1/3 of the country thinks he’s the best thing to ever happen to America. They eat this stuff up.

1/3 of the country thinks he’s somewhere between a national embarrassment and an existential threat to our constitutional democracy.

1/3 of the country is apathetic about politics and cannot be bothered to give a shit over way or the other.

Shh, don’t give 'em any ideas.

Careful what you wish for. Neil Young and Van Morrison are 80, too.

Just the cost of doing business.

Edit: The settlement will be paid out over 10 years. If Meta pays a steady $1.8B every year that’s <1% of annual revenue. Damnit!

Cycling: Get a bicycle and start exploring your area. It doesn’t need to be a nice bike; check garage sales and Craigslist and get whatever fits comfortably. Wander off your usual routes and you will encounter new corners of your town that you never knew existed.

Music: Pick up a used acoustic guitar, electric keyboard, banjo, or whatever you can find. The world is full of inexpensive books and free YouTube videos to teach new students.

Drawing: Make doodles, little comics, or sketches of whatever is around you. A pencil and paper are all you need. Look up YouTube videos for daily sketching practice exercises.

Amateur radio: An entry-level license involves a basic quiz and a nominal fee. Cheap radios can be had for less than US$100. If you meet an old timer with a garage full of gear they might hand you a pile of old equipment for free.

Of course, any of these can become expensive and time-consuming hobbies if you go down the rabbit hole. But that just means you have found something you love.

The risk of harm to my kids.

Most common fear by far.

I mean, it saved them from famine at the time. But today I’m thinking it’s about time to change direction and return to the old homeland.

My Norwegian great-great-great-grandparents saw this and said, “Let’s move to North Dakota and live in a sod hut.”

Well put.

No military background here. But through family and friends I have had a lot of interactions with military folks, and I’m loosely interested in military stuff.

My username is due to living near water my whole life, and enjoying being in and around it. I love fishing, paddling, swimming, skipping stones from shore, watching osprey catch fish, all of it.

Ballpark numbers: USS Abraham Lincoln has about 5,000 people on board. And it is part of a larger carrier strike group that totals maybe 7,500 personnel. You need a long, strong global supply chain to serve that many people for months on end as they travel halfway around the world. Iran has apparently broken the chain in some key places.

Mental health is a separate problem. The Abraham Lincoln’s planned 6-month deployment is now at almost 9 months and counting, with no publicly announced return date. Wikipedia says the ship has only stopped at port twice in that time. So the sailors on board have been stuck in close quarters, away from their homes or loved ones, getting shot at in a war zone, for 3 months longer than expected, and with only two brief breaks. It’s not hard to understand that they might be exhausted and strained. Multiple sailors have tried to jump overboard and at least one sailor actually did it without being stopped. That’s not a supply chain problem; it’s a top-down organizational fiasco.

Nobody speaks up in public. But if you watch the top brass you can catch glimpses of their disdain for Trump and the GOP’s culture war bullshit.

One of my favorite examples is the video ofAdmiral Gilday sticking up for a non-binary sailor (and the Navy in general) when Tommy Tuberville tried to grill him in a senate hearing. Another time, previous Secretary of Defense James Mattis visited troops abroad and let a line slip about trouble back home.

Ultratramp

5 Non Blondes

Ben Folds Twelve

Twenty-Two Inch Nails

The last extension cord you will ever need.

As an American, I approve this message.

Direct link: https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7531

Those are coveted by the noncredibledefense crowd. You can get copies on AliExpress, but they just aren’t the same.

Didn’t you hear? Lockheed is “extremely woke” according to the right-wing culture warriors:

https://buywokefree.com/brand-profile/lockheed-martin

“Sex work is work and work sucks.”

When my Waterpik broke after years of use I was happily surprised to learn they still had replacement parts available.

No. I am not sure how we could even craft such a law in the current US legal climate. Political speech, and money tied to political speech, are nearly impossible to regulate in any meaningful way.