I’m genuinely not sure whether this is a teachable skill or something more like a character trait.

But what if he officially ignores the courts?

income inequality is required for our capitalist based economy to function

Yeah, that’s kinda what capitalism is. The system itself is the problem. It only “works” if there are workers for the owners to exploit, and the goal of the owners is to accumulate more and more capital. Infinite growth is impossible because the resources are finite. It’s time for our economy to evolve.

I’m okay with seeing an acceptable level of advertisement. Content creators have ad reads within their videos which are skippable, and they’ve resorted to that because YouTube doesn’t pay very well. It used to be that you’d get a short ad at the start of every video or two, and maybe another short ad per 7 minutes or so. Now, it’s pretty common for every video to have at least 20 seconds of ad before starting and another 10-30 seconds of ad every 3-5 minutes or so. I like watching on my PS5 while doing chores, so I’m subject to all of these ads. I actually have fully abandoned videos halfway in because of ads that were 60 seconds before I would have the option to “skip” the ad.

I pay for enough things in my life that I was okay with the trade-off of the ads on YouTube. Now, it’s (no joke) about 5 minutes of ads interrupting a 20 minute video, and there’s usually a 2 minute ad read within that 20 minute video, so really 7 minutes of ads per 18 minutes of content. But it’s not really 18 minutes of content because there’s an intro, an outro, and a “remember to like, comment, subscribe, and smash that bell” bullshit too. It’s roughly 2:1 ratio of actual content to ads and fluff. I’m not fucking paying to take it from 2:1 to 3:1 and they can eat my entire asshole for even suggesting such a thing. Maybe instead of trying to hold eyeballs ransom with the choice of either subscription payments or and overabundance of ads, they should charge for uploading videos to their servers. Sound like a terrible idea? Then I’m sure they’ll do it within 5 years. Because fuck everybody, that’s why.

“By official decree, all education shall now be free, and all debts accrued for the purposes of education are forgiven. If this should result in the dissolution of predatory lenders and universities whose business existence depends on this type of debt, then so be it. It’s time to adapt or go extinct, Jack.”

Depends. At a meh bar with bar food, probably an IPA. Mexican place with Mexican food, probably margarita or tequila sunrise. At a cocktail bar, I’ll pick a signature cocktail, probably one with a whiskey of some kind. If it looks like they know what they’re doing but they focus on botanical type stuff (which I don’t really like), then I’ll usually go for something like an old fashioned or a Manhattan, and if it’s not too busy I might request it with the bartender’s choice of unique flair on it. Or I might order a carajillo if they have an interesting one on the menu and if I see an espresso machine.

I disagree since I met the woman who is now my wife through Tinder lol. We both were looking for something casual and found something worth much more. But it’s almost certainly gotten shittier like everything else, so I understand your reluctance to try it.

In that case, get yourself cleaned up and head out to a bar/club and see if you can meet somebody organically. Be ready to talk about your job, hobbies, and interests. Maybe get a few clever jokes locked and loaded. Passionate, nice, and funny will make you a magnet to decent people. Just temper your expectations because it sounds like you’re probably gonna a swing and miss a few times until you find a comfortable batting stance.

It varies from person to person. The act itself imo is pretty good, but I don’t really enjoy it unless there’s a real connection. Others mentioning things like hiring prostitutes here are recommending that you miss out on what I think it’s a pretty key part of it, plus I think you’d be assuming some real risk in terms of whether that’s criminal, will you be robbed, could you get an STI from them, and of course whether it’s even affordable in the first place. I can understand the desire to try it once, but I can’t imagine it being much better than masturbating compared to the risk and cost.

I think I’d recommend getting on Tinder or something similar and just making it clear in your profile that you’re looking for something casual but want to message a bit first to make sure they’re at least somewhat of a match for you. Sometime before getting naked, it’d be a good idea to say that you haven’t done this before and ask for clear communication so that both of you can enjoy yourselves. You want to be on the same page. And go slowly. You almost certainly won’t have a good time if you’re feeling pressured and rushed.

Overall, yes it’s worth trying, but a lot of people stop thinking rationally entirely when sex is a possibility and I think that’s a bit silly. It’s okay to come to the conclusion that it’s not worth the hassle or even not enjoyable at all to you. It’s totally subjective. Just don’t do anything you don’t feel comfortable with.

He’s spelling it out for voters to get them off their asses. People said “yeah right” in 2016 when the ones who were paying attention said that the scotus was on the ballot, and it turns out we were right. It’s probably good to hear the calm warnings straight from him rather than just from “alarmist” friends, relatives, and coworkers this time.

Innocent until proven guilty; if Gorsuch and Barrett suck but haven’t done anything objectively, legally wrong then we need to give them a pass for now. Otherwise, it delegitimizes the very legitimate cases against Thomas and Alito. I think Kavanaugh has worse skeletons than perjury to go after. He had mountains of debt that conveniently vanished right around the time he was nominated, and I can’t definitively say that that’s evidence that he was bought and paid for but I can tell you that if he were bought and paid for that this is one of only a few avenues that it would happen through. He absolutely should not have been confirmed and there should’ve already been an investigation into whether he’s beholden to anybody due to financial insecurity. It’s why you get a credit check in addition to a background check before you can have any kind of security clearance. After all, we wouldn’t want to have anybody stealing and selling classified documents and national security secrets, would we? 🙃

They say of the Acropolis where the Parthenon is

Lol happy to help! Yeah, nowadays it’s easy to hit a gig in data usage without even realizing you’ve used any at all. I wish the unlimited tier were cheaper. It feels like we have gotten to a point where we should be able to use GPS or do a Google search without considering a cost. Kinda feels like if anything, they should be paying us for allowing into our pocket this ever changing billboard that scrapes our metadata. But that’s unrealistic to get anyone else onboard with, so I’ll settle for free connectivity to knowledge in exchange for advertising and spying on me.

What state are you in? I’m in VA and considering going from Google Fi to Mint mostly because we would go from minimal data usage to unlimited for about the same price. Definitely not making the switch if you’re also in VA and can vouch that it doesn’t work here.

I’ve been on Google Fi for 3 or 4 years and it’s been pretty much flawless. I’ve traveled to Mexico and Spain with it, and there’s a sort of calibration period of like 30 minutes before you have service in another country, but that’s literally the only time I’ve been without service for any period of time. My wife and I are on it and use very little data, so covering both phones is typically about $60/month. We usually have 5G service around our home in northern VA.

Proof of bill cost:

Because any country fighting a war on defense against aggressors/invaders knows that the path to winning is to hold strong, wait out the clock, and drain resources from the enemy. Something as essential as that will cause urgency to redirect resources and personnel to replace/repair and then better defend it so that it doesn’t just immediately happen again. This makes defense easier because there’s less of an offense while that’s happening. This also can cause internal loss of support since Russian citizens can see the costs of this going up. They will know people who were sent to die on the front lines. They will see taxes go up and availability of goods go down. Once Russian citizens start to question and criticize the campaign, there could be a snowball effect that ends with Putin and his cronies having to make a choice between stopping the invasion or losing power. I don’t think Putin will ever stop, so the real choice will be desperate attacks (which could include nukes, triggering article 5 and effectively ending Russia) or a coup. Putin has checkmated himself whether he is aware of it yet or not. His best case scenario at this point is dying of natural causes in office and leaving that hard decision to his successor who will probably back down and be a pariah for it, saving Russia in the process.

I’m trying it. This was the kick in the ass I needed to finally go ahead and get F Droid. Anything else I should be getting from there? I’ve heard of some good apps through it but idk what a sorta “standard” user might be interested in.

Same. I can take tap water fine but my wife hates it. But even so, we both can tell by taste when the filter is toast. We can also tell from the way our bathroom counters get white buildup just by incidental water droplets during handwashing that we have excessively hard water. Not dangerous but not pleasant.

False. Walmart makes about $600 BILLION per year.

Idk where you found the $13B figure, since that’s less than the amount they made OVER the previous year’s earnings.

I know what you’re thinking: “but that’s revenue, not profit!” Okay sure, and let’s not even address what qualifies as a “loss” for a massive business like Walmart because I don’t even need to get into that to make my point. Still, they profited nearly $150B in 2022, source is the same link but lower on the page.

Walmart makes over $250k per employee, and nearly 15k of those employees are on food stamps, which means that our tax dollars are being used to subsidize their exploited labor force to make them 12-figure profits.

So yeah, I think we’re kinda sorta morally obligated to steal from them in order to feed the hungry that they are responsible for making hungry in the first fucking place.

Most of the “riots” people have complained about in the past 5 years have been directly caused by police existing in the way that it does. I can’t deny that police serve as a deterrent for some people regarding some things, but I don’t think I’d live much differently. I’d probably shoplift from big box stores occasionally, but not out of greed. It’s about taking money, not making money. If everybody stole a can of food from Walmart every day to give to the hungry, there would be no more hungry and Walmart would still make billions.

Stonks.