That’s probably a carry over from systems built out for major cities and their park spaces. You would know in a second why it was necessary if you ever rolled over to an NYC park, hoping to play some tennis or handball, or whatever, only to find out that all the courts near you are being camped out by the same group of guys who are there so often, it seems like they live there. I could see if becoming the standard from major cities where it makes sense to make sure these resources can’t be dominated by a handful of individuals who don’t allow anyone else a turn, but then mindlessly carried over when installing them elsewhere in places where there isn’t the same need.

I would guess it would break it in that people holding out on switching until every game they play is as simple to run in Linux as they are in Windows would probably consider that a deal breaking amount if work compared to staying on Windows.

Yeah, when you say stupid shit like this, you make it really obvious that you’re just trolling. You’re really going to say “vote blue no matter who” is a phrase that admits qualifications? You’re still ignoring the hypocrisy of the same sort of centrists Democrats who used that slogan as a cudgel against people not falling over themselves to vote for other centrists candidates are now trying to make the phrase, “Vote blue no matter who, unless they happen to be socialists.”

You’re the one who decided to defend that stupid slogan to begin with.

But there was help for people like this uncle. There were massive campaigns to address vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID, to which they collectively said “No thanks, I did my own research.” What were we supposed to do, set up reeducation camps and forcibly round them up and ship them off? I can’t really see that being a viable solution.

I’ll be the first to accept that Iran, just like Cuba and any other country under long term sanctions from the US for refusing to kowtow to US demands, is essentially crippled from the start and unable to function as well as they could have without that ongoing interference. However, that doesn’t negate things that they’ve done on their own, like harsh repression of protests or that lady who was sentenced to being whipped for singing a song without wearing a hijab the other day.

I’m basically saying that my view of him is like my view of whoever wound up being Putin’s handpicked successor would be. I find them suspect by virtue of passing the screening process to even wind up in that position to begin with, and that will only change if they start taking actions that are at odds with their predecessors’ once in power. If his other positions turn out to be even half as good as his stance against Israel and the US in the current war on Iran has been, I will be happy to realize that my suspicions were unfounded. At the same time, just because they’re in the right on this specific topic doesn’t mean they are flawless in other aspects. Like, the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church was surprisingly progressive for civil rights for African Americans for a white guy in Kansas in the 1960s, but you won’t catch me singing Fred Phelps’ praises in light of all the other heinous stuff he’s done in his life.

Are you really going to ignore how the elected Dem officials who embody the “Blue no matter who” slogan did everything they could to undermine his chances, right up until they realized they couldn’t cripple his bid for mayor? In comment on a post about 13 such people going full Scooby Doo and pulling off the masks to reveal they’re just red guys in disguise who will gut everything and blow up children if it means stopping a candidate who could actually make good on being something other than a corporate bought stooge that’s padding the ranks of the controlled opposition party?

If anyone doesn’t understand what “Blue no matter who” means, I’d say it’s yourself. It’s a thought terminating cliché for liberals to make voting for the neoliberal ghouls running the party more palatable that, funnily enough, is completely forgotten by the aforementioned ghouls as soon as the wrong kind of blue appears as a candidate. It’s a tool used solely to browbeat people into voting for the shittiest candidate the DNC thinks we’ll stomach, yet is readily abandoned with a “No, not like that” when someone like Zohran rocks up and says “Hey, I’m blue, I’d like to represent my city.” and voters respond enthusiastically to them. Until Democratic electeds stop pulling out their knives for candidates that can be described as at least progressive, if not socialists, I don’t want to hear this blue maga bullshit again.

It’s quite telling that they’re quick trot out bullshit like Suozzi is championing in response to a popular leftist candidate, but when someone suggests primarying a Joe Manchin or a John Fetterman, suddenly the Democratic party is a big tent party, and we need to work together and maintain unity. Where is a censure for Suozzi and crew for violating the sacrosanct big party spirit that protects fascist collaborators like Fetterman? “Blue no matter who” is a lie, and has been since day one.

Yeah, I wanted Mamdani, too. I’m just pointing out the fundamental contradiction in “Vote blue no matter who” when a significant portion of the blue are like these 13 assholes, and will leave no stone unturned to actively oppose people even having a chance to see Mamdani’s name get past the primaries. The Democratic Party is absolutely rotten with such candidates, and following the blue no matter who mantra only ensures that you have people like them ready to pull out all the stops to go and kneecap a primary candidate who’s to the left of Reagan so that you don’t get a chance to vote for someone like Mamdani.

You know, that was a bad assumption on my part commenting on an article about conservatives and their conspiratorial views, but it still just changes the specifics of things, rather than the grand picture, as your uncle still didn’t live in a vacuum. The vaccine skepticism and other nonsense still made things worse for everyone, and caused needless deaths, aside from your uncle’s. I get that it can be harsh for those who personally knew an individual, but you can’t ignore the impact that line of thinking has on everyone else around them and pull out the surprised PIkachu gif when people are less than sympathetic towards them.

Personally, I had to deal with those sorts of yokels yelling at me and being jackasses because I was wearing a face mask in the fall of 2020, actively following up on the health issues that arose after I had the OG Covid and was left unable to walk more than two blocks from my apartment without being completely exhausted, and had to deal with my body deciding that it was an excellent time to develop an autoimmune disease and nerve damage. I’d be yelled at to take off “that face diaper” because Covid isn’t real, and vaccines are fake, blah blah blah, from the same sort of people who were all in for Trump, so I’ve got a bit of a bias there. Still don’t have much sympathy for them, though.

As someone else pointed out, they had access to the same information as the rest of us, and chose to go with the dumbest possible conclusions they could draw, yelling “Fake new!” and “Do your own research!” to the rest of us desperately screaming at them to knock that shit off, get with the program and stop actively making an ongoing pandemic worse for themselves and those around them. They decided that they and their misinformation monger(s) of choice knew better than the rest of the world, and now we all have to live with the consequences of it.

Ah, yes, the race where these guys were famously supportive of the blue candidate and didn’t do everything in their power to make sure he would lose even if it meant giving the election to a Republican candidate. I certainly see the logic in your support for them.

I’m not sure why people have decided he’s a bad leader, given that he hasn’t made any meaningful leadership decisions since taking office.

Probably something to do with the fact that he was in a position to become the leader of such a repressive government to begin with. Maybe he will break with past policies and be a champion for women’s rights and LGBTQ+ causes, but if someone was already tipped to take over the reigns of such a government, I assume vetting processes mean he’s generally onboard with what the government was doing beforehand unless I see them taking actions that show otherwise. At this point, who knows how he’ll be, as he’s been set up with something of a PR softball in responding to an aggressive war lead by Israel and the US. Postwar, we’ll see how he shakes out domestically.

That said, I’m still hoping the Iranians just trounce their enemies in this conflict. Whether he’ll ultimately represent an improvement for the Iranian people over his predecessor or not has nothing to do with the fact that he’s on the right side of the current conflict and crushing it at the moment.

They fell for a scam. That doesn’t merit the death sentence.

You know, if this scam wasn’t both easily avoidable and actively calling for the imprisonment and/or death of various groups of people within the country, I might be a bit more sympathetic. I know it can be tough watching someone you know fall for it and not being able to stop it, but getting mad at internet strangers who say that MAGA followers got what they should have seen coming to them has the same vibes as going “But my uncle was a good guy before he fell for all this Nazi stuff Hitler is saying, he didn’t deserve this,” while overlooking that they volunteered to be a guard at one of the camps.

Nobody is forcing people at gun point to go MAGA at present, and adopting and promoting that ideology has real impacts on other peoples’ lives, which currently include arbitrary imprisonment, an inhumane death camp in El Salvador and Trump’s brown shirts beating and killing people in the streets. So it might suck on a personal level, but who are you to tell someone who lost their access to abortion, medical care and/or the ability to just live a normal life if they happen to be trans or gay in the wrong state, or even someone they know being rounded up by ICE that they’re bad people when they say, “Well, good thing another MAGA person died, that’s one less of them fucking up my life,” in a situation like this?

Again, it sucks for you that you lost your uncle, but he didn’t live in a vacuum and the ideology he adopted has real, severe consequences for everyone else who has to deal with it.

With that said, I do think we need to give some serious thought to deprogramming these folks and reintegrating them with civilization in the near future. “Screw them all, let’s just kill them,” is hardly going ti be a viable strategy when we have to face our own period of de-Nazification in the future and could be helpful in actually getting some off the indoctrination pipeline and reducing their numbers in the present. There are millions of people who have openly embraced fascism in the US, and millions more supporting right-wing extremists in Latin America and Europe. Indefinite imprisonment or mass executions are both equally unfeasible as solutions for when we collectively pullour heads out of our asses as humans and go “Oh shit, we really fucked up with this fascism stuff, again. What do we do now?”

I think we had it for about 3 months of a single grade in middle school, maybe once a week. We rolled out a ton of cookie dough in the shape of a pizza, put candy on top and called it cookie dough pizza, then said “To hell with learning how to cook” and spent the reminder of our time back in the classroom, sewing and stuffing fuzzy little American footballs. With all of two things done, one of which just required opening packaging and squishing the dough a bit, we had nothing else lined up for the rest of the year, and never did home ec again once we left for summer vacation. At peak boredom, towards the end of the school year, it became something of a game for the boys in the class to see how much of their fuzzy football they could sew to their hands before the teacher noticed and made them undo it.

The pronunciation tab there is paywalled, but in the OED app on my phone, they list /əˌsəʊsiˈeɪʃn/, followed by /əˌsəʊʃiˈeɪʃn/ in the pronunciation section. I honestly can’t recall ever hearing a single person in the US pronounce it /əˌsəʊʃiˈeɪʃn/, and though I won’t say nobody does, the other pronunciation is far and away more common, where the ‘c’ and ‘t’ make entirely distinct sounds.

I think one obvious answer would just be a dock or something that would let you connect it and play on a TV or monitor for more screen space when you’re at home. Conversely, a powerpack/grip accessory would probably have gone over well with people who were frequently traveling with their Vita.

No, no, that’s crazy talk.

Fingernails and toenails. They grow back.

I don’t know, I feel weirded out seeing someone serving that bowl without a single bit of gammon or bacon ribs on the plate. We have a few occasional customers at work who seem to subsist solely on a diet of Lucozade, sketti hoops, bacon ribs, gammon, and WKD.

Nobody said phonics is a perfect method, but against evidence showing it does substantially better at getting kids to learn how to read, you rocked up to contribute what amounts to “This is bullshit, because I didn’t like it as a kid.” We aren’t discussing how private tutors work, but how to get the public school system to get the best results in aggregate.

Every kid learns differently, sure. But we can’t even staff schools at adequate levels to hold decent group instruction, much less provide tailored education for each student, so your reply about everything being wrong until every every child has their unique idiosyncrasies accounted for comes across as a bit daft in the context of the discussion.

There are a ton of parades for one nationality or another in NYC. If you accept one’s like St. Patrick’s day, which are strongly associated with one country despite not being called the “X Nationality Day Parade,” you have the Irish, Scottish, Germans, Dominicans, Panamanians, Japanese and Chinese covered, at least.

I don’t think anyone is suggesting that you should be able to work it out in your head for every single woman you see, but that makeup actually doing the thing it exists to do shouldn’t be this massive shock to anyone who has any close relationships with women in their normal lives. Acting like this app is some big gotcha moment as it’s portrayed is maybe one smidge better than being shocked to find out on your 30th birthday that women poop.

If Bob ate 29 Toblerone bars in one setting, I think it’s safe to assume he’s just chomping off each section straight from the bar.