But if you wanted to do something about it: these weapons come from this country and they have to get there in trucks traveling on roads to ports that load them on ships.

We are discussing voting, though. That’s a bit tangential, because you can vote or not vote and still commit acts of… resistance…

And it’s not like there’s not a value to making genocide come with electoral consequences…

If you otherwise would have voted Dem against the Republicans, who are as bad or worse when it comes to the specific issue you’re punishing the Dems for, you are hurting one group committing genocide by helping one who commits and wants to commit even more genocide.

All under the mistaken belief that by refusing to vote for the group you would otherwise vote for, you will get them to move Left. But if the Dems lose to the VERY right wing party, if the voting shows that Americans favor more right-leaning policies, they would move to gain the votes of the people who actually voted.

The reality is, refusing to vote is still a choice. As long as you are an adult who can legally vote in the US election, you are partly responsible for the results of the election. You don’t get to wash your hands of it. Choosing to abstain because you don’t want to partipate out of moral self-righteousness is saying your soapbox is more important than the lives affected by your choices, from the Palestinians to the Ukrainians, immigrants to LGBTQ. Nobody is more important than your ability to say “I didn’t vote for a party that commit genocide.”

So what are the other choices?

Do you need to be an -ian? Like, if you like the teachings of Ghandi, or Socrates, or Marcus Aurelius, you don’t have to call yourself a Ghandian, or a Socratian, or an Aurelian. You just agree with their teachings.

I feel like you’re just making a dig on Christians, and it’s not like a lot of them don’t deserve it, but what you’re talking about isn’t a religion. You don’t need an -ian to like a philosophy.

I’m going to let you in on some insight from a 40-something millenial:

I feel like being a adult is just lying about how much you have your shit together to people who also lie about having their shit together.

It starts off that way a bit, and you’re expected to at least put forward the impression you have your shit together before you do. But then the pretending gets easier and easier until you realize you’re just paying your bills, getting your laundry done, and doing what you need to do while feeling like you’re failing at the new, added responsibility in your life (like big career changes, kids, projects taken on, kids, taking care of family or friends, more kids). But that’s with anything new you take on. If you aren’t struggling at least a little, you’re not growing.

After we got out of college, we are just going to sit in front of a computer like the generations before us for the rest of our life, with the only difference of be paided less then them.

If you choose that. I can’t speak to the pay, because y’all are getting fucked… so far. I’ll speak more on that in a second, but I was the store manager of a restaurant for a few years before moving to New York from Seattle on a whim, worked customer service at a phone center for a cable company, and then joined the Coast Guard in my mid-to-late 20s, and drove boats until going into aviation and flying in helicopters, living in various places throughout the country, saving a few lives, flying in really cool places, and when I retire I can go do something else. People who stay in a job behind a desk their whole work life either love that job or are complacent in it. You are absolutely not chained to it.

And as for the shitty pay and everything, what I have seen of the Gen Z folks that have come through the Coast Guard is that they advocate for themselves and get things that we millenials are embarrassed to hear requested, much less think to ask for ourselves. And look to all the labor movements going on to push back at those pay drops. Keep the momentum, keep up the fight, don’t get complacent like my generation or Gen X.

not one of us could have imagined the entire generation having a mid-life crisis at the age of 18.

That’s not a mid-life crisis, that’s just the normal fear of entering the world for real, and it’s been that way for a long, long time. The crises come when you start feeling how little time you have (quarter-life realization you just don’t have enough lifespan to do everything you hope to do, mid-life realization of how little time you really have). Your thing is simply the fear of embarking into the unknown, and your doomscrolling has made your future look bleak. Put the phone down. Take opportunities when you can. Enjoy what you can out of life.

The whole thing is daunting, I totally get it. But going in with the approach you have is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There’s another part to this, and the renowned surgeon makes it a bad metaphor.

It’s more like: “You have a choice for your surgery. On one hand, we have a trained surgeon, on the other hand is a circus clown.”

“What are the surgeon’s credentials and record?”

“Well… they have a reasonably good record in other kinds of surgery, but and they’ve shadowed a surgeon who has done your surgery before. I won’t lie to you and say their record is perfect, though, and some of the practices and techniques they use draw serious criticism from various world health organizations.”

“And the clown?”

“They have more experience with these surgeries, but the vast majority of the people who underwent these surgeries have died. In fact, he shows flagrant disregard for even the most basic and accepted sanitary standards in the medical community.”

“But some people did live, right? So he can’t be all bad.”

“Occasionally he was part of a surgical team, and in those cases the rest of the team managed to keep the patient alive. And again, your other option is a trained surgeon.”

“But a shitty surgeon with no experience.”

“A questionable surgeon with limited experience. Or a clown who kills those he commits surgery on more often than not.”

“I can’t believe these are my only two options. When you said I had a choice, I thought it was a real choice, but it sounds like you’re just trying to force your surgeon on me. I think I’ll wait until another round of surgeons is available.”

“You will probably die before the next round of surgeons is available.”

“Honestly, I don’t trust your judgement over what’s best for me. I’m sitting this one out.”

Undecided doesn’t always mean who you vote for, sometimes it means whether you vote.

Still dumb not to vote, though.

Does anybody know what this said?! I’m having the same problem!

Edit: nevermind, I figured it out.

Niche crossover?

I once had a female coworker who was complaining about how she had walked in on a male coworker using the single-occupancy bathroom (peeing, his back was turned to the door), that him not locking the door was somehow inappropriate of him.

Somebody put a poll up on a white board with the scenario, with question “who behaved inappropriately” with the choices “the person entering the bathroom without knocking” “the person using the bathroom without locking it” “they are both wrong” and “we’re all adults here, get the fuck over it.”

The tallies were overwhelmingly in the “get the fuck over it” column. But I feel the poll was missing something important: the door had a tendency when locked to stick and leave the person locked inside. We were in a quick-response duty status (as in running to the aircraft), so the person already in should absolutely not have locked it (he was the runner).

You see a closed door to a room (of relative privacy) that might be occupied, you knock. Simple as.

My parents were wonderful, so I have no real complaints, but my father had a weird quirk. Tools, equipment, whatever that he had interest and purchased himself were “his.” I mean, obviously, but he would use the possessive when referring to those things.

“You have to prime my lawnmower first before you try to start it.” “Go and get my ladder.” Never the ladder, always my ladder. I never questioned it (because I didn’t care), but when I was a teenager I started noticing it and it was odd. Like he was establishing that the lawn mower or the ladder or whatever didn’t belong to the household, they were his. And nothing seemed to get him worked up more than a neighbor borrowing something and taking more than a day or so to return it.

Took a few decades, but i eventually realized I want the second one more than the first. So my friendships are dependent on how comfortable they are with not talking for at least a month at a time.

you can take a day or some time off to support your local business

Now who’s being entitled?

This isn’t even satire. I am willing to bet if my conservative coworkers even hear about it, they’ll basically say this. Or make some comparison to Venezuela if they are slightly more aware than just parroting Fox.

I’ll be honest, with the exception of “Keep Us Connected” I absolutely hated the musical episode… except the first time they mentioned that it had affected a Klingon vessel. And then I powered through in the hopes of seeing Klingon musical time, and when it happened, it redeemed the whole thing for me. Better than I could have hoped.

Seriously, try being the candidate talking shit about an astronaut and decorated servicemember. “I like people who stay on Earth.” Well I don’t!

Normal Tuesday night for Shia LeBeouf

I’m a man, and that’s how I feel about boxers and being nude. I don’t like that dangle feel of uncontrolled swaying on a sensitive part.

Trans Exclusive Radical Feminist. The main example is J.K. Rowling, who thinks shitting on trans women is in service to feminism, instead of harming some women in order to pretend to protect others.

Basically feminist but only for cis women.

Especially hot sauce. I missed that the cap wasn’t closed on some… I think Sriracha, and ended up pepper spraying myself. The waitress was very concerned.

BTW, actually getting pepper sprayed is MUCH worse. Getting bear sprayed is worse and also disgusting, because on top of the pain and misery, it also has a really gross musk stank. It took A LOT of washes with vinegar to get the smell out of the clothes I was wearing.

Do not recommend getting spicy stuff of any kind in the eyes.

I feel like George R.R. Martin was doing that with incest. Starts out with shocking incest between twins, and then spend a bunch of books getting you used to the idea until you find yourself reluctantly cheering for a dude hooking up with his aunt.

And the US military. I was studying the supply manual (not for fun, a large portion of our promotions are based on a test we take once a year), and saw there was a hierarchy for ordering. Most of our stuff is from Skilcraft (“Made with pride by people who are blind”) and thought that was our preferred source. Nope! Our first source we have to try to order from is Unicor. So I looked up Unicor, and it’s prison labor.

So our first focus is buying cheap products from slave labor lining the pockets of truly awful business people. The secondary choice is one that helps blind people. Way to show priorities, right?