Yes, when they’re older. I’d rather be the “dad, can you find this for me?” guy, and then when they’re older and start talking about wanting to set up their own Plex server or something I’ll show them how to do it, if they even want to. I would be perfectly happy being the perma media pirate for my family.

I honestly have no idea how much cable costs where I live and it’s not for a lack of trying. I’ve tried to look but it’s literally not possible to look on mediacom’s website to get cable prices unless I add a cable package to my internet plan. My only other option is to call them, and their entire support is outsourced and it’s a toss up on whether I get someone who speaks English or not. One time the call center person spoke so little English that they had to transfer me to someone else.

Europeans have been settling in North America for 500 years. The United States being a young country has nothing to do with the evolution of accents and dialects. When the US was formed the Spanish had been in the Americas for 200 years, the French and English not much less, in addition to enslaved Africans who brought their own native languages to the continent and then were forced to learn English, Spanish, French, or Portuguese. That alone is more than enough time and groups of people for dialects and accents to develop.

When I was in law school I did a deep dive on the formation of Illinois and ended up going down a big rabbit hole of the dialects of Southern Illinois. The reason different parts of southern Illinois have accents that sound so different is because a lot of people settled there from Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina, and even thought towns were closish to each other the accents were very different because of the group of southern settlers. Super interesting. Where I’m from in Southern Illinois people have a very unique and unmistakable accent.

I hate that people treat the US as if it doesn’t have a wide variety of accents. I can drive an hour in any direction and the people sound different than where I live. A lot of states have their own accents, and there are regional accents within them. I live in Illinois and people from No. IL and Central IL sound completely different from people in So. IL.

Accents get even more differentiated the further North or South you go. PNW sounds different than NE. Etc. The real difference is that a lot of the accents in the US aren’t based on indigenous languages spoken in that region (even though some are), they’re largely based on the group of Europeans that settled in the region.

Americans are very very good at code switching, which is why I think a lot of people think there are only one or two accents.

I have a 2020 rav4 and it is only valued at $3k less than what I paid for it brand new. This isn’t a reality anymore.

I see what you’re saying, but 9/11 resulted in the largest enlistment surge ever.

The US military has more than enough people signing up willingly. The only way conscription would ever possibly get restarted is if the US was in a conflict where hundreds of thousands of soldiers were being lost. I honestly don’t even think it would be necessary then either, because the US is a giant war cult, so people would be lining up left and right to “serve their country.”

I don’t understand how they can do this with iPhone when Apple requires all apps to prompt with the option to deny tracking?

I keep seeing YouTube shorts of dudes like this doing not just stupid shit, but DANGEROUS shit. I saw this one of this dude flashing gang signs in gang territory in LA. You DO NOT do that shit. Any time someone would get aggressive with him he’s go “it’s a prank there’s a camera!” One of these days he’s going to say that and it’s going to piss the dude he flashed signs at off even more and he is going to get shot.

Also, if the crime is serious enough, the judge can rule to not release at all. One of the screaming points for conservatives in the state is that rapists and murder suspects are just going to be allowed to go free, which is not true at all. There is a list of serious crimes in the statute that judges are granted heavy discretion over in regards to whether the defendant should actually be released.

ALSO, think of this as a way to combat recidivism. One of the reasons people continue to commit crimes even when they’re incarcerated because they can’t afford bail is because they lose their jobs. They end up in jail for a week or more and don’t show up to work, they lose their job that was likely hard for them to get in the first place. It’s a major part of the prison industrial complex and the Right’s war against the poor. Ending cash bail takes away a major component of that.

They’re so deluded, they all see themselves as disenfranchised millionaire. So when the graduated income tax was proposed, they freaked the fuck out, when anything is raised that impacts the wealthy, they freak the fuck out. I was an attorney that dealt with some of the poorest people in Illinois, and the conservatives, despite living in a 40 year old trailer and not owning a vehicle because they couldn’t afford one STILL bitched about this stuff like it effected them in anyway, while having the audacity to ask me if I could help them commit Medicaid fraud in case they needed the state to pay for nursing home costs in the future.

He has been an excellent governor. All the conservatives in So. IL disagree, but when you ask them why, the literal only reason is “he raised the gas prices!!” They ignore the fact that Illinois has had a balanced budget for the last four years, that we are slowly climbing our way out of debt, that marijuana is legalized, cash bail has been ended, Southern Illinois has received a fuck load of infrastructure money, etc. They also ignore the fact that Southern Illinois is the prime reason WHY Illinois is so broke. Southern Illinois is where the majority of the people on snap, tanf, Medicaid, and other social programs are. They all conveniently ignore that though.

That is only if you get healthcare through the ACA healthcare marketplace. Those plans cost upward of $400 a month. While private healthcare plans do sometimes cover mental healthcare, you then have to find a mental healthcare provider that accepts your health insurance. They are not required to accept all healthcare plans and that can mean you have to drive 1+ hours away for mental health appointments. Under my insurance the closest psychiatrist that takes me healthcare is two hours away, and they have an eight month wait list. That was the one I got to actually call me back to find that out. The other ones 2+ hours away never even bothered to call me back.

I got tried to get on the wait list for the local healthcare group that has a few psychologists on staff last October. They told me it would be two months before someone reached out to me to set up an actual appointment. It is now August 2023 and I’ve still never been contacted.

Yeah, but when therapy costs $100-$200 per session and is not always covered by health insurance (in the US at least) what else are you going to do? In most places in the US it’s also very very very hard to get in to see an actual Psychologist, and nigh on impossible to get in to a Psychiatrist, so most people are stuck with LSCWs who are not competent at all, and often times make matters worse. Mental healthcare in the US is an absolute joke.

Have you smoked outside of Germany? I only ever smoked in Germany so I don’t know how it is anywhere else in Europe so maybe my experience is the problem, but I have friends who have come to the US and said weed is way stronger here.

I hope you’ll be able to get seeds and strains imported from the US and Canada. I smoked weed in Germany while I was living there in 2015 a few times and it was the worst weed I’ve ever smoked. It tasted weird, smelled bad, and didn’t even get me high. When I asked someone about it they were just like “weed isn’t as strong here as it is in the U.S.”

I can. It harms the U.S. government’s war against the poor. How is the prison industrial complex going to continue to thrive if the largest exporter of opium poppy in the world doesn’t export opium producing poppy anymore?

Yep. It’s easier to just break the law, pay the fine, and continue making billions over actually stopping the activity that causes the fine. That’s what happens when it’s almost impossible to hold anyone actually personally responsible force actions of a corporation.

If they’re not losing money, shareholders do not care. The end goal of a corporation is to maximize profits for the shareholders within the confines of the law. So until they start actually costing shareholders substantial amounts of money they will do nothing.