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let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open

Love Begins
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shark vs the universe
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i don't do bad sauce passes
we're not kids anymore.
styofa doing anything
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noise dept.
Cosmic Funnies

blake kathryn
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸

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@lighthouse2030
I found this on NewsBreak: Pentagon is panicking over Biden’s proposal that would increase water costs by $10,000 per household
I found this on NewsBreak: Pentagon is panicking over Biden’s proposal that would increase water costs by $10,000 per household
Without so much as a whisper of pushback from Congress, the White House is bulldozing forward with a regulatory proposal that could cost the
Ukraine aims to wear down and outsmart a Russian army distracted by infighting
Ukraine aims to wear down and outsmart a Russian army distracted by infighting
1/12FILE - Ukrainian soldiers walk in their positions on the frontline in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, Friday, June 23, 2023. In the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, Ukrainian troops - backed by tanks, artillery and drones - have broken through initial Russian fighting positions and continue to make steady gains south of Velyka Novosilka near the administrative border with Donestk and south of Orikhiv, while confronting heavy bombardment in wide open fields with little cover. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)ASSOCIATED PRESS
2/12FILE - A Ukrainian soldier lies on the ground as a tank fires toward Russian positions at the frontline near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Saturday, June 17, 2023. In Bakhmut, Ukrainian platoons continue to chip away at Russia’s northern and southern flanks, inching toward the strategic heights of Klischiivka. (AP Photo/Libkos, File)ASSOCIATED PRESS
3/12FILE - Ukrainian soldiers fire toward Russian position from a trench on the frontline in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, Friday, June 23, 2023. In the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, Ukrainian troops - backed by tanks, artillery and drones - have broken through initial Russian fighting positions and continue to make steady gains south of Velyka Novosilka near the administrative border with Donestk and south of Orikhiv, while confronting heavy bombardment in wide open fields with little cover. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)ASSOCIATED PRESS
4/12Ukraine's armed forces are trying to wear down Russian troops before making an eastward push. (AP Graphic)ASSOCIATED PRESS
5/12FILE - Ukrainian soldiers on a Swedish CV90 infantry fighting vehicle at their positions near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Sunday, June 25, 2023. In Bakhmut, Ukrainian platoons continue to chip away at Russia’s northern and southern flanks, inching toward the strategic heights of Klischiivka. (Roman Chop via AP, File)ASSOCIATED PRESS
6/12FILE - An aerial view of Bakhmut, the site of the heaviest battles with Russian troops in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, Thursday, June 22, 2023. Ukraine's June 10 recapture of the small village of Neskuchne in the eastern Donetsk region encapsulates the progress of its much-anticipated counteroffensive: small platoon-sized operations banking on the element of surprise and, when successful, notching incremental territorial gains. (AP Photo/Libkos, File)ASSOCIATED PRESS
7/12FILE - A Ukrainian soldier examines a culture center in recently retaken Blahodatne, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Friday, June 16, 2023. Ukraine's June 10 recapture of the small village of Neskuchne in the eastern Donetsk region encapsulates the progress of its much-anticipated counteroffensive: small platoon-sized operations banking on the element of surprise and, when successful, notching incremental territorial gains. (AP Photo/Libkos, File)ASSOCIATED PRESS
8/12FILE - Houses are seen underwater in the flooded town of Oleshky, Ukraine, Saturday, June 10, 2023. A catastrophic dam collapse last month in the southern Kherson region has altered the geography along the Dnieper River, which marks the contact line, giving Ukrainians more freedom of movement. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)ASSOCIATED PRESS
9/12In this handout photo taken from video released by Prigozhin Press Service, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Wagner Group military company, records his video addresses in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, Saturday, June 24, 2023. As a revolt by Yevgeny Prigozhin's Wagner mercenary group posed the most serious challenge to President Vladimir Putin's long rule in Russia this week, Ukraine simultaneously intensified operations in the Bakhmut direction, making advances on the southern flanks for four straight days. But the disarray within Russia's military ranks has not affected it's military posture along the front, though analysts speculate it may prove devastating for troop morale. (Prigozhin Press Service via AP)ASSOCIATED PRESS
10/12FILE - Members of the Wagner Group military company load their tank onto a truck on a street in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, Saturday, June 24, 2023, prior to leaving an area at the headquarters of the Southern Military District. As a revolt by Yevgeny Prigozhin's Wagner mercenary group posed the most serious challenge to President Vladimir Putin's long rule in Russia this week, Ukraine simultaneously intensified operations in the Bakhmut direction, making advances on the southern flanks for four straight days. (AP Photo, File)ASSOCIATED PRESS
11/12FILE - A Ukrainian serviceman of 28th brigade shoots a Maxim gun towards Russian positions at the frontline in Donetsk region, Ukraine, Wednesday, June 21, 2023. Ukraine's June 10 recapture of the small village of Neskuchne in the eastern Donetsk region encapsulates the progress of its much-anticipated counteroffensive: small platoon-sized operations banking on the element of surprise and, when successful, notching incremental territorial gains. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)ASSOCIATED PRESS
12/12FILE - Ukrainian soldiers fire toward Russian position on the frontline in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, Saturday, June 24, 2023. In the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, Ukrainian troops - backed by tanks, artillery and drones - have broken through initial Russian fighting positions and continue to make steady gains south of Velyka Novosilka near the administrative border with Donestk and south of Orikhiv, while confronting heavy bombardment in wide open fields with little cover. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAMYA KULLABFri, June 30, 2023 at 12:29 AM EDT
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The ambush had been postponed three times before Ukrainian commanders decided one recent night that conditions were finally right. Cloaked in darkness, a battalion of Kyiv’s 129th brigade pressed ahead, advancing stealthily on unsuspecting Russian soldiers.
By the time the Russians situated along the front line realized they were under attack, it was too late.
Ukraine's recapture of the small village of Neskuchne in the eastern Donetsk region on June 10 encapsulates the opening strategy of a major counteroffensive launched earlier this month. Small platoons bank on the element of surprise and, when successful, make incremental gains in territory and battlefield intelligence.
“We had a few scenarios. In the end, I think we chose the best one. To come quietly, unexpectedly,” said Serhii Zherebylo, the 41-year-old deputy commander of the battalion that retook Neskuchne.
Across the 1,500-kilometer (930-mile) front line, Ukrainian forces are attempting to wear down the enemy and reshape battle lines to create more favorable conditions for a decisive, eastward advance. One strategy could be to try to split Russia's forces in two so that the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014, is isolated from the rest of the territory it controls.
Ukraine's troops were given a boost of morale last week by an armed rebellion in Russia that posed the most significant threat to President Vladimir Putin's power in more than two decades. Yet how the revolt by Wagner Group mercenaries under the command of Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin affects the trajectory of the war remains to be seen.
The infighting is a major distraction for Russia's military and political leaders, but experts say the impact on the battlefield so far appears minimal.
For the past four days, Ukraine has stepped up operations around the eastern city of Bakhmut, which Wagner forces seized after months of intense fighting and then handed over to Russian soldiers, who continue to lose some ground on their southern flank.
Along the front line, however, the strength of the Russian military remains unchanged since the revolt.
It is not clear where Ukraine will attempt to decisively punch through, but any success will rely on newly formed, Western-equipped brigades that are not yet deployed. For now, Russia's deeply fortified positions and relative air superiority are slowing Ukraine's advance.
Military experts say it is hard to say who has the advantage: Russia is dug-in with manpower and ammunition, while Ukraine is versatile, equipped with modern weaponry and clever on the battlefield.
But with the autumn muddy season only four months away, some Ukrainian commanders say they are racing against time.
“Although Ukrainian forces are making small and steady gains, they do not yet have the operational initiative, meaning they are not dictating the tempo and terms of action," said Dylan Lee Lehrke, an analyst with the British security intelligence firm Janes.
“This has led some observers to claim the counteroffensive is not meeting expectations,” Lehrke said. But it was never going to resemble Ukraine’s blitzkrieg liberation of the eastern Kharkiv region last year, he said, because ”Russian forces have had too long to prepare fortifications."
Russian authorities say Ukraine has suffered substantial losses since the start of the counteroffensive — 259 tanks and 790 armored vehicles, according to Putin, whose claims could not be independently verified.
Grinding battles are being waged in multiple combat zones.
A catastrophic dam collapse last month in the southern Kherson region has altered the geography along the Dnieper River, giving Ukrainians more freedom of movement there. Russian military bloggers claim a small group of Ukrainian fighters are making gains in the area, although Ukrainian officials have not confirmed these reports.
Across the agricultural plains of the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, Ukrainian troops backed by tanks, artillery and drones appear to be chipping away more decisively against Russian positions.
Ukrainian troops would deal a severe blow to Russian forces if they managed to regain access to the Sea of Azov from this direction, effectively cutting off Moscow’s land bridge to Crimea. It’s too early to determine whether this is a realistic goal.
They are still a long way off.
In an underground command center on the front, a Ukrainian Special Forces commander with the call sign “Hunter” stares intently at an aerial view of the lush green battlefield.
His servicemen have just stormed an enemy position, but the return fire is constant. Russians blast rockets into the air, while his fighters hide and wait for orders.
Hunter directs the drone operator to shoot.
On the screen, a huge plume of black smoke swells in the air. A hit, he says.
The battle here will only get harder, analysts say.
Ukrainian troops are still several kilometers from Russia’s main defensive lines. As they penetrate deeper into occupied territory, the fighters will have to contend with Russian defenses organized in a diagonal pattern, 10 kilometers deep in some areas, including minefields, anti-tank ditches and pyramid-shaped obstacles known as “dragon's teeth.”
And with each advance, they become more vulnerable to Russian air attacks.
At least 130 square kilometers (50 square miles) of land has been regained in the south since the start of the counteroffensive, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said this week.
It’s not the pace many hoped for.
A U.S. official familiar with the Biden administration thinking said the counteroffensive is a “long slog” that is testing Ukrainian forces in ways that few other episodes of the 16-month old war have. The official, who was not authorized to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that there never was expected to be a “D-Day moment,” but that the early going suggests the pace of the counteroffensive will be “tough and challenging” for the Ukrainians.
Unlike some of the earlier battles in the war, in which Russian forces showed little resistance or even fled the battlefield, Ukrainian forces are currently facing stiff resistance, the official said.
In the northeast, Russian forces have stepped up offensive operations in the direction of the Kreminna forest near Lyman with the aim of securing a buffer to prevent incursions close to Moscow’s supply lines, said Lehrke. But it may well have a secondary aim — of forcing more Ukrainian deployments, he said.
The dense forested area has proven to be notoriously difficult terrain.
“The Russians have sabotage groups going into the woods and there have been cases where they enter behind the first line of Ukrainian defenses,” said Pavlo Yusov, a press officer with the National Guard’s Thunderstorm brigade, currently in Lyman.
Col. Volodymyr Silenko, a commander of the 30th Mechanized Brigade operating near Bakhmut, pays no mind to criticism over the pace of attacks. It’s much more important to focus on how the adversary is thinking and responding, he said.
“A war is not a competition of raw force and strength of weapons and people, it’s more about who’s more cunning,” he said.
Silenko knows the Russians watch his men, the same way he watches theirs; Moscow sees their movements, how they change, how they evolve.
“Our job is to outsmart them,” he said.
Deception was a key part of Ukraine's most significant battlefield success to date, last fall's “Kherson ruse.” By making it appear that the city of Kherson was the main target of that counteroffensive, Ukrainian forces were able to swiftly retake the northern Kharkiv region.
“That was a master class in deception," said Lehrke. "Whether they can do the same this time remains to be seen.”
___
Associated Press journalists Evgeniy Maloletka contributed from Donetsk region, Mystyslav Chernov contributed from Zaporizhzhia, and Aamer Mahdani contributed from Washington.
My Comment:
And how many billions more will the U.S. be on the hook for while Ukraine “wears down” ... Russian Army?
Happy 4th of July
The Supreme Court rejects Biden's plan to wipe away $400 billion in student loans
MARK SHERMAN
Fri, June 30, 2023 at 10:39 AM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Friday that the Biden administration overstepped its authority in trying to cancel or reduce student loans for millions of Americans.
The 6-3 decision, with conservative justices in the majority, effectively killed the $400 billion plan, announced by President Joe Biden last year, and left borrowers on the hook for repayments that are expected to resume by late summer.
The court held that the administration needs Congress' endorsement before undertaking so costly a program. The majority rejected arguments that a bipartisan 2003 law dealing with student loans, known as the HEROES Act, gave Biden the power he claimed.
“Six States sued, arguing that the HEROES Act does not authorize the loan cancellation plan. We agree,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent, joined by the court’s two other liberals, that the majority of the court “overrides the combined judgment of the Legislative and Executive Branches, with the consequence of eliminating loan forgiveness for 43 million Americans.”
Loan repayments are expected to resume by late August under a schedule initially set by the administration and included in the agreement to raise the debt ceiling. Payments have been on hold since the start of the coronavirus pandemic more than three years ago.
The forgiveness program would have canceled $10,000 in student loan debt for those making less than $125,000 or households with less than $250,000 in income. Pell Grant recipients, who typically demonstrate more financial need, would have had an additional $10,000 in debt forgiven.
Twenty-six million people had applied for relief and 43 million would have been eligible, the administration said. The cost was estimated at $400 billion over 30 years.
___
There’s a clause in the debt-ceiling deal that means bad news for Social Security
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/taxes/there-s-a-clause-in-the-debt-ceiling-deal-that-means-bad-news-for-social-security/ar-AA1bTY0N?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=8de037806f8e45dd9a7d407da120a728&ei=7
Rich nations say they're spending billions to fight climate change. Some money is going to strange places.
Wealthy countries have pledged $100 billion a year to help reduce the effects of global warming. But Reuters found large sums going to projects including a coal plant, a hotel and chocolate shops.
By Emma Rumney, Irene Casado Sánchez, Jaimi Dowdell, Misato Nakayama, Sakura Murakami and Kiyoshi Takenaka
Filed June 1, 2023, noon GMT
Italy helped a retailer open chocolate and gelato stores across Asia.
The United States offered a loan for a coastal hotel expansion in Haiti.
Belgium backed the film “La Tierra Roja,” a love story set in the Argentine rainforest.
And Japan is financing a new coal plant in Bangladesh and an airport expansion in Egypt.
Funding for the five projects totaled $2.6 billion, and all four countries counted their backing as so-called “climate finance” – grants, loans, bonds, equity investments and other contributions meant to help developing nations reduce emissions and adapt to a warming world. Developed nations have pledged to funnel a combined total of $100 billion a year toward this goal, which they affirmed during climate talks in Paris in 2015. The funding helped crown Japan and the United States as two of the top five contributors.
Although a coal plant, a hotel, chocolate stores, a movie and an airport expansion don’t seem like efforts to combat global warming, nothing prevented the governments that funded them from reporting them as such to the United Nations and counting them toward their giving total.
In doing so, they broke no rules. That's because the pledge came with no official guidelines for what activities count as climate finance. Though some organizations have developed their own standards, the lack of a uniform system of accountability has allowed countries to make up their own. The U.N. Climate Change secretariat told Reuters it is up to the countries themselves to decide whether to impose uniform standards. Developed nations have resisted doing so.
“This is the wild, wild west of finance,” said Mark Joven, Philippines Department of Finance undersecretary, who represents the country at U.N. climate talks. “Essentially, whatever they call climate finance is climate finance.”
The four countries defended their programs as sound. Japanese officials consider the power and airport projects green because they include cleaner technology or sustainable features. A U.S. official said the hotel project counts because it includes stormwater controls and hurricane protection measures. A Belgian government spokesman defended counting the grant for the rain-forest movie as climate finance because the film touches on deforestation, a driver of climate change. An Italian government official said Italy aims to consider climate in all of its financing but did not elaborate on how the chocolate stores met that goal.
Developed nations reported more than 40,000 direct contributions toward the finance target, totaling more than $182 billion, from 2015 to 2020, the last year for which data is available. In an effort to understand how that money is being spent, reporters from Reuters and Big Local News, a journalism program at Stanford University, examined thousands of records that countries submitted to the U.N. to document contributions.
The system’s lack of transparency made it impossible to tell how much money is going to efforts that truly help reduce global warming and its impact.
Countries are not required to report project details. The descriptions they disclose are often vague or non-existent – so much so that in thousands of cases, they don’t even identify the country where the money went. Even receiving countries listed in the reports sometimes couldn’t say how the money was spent.
"You cannot really follow the money, track the money, track the impact," said Romain Weikmans, a senior research fellow specializing in climate finance at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
Sliiiiiiiiiiiide
Did you know?
The greatest risk of injury to a professional football player's anatomy is the knee, which is involved in 58 percent of all major football injuries.
Bananas have no growing season, which is why they are available year-round.
It takes approximately 75,000 flowers, which must be harvested by hand to make one pound of saffron
Colombia has more bird species than any other country.
Astronauts sometimes lose their fingernails after conducting space walks.
Svetlana Stalina was the only daughter and last surviving child of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. As a child, she became a celebrity in her country, comparable to Shirley Temple in the United States. In 1967, she became an international sensation when she defected to the United States and changed her name to Lana Peters. Upon arriving in the United States, she burned her Soviet passport and denounced communism and her father, whom she called "a moral and spiritual monster." "You can’t regret your fate," Ms. Peters once said, "although I do regret that my mother didn’t marry a carpenter."
Lava can flow as fast as a sprinting greyhound.
Nineteenth president of the United States, Rutherford B. Hayes gained the presidency (1877-1881) by a margin of only one electoral vote. His middle name was Birchard.
Gustave, a giant crocodile in Burundi, is rumored to have killed more than 200 people.
Humboldt penguins poop with so much force that their feces can land more than 4 feet away.
The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff on January 30, 1945, is the deadliest maritime disaster in history and resulted in the loss of approximately 9,000 lives.
As weird as it sounds, the belly button once served a purpose for mammals. It is where the umbilical cord attaches to the baby inside the mother’s womb. The umbilical cord provides nutrients from a mother to a baby mammal, allowing the baby to grow from a fetus to a full-grown baby ready to be born. In egg-laying animals, the baby never grows inside the mother, and therefore there is no need for the umbilical cord to form and nutrients to be passed along from mother to offspring. This means the belly button never forms.
The Supreme Court of Maryland is the only court in the U.S. where the justices wear red robes during hearings, not black.
Some of 1984's lexicon has entered into the English language. One such phrase is 'Big Brother', as in 'Big Brother is watching you'. Today, security cameras are often thought to be modern society's big brother. The phrase 'thought police' is also derived from Nineteen Eighty-Four, and might be used to refer to any alleged violation of the right to the free expression of opinion. It is particularly used in contexts where free expression is proclaimed and expected to exist. The adjective Orwellian is mainly derived from the system depicted in Nineteen Eighty-Four. It can refer to any form of government oppression, but it is particularly used to refer to euphemistic and misleading language originating from government bodies with a political purpose.
When the King of Thailand sued his first wife for divorce, she was unable to defend herself in court because of a law forbidding criticism of the King.
There are more than 50,000 earthquakes throughout the world every year.
The average human is born with 33 distinct vertebrae, which are connected to one another through flexible joints called facets. Birds, meanwhile, have anywhere from 39 to 63 vertebrae. But even they can’t compete with snakes, especially large species of snakes like pythons. The Australian Oenpelli python, for example, may have as many as 600 vertebrae. That’s nearly three times as many bones as an adult human have in their entire body — though only two times as many as that same human has at birth.
Noah Webster, of Merriam-Webster Dictionary fame, learned 26 languages in order to evaluate the origins of American English.
Russia produces the most oxygen in the world. Russia's main export maybe energy but that doesn't change the fact that they are also the largest oxygen producer in the world. With over 17,098,242 square kilometers of land, Russia is the largest country in the world by quite a large margin (Canada is second with 9,984,670 square kilometers). As a result, they lead the world in the density of trees with about 640 billion trees throughout the country Trees play a crucial role in supporting and nurturing life around the world by absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen into the atmosphere.
With hundreds of different meanings one of the most versatile words in the English language is “set.”
Middle school student allegedly sent home for refusing to change shirt that said 'There are only two genders' | Fox News
Liam Morrison, a seventh-grader at Nichols Middle School in Middleborough, Mass., was allegedly sent home for refusing to remove a T-shirt t
ONE BRAVE AND SMART KID.
From one-handed typing to gallery search, discover the tricks you never knew existed on your Android device.
Don't let scammers get a hold of your credit card number. Make sure you take a look at these top ways to protect yourself.
It may seem like your lucky day, but it could be anything but. | iHeart
Earn money with your old devices by using Amazon's Trade-In Program to get Amazon gift cards. Follow these steps.