I moved out to go to college at 18 and back in with my mom as 21 after dropping out due to financial issues. I had trouble finding work there, nothing stable that paid well. I was a pretty lonely depressed guy, a virgin into my 20s, with nothing significant in my life and nothing to offer anyone else. It was a pretty shit time for me. I ended up moving in briefly with my dad 2 states away and was able to find a decent paying factory job shortly thereafter and got my own apartment. Then I found an even better paying factory job a year or two later, and got promoted to management within the year. I lost a bunch of weight, was able to save money, lost my virginity finally and I bought a house. I met the woman who would become my wife. Sold my house moved in with her. Went back to school, got my degree, got a much higher paying job, bought a much nicer house and we just had our first kid.

I don’t want to tell you how to live and I am not under the impression that everyone can just do what I did. Everyone is different. Circumstances are different. I know. But nothing in my life started to improve from my lowest point in my adulthood until I stopped the complacency, moves out and worked to improve myself and my life. I would be shocked if your 50+ year old uncles who live with you grandmother and have never had a girlfriend are truly happy with their situation. I would encourage you to seek to change your situation if you can. I’m only a year older than you. At one time I was tens of thousands in debt, out of shape, had teeth falling out, living with my mom, no social life, no girlfriends, sexless, penniless, and had no hope or outlook in life. I have had my own share of failures, yet I am in a good place now. I got my teeth fixed, got a degree, i have a nice job, a nice house, a wife and beautiful daughter, and we’re comfortable. I hope you can get there too.

Could you imagine if both of them just suddenly died of natural causes from old age in the same day before the election… like… the power vacuum would be wild.

So… I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t think this is quite right. Intent does matter in a criminal act, yes. This is called mens rea. It is the intent and knowledge to commit a criminal act, rather than just the action itself. For example, causing the death of another intentionally (without reasonable cause like self defense) is murder. Killing them unintentionally is only a crime if you were criminally negligent (which also includes knowledge and intent) and said negligence caused the death.

However, motivation is not the same as intent and a potentially unethical or political motivation to perform an otherwise legal action does not make the act illegal. Especially in the execution of the law. If your political rival commits a crime, even though you may care more about their political challenge then actual justice in that case, you still can and should execute the law exactly as you would for anyone else. The alternative would be to allow personal bias against the criminal to make them immune to the law, which can clearly not be the solution. So long as due process is followed, the law is impartial, and the trial is fair, it doesn’t matter what the motivation of the prosecution was. They are still subject to the law like anyone else.

I just had this same argument with my Father-In-Law a couple weeks ago about the Trump convictions. He said it was all politically motivated, so it was wrong. I said, maybe it was politically motivated, I don’t know. I can’t read the minds of dozens of people that I’ve never met before. But it doesn’t matter if it was or not, because Trump still committed the crimes, as was demonstrated before a jury, and he was given a fair trial like any other person was and found guilty by a jury his lawyers helped to select. What anyone’s hopes or reasons were are their own and completely inconsequential.

When the controlling conservative party under-represents your sex and race in the U.K. government and you call the Labour Party and its supporters racist because they dare to criticize you, “the only black woman in the U.K. government”, on policy. Why aren’t there other black women in government, Kemi? And why does that make the dislike of you and your policies automatically loaded with bigotry? Smh.

Exactly. RIP, George.

The idea of “the power of prayer” is stupid on the face of it. First, you’re presupposing a omnipotent diety that can and does directly effect the universe, changing the outcomes of events based on it’s desires, whims, plans, whatever. And you think THAT diety is taking requests? When “God answered my prayers”, you think that had you not requested it, it wouldn’t have happened. You think that God answers to your puny human concerns? That shit is arrogant as hell.

But furthermore, it also flies in the face of two other common beliefs about God, at least in Christianity. “God gave man Free Will” and “It’s All Part of God’s Plan™” (don’t get me started on how those are already two mutually exclusive ideas and hundreds of millions of believers just ignore that cognitive dissonance). Many of the things that one prays for, like “getting that job”, “winning that award”, “ending the war”, etc. directly involve altering the decisions and actions of others, which means that God would be stripping them of free will. Also, the most classic call to prayer is to heal the sick, or preserve one’s life. But surely if God has a plan for everyone’s life, at minimum everyone’s birth and death must also be planned. How can he answer your prayer to save your life if it’s his plan for you to die, yet still have an plan he’s always been following? The irony is that people like to pull the “all part of God’s plan” platitude particularly when someone has died before their time.

The one that really makes me annoyed, or even angry, is when something terrible happens, people are hurt or killed, and someone who was supposed to or had almost been there says something like “God was watching out for me”. It’s so self-centered and arrogant to attribute your simple dumb luck to God’s will in that situation. Because, not only does it assume you are God’s most special little guy that he’s constantly paying attention to and protecting, but also that God willfully condemned those others who did fall to this terrible fate that he supposedly saved you from. It’s all arrogance. I can’t stand it.

None of that is true. Nixon was never charged, let alone convicted of any crimes. And pardons can be completely general and not even specify an explicit crime at all. President Ford’s pardon of Nixon, for example, was for “all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974” So, no. Neither charges or convictions are required, nor even a crime at all.

Is this guy Tom Segura’s cousin, the inventor?

I agree with this. Correcting one’s grammatical error is fine. However, additionally, correcting one’s grammatical error as a means to disregard the content of the comment in an argument and/or deem their opinion or perspective false because of said error? Not fine and asinine.

Correct. But I’m sure their argument would be something to the effect that they wouldn’t reasonably be able to know what the former employee actuality disclosed to their competitor and would be even less likely to be able to prove it making the NDA unactionable and functionally useless in that case. That’s why they’d rather prevent you from working for the other company altogether to avoid that. Unfortunately for them, they’re just going to have to trust their former employees. Which probably also means they should treat them well so they’re not incentivized to fuck them over.

On one hand, businesses want to ensure that their investments in training and their corporate secrets are not walking out the door and into the hands of their competition. On the other hand, businesses can use other means to help mitigate that without removing the freedom of employment choice of their employees. You don’t get to require an agreement that effectively locks your employees to your business, especially when employees do not get guarantees of continued employment in return.

Imagine being laid off by your company and simultaneously being contractually restricted from seeking a similar position with another company. At best, you may need to move far away. At worst, you may need to find a completely new way to make a living. None of that was your fault or choice. You were obligated to sign the non-compete to get any job at all in your field. That’s the truth for millions.

Employers cannot hold all the cards.

Mostly we’re more aware of the shittiness. On the whole, most things that were problems decades, generations, or centuries ago are objectively, measurably better now. However, there are specific things that are recurring problems or newer problems that have never existed before. Some of those are very serious problems that we are currently trying to, don’t yet know how to, or have failed to deal with. Things like climate change, mass misinformation in the information age, nuclear threats, gun violence, political corruption, war, and threats reproductive rights, LGBT human rights, and religious rights. So… bit of column A, bit of column B.

I do it as well. If I’m not actively speaking and the person speaking isn’t presenting something that I need to look at, I usually end up bouncing back and forth between the speaker and my image.

I don’t want to necessarily apply logic to it because I don’t think it’s a conscious, logic decision I’m making. But if I had to try, I’d say that the reasons are A) I cannot “look them in the eye” as I would in person without looking directly at my camera, which is both weird and means I’m literally looking away from them. That is the paradox of video calling. B) Looking at them, versus looking literally anywhere else on your screen makes no tangible difference to anyone else looking at your video feed. C) I want to make sure I am not looking ridiculous while blasting my image to a dozen people. No double chin, no resting bitch face, no glazed look, no boogers, etc. D) Staring at anyone else would feel weird, invasive, and distracting to me, including the speaker, if they are not actively speaking to me. It feels like I’m eavesdropping when I’m not actively being addressed. E) Gotta take advantage of having eyes on the back of your head. Never turn your back on your enemy. Stay vigilant. The cat will not pounce me and claw my back mid-meeting again.

Do you win if they die? Because solid chance they are killed by someone else or drugs.

I am a software engineer and I also have a PC with RGB vomit. But not because I’m a software engineer. Because I’m also a dork, and the icy blue color keeps my cpu cold.

On your chest. Much more macho.

Now do '0000: 0000: 0000: 0000: 0000: 0000: 0000: 0001" across both knuckles like the classic “LOVE HATE” tat.

Exactly. Unfortunately, the fundamentally good and sound idea, “defund the police”, got named a phrase that, while understandably cathartic and snappy for those on the side of police reform, was an easy target to the opposition. It played into their misrepresentation of the actual goals of the movement as being fundamentally lawless, chaotic and anarchistic. They made the idea of reprioritizing our tax dollars to more directly meet the public needs into a scary idea that will destroy property and endanger lives. And the police helped with that too. I really feel like if the name attached to the idea was less seemingly antagonistic towards the police and more descriptive of the actual goal, we’d still at least be talking about it in legislatures.

Whether you are an ACAB type or a Thin Blue Line type, you should be in favor of being less dependent on cops for things like basic civil service, mental health care, wellness checks, traffic enforcement, etc. Cops have to wear too many hats. They’re expected to be professionals, experts even, in too many fields. It is not fair to them to expect that level of competence in so many specialties and it’s not fair to the community that needs experts to rely on people who have minimal training outside of arrest techniques and self defense. Instead of 30 generalists in all fields in a community, we should have 30 specialists in different fields. Some cops, some emergency mental health experts, some social workers, some traffic enforcement specialists (yes, this should be separated from general law enforcement), etc.

Edit: Additionally, I believe that separating these duties to different people with different authority, techniques and mind sets will also make it safer for both cops and the public. How many cops are killed during basic traffic stops because a criminal was expecting to be caught or feared the cop’s sidearm? How many innocent citizens have been killed in basic traffic stops because the cop was trained to be afraid for his life? How likely is a civil worker going to be to feel the need for lethal force if they aren’t armed at all times? How likely is an addict going to be to shoot on sight when an EMT knocks on the door for a wellness check?

It’s also counter-intuitive, but cops and the public will be safer when they only have to deal with dangerous situations, when they’re exclusively dealing with criminal suspects. They can rely on their defensive training without worrying about as much situational circumstances. And they’re not interacting with the general public as if their the nails they’re trained to hammer.

https://youtu.be/OpLU__bhu2w?si=ZXToQKl8SbhZni5O