Still, I would’ve been disappointed if someone hadn’t just typed it out. Probably woulda felt like I had to.

Not the peepeeholefish :(

Currently rehabbing an old drive or two to begin my transition away from Windows during some upcoming time off! Enough is enough, MS has made it abundantly clear that users should not expect to own or control their Windows installations anymore. Complete deal breaker and I doubt I’ll be back.

Damn, I never considered how much the marketing of the earlier eras must have contributed to toxic gamer culture, particularly misogyny and eventually inceldom.

I’m a little uncertain how much credit to give it, I feel like that kinda stuff was commonplace in advertising in general. But that was a long time ago and it’d be easy for me to just think that since I saw it in gaming and beer marketing that it was “everywhere”. Maybe it was way more uneven than I’m thinking, or something. Sure feels relevant.

Hell yeah, I’m a goddamned fortress by now. I shrug off everything but a multi pronged attack, no matter how sustained. Pretty much have to be badly under slept, kept in tight quarters, and exposed to something virulent.

My immune system is like an advanced alien race just crashing through whole galaxies and annihilating weaker species. As it should be.

It has puzzled me too. I think it’s a combination of:

• above average raw charisma (people subconsciously want to relate to him)
• VERY generous / manufactured audiences
• our strong subconscious tendency to want to laugh along with others
• deliberate abuse of the “this is so funny I can’t help but break character” move, the most egregious and hateable thing the man does

People look at me like I slapped their mother when I say I find him 0% funny or likeable.

There was no walking path, no. There was, however, a huge stretch of unused farm land between the neighborhood and the school. The owners of the land fought bitterly to prevent access.

LOL, perfect reference. Hope that’s not where I got the idea haha.

But damn, ya know what, I need to watch this whole entire show again, it was fucking AWESOME. Avasarala herself (not in this clip of course) is dope enough to merit a re-watch, and there are so many cool characters and excellent performances, the writing is great, the universe is great, fuck. I’m not even a TV or really movie watcher.

You magnificent SOB!

Members of his previous administration complained about his tendency to just kind of agree with the last person who spoke to him on a given topic / day. I assume it’s mostly due to his love of (need for) flattery - he comes out of each meeting feeling great and wanting to endorse whatever that person was saying.

Yep, that’s been our experience. We have a niece who got a concussion from a bully (aluminum water bottle) and really nothing changed (so her parents had to find a way to get her off the bus). Two school years back and in a different area, there were so few drivers that my kiddo would come home at completely unpredictable times, anywhere from “on-time”, up to 2 hours late, with very little communication. And we could basically see the school from our house.

Needless to say we no longer see the school bus as viable. Our society can’t even get our kids to and from school in a functional way anymore. Things are really bad.

Edit: missed a word, grammar

Historically it’s been threats to the owner / controller class that have produced serious gun control legislation in the US, so you are probably right! But if you mean actual confiscation a la Australia, pretty sure that’s off the table here. Sincerely think it’d spark a war no matter who sincerely attempts it or why.

It really would be a strange kind of uniquely American poetry if our school shooting problem inverted itself into a megacorp CEO shooting solution.

That’s a consistent and reasonable take. Mob violence can be unpredictable and harmful to its own causes. I’m certainly willing to call it murder myself, while also being glad for it. And I condemn going after the person who called in the tip, for many reasons, but succinctly - that person cannot possibly bear enough responsibility for the state of things, even acknowledging the actions they sure didn’t have to take, to be an appropriate target of anything like what happened to Brian Thompson.

Well, I can understand your point of view without sharing it. As for the hostility, beyond most folks just following whatever up/downvoting they see taking place already, there’s a critical element here that shouldn’t be missed - the positive response has been largely bipartisan, which is rare and valuable. And not only is it bipartisan, it points out an important truth which any resident of this country would do well to keep in mind -

At this stage of the game, we might be a hair’s breadth from realizing that it hasn’t been Democrats vs. Republicans for a long time, it’s just all of us regular folks vs the abusive rich (+their enablers).

I’m reaching here, but if other people feel that way, I can imagine wanting to discourage anything that takes away from a sudden (much needed) feeling of unity.

Just to give one more take (without contributing any hostility, I hope!) - one way to look at it might be that you see this new development (Thompson’s murder and the nation’s “hell yeah!”) as the scary, dangerous step too far, whereas maybe many of us see the scary dangerous step(s) too far as having already happened (maybe long) in the past.

We’re in a really scary situation as a country, and that was almost exactly as true the day before Thompson’s murder as it is today. The significant events leading to our scary situation are a list of egregious misdeeds and manipulations by people in power, stretching back years - even if I take your premise that it’s wrong, this is just yet one more event (if a notable acceleration). I sincerely believe that a few more gray hoodies might actually send things back in the right direction and bring the owner class back to the negotiating table. As it stands (and ~equally true two weeks ago), the social contract in this country is in tatters. The rich get everything, everyone else - nothing, not even the healthcare we already frickin bought.

Laws are not virtuous by default, is it a moral judgment against killing itself here, or is the problem that it was not a legal act? Of course don’t let me reduce your position to one of my own two phrasings lol, but I am curious about the specific objection you have.

Damn. Another Adjustment made, may he never stop Adjusting.

Mine’s even slightly weirder - I’m trash at navigation in a car, on streets. Even if it’s somewhere I’ve been a bunch, once GPS became commonplace that part of my brain seems to have basically switched off or decayed somehow.

But outside, backpacking or even less demanding stuff, I have a great sense of direction. Plenty of successful solo trips, etc., very rarely feel turned around or confused. There’s probably a contribution caused by the differing level of effort, but it’s hard to put into words how my subconscious automatically provides a ton of help in the latter situation and zero in the former.

Very true, but kind of glosses over the gigantic accumulated suffering felt by those experiencing a civilizational / societal collapse.

Clever reversal bud, sure got me.