was running to represent a competitive House district in northeastern Pennsylvania, he published a letter to the edit…

www.citizensvoice.com/2025/04/06/b...

❤️❤️❤️

Republicans cannot successfully pit disabled people against trans folks | Opinion Paving the way for one marginalized group paves the way for all.

"Pitting one person's needs against another perpetuates the false belief that we are not all a part of one community" Gift link. share.inquirer.com/HnBIjl

Pinterest Changes User Terms So It Can Train AI on User Data and Photos, Regardless of When They Were Posted Pinterest is the latest tech company to update its privacy policies to allow it to scrape user data for AI training.

Just updated my settings and now deleting a ton of ancient pinterest boards, including those for my knitting patterns. Sad to delete yet another little archive of so many things I'd created with my own human brain, so fuck you, Pinterest. futurism.com/pinterest-da...

That's a good point.

Closeup view of a waistband buttonhole with rounded corners in tan thread, fabric is cheap closeout quilting cotton with a light tan background and a small floral geometric print in darker tan. It looks similar to a faded Victorian era wallpaper. Fabric like this is usually unsuitable for garments, but I found a pattern (simplicity ESP 8151 back wrap skirt from 1977) that could work, just to get rid of this fabric. The buttonhole looks a little lumpy, with stray threads bulging out and off of it. The waistband is interfaced and topstitched with tan thread. A side seam is visible, the waistband and top of skirt rests against a background of the reverse side of the fabric.

Never fails. I manage to sew 3 perfect buttonholes on scrap materials & the one on the actual garment looks like someone chewed on it a little bit. Made with kenmore 158.1430’s buttonhole attachment, pattern is Simplicity ESP back wrap skirt 8151 from 1977. More details as part of alt description.

HHS.GOV Screenshot with text as follows: "Hmm. We're having trouble finding that site. we can't connect to the server at www.hhs.gov. If you entered the right address you can: try again later, check your network connection, check that firefox has permission to access the web (you might be connected but behind a firewall)." A blue button says "Try again".

HHS.GOV right now.

US health department condemns private equity firms for role in declining healthcare access Government report says private equity investment in nursing homes led to 11% increase in patient deaths

In case you're wondering: Yeah, according to the article, the HHS has already purged the press release announcing the report. The link to the report itself currently says the entire HHS.GOV website can't be accessed right now.

I looked through the CDC bookmarks I had this weekend and noticed the same about allergic reactions more generally (vaccination entries remain, otherwise gone)! Extremely mundane things like "Common Colds: Protect Yourself and Others" and "Supporting Caregivers" are all erased. It's grotesque.

One of those big white signs with the flashing lights and an arrow on top that you can change the letters on, it’s worn and covered in algae. It reads “Worried: This 2 shall pass. Maybe like a kidney stone” . the arrow points at a small brick church (out of frame, but the concrete steps are visible to the left of the sign). The background is brown grass, yellow road signs with arrows to warn of a curve in an unseen road, power lines, a big white 1800’s house is farther away in the background ringed by leafless trees. November 2024.

Not knowing the intent, I always hesitate to share cryptic signs (what if it’s a reference I don’t get?) but I keep thinking about this one, a reminder that people did know this was going to be bad. Seen outside a rural PA church, mid-November while at a riverbed in extreme drought conditions.

Reading the news while also watching S4 E4 of the Twilight Zone, "He's Alive" (a disturbing look at a bad and hateful man as he hones a monstrous message for the masses). Not loving how timely this feels.

NIH funding is critical for Philadelphia-area research institutes. It’s threatened under a Trump administration freeze. Major academic research institutions and medical schools in the Philadelphia region are allotted $1.7 billion in NIH funding.

www.inquirer.com/health/donal...

www.wvia.org/news/local/2...

Several handknit socks in shades of turquoise, purple and blue are partially darned with blue and turquoise yarn. They sit on a tan metal table alongside an antique wooden darning tool and a small clear container of darning needles.

Darning knits just absolutely shuts my brain off like no other craft/activity can. I’d been saving these forlorn handknit socks for a special (bad) occasion. Today feels like a nice day for it.

Front page of The Citizen’s Voice Newspaper Saturday January 11, 2025. Only partial headlines are shown, centered on “…The Mend” with a partially visible subheading “being shot in the line of duty, Scranton police detective… recovery during a difficul year has been remarkable”. The Citizen’s Voice was founded as a strike paper in the late 1970’s and became a going concern when the paper that became their primary rival refused to meet the union’s demands. It was sold to Media Newsgroup, a subsidiary of Alden Global Capital in 2023.

What’s it like watching a venerable news outlet rapidly decline after being bought out by private equity? It’s “difficul”.

Please PLEASE go comment in favor of this rule. The subminimum wage for disabled folks is vile and evil and *must* be eliminated.

The poverty rate of disabled folks is astronomical compared to abled folks. There is no doubt this disgusting discriminatory policy is part of the reason why.