evil pelvic sorcery

Awww DARN that’s awesome. That’s *really *awesome.

I also like some religious music, I think the key is that the music needs to be interesting with zero pandering.
At the risk of turning this into a “not religious, but…” music recommendation thread: I’ve enjoyed mewithoutYou for a long time now. They have a subdued art-rock sound, and I even enjoy a lot of their more overtly religious songs like “In a Sweater Poorly Knit” and “The King Beetle On A Coconut Estate.”
Mewithoutyou - “Cattail Down”

I get you. Thanks for the call out and clarifying. Decades of being on the internet has turned me into a grumpy pessimist🫥

EDIT: one of my best friends has a ~15 year old Toyota Yaris. He just replaced the clutch in it last year, and that was the first major work that it’s needed. That thing is going to outlive his kids. I think it’s great he (and you) are driving old cars that still work; it really is the most economical and ecologically sound thing to do.

The OP’s position is reasonable given their circumstances, and several people, including you, have clearly said as much. Even industry and financial experts acknowledge that if someone already owns a functioning vehicle, the most economical and environmentally responsible choice is often to continue driving it until replacement becomes necessary, regardless of whether it is ICE or EV.

OP seems less interested in discussing practicality than repeated reaffirmation of “I do not want an EV.”

Pre-COVID (Trump’s first time) I took a trip to Europe. All of the European customs officials were polite and professional, did what they needed to do, and still made me feel welcome in their country. When I returned to America, the customs official checking me back into the country was mean-mugging the entire time, rude, and acted like I wasn’t welcome back to my own home.

Your hardiness zone is probably the best way to decide what kind of berries to grow. In my experience, compared to most other crops, berries are most likely to be cheaper when grown at home versus buying at the store. I’d recommend looking at what berries grow best in your zone, then choose cultivars based on what growing conditions you can provide.

Blackberries tend to need a lot of space, growing an average of 2m high and 1.5m across. When I was little, one of my neighbors had a blackberry patch and some of the plants were over 3m tall. Raspberry plants are marginally smaller, growing an average of 1.5m high and 1m across, though there are some dwarf varieties that can thrive in patio containers. Blueberries are moderate in size and can be grown in containers, but they thrive best in acidic soils. Plant near pine trees, or mulch with pine needles for good results. You can also fertilize with specific blends that increases acidity specifically for blueberries.

Strawberries are fairly easy to grow. The only downside is the most varieties only fruit once a year in late spring/early summer. Varieties that produce all summer are still tasty, but they are typically just a little bit sweeter than store bought. The great thing about strawberries is that if you have half-decent soil and don’t prune runners, they will propagate endlessly with very little upkeep.

I planted several gooseberry bushes on my property. They take a few years to start putting out berries, but once they do it’s so nice. Unripe gooseberries are tart and great for making pies and jams. When ripe they are sweeter, but not too sweet, and I love eating them fresh off the bush… as long as I can get to them before birds do.
I also have several aronia, chokecherry, and elderberry bushes. Their berries are smaller and more tart that other ‘dessert’ berries, most suitable for syrups or mixed into desserts or jams. Supposedly their health benefits are phenomenal, but I discount a lot of that kind of talk and just enjoy using them where and when I can.
I’ve also planted a Hawthorne tree that puts out a ton of berries each year, but one thing I didn’t realize is that they are extremely susceptible to rust (fungal disease), and if I don’t treat it every spring when it flowers then I won’t be able to use the berries in the fall. When I do treat it, and I do get around to using the berries, they taste like a cross between an apple and a cranberry, and I like to use them in my thanksgiving stuffing/dressing and cranberry sauces.

My parents didn’t yell or scream or threaten. They explained. Even as a child I understood why smoking was bad and what damage it did to lungs. By the time I was old enough to consider smoking or have any opportunity to do so, I understood lung cancer, and addiction, and that it’s much easier to start something addictive than to stop.

I also told all that stuff when I was kid, but don’t underestimate the power of youthful arrogance and the influence of an older girl who smokes and is interested in you… I ended up being a smoker for over ten years before I finally quit. Shared my own experiences with my daughter, educated her on all the reasons not to smoke. She still ended up vaping because of youthful arrogance and the influence of an older girl that was interested in her.

You can teach a horse to water but you can’t force it to not vape. Or something.

My hot take is that the number of justices should be raised to match the number of federal judicial circuits, reasonable term limits given, and and the seat should be impeachable. Each circuit nominates and seats its own justice, and congress presides over impeachment proceedings.

NOVA has started uploading some documentaries. I think the best way we can show them that we’d want to see them upload more of their catalog is to leave comments on the videos asking for that—I know that Spacetime, at least, reads every comment left of their videos, so it’s a great way to contact the creators.

I haven’t logged into my reddit account in almost a decade. A few weeks ago I was searching for something and ended up on the reddit front page, and I saw a video of a man punching a woman. It’s not about how one curates their feed; it is what new users are served.

My guy, no one is saying that pick up trucks are useless. What they are saying is that trucks are too big and too expensive for what the majority of buyers use it for. Many Americans buy their pick up trucks for symbolic cultural status, not pragmatic trades use.
I once spent a summer installing new milking parlors at dairy farms in central PA. The welder, tanks, PPE, and the rest of our tools fit just fine into an old transit van with sliding side doors, rear double doors, a hitch to tow the generator, and a roof rack for large items like pipes and ladders. A box truck was used to deliver material pallets to each worksite.

The company I use for plumbing and HVAC uses vans. The carpet cleaning service I use has their cleaning machine built inside of a van. When I had to transport 50+ computers to refresh satellite office hardware I used a minivan with removable seats.

Could a pick up have done all those jobs? Absolutely. However, we didn’t need a pick up to do all those jobs, and the vehicles we did use were much smaller and less expensive. That is what people in this thread are saying. Most modern pick up trucks are not designed for trade use; today’s midsize pickups are larger than full-size pickups from 20 years ago, and they have the bells and whistles that you’d expect to see in a higher end passenger car, instead of the vinyl/plastic interiors that they used to have ~20 years ago.

EDIT: I just saw that the original person you responded to did say that no one needs a truck. They were probably being hyperbolic, but as there are numerous use cases for pick up trucks I can see where your push back came from.

Him in a vacuum? Yes, probably.
However, it’s the handlers and enablers Wormtonguing him behind the scenes that make it difficult.

As with another well-known French hard liquor, drink enough and you, too, just might taste colors swirling on your tongue and hear emotions swirling in the sky.

Oh no, please no…
We’re not going to make it, are we?

Ownership class needs to extract as much value as they can out of their workers. They think that if you don’t entangle healthcare with employment, then no one’s going to work anymore. I think it is all projection; the wealthy already don’t work nearly as hard as the people they exploit.

I can’t speak for the other poster, but the way I see is is that “forced inclusion” is where the script directs viewer attention to it in a protracted, unnatural manner that is not pertinent to the plot. For instance, the script may be as blunt as a character saying “Wow, I can’t believe you made it this far despite being a [marginalized out-group],” or it could be a little more subtle by offering a stereotyped representation of [marginalized out-group] without any kind of deeper exploration. i.e. Tokenism

Star Trek, for the most part, dove into social subjects deeper, more meaningful way than other media at the time. Like other users have pointed out, TOS confronted racism and gender roles head on by placing a black female character on the bridge. By never drawing attention to those traits, the show issued such a strong rebuke against racism and male chauvinism that no more needed to be said. In my view, that is inclusion that is not forced upon the viewer; it is implied, but unless the viewer is explicitly looking for it, they’d never notice.

Agreed. Season three TNG is peak Star Trek. That said, and at the risk of being flayed by the Star Trek community at large, I think DS9 was the best series, taken as a whole.

Yep! Not only is incredibly economical, it’s a healthier meal than most “traditional” American breakfasts.

Didn’t stop conservative media from deriding it as millennial over-indulgence. Vilifying the millennial tendency of frugality + preference for plants-based diet choices by portraying avocado toast as excessive and soy milk as emasculating, along with a concerted effort to deliver narrative to the /pol/ audience, it not only swayed the opinions of older generations, but spurred parts of the younger generations to resent each other. I’m sure meat industry profits were also in the mix somewhere.

The only winners in the culture war are the ones who drive the narratives, and it’s been that way in the US since radio was invented.

You are right that worker unions should have the weight of collective bargaining behind them, enough to affect the big changes. However, the US has demonstrated again and again that it will just crush unions if they start to irritate the ownership class a little too much. Like what Reagan did to air traffic controllers, what Scott Walker did to the Wisconsin public employees union, and the 2022 railway worker labor dispute under Biden.

Unions have been defanged by decades of ownership class lobbying and regulatory capture. The executive branch has no qualms about neutralizing and marginalizing union workers who step too far out of line. Something much bigger than labor unions is needed, but I’m afraid the ownership class has us all so exhausted from overwork and the media too wary of our neighbors for that to happen. For the public to build the kind of movement it needs will take both a hugely impactful economic downturn that affects everyone, and as much as I wish it weren’t the case, an immensely charismatic figure to pull them together. Whenever someone with an anti-status quo message and the charisma to start pulling people together starts to gain traction, they invariably end up on the business end of the CIA.

It’s hard not to feel defeated and deflated, especially when we’re all so exhausted.