Manure being spread on fields for spring crops.

Everyone doesn’t consider more unpaid time off for lower pay an upside, especially when teachers commonly spend much of that time training or preparing for the next year/ session, and/or have to get creative about a side hustle to make enough money. That’s besides the already cited issues by other commenters about teachers commonly having to use their own money for supplies, and working long hours for various tasks beyond the school day (lesson planning, grading, etc).

Nurses typically receive overtime for extra work. Teachers do not.

The thing is, not only is there school/district variation, but also: compared to what? Median teacher salaries are 56k in PA and typically ranging 47-68k, according to salary.com data. Compare with a BSW social worker’s median salary of 66k in PA and typically ranging 59-74k. Or a newly graduated RN: 67k ranging 60-77k. The low end ranges for these jobs are higher than the median salary for teachers.

It might take some snooping around but honestly should be able to find small dog-friendly apartment with yard access in one of the safer areas of the city, like Manayunk-Roxborough area. Eg: https://www.trulia.com/p/pa/philadelphia/200-east-st-1-philadelphia-pa-19128--2297861416

There are even places with off-street parking if that’s something you need, eg: https://www.bexrealty.com/Pennsylvania/Philadelphia/Manayunk/Nob-Hill-Condominiums/Rentals.php

It’s a relevant point as to how important this research is to have any significant amount of money spent on especially if this is the only thing they looked at. Although confirming “obvious” beliefs is an important part of science.

But what struck me most about your comment is it’s hilarious you think a team of 2 social scientists relying on public grants are likely to be spending “millions”.

I 100% understand where you’re coming from and especially if you have a good relationship with your landlord it wouldn’t hurt to politely request a prorated refund of part of the last month’s rent. However, if they refuse it’s unlikely to be worth your time and/or money to pursue it further.

Since the landlord presumably didn’t pressure you to move out early and you turned in the keys it’s well within normative practice to look for the next tenant ASAP. And if you were under a lease it’s normative for them to expect full pay for your lease term even if you choose to move out early. The law might provide some specifics that would be in your favor beyond that but I have my doubts - it’s just one of the downsides of renting. Unless the landlord just decides it’s the nice or ethical thing to do you’re probably out that money.

This is more of a future reference thing but don’t turn in your keys til you’re ready to surrender the property. And if the gas/electric are in your name make sure you let the utilities companies know when you plan to end service.

Now you’re either doubling down on disingenuousness or just aren’t familiar with what a “fact” actually is. If I pay $100 a month for house insurance for a year and at the end of that year my house burns down and I’m given $250,000 to rebuild, that doesn’t mean I was never an “insurance payer”. If I donate $10 to my local food bank every few months, then lose my job for a year and get $100s of dollars in food support from the pantry, that doesn’t mean I’m not a donor.

The position that people who receive valuable taxpayer services aren’t taxpayers is incredibly disingenuous.

The estimate this year of nonpayers for federal income tax is closer to 40% and 1/3 of those households are retired people who mostly live on Social Security. Most of the rest are households with low or no income, especially those raising children, or else that have things like short term major business losses or medical bills. It doesn’t particularly make sense for people to be paying income tax in those situations.

Also, most everyone is paying some form of taxes: sales, excise, property, payroll. Those taxes are generally regressive in that they’re a much greater burden for low to moderate income households. Federal taxes offsetting that somewhat is a good thing.

That’s not what these statistics represent. This is looking at population-level statistics and relative risk of death when contracting Covid, not just among people who were vaccinated.

So, for example, this is comparing death rates in countries with, say, 20% vaccination rates vs 30% vaccination rates. What they found was actually an outsized protective effect: not 10% fewer deaths, but 18%, when 10% more were vaccinated (and not noted in the headline, the booster effect is closer to 33% reduction in deaths). This could in part be because people at highest risk of dying were the ones most likely to get vaccinated (and boosted). It might also be that more vaccinations not only protected people with vaccinations but helped prevent spread of disease and therefore overwhelming of healthcare centers, so more effective care of Covid cases was possible. But there may also be other confounding country-level effects like baseline healthcare system effectiveness.

Because most people are vaccinated, including very high rates among the highest risk groups. It’s only hard to understand if you want it to be.

West Chester is considered the “flagship” campus so probably the most recognized widely even if other schools have stronger programs in some areas. Otherwise some of the schools that tend towards the larger side (at least pre-merger) like Indiana and Kutztown are probably the most prestigious. Unfortunately with the 2 mergers of schools (PennWest from Clarion, Edinboro, and California; Commonwealth from Bloomsburg, Lock Haven, and Mansfield) there will be some loss of name recognition at least in the short term.

>It’s not semantics, it’s the actual dictionary definition

Bless your heart.

So, you are wanting to argue about semantics then, yeah. The meaning people ascribe to words. You are asserting one meaning but it’s not the only meaning, as your own source explores. Did you even read the article you linked to?

Stating someone is a murderer is a direct accusation and as the article you linked to states, it might be grounds for defamation. But especially if it’s not an organization that would just rather settle its not clear suing against even a direct accusation would be successful.

But that’s also different from describing a person’s death as “a murder”. Saying you believe a person’s death was a murder or is best described as a murder isn’t clearly grounds for defamation at all.

In addition, as your article states, even if we’re talking about direct accusations “legal standard” isn’t the only understood meaning:

> If we assume for now that the term "murder" refers to the intentional killing of another person without justification, a private person may look at the situation and reach the conclusion the officers acted without justification when they shot and killed Breonna Taylor…

> Additionally, it could be argued that the gist of being called a murderer isn’t an accusation the officers committed the crime of murder. Rather, the essence of the accusation is that the officers intentionally shot at Taylor and her boyfriend, killing Taylor for no good reason.

> Many people genuinely believe there was no justification for killing Taylor, even if it is determined there was a justification under the law.

Interesting reaction to a sharing of basic facts.

Given that part of the whole BLM/racial l-justice-in-policing critique is that police are often protected from prosecution, and given that many people consider Taylor’s death to be a murder, I’m not sure of your point here other than to argue semantics.

She was killed on March 13. WHO declared a pandemic March 11 and Trump declared a national emergency March 13. Louisville was seeing cases start appearing by that week. So no, but it was right at the beginning.

I’m not the person you were responding to but if I had to guess it would be something to do with school policies: attempts to ban discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in classrooms, and/or attempts to ban books with queer content from libraries and/or curricula are seeing an uptick currently.

Personally I lived 10+ years in a small town in a more rural part of the state. Our immediate neighbors were always friendly, though all were clearly not accepting, and we found specific social circles that were accepting. It’s also notable over our years there certainly the community as a whole became more visibly welcoming. When we moved there we were cautious about hanging a rainbow flag in front of our house but did do it - it was the only one in town at least that I saw. By the time we moved away last year there were a few Pride flags to be seen in the neighborhoods (some from allies), including at least 2 just in our neighborhood, and after a long process one of the local churches had declared itself open and affirming.

At the same time, by the time we moved the area was also was more visibly hateful-to-hostile - more Confederate flags and the like. Hostile symbolism representing social views that are not typically pro-LGBTQ easily outnumbered accepting by at least 2:1 by my reckoning, and you would sometimes catch even more glimpses of more private displays behind an open garage door or through a window hanging on a wall.

Arguably my worst personal experience while living there was walking in our neighborhood one evening with my husband and hearing a preteen girl who was playing in the street with her friends call us faggots. Yes, it was just an “insult” - I wasn’t afraid of her and in fact I read her the riot act about basic respect. But the bigger issue is: she didn’t just come up with it herself. The way she said it it was clearly normalized for her in her home and/or in school via peers (which still points to how children in the community are being socialized at home). Based on reports we heard about the state of LGBTQ issues in local schools, that was pretty certainly a factor.

We had a housemate for our last few years there who would sit on the front porch a lot, and regularly reported that people would shout something about faggots while driving by (because of the aforementioned rainbow flag). Being vigilant about our surroundings whenever we were walking around town was a necessity, especially at night.

So would I describe that town as LGBT “friendly” to someone who asked? No. Would I tell them there are friendly people and groups in the town? Absolutely. But it’s a situation where I could never in good conscience recommend an LGBTQ person live there, even if I would be happy to help them have the best experience living there if they had to or chose to.

Hate crimes do not include “insults”. In order for something to be considered a hate crime in the US it first has to be a crime. In the US if the incident is solely verbal then that would mean either an accompanying threat of violence or if we want to define “verbal” broadly then something like vandalism.

Also, in the US hate crime reporting relies on both the victim reporting to the police (and a lot goes unreported due to distrust of the police) as well as the policing agency reporting to the federal agency. Unless it rises to the level of a federal crime, in PA most agencies would probably not report an incident as a hate crime, since PA does not currently have a hate crime law covering sexual orientation. That’s not to say you’re not correct that things are much better than, say, the 80s, and that it’s probably generally “safe” to live in most parts of the state - even if you don’t feel particularly welcome.

I want to say more about my own experience living in small-town PA for 10+ years but I don’t have time at this very moment.

Yes, Lancaster has a fairly visible community but the gay bar didn’t survive the pandemic, and The Loop which will house some LGBTQ community resources is just getting off the ground. Reading has a surprising number of resources and events as well.

It’s probably got the most visibly active LGBTQ community in SEPA outside of Philly.

Bradbury-Sullivan Center is a very active LGBTQ community center.

Stonewall Lehigh Valley is one of the few gay bars in the region.

There’s a pride festival every August, I believe.

You’ll see pride flags hanging here and there.

I literally listed problems earlier so I guess reading comprehension isn’t your strong suite. But also I’m not in the habit of arguing with religious fundamentalists. Have a nice delusional day.

Your disagreement isn’t based in anything different than a religious doctrinal declaration of faith. The idea that “government is the cause of most of our problems and those problems would be solved if we only had local government” is nonsensical to anyone actually familiar with contexts where there are no functioning government or only local/tribal governance. And handwaving wishful thinking doesn’t solve any of the issues I already mentioned.