For real. I once had the misfortune to admit to having some Centrist ideas, and the down votes were immediate and generous. No discussion, just personal attacks.

And we wonder how things got to where they are.

Said like someone who confidently knows nothing about the complex process of vetting the backgrounds of people applying for refugee status.

I have a bunch of weird stuff, but I rarely show it off.

Tooth from a dinosaur, not sure what kind, it was found by a herder in a remote area, but some sort of preditor as its pointy.

Two 19th century swords that were from both sides of the French colonial expeditions in West Africa. One has magic powers (or, so the guy that sold it to me said). A number of other supposed enchanted items and charms.

Jar of sand from the Sahara outside Timbuktu and the Playa at Burning Man. Stones from I guess around the middle of Mt Olympus, and bunch of giant quartz crystals from southern Africa. A pin given to basically every Soviet citizen that was alive during (and therefore coined as fighting in) WWII.

Ticket to one of the Obama election night parties.

Thats not entirely true. Declaring a national state of emergency at the border, ending any Green New Deal programs, and bringing back the Schedule F EO are mentioned and that’s pretty definitive.

The thing is it’s all clever inside baseball references, not intentional.

It sort of detracts from the magic to rationally think about Friends, X-Files, Seinfeld, and Buffy all being in a shared universe. Vampires LOVE New York.

“Yes, you see, as a country we are barely holding our shit together. We can’t even figure out how money works anymore. Our power grid is…aspirational at best. Our most notable exports are oil, emails, and Nigerians running from this place. But you see, if we join BRICS, it definitely means you all are awesome, and so are we.”

The degree to which MS Teams can get fucked by the horse it rode in on is proportional to the number of registry entries their bloatware has on first install.

Sarcasm tag added

Well, to be fair, a kleptocracy is a poverty mindset applied to wannabe plutarchs or oligarchs. Oligarchy is the DEI version of Plutocracy because it’s not just wealth based. Edit:/s

And learn how to use it.

And get your FF fork loaded up with the right extensions to prevent fingerprinting.

Ugh, this world is so cooked, but we keep reaching out of the oven and turning up the heat on ourselves.

The best my brain ever felt was when I worked in a corner of a building that was a dead zone. No distractions unless I sought them out and physically went to them.

Lol, that’s fair. Maybe I should really feel surprised that people paid attention enough to Google it.

I genuinely can’t believe that there is any overlap at all with the maybe 500 people who actually listened to his speech or even read an article summarizing it and those who don’t know what the meaning of “oligarchy” is.

How does anyone get engaged enough in the political process to watch a speech from Biden and not recall Bernie Sanders saying this every day of his life for the last 30 years?

Well, considering that I speak 4 languages myself, maybe that’s not the take I was going for.

I speak 4 languages, and when I need surface level basics for a trip, I’ve found the Duolingo helps get the wrote memory part of see a shape, hear a sound.

For actual terminology or grammar, it’s OK, but it doesn’t deserve the hype it gives itself. I can make up my own lessons with Google Translate better than Duolingo.

I believe that a clickbait title about 400 idiot people starting the first lesson in Duolingo and then quickly quitting without deleting their accounts is the through line here.

Narrator: “But he didn’t mean the critically acclaimed 2013 movie ‘Her,’ but instead the 1991 classic ‘Mannequin 2:On the Move.’”

Cut to GOB driving the stair car with a mannequin in a wig tied to the top.

In theory, but in practice the BBB is usually a pay-to-play sort of racket where as long as a member doesn’t have active litigation happening, you can likely swing an A+ rating and still be a terrible company. It’s business oriented, not consumer.

shit ton

I see what you did there.

Same.

There’s a song by the Armenian band Ladaniva that’s just a few lines about a mountain home with a table that sits under a fig tree for the season. It’s relatively vague imagery with beautiful haunting vocals. Makes me ugly weep every time. No idea why. It’s the only song that has ever affected me like that. But there’s something about the idea of just a homey, simple life and how gar away that is that makes it seem all the more important.