Free Republic

New York City could soon ban detergent pods across the five boroughs in the latest “green” push from lawmakers. The “Pods are Plastic Bill,” introduced by City Councilman James Gennaro last week, would make it illegal to sell any pods and laundry sheets if they’re made with polyvinyl alcohol. Fines for selling the pods would start at $400, double for a second violation and top off at $1,200 for flouting the rules more than twice, if the bill becomes law. The bill would also require education and outreach to businesses on the ban for the first year. The law wouldn’t...

San Francisco is pouring millions of dollars into an RV park for the homeless, while young people trying to get a break in their careers are reduced to living in 4-feet high by 3.5-feet wide “pod” spaces for $700 a month. The city opened a “safe parking site” at Candlestick Point in January 2022, which is home to 30 RVs — each of which cost the city $12,000 a month to keep there, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The site, named the Bayview Vehicle Triage Center, has been recommended to be opened for another two years, which will cost...

Isla was in kindergarten in Voorhees, New Jersey when the pandemic hit. Before long, remote learning flattened school into a glitchy abstraction, and she became restless, fidgety, withdrawn. Like millions of other kids, she soon fell behind. “It was a nightmare,” her mother, Lindsay, recalls. “Besides just the fact that it was hard to stay on track and listen, it caused problems with vision and headaches.” Nearly a year later, in February 2021, Isla was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Then, later that same month, Isla’s school district allowed those children who especially struggled with virtual learning to return...

In the latest sign that the U.S. housing shortage is reaching crisis levels, a Bay Area startup is offering bunk-bed style pods at $800 a month for up to 14 people to live in a single home. Brownstone Shared Housing, an eight-month-old startup, bills itself as a short-term solution for students or people working on temporary jobs.

[cut] our "pod" -- a small number of family and friends who explicitly agree to a similar level of mitigating behaviors, such as always wearing masks and maintaining physical distance, around those outside the pod. [cut] Like most of us, I yearn for normality. I, too, am tired of limiting my interactions, maintaining distance and wearing a mask. But for my 4-year-old daughter and her generation, I continue to do so when I am around others outside my pod, even among those who are vaccinated. I hope you will too.

EMPOWERING PARENTS AND STUDENTS: President Donald J. Trump is taking action to expand K-12 educational options for disadvantaged children impacted by the pandemic.Today, President Trump signed an Executive Order offering flexibility to provide certain disadvantaged children with emergency K-12 scholarships to access in-person learning opportunities.The Order allows States and eligible entities to use available Federal Community Service Block Grants (CSBG) funds to provide life-changing scholarships to families whose children cannot access in-person learning. CSBG funds totaled nearly $1.7 billion in FY 2020.Scholarships provided with CSBG funds can help families pay for private school tuition, home schooling, micro schooling, learning-pod expenses,...

“At this point, no gatherings outside your immediate family that are — in a sense — podded together. And what I mean by that is that the people who you have been with, who haven’t had outside exposures,” Osterholm outlined. “So, if your son and daughter are coming home from college, they are not part of your pod. You know, either they quarantine for 10 to 14 days or they are not part of what happens at the holidays. Don’t get together with neighbors. No Christmas parties. There is not a safe Christmas party in this country right now unless...

Even before the recent unpleasantness, I have long read The New York Times, at least in part, as an exercise in making upper-middle-class liberals feel guilty about their consumer choices. Those convenient Amazon deliveries? Packaged by exploited laborers. Those cheap manicures? Given by nearly indentured immigrants. (Except not.) So it does not surprise me that the Times is reacting to the latest creative workaround to dysfunctional governmental coronavirus response—parent-organized teaching pools, or "pods," whereby a small group of kids can receive instruction and supervision for the many days this fall that schools are not in session—with a triple helping of...

Housing costs have become so expensive in some cities that people are renting bunk beds in a communal home for $1,200 a month. Not a bedroom. A bed. PodShare is trying to help make up for the shortage of affordable housing in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles by renting dormitory-style lodging and providing tenants a co-living experience.

The idea of ingesting a Tide Pod used to be a little bit funny. For example, when The New York Daily News printed a comment from Senator Chuck Schumer under a rudely ageist headline in September 2012. He had recently been informed that 40 children in New York City had eaten Tide Pods and received medical attention for eating Tide Pods in the preceding five months. And he said, mostly unprovoked, “I saw one on my staffer’s desk and I wanted to eat it.” It’s good in print and it’s better out loud. “I saw one on my staffer’s desk...

Two state lawmakers this week wrote to the CEO of Proctor & Gamble urging the company to repackage their Tide Pods product to be child resistant and have clear warning labels about ingesting the detergent. “While our legislation would only protect New Yorkers, we urge Procter & Gamble and all manufacturers of colorful detergent pods to offer the same protections to the nation and immediately commit to the precautions set forth in our legislation,” wrote the lawmakers, Sen. Brad Hoylman and Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas. “It’s time that you recognized the danger to those least able to protect themselves from a...

SPREAD THE WORD TO PATRIOTS IN MONTANA ASAP, NOW!!!!! Obama Montana Town Hall Tickets Being Given Out Locally NOW!!!!!! PATRIOTS, GET IN THE FRONT OF THE LINE, CAMP OUT OVERNIGHT, GET THEM NOW. THE RELEASE DOES NOT LIST THE LOCATION SO FIND OUT LOCALLY WHERE THIS IS HAPPENING. IF SOMEONE IN MONTANA KNOWS POST THE LOCATIONS ASAP.

The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules' carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents.

Need help from you arborist FReepers in identifying what kind of tree this is. Right now it's got a bunch of pussywillow-esque buds on it, but from what I've seen online of pussywillows they look more like bushes, not trees. During the fall it produced a weird-looking pod of some sort. Sorry, don't have a photo of that.

3/29/2006 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) -- An armed F-16 Fighting Falcon is “watching” the road below for the convoys rolling through a dangerous land. The concept of using fighter aircraft equipped with targeting pods to monitor the battlespace is known as non-traditional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or NTISR. Air Force NTISR operations began only four years ago and are the result of increased demand for complete battlespace awareness. With the production and development of traditional ISR capabilities struggling to keep pace, leveraging fighters, bombers, and air mobility aircraft in a similar role is helping ensure information dominance. “Before NTISR, we...