u/GraniteM

Could they do the thing that airports do with geese, where they get a Labrador to run around and bark at the birds and the birds say, "Ehh... fuck this area" and leave of their own accord?


My mom made money as a lobbyist when I was a kid.

She lobbied on behalf of family farms that wanted to limit the use of bovine growth hormones, either because they had moral objections to pumping their cows full of steroids or because its use gave advantages to factory dairy farms over small family operations.

Lobbying is a disease on democracy, but there are moral cases for its existence in certain circumstances.

It's a modification of a Matisse painting.

Comparing the attacks and India's response to 9/11 is apt because America's response led to America wasting billions if not trillions of dollars fighting a series of wars that had the primary effect of making people hate us even more than they did before, and also led our national politics down an ever stupider road than we were on before and let us directly to the point where we have our own tinpot dictator.

If history should teach us anything, it's that America's response to 9/11 is the absolute opposite of what one should do when attacked, if one wants to have a better long-term outcome.

☜( ﾟヮﾟ)☜

There was a great interview with a woman who had written a book on the Manosphere and she said that it's "funnel-shaped," which is to say that the first stages are nowhere near as extreme as the ones they lead to. It starts off by talking to lonely young men and telling them that their feelings are valid and that they have value, both of which are things that young men very much do need to hear! But the pipeline then moves them from that to "Your feelings of isolation aren't your fault" to "Your negative feelings are women's fault," and then you're off the primrose path to "Women aren't people" and "Women deserve any horrible treatment you can think of."

But the earliest stages are ones of finding young men that aren't having their emotional or structural needs met, and filling that vacuum in.

Boy asks Pope if his atheist father is in heaven.

Humility, patience, kindness, grace, and rationality. Would that we should have more leaders like him in the future.

I got cold-called by one of those "We'll buy your house!" scam outfits one time asking if I was interested in selling my modest single-story, two bedroom / one bathroom house.

Me: Not really!

Them: Well, if you were going to, what price would you hope to get?

Me: You know what, let's say five million dollars.

Them: Uh... is this the house at [my address]?

Me: Sure is!

Them: And... five million? You're firm on that?

Me: Well, anything is negotiable, of course. I've got to go now, bye!

And I just really hope that I wasted a little bit more of their time that day, but if someone were to make a horrible paperwork error and accidentally offer me five million dollars for a house worth a fraction of that, that's really on them, I'd say.

Aw, I remember hearing about these years ago and thinking that investing in a cask of booze sounded so much cooler and more real than investing hallucinatory financial instruments or whatever.

That doesn't sound fair to Greenland if/when Trump loses.

/nottheonion

I got some of these that clip on to my glasses for miniature painting, and they were very nice for being able to flip on and off as needed. Looks like these come in different magnification powers, which sounds handy, depending on one's needs.

That's such an oddly specific north to south multi-state swath of No Data that I'd easily believe there was something going on with that particular longitude, even though that's a completely insane thing to imagine.