I also blame Bush but largely for his firm commitment to ignore the spirit of the bill of rights

“I heard you loud and clear when you chanted ‘No! Blood for oil!’ and have committed to finally trading blood for oil unlike Bush”

It’s also the gulf stream and Mediterranean weather systems. In America it’s really easy to just guess how far north something is by temperature unless it’s on the west coast. So it’s really easy to just assume that the pacific northwest and England are at similar latitudes based on similar weather, and being pretty far north, but reasonably comfortable year round. But nope, Seattle is closer in latitude to Lisbon.

This also plays in with how we’re taught that white settlers were really unprepared for the weather of New England in winter. Turns out, nope they went pretty far south to colonize a place with brutal winters

Yeah. I don’t care if you like your gas stove, I understand that I’m controversial in preferring electric, but the health data is increasingly clear, you are taking health risks when you use one. You should be free to make that choice, but the gas industry is actively propagandizing this unhealthy choice.

I enjoy theology and discuss it somewhat regularly with my wife who also is an ex catholic non Christian that likes discussing catholic theology. To me it’s like philosophy but more aspirational, distant, and constrained. It also provides a framework to process religious trauma, express frustration with bad Christians, and to process our feelings as people oppressed by Christiandom.

I say this to provide context, so that when I say I can’t fucking stand those people it’s not that I’m not comfortable hearing about religion or that I just hate it. I actually quite love it, and part of me is sad that who I am and my religion (paganism) block me from having more access to it. But Christians who are like that are rarely tolerant of things like religious differences (I sometimes got called a devil worshipper by protestants for being catholic growing up), lifestyle differences, and people who aren’t like that.

I also find that they are often religiously incurious. They find the solution that works for them, and stick with it, which I can’t judge, but when they study it they don’t ask about why other Christians think differently, they don’t apply the rigor that Jews and Catholics cherish, and they rarely bother learning about other religions either.

But then we get to the primary issue I have, I’m not Christian, and Christianity is regularly used as a tool to oppress me. I’m not interested in returning to it, and I’m frustrated at how much cultural and political power it has in my society.

Yes, that’s how science goes. Simple explanations and definitions often fall apart upon further discovery and require caveats that sometimes even reinforce the intention.

It lacks the je ne se quois of a binary planet. It just doesn’t have the right atmosphere for it, you know.

Wait, your tinnitus stays still? Mine is basically a symphony made for people whose favorite music is hearing tests.

I hate the idea that you shouldn’t freely provide joy to those around you for the sheer satisfaction of making it. The mammonite brain rot runs deep in a lot of people unfortunately

I want to work a reasonable amount, and have enough time and money to create for my own pleasure if I so choose. I don’t even mind content creation in theory, I see it no different from writing or doing art. It’s the constant pursuit of more, more, more, both status and money, that gets to me. I want freedom, security, and comfort.

Personally I prefer the “classes should feel comparably powerful/capable” model to simulationism. Since we aren’t going full locked tomb and saying that mages are all basically chronically ill, I extend it to martials are folk hero strength. A mid level rogue should be capable of Robin Hood level bullshit.

It’s nearly their entire fucking power budget, and they’re not even a great class!

If they impede your breathing you’ve definitely gone too far. Until then to your taste

And you don’t need to make up a holiday for it, it’s already multiple. You can celebrate Labor Day, but if that’s a bit too red for ya it’s also Beltane, but you’re more than welcome to the more secular version of May Day. It’s really just a lovely day to call off work and enjoy the halfway point of spring, ideally in nature with loved ones

Fine, then he’s too creepy to run Pennsylvania, and I assure you that is not a cool and normal place, despite what the Sheetz would have you believe

I think it may be more that they were the first generation to really be targeted by a disposability culture. The world they were born in was such that tv repair was a job and it was expected that if your small appliances broke you’d fix them rather than assuming it’s just not financially worth it. And their great grandparents had lived in a world where middle class people may have a few nice things that were hand crafted and meant to be passed down in a sort of poor person’s version of wealth.

So as mass production and upward mobility skyrocketed in the 20th century, it makes perfect sense that the generation born in the middle of it would not really get that the fact that their parents and grandparents had boxes of “valuable stuff worth a fortune” despite never actually having a fortune or anything close to it means they didn’t, they just had mass produced imitations of what once had been reserved for the wealthy.

Today all items are disposable because consumer goods are either too cheaply made to last a long time (furniture) or too complex or hostilly made to be able to efficiently repair compared to the labor and materials to make a new one (electronics)

Yes but I’m not cooking for 12

In this context aesthetic means “aesthetic[ly in line with me/the situation]”. It means big mood, but for style.

I see where they’re coming from. It’s a common demand straight men make of women while our culture sees body hair as very masculine rather than the biological element where testosterone is one if several reasons a person may have very thick body hair. And there’s a hypervigilance at times when it comes to cis partners of trans people because enough members of our community have been burned, especially those who date chasers.

That said, having known my fair share of gay men, yeah I wouldn’t jump to transphobia. Especially if you’re kinda twinky.

For some reason a Lucy Parsons quote came to me while reading this:

Let every dirty, lousy tramp arm himself with a revolver or a knife, and lay in wait on the steps of the palaces of the rich and stab or shoot the owners as they come out. Let us kill them without mercy, and let it be a war of extermination.

Now, I don’t agree with her there per se, but if these people want the poor and infirm dead well then maybe the Haymarket widow has a point