Not that we need to open this can of worms here, but it’s a pet peeve of mine that “vanilla” has become a term used to mean plain, boring, sheltered, standard, mediocre, underwhelming, basic, and uninteresting.

Vanilla is an amazing flavor that comes from orchids that must be hand pollinated to cultivate at scale, and has a long and interesting history. It’s the second most valuable spice after saffron.

Just feels wrong to use that as a synonym for bland and blah.

LotRers.

Fans of Lord of the Rings.

Yeah I think that’s the big thing: don’t have a dish that requires shifting from utensil to fingers and back… especially if there’s sauce.

Buffalo wings violate that rule and I’m not prepared to give them up.

For me, the rule would be: if it’s a dish meant to be eaten with utensils, don’t include inedible parts that have to be separated by hand.

Maybe not the best parallel but a good point nonetheless.

A more apt comparison might be:

“What’s the best all-beef hot dog I can buy at my local supermarket?”

“Ugh! OMG! Don’t do that to yourself! Why would you even want to bother with eating beef if that’s the shit you’re going to put in your body?! Just get some Japanese A5 Wagyu ribeye and thank me later!”

Most jobs like that, or really any pay scheme other than piece work or an hourly wage usually has the process of:

1. You can take as much PTO as you like.
2. You can take as much PTO as you like…provided you get all your work done.
3. You work like a dog, get all your work done, and take time off.
4. Since you were able to get everything done and have time left over to not work, your boss increases your workload, so now you have to work like a dog, all the time, or else you’ll never get everything done.

It’s like playing chess, and while the other player can’t change the rules as they go, but a condition for playing with them is that they get two moves every turn.

Right?

Unless it’s a cause you’d donate to, and by extension donate your music to, get it back!

The SCOTUS is a distraction, as they’ve got no real power to enforce their decisions.

This is something I’ve been thinking about more and more.

With our three branches of government, it’s up to the executive to enforce the laws, and by extension, the rulings of the judiciary.

What’s the failsafe mechanism for when the executive doesn’t like a ruling and has no respect of law, or for the system?

What happens after the supreme court says, “Hey President! What you’re doing is unconstitutional and you must stop immediately.”…and the president just goes, “Actually I don’t care what you say. I’m still doing it. Have a wonderful day and go fuck all nine of yourselves.”

Right.

One of the things I won’t miss about my last apartment (which was overall pretty fantastic) was how the plumbing was under-built when they constructed the otherwise overbuilt building back in the 60s or 70s.

This meant that on my end of the building, all 4 apartments (mine, the other one on my level at the end of the hall, and the two above us) all shared the same undersized drainage piping.

I was there 6 years, and averaged about 1.5 horrific backups per year that required a call to management, who had to come out, try to fix, then give up and call professionals (and twice in that 6 year span, the professionals even gave up and had to call in even more capable professionals).

In every case, I always asked them if there was anything I could be personally doing…or not doing…that might help.

In each case, the plumbers always said I was doing everything I could, even above and beyond considering the more capable drain filters I used on both sink and tub, and that the real issues were the long hair from the ladies in all 3 other apartments (not a criticism on them, just an observation that many of the clogs were long hair, vs my buzz cut), and in a few of the worst cases, flushed hygiene products (which prompted a mass email from the landlord that these things were not to be flushed, both feminine hygiene stuff and “flushable wipes”)…and in the worst backup, the two young girls in the family above me had flushed a wash cloth.

That last one was the worst by far. Had disgusting, chunky shit water/gray water cocktail backing up into toilet AND shower.

Also, it’s not just targeted at people perceived as “other” in many of these traditionally masculine realms.

Often, it seems like so many of these men see patronizing and second guessing as the only ways to establish and defend their own credibility on their given subject. It’s not just the “oh it’s a woman/someone who doesn’t look the part…I bet they don’t know what they’re doing” factor, it’s also that they’re a product of the culture that tells them that the most important thing is that they’re perceived as more knowledgeable than anyone else, and that the only way to establish that is to have their own opinions and views on every subject in the field, and then aggressively defend and promote those views while dismissing, undermining, and discouraging any views that conflict with theirs…or the people who hold those views.

And it’s not just big picture “world view” type stuff. It’s crap like, “which brand makes the best widget in your hobby?”. If they’re a “brand red” guy, they feel the need to not only let everyone know that they like brand red…they have to let everyone know that brand red is the best, and that it’s objective, and that if you prefer brand blue, you’re just a clueless newbie who hasn’t learned yet. If you like brand green, well you’ve just been taken in by their marketing. And if you’re one of those brand orange people, well you know what they say about those people…

I avoid the non-preferential result by…well…not dropping things in the toilet.

I’m in my late 30s and have literally never dropped anything in the toilet that I wasn’t intending to.

Sounds like a personal issue; maybe try not to be so clumsy?

Fucking cormorants…they kill lots of fish that they can’t even eat, plus a ton of fish that they do eat…and they’re federally protected.

they struggle to reload a sex shooter

They make a pill for that!

Oh my god, there’s always a relevant xkcd.

Great job!

I gotta say, Google Maps has been getting squirrelly on me lately tho.

Most recently, I was out fishing and wanted to get directions to the other side of the lake and a parking area over there.

The road directions had me driving a little ways up the shore, then down a fucking footpath to the water, then swimming across the fucking lake, then getting on another road and driving to the parking area.

I strongly disagree with you, but I definitely give you credit for at least actually saying it.

Most that I’ve had this discussion with insist they don’t want to touch the second amendment and revoke the rights of law abiding gun owners… then most of their ideas both won’t solve gun violence while also stripping millions of people who’ve never broken a gun law of their rights without due process.

Guns are one issue where I strongly break with the Typical American Left™, but if you’re going to be anti-gun, I absolutely give you credit for having the wherewithal to just say what you really want.

Exactly.

Say it with me, “The State should not have a monopoly on violence.”

It’s also a lightning rod issue that turns more voters away than it attracts.

Sure there are staunch anti-gun people under the Democrats’ tent but they’re not the kind of people who will vote Republican if the party suddenly scaled back or ended its decades long futile efforts at gun bans.

On the other hand there are a ton of white working class voters on the suburban-rural fringes of swing states who would absolutely at least consider a Democrat if the party wasn’t so easily cast as “gun grabbers and job killers who only care about minorities”.

You get a pro-union, pro-legal-gun Democrat on a ticket who speaks on issues affecting rural whites as much as they do urban non-white voters (who are equally important), and you’d have a winner in many of these areas where they’ve been quite red, but not so rabidly Trumpy as other areas.

Even moreso if that’s a change that happened at the party/platform level.

I feel like from a campaign strategy standpoint, guns are just a lose-lose for the Democratic party. Playing to a base that would be loyal anyway for other reasons, even if the party dropped that position completely (which would not only eliminate a deal breaker issue for rural Democrats but also eliminate a cornerstone of the GOP platform in “protecting the second amendment”). Unless they did a complete about face and suddenly became as cozy with the NRA as Republicans, anti-gun voters might be upset, but they’re still voting blue.

After all there’s still abortion, electoral reform, racial justice, the environment, education, foreign policy, infrastructure, legal weed, LGBT rights, healthcare, and a host of other issues where the Dems are still their people.

I mean, when you’re talking about, essentially, “Hey just to be safe we’re going to permanently remove one of your constitutional rights without due process.” then it’s a no-go for me.

Imagine if anyone arrested just for being present at a protest that turned violent, whether that individual was violent or not…or even just made a social media post that they agreed with the protestors…well sorry, but just to be safe, we’re going to revoke your first amendment right to assembly for the rest of your life.

Erring on the side of caution, you know. Never can tell when those peaceful assemblies might turn violent and you’ve already shown a risk factor.

And when a TrumpAir jet goes down, the families of the partners get the cleanup and aircraft replacement bills, since that plane never would have been in the air if not for them, so it’s really their fault.