I feel you. I find the best satire usually makes me a bit uneasy and unsure. It took me a second on your post until I looked back at the title.

I wonder if the reaction would have been different if you had put the title in the comic itself instead of just having it as the post title. It’s a small change, but I think it might have been enough. It would be an interesting psychology experiment if you could randomly serve both versions and see how the reaction plays out.

My friends and family absolutely know and see what is happening. When I go to the park and walk, I often hear people talking about what is happening (from the angle of “this is insane; how are they getting away with this.” The lady that manages the corner store that I chat with sees what’s going on. The people I work with are very aware.

Most of the people I know are scared and feel powerless to do anything about it. Of course, some are more aware than others and some are more scared than others, but they are at least moderately aware.

BUT, I live in a very liberal city and the people I just talked about are people I choose to associate with. My sample is heavily skewed.

I also run into a lot of people that are pro Trump. Drive 10 miles outside the city and you start running into a lot more MAGA folks. There are also people that avoid politics and are good at sticking their heads in the sand. Somehow they manage to remain unaware. Ignorance seems to be a concerningly common American trait.

BTW, OP, there’s a good chance the “both sides” people you know are republicans but are embarrassed to admit it. They’re the quiet trumpers — the ones that chose to elect a criminal who tried to violently overthrow the government four years ago. Unlike the rabid, loud MAGA folks, they are uncomfortable talking about this stuff because they know people find their views abhorrent. They use “both sides” as a method to indirectly defend their views without having to admit to having them.

Either that or they’re willfully ignorant about what is going on around them. But I find willfully ignorance and Repubicanism go hand in hand.

My best guess is to use a spray lacquer for enamel, such as this:

https://a.co/d/ixJ7knW

I suspect the “brass” over zinc that is on that clip isn’t just brass - if it were brass plated zinc, I’d be totally comfortable using that spray lacquer over it. Instead, it’s probably some type of brass colored paint (or paint containing actual brass.

This means that you have mystery paint (and mystery “enamel”) that you are trying to coat. Because of that, no matter what top coat you choose, there is a chance it won’t work well and the solvents in the top coat could melt/harm the clip.

But… if I were in your situation, I would try the spray above and cross my fingers.

If you go that route:

Gently dab a bit of rubbing alcohol somewhere that you won’t be too sad if it hurts the finish. Give it a little rub. If it doesn’t mess with the finish, then you’re probably good to use rubbing alcohol to do final cleaning before top coating with lacquer.

Spray a tiny bit of the lacquer on a something (like the corner of a paper towel. immediately rub it on a spot on the clip to do the same type of test. Is the finish ok? Then you’re probably good to proceed.

Before spraying, clean the clip gently but thoroughly with dish soap and water. Rinse well. Dry well.

Give the thing a good rub with a soft cloth and rubbing alcohol to get any other remnants/grease off the clip before painting.

Give the clip a light coat of spray enamel. Follow directions for ambient temperature and recoat time. Give it another coat a bit heavier. Maybe even a third.

Let it dry and cure for a long time. The lacquer will seem completely dry and “done” after a day, but it won’t be fully cured. Giving it time to fully harden before messing with it too much.

Other notes: dust is your enemy. It’ll stick to your top coat while it’s drying. Try to minimize dust and similar nasties.

If you haven’t done used spray cans much, learn to use them first. Do a practice pass on something you don’t care about. It’s really easy to put on too much and have your clearcoat run. No fun.

This person is correct.

I’ve finished, painted, sealed, and repaired enough stuff to know that “maybe try clear nail polish” is a terrible idea for OP.

Nail polish is very hard to get to go on smoothly over a large area and OP is very likely to end up with an uneven or marred finish. If you just put down nail polish, you are not going to get a lasting finish on much of any material without cleaning and degreasing it first.

I would clean/degrease (I don’t know what to use as I can’t tell what the material is). I would lean toward using some type of spray top coat (again, I don’t know which product because I don’t know the material). You still need to know how to spray on finishes, but I find it much easier to do well than brush on finishes.

Yep. Ken Chang is a comedian and does LinkedIn satire.

The Anarchist’s Cookbook is actually legal to possess (and buy and sell). It’s a common misconception that it is illegal. In the US, at least.

Hello, 30-years-ago me. My sister and I had a similar age gap. We had an amazing relationship/friendship throughout our childhood and it was really hard when she left for college. The good news is that we still have an amazing relationship and she is still the best sister I could ever ask for.

It’s a funny thing that when we are young, everything feels so permanent when in reality, your life is changing incredibly quickly. When you get hit by something like this, it’s uncomfortable as fuck to see that reality. Change is hard, but it also leads to and comes along with growth… and growth is good.

I don’t say this to be dismissive of what you are going through, only to say that change happens. It is a part of life that we learn to deal with because it can’t be avoided. What is happening in your life probably hurts. It’s probably scary. The uncertainty sucks. All those feelings are valid.

She will be farther away. You will see her less. She is going to be incredibly busy at times. But she is also there for you and you two will still have each other and have time together.

Of course, I have no guarantees — your life isn’t mine. But for me, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it seemed (it’s easy to imagine the worst). Just like it was awesome having an older sister as your friend while at home, it’s really awesome to have an older sister in college to talk to and visit get to experience bits of that life with.

Wow. I just want to say thank you for such a thoughtful, informed, detailed response. You are an amazing person!

I typed in the url and… yeah, that was A LOT of boobs and butts.

Came back here to see that I mistyped the url. Doubling the “O” results in many boobs and butts.

Are you logged in? It appears you can go to the privacy settings page and set some (not all) settings without being logged in.

Thanks. I just went and disabled it. I also found that they had “products and services notifications” turned on. I know I attempted to disable all advertising and monitoring stuff shortly after I signed up, but I can’t say for sure whether I had missed this section at that time or if they kindly turned it on for me between then and now.

I suspect that there is “palm check” turned on for your touchpad. This is designed to keep you from accidentally moving/clicking the touchpad by brushing it with your palm while you are typing.

Look for a “palm check”, “palm rejection”, or “disable touchpad when typing” setting in your touchpad utility. As far as I know, these are all roughly the same thing.

On this train of thought…

OP, if you don’t make it clear that you want to date her, then make sure you accept the ambiguity of the situation and that she might have no idea that you want to date her (romantically). It can feel like your interest is obvious if you ask her to hang out one-on-one. But she may not immediately see that and could accept, assuming that you are strictly going as friends.

It’s totally ok to ask her to hang out, just don’t build up the situation to be more than it is. If she says yes, you’ll have to play it by ear. Maybe she’ll consider it a date. Maybe she’ll consider it a strictly-platonic hangout. Or maybe somewhere in between.

Edit: and if it goes well —even if it just ends up being a platonic hang out—I’d lean toward specifying “date” when you ask her to go out again.

If the others suggested aren’t quite right for you, you might try looking for an interval timer app. These are generally used for fitness, but it seems to me that type of setup might do exactly what you want if you just set up a “workout” that has a single 30 min interval and repeats.

Or use a scale.

If you look for a “watt meter plug”, you’ll pribably understand what it is at a glance. It’s a device you plug into your wall outlet (or surge protector or whatever). It has a power outlet on it, which you plug your device into, and a screen that shows watts drawn and watt-hours over time. Super simple. I think “Kill A Watt” is the most well known brand.

Agreed. I strongly dislike Elon and think he is a thin skinned trust fund baby who is destroying Tesla and already destroyed Twitter. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least to find out he is using sock accounts to praise himself… but in this article all I see are people making accusations without solid evidence. Yes, it appears he banned the guy accusing him but we already know that Elon will ban his critics whether or not those critics’ accusations are real. There is nothing here showing that the account is anything but one of his braindead fanboys.

It’s one thing to take these accusations and try to find solid evidence. It’s another to treat the accusations as solid evidence itself. Let’s be better than the conspiracy theorists.

I think I have Reddit PTSD. I saw you replied and thought “oh god, they’re going to say something rude/hateful/etc.”

Nope, it’s a polite, human response. Thanks! Have a good one!

Per the sidebar, terrible photos are one of several reasons for something to be “bad real estate”. Another reason is terrible property and layout. While the architecture is interesting, it looks awful to live in to me.

Someone bought a pallet of returned products and found this as one of the returned products. So what?

It is important to note that this pretty useless concoction of non-working parts – dressed up as one of the best graphics cards available to consumers in 2024 – wasn’t sold as a new model. It was received by an NWR customer in a pallet deal from Amazon Returns.

…

We can’t know for sure, but the product received by NWR, apparently from an Amazon pallet deal, may have been an Amazon return where a faulty Franken-graphics-card was returned and someone kept a good working one. The outward description of a cracked PCB and melted power connector might even suggest another level of deception used to return this switched product.