I would be happy with one guideline: taxpayers should see and feel the impact of their tax dollars.

It feels like that’s currently not a priority at all. The govt can just hand the money to some middleman who pockets 90% for a job worth 10%, and no one checks on it. DOGE was the pinnacle of this practice; honestly felt like Elon and Trump said “hey, you know what would be funny?”

Honestly don’t know if that’s worse than the protestant message that “god is omnipotent, all knowing, created good and evil, created you in his image, loves you and wants you to go to heaven, buuuuuut sorry, he can’t unless you “freely” choose to accept him into your heart. Yep, the heart he made, the mind he gave you, yeah, those are going to send you to hell. Nothing he can do about it, it’s on you. Totally not a weird, abusive, logically inconsistent relationship we have with him.”

Then stack on top of that “the woman should serve the man in the same way the church serves the Lord”. Just problematic all the way down.

If it was as simple as, “the man hates the woman just as god hates us” then the next step is easy. Fuck that guy, I’m out.

Let’s be clear, getting rid of trump doesn’t stop anything. If anything, they WANT someone to target trump, because that gives them justification to be more tyrannical. What you are advocating for is called a Civil War, and if we started one now, Trump would win.

Like all countries, we have a system of government in place. When it comes to removing the president (executive branch) over objectionable behaviour, we have a process: it falls on the judicial and legislative branches to conclude that the behaviour was objectionable and that the president should be forcibly removed (a process in the system called impeachment). Trying to remove the president using means outside this system is literally saying, “the system doesn’t work, we need to throw it out, take matters into our own hands, and start from scratch”, i.e. a civil war.

For now we continue to try to take steps within the system, but it is now abundantly clear to most Americans that the Republicans in Congress have been colluding to allow the president to do whatever objectionable thing he wants. SCOTUS seems to be doing something similar. Unfortunately, that is their prerogative in the system we have.

If a group of states said, “that’s it, we’re done, the system doesn’t work, we don’t acknowledge you as the president, and we’re going to try to stop you” then within the system, it is the job of the US military to put a stop to that. Their job within the system is to ensure the system keeps working as the law dictates. And the US military is the most funded military in the world, so the rebellion would lose almost instantly.

This fall will be the real decider because of midterms. Trump is polling very poorly. A record number of Republican congress-people have announced they will not seek reelection. Democrats are winning in red states for the first time in close to a century. Trump is desperately trying to rig elections, and there’s a possibility he’ll attempt to cancel elections entirely. The result will be one of two things:

1. Democrats regain control of Congress, and all of the crimes that Republicans wouldn’t hold anyone accountable for suddenly get held accountable.
2. Trump tries to say “the system isn’t working, we need to establish a dictatorship and cancel elections”.

Ideally it’s option 1, but there’s a very real chance it’s option 2, in which case the US military is obligated to stop him. If they don’t, then we will cross the bridge you’re describing, and it won’t be pretty.

Up until the 80s-90s, they were virtually mandatory for women. Probably still are in many countries.

Yep, it was in the textbook, but just like the Barthalona lisp, it was basically a bit of trivia we were never expected to actually learn.

I’m fully convinced this meme, and possibly even OP, are the work of Redbull’s marketing dept.

What does “free pass” mean? None, I guess. I like the companies I do because they don’t cross certain lines, why would I then let them cross those lines without adjusting my view of them?

People are saying Valve, and Valve is positioned as THE primary company gamers should never give a “free pass” to (again, whatever that means). I’m not going to allow valve to start running KLA on my machine, I love Proton but the best part are the community forks, I would much rather have an open alternative/competitor to the steam launcher and storefront. The more power valve has, the more I want to see checks on their power, not capitulation from their customer base.

There is no such thing as a free pass to a corporation. All forms of competition are always welcome and encouraged.

I think it makes total sense from their POV if I’m not posting my shit publicly and they want to be able to view it in the future. I will gladly make a copy of their photos of the trip for my own record, but I will store it in a way that only I have access.

I want to share my photos of our trip with you, but I don’t want you to upload them to Google, or apple, or amazon, or meta, or any social media.

If it’s a pic of you, fine, do whatever you want. But please don’t take my whole album and store it in your google photos.

Edit: to maybe disambiguate, I go on a trip with someone else, we both take photos/videos using our own devices, and then afterwards we are exchanging what we took. Not like, me sharing photos with someone who didn’t even go on the trip.

My friends and I call each other degenerate when we do things that are degenerate. Like playing wow until 6am. Or buying a taco bell burrito with the intention of reheating it the next day. Or binging some garbage reality show. It’s all in good fun.

I wouldn’t take it personally, it’s just a term that jokingly means “a person who has their shit together wouldn’t be doing that”, but we all have those things and they’re fun to take note of and laugh about.

The Sumerian/Greek/Roman/Egyptian pantheons really feel like the MCU of their time. Public domain collection of super humans that anyone could adapt their own fanfic to.

I would not say “often” better academically. It’s up to the resources the parents have. Poor families doing homeschooling end up poorly educated, wealthy educated families are more able to educate. Humans already did this up until the advent of modern public education systems.

In a public school, the idea is that both the rich family and the poor family are offered the same education, and this is better for society as a whole. I will agree that public education isn’t perfect and could be improved in almost every way, but opting for private education is leaving your child’s future up to random chance as dictated by your social status.

At some point you will try to socialize your homeschooled kid. If you live in a rough community where drugs, gangs, and teen pregnancies are relatively common, you won’t be able to avoid the same influences you’re trying to avoid in public schools. Except now it will be all they know.

IMO exposure to a larger population of people in a public school gives kids more reference for all the kinds of people in society, and control over who they want to interact with. Then it’s the parent’s job to make them feel empowered (not pressured) to make the best choice they have available.

If there is an HR dept, I would raise this with them. If you are no longer on the clock at 5pm, there’s nothing stopping you from hopping out of the vehicle wherever it is and going home. Keep a record of everything, what was asked of you and when, what action you took and when, and maybe even have a witness sign off. If they try to fire you with cause, you can sue for wrongful termination. Just remember that HR is there to prevent the company from being sued, they are not your friend.

At the end of the day, the real solution is obvious: this is what unions are for. Collective bargaining is how you even the odds with greed.