I argued with family about this more than once since the debate, and it’s endlessly frustrating. I work in the medical field. I’ve worked mother/baby. Still takes way to long to impress on them that this not only isn’t happening, but any remotely similar story they hear is someone twisting the worst day of hopeful parents’ lives around to support their political bias. Real people having their tragedy flagrantly lied about, and being painted as baby killers, for no good reason. It’s disgusting.

Still no idea if I’ve gotten through, but they seem to have stopped bringing it up for now.

Then called her (I think NPR said it was a her) crazy afterwards, implying she was having a mental health episode. Then they’ve gone on to release photos, showing they were blatantly violating federal law after being clearly told they were doing so. Not to mentioned , they allegedly assaulted an Arlington cemetery staff member in furtherance of that violation (I know you mentioned this but I feel it’s worth repeating, there should be multiple people charged for this).

West by God Virginia. I spent a lot of time there reminding people we fought for the north.

I don’t think it would prompt some kind of vindictive vote. That side of it is only going to energize those who were vehemently republican anyway. Republicans would hammer on any and all sympathy they can eke from having their candidate assassinated (regardless of the truth they will say it was the left, and at best people will think the guy was just crazy), and the average person only half paying attention will eat it up. Dems would be even more hamstrung in their rhetoric against the GOP considering the gravity of an event like that. Even with that aside, they’re now running Joe Biden against whichever face the GOP tells their voters to line up behind – who you can bet will be all in on the kind of stuff that will do even more lasting damage to our country. Biden is not a strong candidate, and without the uniquely unlikable personality and character of Trump I’m not sure there’s enough motivation amongst voters to carry him to another term.

But all of that was a lot to type, so I just said it would give them a massive boost

I tentatively agree. The man himself I have no sympathy for, but an assassination of presidential nominee would have made everything even worse. GOP would get a huge boost, and could replace Trump with someone that is actually competent enough to fully implement their 2025 treason-esque bullshit. Not to mention how much that would have inflamed an already looney tunes level of political discourse.

It’s also just not how we should do things in America. Call me a hopeless patriot, but we should try to live up to the ideals we espouse.

I mean, in context that verse is about being aware one’s belief in Jesus may cause strife with their family/community, and how Christians are meant to endure this strife without denying their faith. The choice of wording makes sense in the context of the time it was written, when affirming Christ is God would have absolutely caused some major animosity with those who don’t believe. It’s assuring the reader that the division and pain that will come from those disagreements is not lost on God, and also not something we can turn away from and ignore.

The Christians that everyone is up in arms about all the time are close to the worst representation of the faith as possible, and you can easily point out their lazy interpretations as well as scripture that, more often than not, outright rejects their twisting of the faith. Modern day Pharisees all the way. Unfortunately the church on a national level is inundated with them, and has done a poor job of separating from them.

You know what, I’m here for it. Anytime I hear about the cicadas coming back it’s always over the top dread. People freak out, and there’s so much acting like seeing a cicada is going to grind life to a halt. Everyone seems to lean into the bit.

The fact that the growing answer to the cicadas this year is a wildly different “fuck it, we’ll eat them and then they can’t get us” could not be more beautiful to me.

This was the biggest adjustment for me with my last program. I was one of those annoying people that tested super quickly, and I developed some bad habits such as picking out the key parts of the question and immediately moving on as soon as I hit an answer that checked the right boxes. When I came up against “they’re all technically correct, but you need to choose the MOST correct answer” it was a goddamn brick wall. I adjusted and grew because of it, but holy shit do I have a new button to push when it comes to multiple choice (and trick questions, but that’s a whole soapbox).

I say all that to add that there is something to it. It made me learn the material in a more applicable way. I stopped trying to just retain lecture based on what seemed likely to be tested, and starting understanding concepts as a whole. It kind of forces you to work abstractly with what you’ve learned. I still hate it, but I won’t deny that kind of testing had a positive impact.

Interestingly enough, 2/3 of those are subs I dropped within the last year or so based on a lack of quality/content for what they cost (never bothered with ESPN, NHL games are easy to find). Seems like streaming is starting to collapse a lot quicker than TV did.

Come on, man, it’s “water under the bridge”. I want to contribute but it felt like we were drifting into malaphors there for a second, so I’m gonna play it by year and just see what comes next.

Find Egress; Aquire Ride. That kinda works.

It’s worth a watch, but for the theory itself essentially the effort/resources required to colonize planets that are not earth-like is unsustainable. A lack of a self-restoring cycle for resources and general ecological needs would inevitably lead to one of a variety of possible collapses. This would lead most intelligent life to avoid extensive expansion due to the heavy cost. Issues brought up with the theory in the video was stuff like tech advancement improving the practicality of life in free space as well as the possibility of differing biological needs (i.e. if a species went more mechanical or used AI/machines they could bypass the need to terraform or transport basic biological needs).

A lot more and better explained in the video, but that’s the gist

That has happened to me so much in recent years, both with clipped songs and bands/artists I like becoming popular. I don’t hold myself with any music pretention, and the vast majority of my “underground” discoveries are just random chance and Spotify algorithm. There is no way I have found to explain “no, I’ve been listening to them since [insert album]” that hasn’t been met with some form of hipster comment.

Don’t even have mothman as number 1, what are they even doing. That bizarre being is a hero, and he deserves respect.

I did some clinical rotations at a correctional facility, and holy shit I did not realize how long processing took some people (30 min is insanely short). I was in a pretty calm city, and there were people there still in the waiting area from the day before consistently who the officers would come down on hard if they dared show frustration. Usually low-level non-violent crimes (there’s always like 3-4 people a shift who can do nothing but gossip about those being processed. Most were possession or DUI in my time there), and always just the absolute bare minimum work from the prison staff. No officer I met gave a single shit about picking up the pace when it was needed, and they certainly didn’t give a shit about the people being processed. It felt like it was being run by highschool bullies. The final straw was watching a doctor argue for far to long about how they absolutely had to send a seizing patient to the hospital, regardless of the fact he went last week.

My short time there convinced me there was nothing I could do as a single nurse in a facility like that, it’s already rotted through.

I’m not sure the comment calling for regulation is a corporate shill. It’s a pretty level-headed look at things imo, because the truth is YT cannot afford to operate for free. We live in a system that just doesn’t allow that, for better or worse. Unfortunately, the way we went about funding things on the internet (outside of ridiculous amounts of capital flowing to startups for years, which doesn’t really apply to YT/Google) was ads, and they have gotten wildly out of hand. This is on top of an insane amount of data harvesting. We have to face the reality that any major, data-heavy platform like YT is going to need significant revenue.

We need a solution to either lower the cost of (opening things up for individuals to host), or more efficiently fund, services we like if they’re going to stick around in the current state of the world. Even if we say “google can eat the cost” we’re still putting all our faith in the goodwill of an entity that is designed to do the opposite of what we’re asking. That’s begging for issues.

Peer-to-peer stuff is the best solution I’ve seen, or self-hosting. I’m far from an expert, but from what I understand the tech just isnt there yet for it to become the norm. All that data has to go somewhere, and storage is prohibitively expensive at a certain point.

Ibuprofen all the way for the flu. I think its a more effective antipyretic, and it will help with the inflammatory response that causes the body aches.

How do you know those aren’t far-right cats?

It’s honestly wild, and ranges from stuff that I can only assume is due to people playing on their phones and half-watching, to a level of ignorance about storytelling that basically requires the plot being exposition dumped for them to grasp it. I genuinely don’t get it, and it can make recommending good shows/movies difficult.

This is one of those weird family connections I’ve known about for a while, but have to keep reminding myself its real. My brain refuses to associate those two people.