It doesn’t have to be fluff though. They could just report on any of the reduced disease or lower heart attacks than last year or whatever. There’s got to be some stats, even at a local level like in a town or something, where things are going well.

They should use that to balance the doom and gloom, not fluff pieces about squirrel butts.

It was worth checking out. I would have been curious.

Let’s face it: this kind of resembles deliberate torture.

The vietnam war might have been the first to show us war in our living rooms, but this war may be the first to really capture the absolute ugliest part of war: the sadistic torture of victims, done by soldiers who have their enemies captured or cornered.

(Unless there is a tactical reason to maneuver the target away from the vehicle— which there could be that I just haven’t thought of)

This war could bring that to the home consciousness for the first time.

I thought democracy died when we started skipping elections, but hey maybe that’s just some weird delusion on my part.

Maybe I’m off. Just seems to me that deciding to skip an election is like the most literal death of democracy that could ever be described as the death of democracy.

Democracy is when the people vote. Democracy dies when we skip over that part.

Make sense? Am I off here?

It sucks. I don’t have children because I’m barely functional. Can barely keep a roof over my own head, let alone maintain a romantic relationship.

I’ve wanted kids for a long time, but the only relationship that showed promise of that ended with a bunch of cheating and abuse. I eventually realized even if I was willing to put up with it, I couldn’t subject my kids to having her as a mother.

So I’m going on 42 and don’t know if I’m gonna make it.

Because population is increasing faster than new housing is being built. There is a supply problem and demand is in elastic. The supply problem is the result of government’s continual suppression of new construction, via permitting red tape and overeager density zoning.

Here’s the set if anyone’s curious: https://youtu.be/4sjLNxnKKxY

Maybe the instructions were to respond with crickets when asked this question.

No it can’t!

I’m an uber driver. I get to be outside in the daylight all day. Work whatever hours I want. It’s nice.

I mean why think it won’t work.

It doesn’t make any difference what got us here in the first place. What matters now is what options are the best from now moving forward.

These scientists seem to say that trying to reverse climate change isn’t the right path forward. I wonder why.

edit: I wonder what makes them think that reversing climate change won’t work.

Someone was so offended by their misreading of my comment that they went through and downvote-bombed every comment in my history.

Notice how it’s the guy in the jacket saying everything.

The one person who doesn’t just hang out, but gives a little micro sermon on how hanging out is wonderful, is the one who wants the group to be a cult.

Why not just good old Blorny

I just didn’t know how to deal with someone like that.

You tell them the truth. That means if you think their stories sound crazy you say “I think your stories sound crazy”.

I know that steps outside of the typical path of politeness, but telling the truth is the only way to help someone in that state.

She wasn’t asking because she didn’t know. She was asking because she knew they sounded crazy, and she wanted to give you an opening to discuss that.

Trust me. When a person is having paranoid delusions only the truth can help them. Saying “No that doesn’t sound crazy to me”, if it does, only makes it worse. That’s because people can detect when others are lying to them. If that person is so far out there that everyone puts on a mask around them, it will reinforce the idea that people are shifty assholes. If nobody ever tells them the truth then they can’t calibrate their sense of what’s real and what’s not.

It may seem rude, but if you truly want to help them, you need to be truthful with them. That includes saying things that might not be polite, such as “I think that sounds crazy”. They will not interpret that as rude. They will interpret that as honest, and it will be an enormous relief to them to have found an honest person.

As someone without much people skills, I take this opportunity to say fuck your glass ceiling idea for people like me. Thank god for the free market, where if someone consents to work for me, they can.

What exactly is “good faith commerce”?

That doesn’t seem to register as a coherent concept, considering good faith has to do with considering the whole of the interaction instead of one’s own side, and business is when each person handles only their own side of the equation.

Seems like an empty phrase to me, unless you can enlighten me.

You know what the difference between a near monopoly and an actual monopoly is?

In one scenario there’s competition and in the other one there’s not. Basically one’s a monopoly and the other isn’t.

Accounting is a relationship. When the government prevents a specific type of relationship — one consenting adults are regularly choosing to enter — the result is a change in relationships.

What are you saying is a lie? What claim exactly?