A long long time ago, I was riding the train into DC to attend Jon Stewart's Reason Rally and ended up standing next to this old woman with a walker who was sitting down.

She said, "I can't believe all these people are going into DC. You know, God must be so ashamed of this country" and I froze up because what do you even say to that? Then she said, "I can't believe people would listen to those hateful Fox News people."

I still didn't really know how to react.

To be fair, so does America. A country can call itself whatever it wants, it doesn't make it true.

Holy shit this is the first time I've ever heard anyone do the same thing as me. My kids have "home words." We've tried to explain that some people think those words are bad, but we think the idea of bad words is silly and really it's all about what you're saying. Similarly to you, my kids will curse every once in a while (and sometimes I have to try really hard not to laugh) but not nearly as much as I did when I was a kid (though never around in my parents, in my case).

It probably will. Human history is mostly a series of shit getting worse, then getting a lot better. We may one day hit an insurmountable wall, but I don't think this is it. The trick is that it won't get better on its own. People have to actively give a shit to make things better.

If you lack exposure to the water. It doesn't come perfectly naturally, especially if you are a bit older and have developed a fear. It's definitely easier to learn if you're younger.

I don't know what your particular situation is but if you're just using it on computers you could use LUKS or BitLocker or FileVault. Then if you want to wipe it, you only need to destroy the key and the data is rendered effectively gone.

Tbh if someone made VR tech that let me feel what sex is like for a woman, I'd sign up immediately.

Going for cover is another great one. "Try to hide behind things so you don't get shot" seems painfully obvious but in real life you can see how often civilians just freeze up instead.

It's also really easy to look at the advice and consider it obvious when you're sitting at home reading it with plenty of time on your hands. It's less obvious when you're in a stressful real world situation.

The stuff that soldiers get taught in basic training also feels really obvious. "Stay physically fit. Be aware of your surroundings. Only point guns at what you want to kill. Follow orders quickly." None of this should feel surprising to anyone with the most basic knowledge of what a soldier does, but drilling it in until it's what you do automatically in the moment is important.

YouTube has gotten more annoying for creators and less profitable, so some of the ones with enough in the bank are dipping out?

Grandia for PlayStation 1 introduced one of my favorite jrpg battle systems, and the story is fun and mostly lighthearted.

Phantasy Star IV, you say? Never heard of it.

Edit: Eh, this was a dumb joke. I just finished my yearly replay of Phantasy Star IV, though, this time using a fan retranslation. I highly recommend it, I think they did an excellent job: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4171/

I have been watching Dead Mount Death Play and really enjoying it. I worry I'm going to go around singing it's praises and then find out other people don't like it, but it's been one of my favorites this year.

A bit twisty, a bit comedy, a bit drama, a bit detective show, a bit isekai. It's blending a lot of themes and I think doing it very well.

No one has ever sufficiently been proven wrong in the history of politics. Prepare for one or more of the following:

• The damage from predecessors was too great
• Other countries teamed up to prevent him from succeeding
• The circumstances were out of his control
• His political opponents sabotaged him
• It hasn't been long enough, this is just an adjustment period

It's infuriating also because these excuses can totally be true.

It's been my experience that they calculate it all stupid, then react to that miscalculation in a dumb way, and inconvenience everyone as a result.

Suppose they have a product they buy for $8 and sell for $10. They get the number of all that got bought but not sold, which may include ones that weren't actually received or that were damaged during shipping and stocking or just left out and went bad or accidental "theft" or actual theft, and they multiply that number by $10. So now on paper they have "lost" a bunch of money to theft, even though they actually lost 20% less than the number they came up with AND they have no way to know how much of it was theft versus other shrinkage.

Now that they have this exorbitant number, they can use it to justify buying a million anti-theft devices. Which reduces the amount people buy because those things suck, but they can blame that on shoplifters too because it's all their fault that the anti-theft devices were "needed." And in the end none of it matters anyway because 1 theft is not the same as 1 lost sale to begin with.

In retrospect, the LG Fusic was the best phone I ever had. I could play music, even connect it to my car over FM. I could text and call. It had Sprint Navigation or whatever. I could even sort of search Google with Opera Mini. And that was it. No email, no Slack, no social media, no games, no app store. And the browser was convenient enough to use for quick answers but inconvenient enough to discourage trying to do much else.

From the text: "The only reason anyone turns to God is because He gave us that grace."

Sounds like predestination to me. Or perhaps they mean to say that God changed his mind at the last minute? Or something. It's not super clear.

Every once in a while I see a pretty large amount of money and it causes me to have an existential crisis. This is life changing money for most of the world, but also there's places that it doesn't even buy one of the cheaper houses. Where it really messes me up, though, is remembering that even those places have retail workers and food workers and day laborers and... how? How has the whole house of cards not collapsed?

In theory, I'm centrist. In subjective terms, the right thinks I'm a commie and the left would think I'm basically a Nazi. In practical terms, I think that the rights of individuals should be maximized, while the rights of groups (like companies, organizations, churches, etc) should be restricted, and I don't think that taxation is theft but I do think we should be getting a better return on our investment.

The thing is, I pretty much only hang out in leftish spaces because the things I disagree with the left on are also less important to me. It's easier to get along.