Maybe just this once, for old time’s sake.

Well, it worked with the news.

I make Special K bars for get-togethers every once in awhile, and I sometimes get people who ask me if they’re healthy. I always tell them that nothing in them is even the slightest bit healthy except the Special K itself, and even that’s debatable.

The point of whisleblower laws is to make people feel like a lack of whistleblowers means a lack of things to blow whistles over. Then all they have to do is silence any whistles before they’re heard by the general population and boom, public trust in the system is strengthened without actually needing to do anything drastic like actually fixing the system.

I’ve seen this image floating around for a while, which breaks down the reasoning - or lack thereof in certain media - pretty well.

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My groups usually think of them as a powerful fey creature who sometimes just whisks people away for an indeterminate amount of time, only to bring them back later.

A lot of cops are so high strung that you essentially have to pretend you’re having the time of your life while interacting with them - any nervousness or annoyance is taken to mean that you’re potentially a violent criminal who could kill them at any moment.

Just the realization that a woman holding a pot of hot water could hypothetically use it as a weapon, however unlikely it was in this scenario, was enough to make him instinctively shoot with only minor notice that still did nothing to prevent him from killing her even as she began cowering and apologizing.

This is the culture we’ve allowed the police to build in this country; the job is dangerous, and they’re only human, so they believe they should be forgiven for being scared regardless of the situation, and should be forgiven for taking drastic measures while they’re scared.

Yeah, my mom used to be upset that I didn’t hold onto my old pokemon cards, but not only did I never have any rare ones that would be worth anything anyway, I used them how I wanted to when I wanted to, and when they stopped interesting me, I gave them to someone who was still interested. I don’t regret that.

For me it was when I was around 8 or 9 and met someone from Kenya. They could speak perfect English, wore normal clothes, and talked about having electricity. I’d literally never been told that those things existed in Africa - every reference to that continent only talked about tribes and jungles, save for Egypt which only talked about ruins and deserts. I asked around and found that most of the rest of the world has the same stuff we have, and most countries have a functioning government. I was so confused - why were we the country of freedom when everyone else has the same thing?

At the time I just assumed that there was something I was missing, or maybe the rest of the world just caught up to our idea, but eventually I came to the conclusion that they tell us we’re the country of freedom - and keep our studies of other countries to a minimum when we’re young - so that we can internalize the rhetoric that our country is the best before we find out that most other countries about the same, and often better in certain ways.

Small price to pay, imo. When my job was forcing everyone back into the office in 2021 I just picked out one of the headhunters who contacted me on linkedin, got an offer for a remote position with better pay, and brought it to my employer to get a raise and the go-ahead to keep working remotely. I’ll suffer the occasional spam email for the knowledge that I have options for another job lined up pretty much whenever.

Most republicans I know believe that their party, like their country and their religion, needs to be followed blindly; if their party supports it, it’s good, and if their party rejects it, it’s bad. End of story. No more thought will, or should, be put into it.

The people who go on and on about how America is the best because “freedom” are now working out whatever mental gymnastics they need to perform to justify voting for the man who said if you vote for him you won’t need to vote anymore. They already chose to support Trump and his party - nothing they say or do anymore will change that decision.

That’s the issue with American politics. It’s so overtaken by corporate lobbying that “good candidate” and “electable candidate” are mutually exclusive.

I was never full-on incel, but I was definitely headed down that path. I was a late-20’s fat guy with severe acne all over my upper body, and I’d obviously never had a girlfriend. I looked ahead in life and just saw it going further and further downhill. I tried dieting, working out, etc, but none of my attempts at making a change ever lasted.

One day I saw a facebook post that one of my old highschool classmates had gotten married. The guy looked a lot like me, and at first I was mad - I had that classic incel thought of “why is he successful and not me?” But after sitting in that dark place for awhile, I realized that the answer to that question is that I can be successful! I realized that I’d never tried to put myself out there because I always viewed myself as not being worthy - I needed to be fitter, more attractive, better at talking to people, etc - but did I really? I wanted to find out, so I made an online dating account, cleaned myself up, got a friend to take some nice pictures of me doing things I enjoyed, and put myself out there.

I made a goal for myself to never start a conversation with “Hey” or something similar - I went through every profile I found and picked something specific to talk about. It took a while, and I missed a lot of opportunities by being awkward, but eventually I got good enough at holding a conversation to secure a few dates, and in only a few months of that, I found the woman who is now my wife!

I’m still fat, but having someone to look good for was at least enough for me to shower more regularly, which cleared up a lot of my acne. I’m still pretty awkward, but so is my wife, and we both find it endearing. Life’s not perfect - there are still issues - but I’m no longer looking ahead at my life and seeing only downhill trajectory; I have a sense of optimism I didn’t have before, and it mostly came from me accepting myself. I’m not sure if other incels are the same as I was - not realizing that the one they actually hate is themselves - but I hope that if they are, they eventually come to the same realization that I did: that they are worthy.

Well, there’s your problem - you forgot the sugar, so all you’ve made is lemon juice.

Right? I love the sticker (minus the random capitalized words), but I’ve never been honked at in the 15+ years I’ve been driving. I feel like if people are honking at you, you’re probably not paying enough attention.

Yeah, that’s part of the reason why I just dealt with the pain whenever I was prescribed stuff like Vicodin. I don’t want to risk it at all.

I’ve seen plenty of people who think they could take hard, addictive drugs and not get addicted, or that the addiction would be a small price to pay for the highs of the drug. Plenty of people have far too much self confidence for their small understanding of the situation. It’s why drugs like heroin are still around; if everyone intrinsically understood that they’re not worth it, they’d have disappeared a long time ago.

My wife and I usually plan big vacations about a year in advance so that we can follow flight prices and whatnot to get a good deal. We also book a few days at a cabin for our anniversary every year, so we just book the next year’s reservation while we’re there, since reservations can fill up even several months in advance.

Only planning a week in advance seems stressful to me - we planned a last-minute (for us) road trip vacation earlier this month for the long 4th of July weekend, and it was tough to find cheap places to stay that weren’t super grungy.

Yeah, it’s specifically because they’re trying to increase profits for so long that they need to get so incredibly meticulous and complicated with how their business works. Companies that just try to earnestly provide a desired service to people who need it in their area of operation don’t need to worry about such details.