The Energy Star program falls under the division of the EPA in charge of climate change and energy efficiency. EPA head Zeldin, under instruction from Trump, is eliminating that whole wing of employees as their function is not something mandated by law to be done.
This is to support the initiative for more powerful toilets, showers, and other appliances, and also to further crush the federal workers unions, who were barred from participating in the discussion of eliminating all these jobs.
Trump had already tried and failed to kill Energy Star in his first term. In more of his stellar business sense, while this program cost $32 million, but saved consumers $40 billion in energy costs.
I did join up with the local rehab center this year. After promoting it every day, it didn't feel right if I did not participate directly myself. Last year I also had another commenter tell me the community got them to join their rehab center, so we're making a small positive change in the world.
I've been learning a lot there and get to see many adorable animals up close. Here is our newest owl patient:
I hadn't been to a McD in ages, but I took my niece and her friend to an event and they wanted to stop there. It was the most dystopian eating experience I ever had.
The interior was all off white and sterile (emotionally). There was no counter service, you ordered through a gigantic kiosk. Food took forever. As you said, the drive in and DoorDash seemed to be dominating the customer base. There were maybe 2 other tables in use during dinner rush.
The funniest/saddest part to me, was it sounded like there was maybe just 1 employee in the kitchen, and at any given time, either a manager was yelling at them or a machine was beeping out orders, I'm assuming from the kitchen timers going or orders coming through. So the whole time we're waiting, which was a decent amount of time, I'm picturing this lone teenager being yelled out by a lineup of a middle age dude and a parade of machines.
Food came out cold and not great, but about what I expect from McD's, which is why I don't like to go there. The kids just each got a Sprite and fries, which we could have gotten anywhere else...
I honestly don't care all that much that the food is standardized to such a degree, that's it's made out of strange industrial processes, or even that it's always cold when all the other fast food places seem to at least have warm food. It's that no matter what I get, I always feel like I've never actually eaten anything. My stomach always feels as empty after I've eaten there. I eat a decent amount of not great for me foods, but McDonalds is the only thing that consistently feels so devoid of any nutritional value whatsoever. It just blows my mind every time.
He's my local representative. He's a pretty interesting guy. All his campaign stuff talks about him being the most independent politician in the country.
He's supported quite a number more Democrat legislation than most Republicans would like, but him and his brother before him have held a solid lock on our district's voting for 20 years.
He does enough to keep both sides of the aisle at least happy enough he wins by a healthy margin all the time. I'd much rather we had a progressive, but we're a solidly mixed district with about 50/50 R vs D voters.
His wiki has a few of the good things he's done, but he's also voted against the Trump impeachment and in favor of the Biden impeachment inquiry, so he's still a Republican first and foremost. He is about the best Republican we have though, so take that as you will. I vote against him every time, but compared to some of our other Republican reps here, we could do much worse.
I'm sure a good deal of it is just that like being lazy and complaining. 😁
I got some good posts added to the queue today and planted some more stuff in my container garden and made some bread, so now to clean dishes and laundry and try to focus on some piano.
I think I've been lost since the gf has gone to a very fluctuating schedule, as it really throws off my routines. It's like if the sun came out at a different time every day. There's still the same amount of time and opportunity to do stuff, but you'd feel off after a while doing stuff at what feels like the wrong time of day. I dunno. I'm weird. 😝
That's the drawback of there being so much great free music stuff these days! You can get lost playing and never actually finish anything.
I haven't used Cakewalk. It seems very powerful, but I see people say it's one of the harder DAWs to learn.
I also hear Sonar discontinued Cakewalk Free and is moving to a paid license, though that was 2 years ago and Free is still available I think, but I don't know if it's being maintained any longer.
As hard as it may be to imagine, I feel I've been getting a bit behind from where I'd like to be with owl stuff. With so many owl babies right now, it's been hard to get some of the variety I'd like, and between being sick and depressed, it's hard for me to focus on owls or music the way I'd like.
But between all those links I've shared, you should have years worth of experimentation ahead of you. I hope you find lots of good stuff.
Gotcha, now I have a better idea of what you're trying to do.
Watching this video about looping in LMMS shows it can sorta be done, sometimes with some help from Audacity.
If you're adding in more stuff like VST plugins and vocals, you may want to try out Waveform Free, which I checked is for iOS also, so you get a full modern DAW. It's the same product as their paid full version, just like 2 updates behind.
For more premade loops, check out Looperman if you haven't already.
It's not free, but I think I under $20 for the program and all the upgrades, if looping and sampling is something you want to focus on, check out Koala Sampler. I downloaded it the other week and have been sampling vinyl recordings from YouTube, it has an AI stem extractor to separate the instrument tracks, and then chopping and looping that.
It has a built in simple synth now as well, and you can use a midi controller with it. Lots of videos are out there if you want to see how that works. You might be able to incorporate that into your setup.
If you're looking for instruments, effects, etc, the YouTube channel elektronickmusick demos a few each day and many are free or free trials and they run the same midday track through all of them to give you an indeed what they sound like.
I don't think they're the best demos because it's a generic track through all of them, not necessarily something that fits perfect with each unique instrument's strengths, but it gives you some ideas of the sound before you search for it, download it, and find out it's not for you.
If you want some nifty and weird sounds with fun back stories, David Hilowitz searches out obscure old instruments, fixes them, and samples them in his Decent Sampler plugin and rotates giving away different ones for free.
I'm still really bad at making my own music, but I like experimenting while I'm learning to do better.
I haven't used LMMS in a long time, but he's manually editing the piano roll (where the notes are stored) but I see a record button here where it should record what you play on the keyboard.
Oh, glad to help! Any other music tools you're looking for? I'm not good with any of them, but I like testing them out. I'm still just learning and experimenting.
I get a little sad when I don't see anything new for me on threads like this, but then I'm a bit grateful since that means I've already spent a long time enjoying all these things!
Things like what the Black Panthers were and groups like Unicorn Ranch and posts of the environmental resistance are the types of things I can get behind at this stage.
I've also been working to solidify my friendships and get more involved in my community and fixing our local environment as well. As you said, this is our home and we need to hold onto it.
Summary for you:
The Energy Star program falls under the division of the EPA in charge of climate change and energy efficiency. EPA head Zeldin, under instruction from Trump, is eliminating that whole wing of employees as their function is not something mandated by law to be done.
This is to support the initiative for more powerful toilets, showers, and other appliances, and also to further crush the federal workers unions, who were barred from participating in the discussion of eliminating all these jobs.
Trump had already tried and failed to kill Energy Star in his first term. In more of his stellar business sense, while this program cost $32 million, but saved consumers $40 billion in energy costs.