If you like snacks and will visit Gettysburg, I’d visit nearby Hanover with their Utz chip factory tour and the Snyders, Renovah, and Utz outlet stores.

There’s tons of Amish and Mennonite stuff in Lancaster County, and especially if you are Christian I would highly recommend the Sights and Sounds Theater and watch one of their amazing performances (I say this as a non-Christian). (Btw Lancaster is pronounced “Lang-custer” here)

In Harrisburg, the National Civil War Museum is huge and great if you like history, and getting a tour of the state capital building is pretty neat too (beautiful architecture imo).

In Reading, they have a cool pagoda you can visit that overlooks the city. I am unfamiliar of other cool sites to see that are somewhat safe, but I am sure someone else can steer you in that direction.

Lebanon does have a history museum (Stoy Museum in the historical society) but it is nothing compared to Gettysburg or Harrisburg, and idk if there really is any other tourist draw to the county unfortunately.

In general though, as someone from between Annville and Ft Indiantown Gap originally, I would say your best bet to just find something cool to do as a tourist outside of Gettysburg would be in Lancaster County, as they have been a hot tourist destination for a while with a diverse amount of things to do, especially if you like learning about the plain folk groups.

Have not been to the Lancaster location, but I like the one near the Ike by Bass Pro. I'm not a beer drinker but the group I go with love the place. And if it's full, we just go over to Fiesta Mexico that's a short distance away.

I agree with everything you said.

The admins I'm talking about are highly paid administrators- not the front desk ladies that I love!

I was just thinking of that. I’d like to take the train to NYC and Philly because I’d rather not drive my truck in those big cities. Thanks for that advice it will definitely help

I can use Facebook through a browser.

The apps are where the danger lies. And while a Facebook app certainly could be abused, the threat doesn't come from foreign nationals.

I had a secret clearance in the Navy, and I fully support US government devices being blocked from apps from hostile countries. There's nothing racist about it as it's well known that China actively collects information about our military. Are they actively using TikTok to do so? That's speculative (and/or confirmed but not to the general population). Given the way the government runs over there, they certainly can if they aren't doing so at the moment.

I'm not a fan of how the far-right pulls all the red scare BS with China or how Trump and co. turned Covid into some bizarre xenophobic nonsense. But on this particular topic, the decision appears to be objectively made, not for political gain and propaganda as you propose.

I doubt that I'll convince you otherwise, but I wanted to be clear that my own support of this move is not based on racism or any dislike of the Chinese people more generally. I do not consider the current Chinese government trustworthy, and that's different from not trusting the people/ethnicity more broadly.

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My dad and I are a little obsessed with Knoebels. We go multiple times a year. Now that we're older, we don't even ride rides. We go to walk around and eat food. And maybe play mini golf.

The ladies in the schools themselves aren't as large of a problem as the ones who run the districts. I worked IT in a school district for awhile and the amount of wasted time and money in the Administration office was staggering. I got to spend a lot of time in the schools and the Admin building and, generally, all the people who work in the school buildings are just doing the best they can with what they are given to work with.

No, I was left with the impression that great teachers couldn't be dragged from the classroom for buckets of cash. That's not why they do it. The bad teachers, many of whom really did become teachers because they had nowhere else to go, want out of the classroom as quick as humanly possible. The only place for them to go is Administration.

At least in the districts I worked in, a promotion out of a school meant your starting salary was now higher than any teacher salary in the district. A large district will spend millions a year on Admin salaries that only occasionally step foot in a school.

While I can't say for scientific certainty, I've worked in enough Education environments to see a trend. I know correlation isn't causation, but...I found that workplace politics were the number one determining factor in anything getting done in Admin. They left IT alone, but forget that IT sees all.

So, you have failed teachers who are know in charge of how students are taught. Since they couldn't handle the classroom, they don't understand how to educate children. When you factor in Common Core and No Child Left Behind, even a team of the most competent people would have trouble making that work. We don't have competent people working in schools. They either get marginalized, or pushed out.

These people also tend to branch out into the private industry that caters to schools: Curriculum, technology, etc. These are ALSO the people that interface with government. So the entire power structure of the education system are failed teachers who exploit the system for their own benefit.

This is a bit of hyperbole because there ARE good Administrators out there. They are just the minority and have to struggle with a corrupt system to get anything done.

Don't even get me started on School Boards!

Republicans won't change their behavior. Dems have been pussies for far too long. Time to give the GOP a taste of their own medicine. Dems constantly take the high road only to be fucked in the end. Not this time. I'll send Cutler a box of tissues.

PA's handling of the education major is absurd. Students were petrified of being caught drinking underage (shocking!) because they were afraid of being found out and dismissed from their major.

There are just so many other professions that pay (substantially) more and demand far less. The only people who become teachers nowadays are the true zealots, and that population shrinks every year.

Those are definitely on list of things!

Alabama SB184.

I don't think you know what genocide is... I'll CP it as defined.

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Points 2, 3, and 5 are all happening.

Points 1 and 4 are inevitable with laws like SB184.

From Annville/Ft. Indiantown Gap, NYC is about a 2.5 hour drive. If you park in Jersey City or Hoboken you can take the subway (PATH) directly into the WTC and lower Manhattan. It makes for an easy day trip.

DC isn’t too far, either. If you don’t want to drive into the city (and pay an assload to park) I’d recommend one of the outlying metro stations on the Red Line. They are the first ones you come to if you take US 15/I-270 from central PA. Look at Shady Grove or Grosvenor/Strathmore Metro stations, I know they have parking garages.

If you are into civil war stuff, be sure to check out the big civil war museum in Harrisburg. Speaking of which, if you like tours of pretty buildings, our state capitol is definitely in the top 5 on beauty.

I can’t wait for some form of minimum wage adjustment, cause I know I’m quitting my manual labor job immediately to go work at a Sheetz for $15hr/$20hr. We know dang well the other industries won’t adjust their pay in accordance, so inevitably there will be a larger shortage of not only teachers, but workers in fields across the board. I know my one buddy, who teaches US Government/Social-Studies here in PA, is bidding his time for an incremental wage increase across Pennsylvania so that he can leave his under-paid and under-appreciated job as an educator.

I've only been to Knoebels once, loved it wasn't crowded & I had the best tasting ice cream I ever had since being a kid

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I’m a full PTSD’d disabled military millennial and wouldn’t work for $25k a year

Shoo, troll. Don't bother me.

This is the Pennsylvania sub.

Little Round Top is closed for the foreseeable future for renovations and restorations. The road to access Big Round Top is closed to vehicles but you can walk or bike it and still explore the Big Round Top. There is some parking and a bathroom near the road closure turn around.

Devils Den is mostly open, but there are closed off areas there, too. Just FYI.

Sure, Alabama currently has laws on the books that enact genocide against trans youth, and are pushing to enact it against all trans individuals. This qualifies as genocide as described by the United Nations.

You have reading comprehension problems. All my points were critiques of REPUBLICANS and not Democrats. I said I was disgusted Republicans voted to strip an insulin cap for all. I said I changed my voter registration to Democratic since then. If you read carefully I am making a counterpoint to the person I was responding to who was blaming Democrats for everything. I genuinely don't understand how you read my post and didn't understand it was a critique of the Republican Party in its entirety going strike by strike until the GOP struck out entirely with me.

Lastly, I can post wherever I want. I'm from Philly. Well, Delco to be specific.

$0 should be sent on football or administrators positions (beyond 1 principal per school and a superintendent) if you can't adequately fund and keep qualified teachers, social workers and provide free school meals

Hershey park is closed for another month or so. I learned the hard way. Stayed out in Hersey for a few days just as a little get away from home thing.

They got a mean jerky shop on the main strip tho! Amazing jerky.