What is interesting is how non-vocal many of these “concerned citizens” are when the criminal justice system does the same thing to normal people. It is why I have a difficult time believing the concern is really about justice and due process in many cases.

Zoning sounds great until you want to start a small business on your property, and you have to spend years convincing several councils and review boards that a photography business is not going to destroy the neighborhood character… and then you need to pay for a traffic study to prove it won’t negatively impact parking or meaningfully increase car travel on the street. And if it manages to get approved, then some retired busybody with no life will complain at every town council meeting that it’s attracting a bad crowd, and there’s too many people around now.

There is definitely a place for reasonable limits, but almost nowhere in the United States has that. People need to accept that neighborhoods change, and expecting them to be frozen in time is literally insane and fiscally irresponsible.

There are certainly stories of overzealous enforcement, but the context of Loi 101 and its amendments is worth considering.

Québecois is really interesting. It has a lot of old, outdated French in it due to the colonial connection with France being severed hundreds of years ago, where it evolved distinctly and the locals made different decisions on what to change and how to adapt to new concepts.

One could argue the French government has been obsessive about policing language much longer with the académie française.

Agreed. I’ve met some people who devoted their lives to work in nonprofits or public service who I would definitely not call losers. I wouldn’t want to be their spouse, but I admire them.

From what I’ve read, 65+ was about evenly split Harris-Trump in 2024. 40-64 broke decidedly Trump. If the markets (and 401ks) manage to bounce back by the time the 40-64 cohort largely enters retirement, I fully expect they will have learned absolutely nothing.

I have made bids on short flights if the free luggage included in business class would make the bid cost less than paying for the bags. I haven’t been successful yet, however…

They place a hold that goes away if your offer is not accepted or you cancel your bid, which you can do anytime before it’s accepted (usually in the 24 hours before the flight).

He is from the Cincinnati area, which borders Kentucky, and he spent some of his youth in Kentucky. Not a proper southerner, but from the gradient where North becomes South.

Indeed. Or working for prison slave wages.

Yeah, the cheap standard powder detergent would probably be less expensive. The volume you’d need to make to beat it is huge. Like, maybe five years’ worth.

I am also laughing at making washing powder in the oven to save money. The amount you’d spend on electricity would put you in the red, unless you live in a petrostate with free electricity or something.

Vatican City: could participate but does not.

English used to have this! Yea/nay for positive, and yes/no for negative I believe. The former fell out of common use.

There’s nothing wrong with having different preferences. It doesn’t have to be because someone has a worse or better attention span.

I personally do think the number of enemies that had to be killed should have been decreased. For me, it was mostly because it became comical sometimes that more guys kept coming out of the woodwork. After the fiftieth O’Driscoll you kill, you start to wonder if it’s a gang or a country’s military.

The gameplay is definitely way exaggerated because it would not be very engaging to get into one gunfight per chapter. I interpret these parts of many games symbolically—the amount of violence is to make a point. The game would be very short or really boring if it was realistic in that regard.

Arthur is a really complicated character who, despite being sometimes sympathetic, is ultimately not a good person. Even if you make only “good honor” choices, his story is still filled with points where he struggles to reconcile his actions with his beliefs. You wouldn’t want to live near a person like Arthur in reality, and he doesn’t like being that person.

RDR2 is ultimately a story about bad people struggling against other bad people. One group represents the lawless banditry that is dying out, while the other is the capitalist yoke that wears a nice suit. Lots of normal people get caught in the middle, and they usually suffer for it.

It succeeds for me because it still keeps the humanity in focus. Bad people are humans too. It does not absolve them, but it underscores the conditions that can manufacture them.

You spend the entire game moving from place to place because the gang keeps getting into too much trouble.

The fragmenting of teams needs more attention. My group uses a follow the sun model that has our team split up across at least seven countries, plus a decent chunk are always contracted through a vendor. Add in remote workers, and it’s very difficult to see an effective way to organize.

When I was a kid, someone tried to name a summer camp team Sofa King Cool. It originally slipped past, as the names were submitted on paper. One of the counselors renamed them Couch Queen Chilly after saying the original one out loud.

So this is what Cardi B was talking about.

Thank you for reminding me these existed. Unlocked some memories that have been sitting there for decades unremembered.

Paradoxically, if you look right above that and click on whether they approve or disapprove of him, it’s 49 approve/44 disapprove right now. I’m not hugely surprised, as I’ve met several people who say they don’t like him as a person but they like XYZ thing he’s said or wants to do.