oats_son
8d ago
I don't have any experiences with these things, but going to the gym together seems like a great way to find time to socialize with each other while you get your lifts in. I saw lots of couples when I was going to the gym a few months ago, and it seemed like a great way to spend time between sets.
If she's on the treadmill, then it's a bit different, because if I'm exercising hard on there, I won't be able to talk. But I second CertainlyWorse's advice on building a habit for her. If you go to the gym yourself, it should be easy to schedule something and shift the time around a bit.
oats_son
10d ago
I really am still not clear, after reading about it to post. But because it wasn't an ideological assassination, apparently reddit and other social medias didn't see fit to look very positively on it, other than general smirking that a billionaire died. That's my guess, anyway.
oats_son
10d ago
I haven't played Twilight Princess, but looking up Midna on Google Images gives me a disturbing possibility: you like weird goblin looking things.
I was pretty disturbed when it was revealed that my former progressive college acquaintances (I think everyone screenshotted is either nonbinary or trans now) vocally expressed their support for some image in the manga where Link is embracing the little fucked up imp thing in a sexual manner.
It doesn't make sense to you that ideological assassinations would get more resources than a gang shooting or a homeless guy turning up full of holes? We're talking cold blooded murder of one dude walking down a street here. I understand your feeling to an extent, but the nature of this crime is very different from the average murder among the lower classes. Usually there is some provocation and a lack of evidence for the latter. The former was premeditated, in cold blood, between two well-to-do higher class people who were strangers to one another (Mangione went hundreds of miles and must have spent a long time planning this), and a lot scarier.
Bob Lee getting killed in San Francisco last year got a lot less buzz, didn't it? I'm not sure why, but I would suggest that even though it was similar to this case with two well-to-do people being involved, in that case, it was not premeditated, it seemed to be over some personal dispute, and perhaps the perpetrator being an immigrant with a criminal history also had something to do with it. Edit: for a while it was suspected that a homeless person did it, which would also make leftists not want to celebrate such a thing (makes homeless look bad).
If the target was different, would your opinion be changed? Would this level of resources be appropriate for someone who shot Trump, or the man who shot Shinzo Abe?
oats_son
12d ago
I can attest to the same, a LOT of media was disallowed due to my evangelical parentage. But I think most people answering this question do not think of evangelicals first, especially since they don't seem to be as numerous as they were 20 years ago. How many parents are banning Spongebob in 2024?
Damn, that makes me think that I will be compared to the evangelicals if I keep my kids from watching modern Blues Clues due to the pride parade segment they showed several years ago. There's a secular basis for my restrictions, damnit!
oats_son
17d ago
Because it was in the morning before most criminals would be awake, because the suspect laid in wait for him, because he shot and fled without looting the body, and because the victim was a CEO of a healthcare company. It's quite unlikely it wasn't an assassination. Jealous lover is a possibility, I guess, stranger things have happened.
oats_son
18d ago
Martial law was lifted by the parliament less than half an hour ago; it seems troops have left the building. Hopefully nothing else bad happens.
oats_son
29d ago
I don't belong in this thread because I don't play Diablo 4, but my experience with speedrunners is that they spend a shit ton of time getting the techniques down. Like, an absolutely massive amount of time, probably talking thousands of hours. So either he's not as busy as he claims, or it's a ghostplayer. Also, it's a very rare busy person that uses his limited amount of time for gaming to play the exact same game that much for that long.
oats_son
1mo ago
Since she was Catholic, I think it should be something with religious symbolism. A nice Christian painting seems like a good idea to me. Jewelry is also a decent idea. Have you considered commissioning a painting? Perhaps even a painting of your grandmother, if that doesn't strike you as an offense to her.
I think she'd approve of sticking it in an IRA, for what it's worth, especially if you struggle to think of something for this idea. If it were me, I might choose something with impermanence specifically to symbolize the transience of life. Some beautiful flowers, or perhaps a fine cigar or bottle of whiskey, or a dove to let loose.
oats_son
1mo ago
From what I recall of this issue, male "milk" isn't even really milk, is it? Does it have any caloric value? What is the actual benefit of men engaging in this behavior? It seems to me to be pretty obviously fetishistic, and if I were the founder of the company and on the council, I would resign too if I had to pretend it isn't fetishistic and actually worth talking about.
oats_son
1mo ago
It is unusual for a Christian group to not let someone join them, since they usually believe that their way is the only path to salvation.
From what I've seen of the Amish, they could probably use some more people in the community who don't share DNA with them. But that's not realistically something people would think about. I agree with the rest of your points.
oats_son
1mo ago
Are politics in Japan as vicious as they have been here lately? Can you summarize the "sides"? Maybe material for Transnational Thursday.
oats_son
1mo ago
Surely there are other game companies with impeccable reputations, right? From Software is extremely respected, for instance; I would also put Nintendo in the running for mostly having very well made games put out for their main IPs (maybe not Pokemon, but I don't care about Pokemon). Perhaps also Remedy Entertainment, maybe a little lesser known.
It does make me realize how many IPs on this page have had at least one serious misstep, though.
oats_son
1mo ago
As a bald man: Ha! Ahahahahahaha!
As the below poster said, those supplements will work. But also, consider just letting yourself go bald so you don't have to take that stuff forever. Just know that once you get to a certain point in the Norwood stages, a hair transplant won't save you. So really, you'd want to take a hair supplement mrvanillasky mentioned, get a hair transplant if necessary, and then keep taking hair supplements.
Or go bald. Then you can get a cool wig or something. If you're already married, ask your wife if she'll let you go bald instead of chaining you to the wall and applying minoxidil to your immobile scalp twice a day.
oats_son
1mo ago
I wonder if Rohan has agreed to interview Trump
Gondor calls for aid!
Oh, yeah?! Well, Rohan calls for Trump!! Make Middle Earth Great Again!
oats_son
2mo ago
That's some super bad luck on Alpha-gal syndrome. I remember my boss and the company owner talking about a tick bite that makes you allergic to red meat, and they both agreed that life would not be worth living if that happened. I disagree, I like chicken a lot and surely there are other meats that can be eaten and even an older adult would eventually adjust, but I honestly didn't even know it was a real disease that happened to real people. I'm sorry to hear that.
oats_son
2mo ago
I'm not an economist either, but I don't think a loaf of bread being a million dollars is too much different from a turkey dinner in 1960 costing 60 cents versus now costing $7. I'd guess we start seeing the dollar like the Japanese see the yen, where $10,000 to buy a pair of shoes is just what's expected and perfectly affordable for most people.
oats_son
2mo ago
You're right. I still think Trump shouldn't have run, but this is no longer one of the reasons why.
oats_son
2mo ago
My problem with that is that Trump is not just affecting Trump, he's affecting any Republican out there by pressuring them to align with him. If they do, they endorse all the utterly stupid statements he makes and have to defend them, or slip out of questions about them somehow. If they don't, they're weakening the party and lose support from MAGA diehards. JD Vance really couldn't answer properly on the "was the election stolen" question. He couldn't outright say he thinks it's stolen, and he couldn't say that Trump is wrong on this. Trump has forced his own side at large to confront similar conundrums.
This will not end after Trump wins or loses. This will hang over every Republican Party member who endorsed Trump for the rest of their careers. And the ones that didn't endorse Trump have to shut up about their Trump supporting friends get screwed over in the media, showing themselves as weak in the process.
He should not have run again.
oats_son
2mo ago
And why shouldn't they run again? So you and yours don't have to see them, or hear their complaints, or address their concerns? So that the manufacturing of votes and stealing of elections can go on unimpeded?
So that we don't lose again, pretty much. I've said my thoughts on Trump in another post: it's not just the election claims, it's everything. I don't understand why some people are so attached to him. He scares the hoes.
oats_son
2mo ago
By the way, I also enjoyed this exchange, which I forgot to mention in the original post. My enjoyment was purely because of @naraburns's writeup on the subject:
TW: Yeah. Well, the question got asked, and Donald Trump made the accusation that wasn't true about Minnesota. Well, let me tell you about this idea that there's diverse states. There's a young woman named Amber Thurmond. She happened to be in Georgia, a restrictive state. Because of that, she had to travel a long distance to North Carolina to try and get her care. Amber Thurman died in that journey back and forth. The fact of the matter is, how can we as a nation say that your life and your rights as basic as the right to control your own body is determined on geography? There's a very real chance, had Amber Thurman lived in Minnesota, she would be alive today.
What's funny to me is that Tim Walz actually got the story wrong, didn't he? Amber Thurman didn't die in any journey back and forth, she failed to go to the hospital for an infection and died in a hospital in Georgia. What an incredible lie. And it makes me wonder about the other examples he mentioned earlier.
oats_son
2mo ago
If it was just questioning the election alone, it could be okay. But that is not the case. It's questioning the election, plus questioning it really hard, plus frequent misspeaks and off the cuff remarks, plus unverified claims about Haitians in Springfield, plus getting really easily baited about rally sizes, plus making inflammatory nothing statements about an hour of violence, plus running a social media site where he rants against anyone and everything and declares he hates Taylor Swift in all caps...
All of the above and more make him look really out of touch and pathetic. I will say once again that he disappointed me greatly in the last debate by failing to even mention any of the Biden policies that made immigration go completely out of control, instead just shouting about immigrants over and over again. He's unarticulate. And he's old. And his policies are either nothings that he won't be able to follow up on or they're bad. If it wasn't Kamala Harris he was running against, he would be unelectable. He deserves to lose. He is terrible. He does not represent my views except in the vaguest sense. And yet, I will still vote for him, because I despise progressive politics.
oats_son
2mo ago
I'm not entirely sure why this matters, but I read The Motte pretty regularly, as well as /r/moderatepolitics. Occasionally I will check Tracing Woodgrains's twitter, otherwise, I pretty much let all my political information seep in through The Motte, reddit, or Discord. I don't click on articles often, and I very seldomly watch videos. I am pretty disappointed by the amount of left wing partisan links that get posted to /r/moderatepolitics. If you have any other forums where intelligent people talk about politics, I'm all ears.
Yes, I'm an American voter. I'm in the Midwest, Illinois-but-not-Chicago.
oats_son
2mo ago
I want a vice presidential debate top level post.
So JD Vance sounded pretty good here overall. If you ask me, both speakers were miles ahead of their presidential candidate counterparts, which is sad. There is probably a lot that can be read from the debate, but I did want to discuss a couple moments making waves on other social media. First I will mention I was surprised to hear JD Vance support nuclear energy, and I will also mention a lot of people were probably unhappy with how he handled the gun control/mass shooting question. But back to the two I wanted to mention
The first such moment originated from a fact check:
JD VANCE: ...Now, Governor Walz brought up the community of Springfield, and he's very worried about the things that I've said in Springfield. Look, in Springfield, Ohio and in communities all across this country, you've got schools that are overwhelmed, you've got hospitals that are overwhelmed, you have got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes...
Tim Walz responds to his statement, and then a debate moderator comes in with this:
MB: Thank you, Governor. And just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status. Temporary protected status. Norah.
DV: Well, Margaret, Margaret, I think it's important because…
MB: Thank you, senator. We have so much to get to.
NO: We're going to turn out of the economy. Thank you.
JDV: Margaret. The rules were that you guys weren't going to fact check, and since you're fact checking me, I think it's important to say what's actually going on. So there's an application called the CBP One app where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand. That is not a person coming in, applying for a green card and waiting for ten years.
MB: Thank you, Senator.
JDV: That is the facilitation of illegal immigration, Margaret, by our own leadership. And Kamala Harris opened up that pathway.
MB: Thank you, Senator, for describing the legal process. We have so much to get to.
TW: Those laws have been in the book since 1990... a few more exchanges continue before mics get cut
I will cut it off there to not balloon this post. You can read the transcript here.
It seems many blue tribers saw him complaining about a fact check and seeing a win. Why would you complain about fact checking other than if you were lying? This is another example going back to Scott's post about the media rarely lying. Hey, they're temporary asylum seekers, so since they were allowed in with little hindrances to speak of, they're legal. Fact checked. This is an example of why I tend to dislike fact checking in a debate. It introduces an opportunity to use unfavorable framing on an opponent with lawyerspeak on technically true things. Let the candidates do it themselves if they want.
Next up, the January 6th and failure to concede the election:
TW: January 6th was not Facebook ads. And I think a revisionist history on this. Look, I don't understand how we got to this point, but the issue was that happened. Donald Trump can even do it. And all of us say there's no place for this. It has massive repercussions. This idea that there's censorship to stop people from doing, threatening to kill someone, threatening to do something, that's not censorship. Censorship is book banning. We've seen that. We've seen that brought up. I just think for everyone tonight, and I'm going to thank Senator Vance. I think this is the conversation they want to hear, and I think there's a lot of agreement. But this is one that we are miles apart on. This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen. And it manifested itself because of Donald Trump's inability to say, he is still saying he didn't lose the election. I would just ask that. Did he lose the 2020 election?
JDV: Tim, I'm focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?
TW: That is a damning. That is a damning non answer.
Once again, there is more to this exchange than that. I said earlier that they had good performances, and I'll go further here and say that JD Vance had a pretty great night. I'd never heard him speak before and he sounded very well spoken, very well informed, and brought up many issues that I so dearly wished that Donald Trump would have brought up, like specifically naming the asylum system and mentioning the partial birth abortions allowed in Minnesota (I noticed Tim Walz's denial was not fact checked). That is to say, JD Vance is competent and might have won against Kamala Harris, representing a return to civil debates and "normal" politicians, despite the "weird" allegations.
But he is really dragged down on this issue. It's lame he has to defend election denial claims in the first place, and leave room for challenging more later. I know many of you have strong feelings on the truthfulness of the claims. I will say this: if someone goes and makes those claims, they shouldn't run again. That is very powerful ammo for the other side. And it's far from the only ammo. I am very disappointed with the rhetoric Trump throws around. His lashing out against Taylor Swift reads as totally pathetic. And it is sad to see someone with as much talent as JD Vance have to try to slip around all this crap coming at him, from both Tim Walz, the debate moderator, and untold amounts of unhappy people on Twitter.
I was checking on the status of Israel's various wars today and found this article.
"I can't believe that America would violate a treaty that they made with Tsarist Russia in 1905," quips the USSR.
I fail to see how this is not the best play for all parties possible:
Or maybe it's bad in some way I'm not seeing? What do you guys think of this?
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