This is the most reasonable course of action. Some things can’t be unseen.

Thank you for this suggestion. I hadn’t heard of this, but I’ll try to remember it the next time I get a bout of tinnitus. Mine is pretty intermittent for now.

Yes, but the price of that temporary earthly magic is your immortal soul!

So, theoretically, it’s not worth it.

According to the story, if your character dies in-game, by that point you’re so addicted to the black magic that you ultimately can’t go on living without it.

Definitely still do.

This is fair.

It’s exhausting to try to have a conversation with someone who isn’t engaging in good faith.

It’s perfectly understandable if you don’t want to spend your time and energy in that way. And (as I argued at length here) it isn’t your responsibility.

I call bullshit on this. Education does not, in fact, “go both ways.”

Generally, in western society, we accept the idea that adults should be responsible for themselves, with exceptions for those who are physically or mentally unable to do so. We value principles of autonomy and personal responsibility, so we’re generally expected to do the work of educating ourselves (or paying someone for their help) in adulthood.

When a person has a child, they make a choice to be a parent and to take on the responsibility to raise that child. Of course, we know that not everyone follows through on that responsibility.

That person’s child has not been given any choice. They should not be required to take responsibility for their parent(s) just because of the accident of their birth. Many children choose to care for their parents in their old age for various reasons, usually for love or money.

As a society, we agree that we owe protection, education, and the fulfillment of needs to our children … because we choose to bring those children into the world and because we need them to perpetuate the social order we rely on.

Those children do not, when they become adults, automatically owe the same things back to the full-grown adults who raised them. Generally, we expect them to provide stability for their elders by contributing to the social and economic order, mostly by paying taxes and keeping infrastructure functional.

Parents are able to control aspects of their children’s lives in order to raise them in what they deem to be appropriate ways. Children don’t get “a turn” to control all of the same aspects of their parents’ lives. My mother kept me from playing video games and watching MTV as a teen because she thought it would “rot your brain.” But as much as I’d love to, I can’t keep her from watching Fox (or NewsMax, or OAN, or TBN, or whatever she’s on this week).

Some people might choose to try to reverse the effects of 20+ years of a 24-hour propaganda machine brainwashing their parents out of love or a sense of familial duty, or whatever. And that’s admirable.

But I absolutely reject the idea that it’s somehow “my turn” to “educate” 20+ years of Fox News programming out of my aging conservative parents.

If MAGA is going to insist that late-night comedy hosts be 100% factually accurate, then I think the least the next Democratic government should do is require partisan propaganda to be labeled as such.

This goes for both sides. MSNBC, NewsMax, HuffPost, Fox News, all need disclaimers for opinion and partisan content.

Mine, too! (Also Korean and Lebanese.) What an excellent range of options.

I would miss Mexican food, but I’d make do.

I have to assume that any witch selling curses on Etsy doesn’t believe in the Rule of Three.

I wonder how many really identify as witches and actually cast the spells people pay them for.

That was my first thought as well.

That was my immediate thought.

(Anyone reading this who doesn’t understand, please trust me when I say that you don’t want to. You can’t unsee that, even 25+ years later.)

I assume they were trash-talking el presidente together, which could be political suicide for a Republican in Texas.

It was a bad three-day weekend.

The current Democratic party is basically the Reagan Republicans with more emphasis on civil rights.

US politics have skewed further and further rightward for the last 50 years. On a global scale, Democrats are firmly center-right.

Bernie Sanders and AOC are barely left of center for the rest of the world, but in US politics they’re “off the deep end.”

A cursory search for “liquid trees micro algae” led me here: https://liquidtrees.org/urban-solutions

Even with ideal light conditions, there’s still more to consider.

I lived in Louisville for many years. It’s fairly green as cities go. In older parts of the city, trees had been planted between the streets and sidewalks … definitely a long time ago, maybe 30 to 50 years? Maybe longer?

Every spring, we lost a number of those trees to thunderstorms. Enough rain, followed by strong winds, would topple multiple trees. Every single one that I saw had a root ball that was exactly the size of the opening where it had been planted, so maybe two square meters and maybe a meter or two deep. (For those keeping score at home, that’s not enough root volume to support a full-sized tree.)

So we’d lose those lovely trees and on a good day, we’d lose the use of the street for a while. On a bad day, someone would lose a car or a chunk of their house.

“Just plant more trees in the middle of the city” is not the brilliant fix that many people seem to think it is.

If you’re concerned about your anonymity, keep in mind that companies frequently put ID numbers on their return envelopes to help match the returned mail piece with your record in their database. Sometimes the number is invisible (UV ink) so it doesn’t look “mass produced” to the recipient.

Do you also think that saying “Happy Holidays” somehow excludes Christians?

Increasing the size of your umbrella doesn’t discriminate against the people who are already under it. It simply invites more people to join them.

You’re exactly correct. I used to work in a manufacturing environment, and the amount of single-use plastic our production team used on a daily basis was staggering. I would estimate that company created as much plastic waste in one day as my household did in three months.

Consumer recycling or boycotts is only a drop in the bucket. Industry will have to shift away from single-use plastic if we’re going to have any chance of saving ourselves from a future filled with generations worth of garbage.