But if the commanders are sycophants, then only certain requests to carry are approved.

It could easily engender a situation where the commander plays favorites to create power imbalances and danger for whoever happens to be in the out group. We’ve also recently learned that Hegseth has meddled a lot with military promotions, targeting specific groups for career suppression.

Weird fucking glove.

I accidentally brought handcuffs into a flight on August 2001. The TSA agent who found them asked what I planned to do with them.

Being a teenager, the answer was obviously that I kept them in my jacket to pull them out and show my high-school friends how quirky and cool I was. But being a teenager, I didn’t realize how endearing that response would be, so I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, which was somehow better and worse.

“I’m visiting my girlfriend!”

She gave me a slow blink and said “Well, alright then, go get your freak on!” (Or something of a similar sentiment - time has robbed me of the exact phasing.)

‘Iran could develop time travel and kill Milton Friedman!’ JD Vance

‘Iran could develop zero point energy and antigravity tech to leave the planet to die in the hellscape we’ve gleefully created while they travel the cosmos!’ JD Vance

‘Iran could develop couches that chop off dicks!’ JD Vance

Hey, no! You’re supposed to be so upset that I’m wrong that you do significant research for me for free!

I’m posting this wild postulation in the hopes that someone corrects me.

Okay, so a billion years ago a volcanic plume tried to fuck up Michigan and failed, causing the Midcontinent rift system. Then it chilled out for awhile before getting squished by glaciers into going east and making the Adirondack mountains about 20 million years ago. Then it went west due to daylight savings time and made Yellowstone about 2 million years ago.

Not buy their products. Drag them on social media. Give interest to news stories about the product’s users, not the figurehead of one of the vendors, so the news media focuses on them rather than the distraction. Reach out to your politicians and your friends to discuss how product failures are the result of the company embracing AI and don’t forget to highlight the greed that brought us to this fascist economic system. Use, donate to, or even offer your skills to non-LLM FOSS alternatives. Spend your dollars on companies with scruples. Build your own home lab, give up on all technology, get really into self-sufficiency, and go live in the woods to escape the whole system.

I don’t know… something other than giving in. Literally anything other than that.

For all the focus on Scam Altman, we should probably be focusing on the companies that are so quick to abandon their workers on the promise of saving a few bucks.

Being treated only as a font of knowledge, a hard worker, a reliable friend (when the friendship is otherwise not rewarding), having a lot of tools, etc, is kind of crappy. I at least get pleasure from sex. Honestly, if I had my druthers of how folks reduce me, I wouldn’t hate being valued for being good in bed.

I wonder if the friend with the truck ever feels like that.

The pain aspect is something you should address. First with your partner if their technique can be changed, and second with a few doctors. This one is like a layer cake - maybe you’re ace, maybe there is emotional context (that could be entirely unrelated to your current situation) that causes physical discomfort, or possibly there’s a physical component that your doctor might be able to help you with. Or some combination of all of them, because people are complex.

But romantic asexuality is definitely a thing, as is a number of variants within it.

You don’t message your homies at 2 am to tell them you miss them?

Until I saw your comment, my (flippant) response to the person you replied was going to be “Because Congress hasn’t figured out how to use Polymarket.”

Which is a far less eloquent corollary to your comment.

They did read my memoirs!

Horner also said Epstein made a $10,000 donation for his research and that he visited the ranch a second time in 2016 with a graduate student “as part of a geology tour”.

Has anyone heard from this student? I would not trust a word of his version of the narrative.

In same camp of supporting the sentiment, I played this out in my head.

Okay, but what if they’re open carrying a large gun?
[Bad outcome]

Okay, what if they open carry and have a body camera (that they turn off while in the restroom, obviously)?
[Bad outcome and ignored by media - bad outcome]

Okay, what if there’s a group that’s open carrying and have body cameras?
[Bitch, did you just determine they had to form a militia to go to the bathroom away from home? Sigh.]

I don’t know the solution, other than for people to mind their own fucking business.

I’m late to this train, but I recently got into Dimension 20, and the GM (Brennan Lee Mulligan) has some incredible characters. Here’s a fitting quote from one of them:

Laws are a threat made by the dominant socioeconomic ethnic group in a given nation. It’s just the promise of violence that’s enacted, and the police are basically an occupying army, you know what I mean?
Video source (YouTube short - sorry)

Very probable. I was also not the most economically secure back then. I was trying to save money on a $20 can opener!

Can openers is what did it for me.

In 2015 I needed a new manual can opener. The local big-box stores had two basic styles. A cheap, all metal one that was just stamped from a single sheet, and a more expensive one with better handles.
The more expensive one had previously rusted and began to look nasty within a few years.
Amazon had a bunch of different styles at less than the price point of the more expensive one.

I bought one. It was fine. I didn’t love the operation. It cut the whole top off from the side, rather than from the top in a downwards cut. The sharp edges were on the can rather than on the lid. It would catch the paper labels and sometimes wad them up into the can while you cut. Cans with no air space would leak when opened.

Anyway. Replaced it in 2019. Amazon still had a broad selection, but all except for obvious crap was as expensive as the local big box store’s expensive option. Wound up going to a smaller local(ish) bulk foods store and bought a cheapo restaurant one for less than Amazon’s/the big box store’s similar offerings. Minimal rusting to date.

A long time ago, someone said something really useful to me about oversharing online:
“I would like to fuck you, but I’m afraid you’ll write about it on your LiveJournal.”

And on that day, I became a lot more selective about what I shared online. At least when it relates to others. I’ll tell you all about my childhood trauma.

I’ve begun to use nonsense statements, made up words, and random vocalizations to make the bots think they couldn’t help me. That usually gets me to a human faster.