I tell people I’m from New Jersey. Always have. America has always been way, way too broad a term. I don’t feel any connection with people from Texas or California, certainly not any of the deep south. Shit, I barely feel a connection with people from Pennsylvania.

If they say “Huh, New Jersey?” I say I’m an hour from NYC, and then that usually keeps that discussion rolling in a nice way.

Without chiming, Lemmy dies!

You are not some people.

Although I guess you are a different some people!

Oh my mistake, you’re right. Was rushing a bit, haste makes waste and all that.

NYC is thrice as dense as Berlin, the densest city in Germany. Probably accounts for something.

Yeah, my wife works with homeless veterans. They run the gamut, from hard on your luck to absolutely insane. She had to call PD yesterday because one threatened suicide. She convinced another to speak to a therapist after she acted as a mediator for two hours between the vet and their landlord.

Some of these folks are just off the deep end. Some have very serious drug addictions. And some are fine. If people like my wife got to be part of the process for determining whether someone needed to be institutionalized, I feel like I could trust that process.

I’ve got one sitting on the doormat as we speak. Winter is over around here, and Bruce Willis is back to work at the ripe old age of 14 or 15, nobody knows.

The US’s issue in wars has consistently been “what next?” They are good at getting troops to battlegrounds and securing battlegrounds. They are logistically superior to everyone. The problem becomes the hanging around afterward. And it’s obvious we’re headed there again, considering the administration has all but stated they don’t know what the endgame is.

Thanks dude, came way too far to see someone else say this. Surprised it hasn’t been a NYPost article title already. It’s a rag, but they certainly can use clever wordplay in the titles.

Ha, we are all just trying to learn stuff, so I appreciate the opportunity to bestow what little knowledge I have.

I think you did a nice job. I thought you were another poster before so I had to come back and edit my post before I stole you some valor, as they say.

So the badge is sharpshooter for pew pew, rifle only. Pistol usually reserved for guys with rockers on their sleeves, but you see some others get it.

Top ribbon is a NAM, Navy Achievment Medal. And like you’d read a book, there’s a CAR (Combat Action Ribbon), a PUC (presidential unit citation), Good Cookie (three years no bad), then some campaign ribbons, I assume Iraq/Afghan, a MEU.

I’m not sure I’d phrase it as a celebration, but the media referring to this as a protest is disingenuous at best. The number of videos I’ve seen of dudes shooting guns at the embassy is enough for me to come to my own conclusions about this “protest.”

And if you’re going to shoot at a building filled with American appointed officials, guarded by Marine Security Guards, you’re probably going to die doing so.

Ideally, this all could have been avoided by not starting another war, but here we are.

He’s the US director of the FBI. He just shows up and they let him in. What’re they going to do say no? They just let him in, do the photo op, and that’s that. None of them are thinking about it. Half the dudes on the team probably don’t even know who he is. Hockey players are so insulated, that’s why the young guys always do the worst interviews, their entire life has been hockey, and that’s it.

You can’t wear cages in the NHL unless you have an injury.

Oddly enough Bruce was recently diagnosed with high blood pressure, so he takes a statin now. We thought he was just getting old and slowing down a bit, vet caught it, we’ve been doing meds, and he has returned to his old self again, with a touch of senility, a lot of meowing and nothing. But yeah, hopeful it’ll help avoid a stroke.

I had two cats, one who goes out often, one who went out once in a blue moon. The tenses tell the tale here.

And I don’t mean to suggest your statistics are incorrect, just that I find it funny to have experienced the opposite. Bruce Willis lives on, and it’s entirely possible his life ends outside due to any number of reasons, but he just craves the outdoors, to the point of being really annoying about it.

And it’s weird, I always attribute it to my wife having found him and our other cat on the streets, they were both 2-3 years old, but Rudi took to mainly living inside (maybe she’d hang on the porch from time to time, or sat some grass), whereas Bruce yearns for the neighbors’ shrubberies. He’s 14ish, and hopefully we get another 14 out of him, despite him clearly going crazy.

I dunno, if the vaccine was “safe,” and it really comes down to will this stop me getting a cold, I’d take one for the team. Maybe not the flu or COVID, although COVID never affected me so maybe I wouldn’t be a good candidate.

We just need an island of clones that we can test on, because clones aren’t real!

I’ve never made a set amount of money, so I’ve never really budgeted. I know how much I need to survive month to month, I keep a buffer in a checking account, a large bugger in a HYSA, and then I kinda just do. I’ve been 1099 my entire adult life and so I’ve had months where I’m flush and months where I’m scraping by. I’m a little older now so it’s less of her scraping by fortunately.

But Lemmy told me it’s a simple thing to do.