We all know this. We are all powerless to change it. Corporations and governments control whether or not it can be changed. Politicians worldwide are being fed by the pollution industry. The poors voting changes nothing until the corporations and politicians decide to do something about it.

Walkable cities? Great idea. Needs politicians to approve zoning restrictions. Don’t drive cars? Great idea. Needs politicians to build public transportation infrastructure. Electric cars? Great idea. Needs corporations to produce them at an affordable cost. Etc etc etc.

There will never be a day when 10 billion people in the world get on the same page to demand the end of anything. We can’t even get a tenth of that many to agree to stop killing each other over border squabbles.

They’re not cheap, but seedlip makes some non-alcoholic herbal concoctions that go well with the types of things you’d normally mix whiskey with. The Spice94 is a good Herby mix. The one with the rabbit is kinda grassy, but the other 2 I’ve tried are pretty good.

https://www.seedlipdrinks.com/en-us/shop/seedlip-spice-94/

Where I live, I have hills, big hills in every direction. I own both types of bike, a rad runner 6 for long, fast rides from my house, and then 20 miles up into the mountains along back roads.

I have a road bike that I bought when I couldn’t really afford it, and paid about 1,000 for it. It’s a tomasso. It’s ok. I wish I had a trek, or a specialized hybrid road with the slightly thicker tires than the tiny ones my road bike has. I can’t really afford those.

I use the RAD bike more for cardio, generally leave it in pedal assist 2 or 3 and just try to get a quick workout during lunch time. I take the other plain road bike out with a cycling club locally one or two nights a week. I don’t own a car, and I work from home. Biking makes me happy, but I get lazy when it’s really hot, so I ride the e-bikes more when it’s hot.

I’m 45. It’s not as easy as 45 to build muscle back up and get superfit in a short amount of time. The e-bike helps with cardio and keeps me excited about taking a quick spin without getting totally smoked by all of the hill climbs it takes to get out of my neighborhood, much less through the foothills of the smokies and Appalachians.

Even if you’re going off to the side you’re on, it’s a distraction. It will draw my attention back to see if you’ve fallen, crashed, or gotten hurt. I will check my mirrors for you to see if there are additional dangers to me. I ride around bike-like objects all the time. Passing you isn’t even going to be a thing that I notice. You’ll get a “On your left, passing” from me when I’m about to go by so you know not to do any funny business in my direction. I don’t expect you to exit the lane. Heck, if you’re doing 15MPH, we might ride and bullshit with each other for a bit.

Nothing like Jordan seeking the spotlight to give journos a reason to look into why his nickname is “Gym”.

This couldn’t possibly backfire, could it?

Probably with questions like “Should women be able to start a bank account without permission of their husband?” or something along those lines for sexism, and some sort of question that determines whether a ruler should be able to enact policies against the majority of the vote, etc.

Yep. It pisses me off when I’m talking about the effective ban in my state (TN), and some dipshit says, “They have until 6 weeks, it’s not a ban!1!1!1!1”, as if the practical fucking effect of the policy isn’t that by the time a person knows they’re pregnant, it’s almost certainly too late to do anything about it.

Nevermind the fact that the state doesn’t really have any abortion providers left, and the closest states to go to might be NC or IL, each of which is roughly a 4-6 hour drive each way for most residents of the state.

It’s asinine, and cowardly. If you want to ban it, ban it and prepare to get kicked to the curb. Stop lying to people about your policies because you’re too cowardly to defend your position.

Basically self-diagnosed at 35 due to this. Therapist backed it up and agreed, but there isn’t really anything anyone is going to do with a 35 year old other than maybe give you some anti-anxiety medicine occasionally after hassling you about it.

I literally used this method while stuck in the Ticketmaster queue for Taylor Swift tickets.

Every Unity developer is under the same agreement. The changes were not announced to be “moving forward”. It’s a change to existing licenses to use Unity. For everyone. Everywhere.

I don’t know that licensing changes have been retroactive in the past. How do lawyers prevent companies from retroactively changing licensing? My guess would be to sue after the fact, which is probably why these developers are hinting that they’re going to suffer economic harm if Unity follows through with this. This statement may be their lawyers doing the work they’d normally do in this kind of circumstance.

That was me in 1996. My parents worked in factories when I was in elementary school, getting paid a piece rate for work. By the time I graduated from high school, their factory jobs had been sent overseas or to Mexico, and they were working as a handyman & selling shoes at Walmart. Combined, they made somewhere in the low to mid $30k per year range, and had 3 boys to raise. I had to take loans to go to college. I worked as much as I could to try and cover my bills while in college. I had the GI Bill from the national guard providing a couple hundred dollars per month.

I ended up dropping out of college after a few years because I couldn’t keep up. I went back after my daughter was born, and used the max federal Stafford loans (~10k/yr) to help pay living expenses because I was working 2-3 part time jobs to work around my schedule and helping to pay rent, utilities, and food for myself, my wife, and a baby while my wife went to school as well. I worked so much that I barely remember my kid before she was in 2nd or 3rd grade. I don’t think I could have worked more.

But now, conservatives say that I shouldn’t have taken loans. I shouldn’t have gone to school because I couldn’t afford it. What is the alternative? A life of raising a family making minimum wage delivering pizzas? Relying on public assistance and tax credits? Or working my ass off for a few years, taking some loans, paying them back slowly with maybe some forgiveness at some point, and now paying 13-15k per year in taxes?

Kind of weird to be told to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”, do that, and then be told that you should have just stayed poor because your parents couldn’t afford to pay for college for you.

The interest rate on my federal direct student loans is 6.8% on half of them (undergrad) and ~9% on the other half (graduate), iirc.

I told my buddy the other day that it was Bethesda Menu Simulator 2023, and I wasn’t wrong. I was working on my outpost, so I’d place some stuff, go to star map, select the planet with the material, pick a landing spot, land, get up, mine ore for 5 minutes, fast travel to ship, repeat 2-3 more planets, choose the outpost, land, place some more stuff. Then repeat.

The list of women is solid. I wouldn’t want to have to pick a favorite from this list.

One of my Senators is Marsha Blackburn, whose photo is used in this cal to action. She will tell me that I’m stupid and should support the bill, and then I’ll be on her GD mailing list again (it is very difficult to get removed from that list).

…and my mind is stronger than a child’s…

It’s not though. It really, really isn’t.

I’m not saying it’s too racist to elect a black man. What I’m saying is that he was a solid enough candidate across the board that the only 2 major downsides that I can see were, primarily, he was a Democrat (biggest hurdle) and black. Here’s an interview with Marcus, and while you can see some of his positions aren’t going to entice Republicans, hes pretty much as moderate a Democrat as one can be in Georgia and still have a chance at winning.

He had a solid ground game in the area. I don’t live far from that district and his name was everywhere, and for a long time. Lots of ads, lots of campaign material, lots of meet and greets in the area. I probably had name recognition of him at least 8-12 months before the election, if not earlier. So, I don’t know how much more money could be spent on a house district in Georgia for it to make sense pulling that much funding away from other candidates elsewhere. The gerrymandering might help, but I don’t think that solution is within a decade’s timespan. The Rs don’t need more republicans around Atlanta, because they’re not going to swing Fulton anyway. So, they’re better off keeping the outer districts super safe R districts and letting Fulton go to the Dems.

Unfortunately, it would probably be a better investment of campaign cash to support a less crazy Republican in the primaries, if the desire was to get rid of MTG, and I HATE the idea of trying to save the Republican party from itself.

Marcus Flowers ran against her in 2022, and really had two things working against him in Georgia - he’s black and a Democrat. He’s a veteran, smart, committed to doing the right thing, ran a clean campaign on policy, and worked hard. Meanwhile, she trolled, filmed videos of herself wasting time at his campaign office while he worked, etc, etc, etc. And all of that happened while she was removed from all of her committee assignments which meant that she couldn’t even do anything to support her district for 90% of her first term.

They gerrymandered her district as much as they could by reaching down to Cobb County suburbs to pull as much away from Atlanta as they could afford to, and Marcus lost by a lot. I’m not entirely sure we’re not stuck with her for a very long time, unless she loses a primary, which I don’t see happening with the Republicans in their current state.

There’s a constitutional reason the justice department falls under the president. It is a function of the executive branch, from Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution: “…shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed…”. The DoJ is the enforcement arm of the executive branch.

I love MARTA. I also know it has its problems. As a neighbor from a nearby small city, I don’t even have a business stop within 5 miles of my house. I love being able to take MARTA all over place in Atlanta with a day pass.