The way that someone responds to you is a reflection of them, not of you. If someone in your life is wildly inconsistent, all you can do is make sure that you are maintaining consistency yourself.

I’ve worked with a number of people who acted like we were besties one day and then gave me the cold shoulder for weeks. I spent too many years wondering what was wrong with me before I finally figured out that their mood swings had nothing to do with me.

I remember when Fox was a brand-new network that only broadcast during specific times of the day in my area.

Same.

That’s because there will alway be new 10-year-olds who are just discovering “new” parts of the Internet. They are growing up with the enshittification, so they don’t know that things were better before they were born.

Though the divorce judge found there was evidence that Hawkins had physically abused the oldest son, the judge said in his ruling that was “one instance that does not involve either of the two children at issue.”

As far as information in the article, it sounds like the two kids in court-ordered Christian therapy are the only two the guy didn’t (allegedly) abuse.

But still, the whole thing is disgusting. These children should be protected from such an abusive garbage human. Their mother is doing the right thing.

I don’t understand how it’s legal for a court to order religion-based therapy that costs $1500 per month. That’s absolutely insane from every possible angle.

I would like to know what source you have for claiming that pedophiles are “born the way they are.”

We understand some of the genetic and intrauterine developmental reasons for homosexuality, being trans, etc. That has scientific backing, and our understanding continues to grow and expand.

Lumping child predators in with consenting adults smacks of the evangelical slippery slope argument against all forms of what they consider to be “sexual deviance.” I’m not buying it.

There are multiple references to this in the Bible. This is the most uplifting one I found.

Psalm 90

10 Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.

11 If only we knew the power of your anger! Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due.

12 Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

13 Relent, LORD! How long will it be? Have compassion on your servants.

14 Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.

Not all protestants do this, BTW.

I wonder what would happen if the world found out that Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (or any other celebrity/athlete/role model) was using Chat GPT to respond to fan mail. My gut feeling is that people would find it disingenuous at best – and there would probably be significant outrage.

Where’s the AI that does my dishes and cleans my house so I have more time to write, create, and connect with others? That’s the technology I want – not one that does the meaningful part and leaves the menial stuff up to me.

The convicted felon?

For me, everything that happens on HBO after Jon is stabbed by his brothers is just high-end fanfic. I will always believe that the showrunners fucked up the ending. And, let’s be real, GRRM isn’t going to prove me wrong.

In some countries, cellular companies still charge for sending text messages to people who have a different provider. WhatsApp is an easy way to connect with all of the people you know without paying extra fees.

And there’s a whole customer interface that lets you order directly from small businesses, which is super convenient if you live in a country that still has a lot of “mom and pop” stores instead of giant superstore chains.

All true. But because teaching is historically “women’s work,” it is undervalued and underpaid.

Most teachers I know have at least Master’s degrees, yet we’re paid less than B.A.s start at in many fields. I took a 20k/year pay cut when I became a teacher, despite having received a Master’s degree before entering the field.

Until we value teaching as much as we value other types of work, we’re not going to attract large numbers of qualified people, whether they’re men or women.

We also would have accepted Rusty Shackleford.

I also live in a country where I was not born, and it is full of kind people. I am very visibly different from most of the population, so people usually assume I’m a tourist. They always seem pleasantly surprised to learn that I live here.

I’ve been here almost three years, and I haven’t mastered the language yet, but people are usually really kind about my limited vocabulary.

That’s most of the programs car dealers buy… lowest bidder marketing company with no context and little practical experience gets told “we need X” and voila, here’s X.

I worked in marketing for a decade, and when my company started trying to court car dealerships, the quality expectation for that segment of our work was basically non-existent. We went from a high-end boutique experience with 99% accuracy and on-time delivery to mass-produced garbage marketing with literally bare-minimum quality control. 1/10, would not recommend.

For real. Every time I’m scrolling through a news article and I see a rectangle with an X in the upper-right corner, my initial reaction is, “Oops. Ad. Scroll past.” I’m quite certain I’ve missed some embedded tweets that way.

Baggallini bags are virtually indestructible in my experience. I have a tote and a purse that I’ve used daily for 5 years, and they both look exactly like they did the day I bought them.

This is something I wish that more people understood. In almost any other democracy in the world, Bernie Sanders is only slightly left of center. On a global scale, US Democrats are a center-right party and US Republicans are a far-right party. There are no successful left-wing politicians in the United States.