I argued with family about this more than once since the debate, and it’s endlessly frustrating. I work in the medical field. I’ve worked mother/baby. Still takes way to long to impress on them that this not only isn’t happening, but any remotely similar story they hear is someone twisting the worst day of hopeful parents’ lives around to support their political bias. Real people having their tragedy flagrantly lied about, and being painted as baby killers, for no good reason. It’s disgusting.

Still no idea if I’ve gotten through, but they seem to have stopped bringing it up for now.

Then called her (I think NPR said it was a her) crazy afterwards, implying she was having a mental health episode. Then they’ve gone on to release photos, showing they were blatantly violating federal law after being clearly told they were doing so. Not to mentioned , they allegedly assaulted an Arlington cemetery staff member in furtherance of that violation (I know you mentioned this but I feel it’s worth repeating, there should be multiple people charged for this).

I think that character was supposed to be an amalgamation, so you’re kinda right. I was getting Tucker Carlson vibes everytime I saw him. That “grown man in a bowtie who desperately wants to hard R it” kinda energy.

There are rooms clearly marked with mask and droplet precautions on the outside of the door, and the staff will take a mask from a box next to the door, go inside to deal with that person, and then when they’re done they take their mask back off and go back to walking around treating patients with no mask. What do the people in those rooms have?

This is pretty standard, and maybe I can shed some light on it. You don the mask as you enter the room and take it off as you leave to avoid spreading the contaminate out of the room. The mask adds a barrier and reduces your risk of contracting whichever disease (and subsequently spreading it to other patients), and all the stuff it’s blocked stays in or at the room when you shed it. So the people seen doing that are actually playing their part in keeping whatever that person has limited to the room they’re staying in.

As for what people in those rooms have, it can be a lot of things, but it really is what it says on the tin. They have something that can spread by droplet, which ranges from the flu to stuff like whooping cough or, yes, COVID. The system to keep these things contained is pretty consistently updated and has worked well when implemented. We were all wearing masks everywhere for a time because COVID was spreading like wildfire, and concerns of people becoming contagious before showing symptoms with no way to reliably innoculate/vaccinate medical workers

West by God Virginia. I spent a lot of time there reminding people we fought for the north.

I don’t think it would prompt some kind of vindictive vote. That side of it is only going to energize those who were vehemently republican anyway. Republicans would hammer on any and all sympathy they can eke from having their candidate assassinated (regardless of the truth they will say it was the left, and at best people will think the guy was just crazy), and the average person only half paying attention will eat it up. Dems would be even more hamstrung in their rhetoric against the GOP considering the gravity of an event like that. Even with that aside, they’re now running Joe Biden against whichever face the GOP tells their voters to line up behind – who you can bet will be all in on the kind of stuff that will do even more lasting damage to our country. Biden is not a strong candidate, and without the uniquely unlikable personality and character of Trump I’m not sure there’s enough motivation amongst voters to carry him to another term.

But all of that was a lot to type, so I just said it would give them a massive boost

I tentatively agree. The man himself I have no sympathy for, but an assassination of presidential nominee would have made everything even worse. GOP would get a huge boost, and could replace Trump with someone that is actually competent enough to fully implement their 2025 treason-esque bullshit. Not to mention how much that would have inflamed an already looney tunes level of political discourse.

It’s also just not how we should do things in America. Call me a hopeless patriot, but we should try to live up to the ideals we espouse.

I mean, in context that verse is about being aware one’s belief in Jesus may cause strife with their family/community, and how Christians are meant to endure this strife without denying their faith. The choice of wording makes sense in the context of the time it was written, when affirming Christ is God would have absolutely caused some major animosity with those who don’t believe. It’s assuring the reader that the division and pain that will come from those disagreements is not lost on God, and also not something we can turn away from and ignore.

The Christians that everyone is up in arms about all the time are close to the worst representation of the faith as possible, and you can easily point out their lazy interpretations as well as scripture that, more often than not, outright rejects their twisting of the faith. Modern day Pharisees all the way. Unfortunately the church on a national level is inundated with them, and has done a poor job of separating from them.

People who’ve never lived in Texas really don’t get it. Everything is spread out to an almost ludicrous degree. I drive an hour to get to my friend’s house, and I don’t even consider him to be far away. We both live in the same metroplex.

Public transportation is almost complete failure here due to not being prioritized, and driving anywhere is a pain in the ass with drivers from all over just winging it on congested streets. Don’t even get me started on overpriced tolls that have become the only reasonable way to travel 30min+

Texas is not ok.

To play devil’s advocate, though, I do wonder what the exact rationale was for this. Was Al Jazeera engaged in legitimate espionage, using their news organization as a front?

Even then, it’s a broadcast that Al Jazeera could just go view somewhere else and get the same info. Its a very thin excuse, and I think it just is what it is at face value. A poor justification for limiting coverage of the the war

You know what, I’m here for it. Anytime I hear about the cicadas coming back it’s always over the top dread. People freak out, and there’s so much acting like seeing a cicada is going to grind life to a halt. Everyone seems to lean into the bit.

The fact that the growing answer to the cicadas this year is a wildly different “fuck it, we’ll eat them and then they can’t get us” could not be more beautiful to me.

I haven’t seen it because I have the opposite problem.

I can relate to that. I’m one of those people who won’t even squash bugs, and even heavy-handed, poorly written emotional moments in movies can make me tear up because I’ll inevitably find something in there that speaks to me. Shits wild compared to my friends and family

The idea the my life is so low stress that I can enjoy simple pleasures? That’s the dream.

I used to think this way, until I tried writing more sci-fi and I kept running into weird moral quandaries trying to keep stuff realistic on a human level. I genuinely don’t think there will ever be a threat that could rally all of humanity at this point. Not only because I don’t believe aliens are a thing we’ll ever experience, but also because everything I’ve seen points to people being too chaotic. Even the perfect enemy (some bugs that just want to kill us all) would have humans helping them out, a contingent of people who think the whole thing is a deep fake, and a multitude of people preying on the flawed reality of those groups and others to horde whichever resource (money, food, manpower, etc.). That’s before you even get into the various well-intentioned factions that would form around a variety of “best” approaches to the issue.

I’m not even saying this in a doomer kind of way, I’m rather optimistic and believe we tend to stumble forward. I’m just saying the rally around the flag moment for humanity feels like a total fantasy.

The headline, which very likely isn’t even real, is also not inherently fascistic. If anything its more a statement on people being so stressed with life, that a fantastical idea of going off to live a sci-fi movie life is appealing.

You’re pulling the fascism from the movie, which is inherently satirical. It makes sense something like that, which was already popular, continues to be so when the satire has more real world connections. You’re on a platform with a ton of nerds, they’re gonna reference sci-fi classics. If anything I’d say that’s a healthy sign. Satire is arguably one of the strongest forces pushing back against fascism and the like on a cultural level.

It’s the use of “rigged” that throws me. I agree money in politics is bad, and adds improper influence and incentive into the whole thing. That is not the same context that we have widely seen “rigged” used in the last 8 years. The term brings to mind GOP lies about election integrity, and bogus claims of fraud.

If this was just someone I was talking to I would brush the statement off as bad word choice, and move on if there was nothing else. With it being a statement after an election loss from someone with political experience I struggle to let it slide. Word choice and presenting ideas/policy is a major part of the job she is running for, and I think such poor word choice in a statement she had every opportunity to proofread and consider is worthy of some criticism. Doesn’t make her an election denier, or anything of the sort, but it does warrant a little slap on the wrist from the public.

Overall she’s right, but there were many better ways to say it.

Proper intermittent fasting is quite a bit more involved and planned out than “avoid meals”, and doesn’t seem to be what the other comment was referencing.

As a non-fat person who doesn’t exercise consistently, it’s not that simple for the vast majority. There are a lot of factors including health/genetics and the stuff mentioned in the comment you responded to. I’m not skinny because I avoid meals, I’m skinny because I lucked out genetically and I really don’t have to worry about what I eat in terms of gaining weight.

Also, avoiding meals is like the worst way to maintain your weight and you should stop implicitly recommending it. It’s just going fuck up your metabolism, nutrition, and ability to maintain your weight. Quality matters substantially more than quantity, and quality is prohibitively expensive for many.

This was the biggest adjustment for me with my last program. I was one of those annoying people that tested super quickly, and I developed some bad habits such as picking out the key parts of the question and immediately moving on as soon as I hit an answer that checked the right boxes. When I came up against “they’re all technically correct, but you need to choose the MOST correct answer” it was a goddamn brick wall. I adjusted and grew because of it, but holy shit do I have a new button to push when it comes to multiple choice (and trick questions, but that’s a whole soapbox).

I say all that to add that there is something to it. It made me learn the material in a more applicable way. I stopped trying to just retain lecture based on what seemed likely to be tested, and starting understanding concepts as a whole. It kind of forces you to work abstractly with what you’ve learned. I still hate it, but I won’t deny that kind of testing had a positive impact.

It’s really about the lack of context. Its fine if the focus was on a minority of idiots, but you should also be reporting how insignificant the support is in general and an objective look at why they’re there. I don’t have faith in most 24/7 media to do that.