Ah, right. My mistake.

That occurred to me too. Having an awful, public crime to blame on “the left” is awfully convenient, and Trump and his ilk immediately came out blaming Democrats and calling for political violence. What if Trump or one of his circle is behind this because they wanted a distraction from the Epstein situation and literally everything Trump does being unpopular? People who are okay with raping kids clearly have no moral compunctions preventing them from such an act.

But I’m not one to profer conspiracies without any kind of actual evidence, and I doubt Kirk is really considered enough of a somebody for them to believe he’d be enough of a distraction (although that may be because I just ignore anything to do with him because of his being a bigoted dumbfuck). Having something to blame on Democrats and “the left” just happened to be good fortune for them. I do think it more likely that the shooter was someone like a parent of a kid who was a victim of a school shooting or who was queer and died by suicide.

Charlie Kirk wasn’t even a politician or CEO? He was a talking head, a media personality; an “influencer”.

The political leanings and goals of the shooter, who is not in custody, are not yet known.

So … We don’t actually know if this was a politically-motivated shooting. I mean, I’d be willing to bet money that it was, but for all we know it could have been a jealous husband, an enraged parent, a jilted ex lover, or someone with delusions.

In any case, political violence is not a new thing here.

The worst part is: the wealthiest few of them could each, individually, if they wanted to, end world hunger permanently with their current wealth. Estimates I’ve read range $40b per year or something like $250-300b just once to set up sustainable long-term solutions globally.

Musk, Zuckerberg, or Bezos could end hunger globally and permanently. Any one of them, individually, could do it. If the richest 10 billionaires all pitched in a portion, they’d all recoup everything they spent within a couple years at worst. If the richest 100 did, many of them wouldn’t even notice the expenditure.

But it would only take 1 of them.

Wiktionary suggests both “fixing to” and “fitting to” are used synonymously. Fwiw, in Tennessee, I only ever hear “fixing to”. As someone who learned English outside of the southern US, it makes little sense to me also. But what makes even less sense to me is people saying “trying to” to mean “want to”.

Also consider a healthcare career. As a teenager, I wanted to do computer science/engineering, and sometimes I do wish I had stayed on that track. But now, as a nurse, I could get a job in any state in the US by tomorrow. I dare you to try to find a hospital that doesn’t have open nursing positions. Even when the economy goes down, people still get sick. Even if society collapses, the knowledge/skills will be useful.

And if you don’t want to change diapers or deal with blood, there are still options; I’m in psychiatry and rarely have to deal with either.

I used to do most of my grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s. When they came out calling the NLRB unconstitutional, I never went back. Fuck Traitor Joe’s.

I really don’t understand why I constantly see this sentiment on every post pertaining to protests. Rome wasn’t built in a day. How do you expect the masses to go directly to violent revolution when many of them don’t even recognize there’s a problem, and most of them have spent their whole lives in a system which hasn’t required any political participation at all? Drawing attention to the problems is how you get more people active.

Obviously, protests won’t do anything to directly influence the corrupt leaders in any meaningful or beneficial way. I don’t know anyone who actually hopes for that. But a handful of individuals resorting to political violence will be easily quashed by the fascists’ enforcers and then demonized or ignored by the fascist-friendly media, so the logical thing is to make the movement too big to fail or ignore. Drawing attention to the problems is how you get more people active.

Something something only the best people?

I don’t quite follow your argument. Are you suggesting it requires more cropland to make vegan food than meat? If everyone ate crop-derived foods in place of livestock-derived foods, we’d need less cropland, because livestock animals are not perfect energy converters. I.e., it takes more than a pound of feed to get a pound of beef.

Or are you saying it’s hypocritical of a vegan/vegetarian to eat products of agriculture because of the damage to the natural environment and animals which reside in it? The only non-hypocritical thing for me to do in that case would be to kill myself. Forgive me if I don’t. Perfect is the enemy of good, and so I’ll choose to minimize harm where I can.

We can’t eliminate all suffering and harm, so we shouldn’t even try reducing it? Perfect is the enemy of good. For many if not most vegans, it’s about minimizing harm. Many are motivated by ecological concern as well.

Some insects die on my car’s grill when I’m driving. I still go to work every day while calling myself vegan. Literally the only non-hypocritical action would be to kill myself. Forgive me if I don’t.

My understanding was that it was a “no modern weapons” thing. That is, pre-1900 weapons were “acceptable”, hence why the pirates and wild west sets could have guns, but the police sets do not. To my (absolutely non-expert) knowledge, Indiana Jones sets only had revolvers, a pre-1900 technology. As I recall, there was a bit of controversy when they released the Sopwith Camel (a WWI-era fighter plane, i.e. post-1900) set with machine guns on it.

The Star Wars sets have fantasy weapons, not real modern weapons. Why that or a revolver should be seen as meaningfully different from a modern gun is, evidently, left as an exercise for the consumer. In any case, clearly the stricture has been relaxed over the years.

In some states, testing and then notifying CPS of positives is required by law. The healthcare staff hate it as much as the patients, because it does more harm than good.

I dunno. He accused the board members who pointed it out of lying. If he had nothing to hide, why say they’re lying? Why not just say “I have no idea how this happened”? The only alternative explanation I can think of for accusing them is that maybe he’s paranoid?

Having grown up in the ultra-conservative puritan world, with its absurd and unhealthy levels of sexual repression, I would be genuinely surprised if this guy wasn’t regularly consuming porn. And he’s a millennial, so I wouldnt be at all surprised by him knowing how to connect a screen…

We’ll convert the bloodmouths, one way or another! The next plan is mosquitoes that make you allergic to cheese.

Bezos is halfway there; his yacht cost 500 million:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koru_(yacht)

Give it a few more years and I bet one of them will buy a a billion dollar yacht. But in an ideal world, such absurdities wouldn’t exist.

But… What the fuck did just happened here? 🎶

I don’t watch star trek.

I like […] The Orville, […]

They use Haiku and watch Farscape.