Ah, I see how it could be read that way. I was agreeing, trying to back you up. I could’ve been clearer. Apologies.

“That’s not really the same at all” is a very confusing way to agree. My bad.

Yeah, I’m not saying Hegseth is trans. But “That’s gender-affirming!” is not the gotcha people think it is unless you fundamentally have a problem with affirming gender. It turns “gender-affirming” into an insult that is okay to use against people you don’t like, similar to declaring all homophobes to be closet-cases. Both perpetuate the specific type of hatred that the speaker is supposedly opposing.

Not saying it’s the exact same thing, but it’s similar.

It’s in the same vein as people lashing out at Hegseth for wanting to give testosterone to troops that want it with, “That’s gender-affirming care!”

Like… yeah? So? Do we not want gender-affirming care to be available to people?

Queen of the Damned was an abysmal movie with a surpassing solid soundtrack with some of the biggest names in music at the time collaborating.

Jonathan Davis of Korn wrote half the songs and sang in the movie, but his record contract stated that he couldn’t appear on an album put out by another label, so the solution was to bring in guest artists to sing instead. Chester Bennington from Linkin Park, Wayne Static from Static-X, David Draiman from Disturbed, and Jay Gordon from Orgy. If you were a nuMetal fan back then, this was an all-star lineup.

Also, honorable mention to Batman & Robin for being absolute dogshit but having one of the Smashing Pumpkins’ best songs on it.

There’s an argument that could be made for Iroquoia or Haudenosaunee. The Iroquois Confederacy was an alliance of five different native tribes who cooperated and jointly made decisions for hundreds of years before European colonists arrived, and that confederacy did serve as a point of reference when the earliest drafts of the Constitution were being written.

That said, the US is absolutely massive and there are way too many tribes with different languages and cultures. No one word is going to be a good fit for everything.

I used to be buddies with a retired NYPD patrolman. One of the most funded and well-trained municipal police forces in the US. With regular range testing, they were expected to hit their targets 40% of the time.

I’ll say that again: in a controlled environment, against unmoving targets, an NYPD officer can usually miss, and that’s fine. Does anyone think they suddenly get more accurate once adrenalin is pumping and a teenager is running away from them?

I used to work with a guy who moonlighted as a Methodist minister. He was mostly a totally normal, nice, funny guy. But every once in a while he would say some absolutely bonkers shit.

He casually asked me, “where do you think the government is hiding the nephalim bones?”

Big difference between serving alcohol and selling alcohol. When I was doing 3rd shift, we’d get out at 5AM, head straight for the gas station, and pour tallboys into paper cups and drink in front of the store.

First bus home came by at 6:30. I was usually pretty buzzed by then.

Good news: you don’t have to ascribe to an oppressive religious dress code. The people that do want to dress in ways that conform to their religious and cultural beliefs can, and that continues to have fuck-all to do with you.

Even red meat. I’ve basically given up on beef and pork because it’s so expensive. Just tofu or poultry these days.

I drove a rental that had collision detection in it. Three or four times, it suddenly slammed on the brakes for no discernable reason, and with no regard to how close/fast traffic behind me was moving. I had to pull off, download the manual, and figure out how to turn it off before the car killed me.

One of the most important things in safely operating a vehicle is using gradual, predictable movements. My car braking without my input makes predictable movement impossible.

Her wasn’t a warning message about the dangers of AI. It was Spike Jonze reflecting on the slow dissolution of his marriage, coming to terms with the idea that he had taken his wife for granted, an always-available thing that existed to validate his feelings, rather than a whole person who was growing and changing beyond him.

Anyone who hasn’t done so should try watching Lost in Translation and Her back-to-back. They both star Scarlett Johansson as a thinly-veiled stand-in for Sofia Coppola as each filmmaker examines how their relationships impact their self-image and ambition. Together, they form such a detailed and affecting picture of two sensitive people who just can’t connect. It’s like (other ScarJo movie) A Marriage Story, but more nuanced and capable of occasional levity.

“It’s Never Been a Fair Fight” from Craig Finn

They said there weren’t any rules But there were so many goddamn rules They said that they’d be cool But there were so many goddamn rules

If the cops shut down the shows Just remember that we tried And I’ll meet you at the place we crashed In 1999 If you’re still staying there I’ll take that as a sign That the drugs all ganged up on you It’s never been a fair fight

Growing up in the punk scene and losing a lot of friends, the whole song really hits me hard.

While I mostly agree with you, it is worth noting that vehicles can (and often do) have passengers accompanying a driver. They would be free to mess around on their phones when the alert goes out.

As a part of the famous Democratic circular firing squad, I was extremely critical of most of Obama’s administration. But I voted for him twice, and I’d take him over Trump in a heartbeat.

Edit: autocorrect-induced typo

My wife and I routinely play FromSoft games together. Just find a girl with the same interests as you; it’s not hard.

There’s a chain of gas stations near me that has a payphone and a map right next to the front door of every shop, just in case someone is having a real bad day.

To be fair, caloric measurement is always an approximation. No two servings will ever have the exact same number of calories. Even if they did, different gut biomes will also feed on those macronutrients to different extents. Couple that with everyone having different metabolic rates, and 2 calories is indistinguishable from a rounding error.

And the guidance from the FDA reinforces this. The reason this panel shows 0 instead of 2 is not because anyone screwed up or is trying to mislead; it’s because any serving that provides less than 5 calories is supposed to be rounded to 0 per FDA regulation.