Do you need to be an -ian? Like, if you like the teachings of Ghandi, or Socrates, or Marcus Aurelius, you don’t have to call yourself a Ghandian, or a Socratian, or an Aurelian. You just agree with their teachings.

I feel like you’re just making a dig on Christians, and it’s not like a lot of them don’t deserve it, but what you’re talking about isn’t a religion. You don’t need an -ian to like a philosophy.

I’m going to let you in on some insight from a 40-something millenial:

I feel like being a adult is just lying about how much you have your shit together to people who also lie about having their shit together.

It starts off that way a bit, and you’re expected to at least put forward the impression you have your shit together before you do. But then the pretending gets easier and easier until you realize you’re just paying your bills, getting your laundry done, and doing what you need to do while feeling like you’re failing at the new, added responsibility in your life (like big career changes, kids, projects taken on, kids, taking care of family or friends, more kids). But that’s with anything new you take on. If you aren’t struggling at least a little, you’re not growing.

After we got out of college, we are just going to sit in front of a computer like the generations before us for the rest of our life, with the only difference of be paided less then them.

If you choose that. I can’t speak to the pay, because y’all are getting fucked… so far. I’ll speak more on that in a second, but I was the store manager of a restaurant for a few years before moving to New York from Seattle on a whim, worked customer service at a phone center for a cable company, and then joined the Coast Guard in my mid-to-late 20s, and drove boats until going into aviation and flying in helicopters, living in various places throughout the country, saving a few lives, flying in really cool places, and when I retire I can go do something else. People who stay in a job behind a desk their whole work life either love that job or are complacent in it. You are absolutely not chained to it.

And as for the shitty pay and everything, what I have seen of the Gen Z folks that have come through the Coast Guard is that they advocate for themselves and get things that we millenials are embarrassed to hear requested, much less think to ask for ourselves. And look to all the labor movements going on to push back at those pay drops. Keep the momentum, keep up the fight, don’t get complacent like my generation or Gen X.

not one of us could have imagined the entire generation having a mid-life crisis at the age of 18.

That’s not a mid-life crisis, that’s just the normal fear of entering the world for real, and it’s been that way for a long, long time. The crises come when you start feeling how little time you have (quarter-life realization you just don’t have enough lifespan to do everything you hope to do, mid-life realization of how little time you really have). Your thing is simply the fear of embarking into the unknown, and your doomscrolling has made your future look bleak. Put the phone down. Take opportunities when you can. Enjoy what you can out of life.

The whole thing is daunting, I totally get it. But going in with the approach you have is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I disagree. If we sent 100 personnel with an air defense group to Ukraine, shit would get pretty real pretty fast. Sending people is a whole different commitment to sending weapons.

I had an old instructor who liked to say “when it comes to breakfast, what’s the difference between the chicken and the pig? The chicken made a contribution, the pig made a commitment.”

Sending our own troops stops being a contribution and starts being a commitment.

Should have had his wife “design and print” them, get a patent, and sell them to the air force instead.

There’s another part to this, and the renowned surgeon makes it a bad metaphor.

It’s more like: “You have a choice for your surgery. On one hand, we have a trained surgeon, on the other hand is a circus clown.”

“What are the surgeon’s credentials and record?”

“Well… they have a reasonably good record in other kinds of surgery, but and they’ve shadowed a surgeon who has done your surgery before. I won’t lie to you and say their record is perfect, though, and some of the practices and techniques they use draw serious criticism from various world health organizations.”

“And the clown?”

“They have more experience with these surgeries, but the vast majority of the people who underwent these surgeries have died. In fact, he shows flagrant disregard for even the most basic and accepted sanitary standards in the medical community.”

“But some people did live, right? So he can’t be all bad.”

“Occasionally he was part of a surgical team, and in those cases the rest of the team managed to keep the patient alive. And again, your other option is a trained surgeon.”

“But a shitty surgeon with no experience.”

“A questionable surgeon with limited experience. Or a clown who kills those he commits surgery on more often than not.”

“I can’t believe these are my only two options. When you said I had a choice, I thought it was a real choice, but it sounds like you’re just trying to force your surgeon on me. I think I’ll wait until another round of surgeons is available.”

“You will probably die before the next round of surgeons is available.”

“Honestly, I don’t trust your judgement over what’s best for me. I’m sitting this one out.”

Undecided doesn’t always mean who you vote for, sometimes it means whether you vote.

Still dumb not to vote, though.

Does anybody know what this said?! I’m having the same problem!

Edit: nevermind, I figured it out.

My parents were wonderful, so I have no real complaints, but my father had a weird quirk. Tools, equipment, whatever that he had interest and purchased himself were “his.” I mean, obviously, but he would use the possessive when referring to those things.

“You have to prime my lawnmower first before you try to start it.” “Go and get my ladder.” Never the ladder, always my ladder. I never questioned it (because I didn’t care), but when I was a teenager I started noticing it and it was odd. Like he was establishing that the lawn mower or the ladder or whatever didn’t belong to the household, they were his. And nothing seemed to get him worked up more than a neighbor borrowing something and taking more than a day or so to return it.

you can take a day or some time off to support your local business

Now who’s being entitled?

Seriously, try being the candidate talking shit about an astronaut and decorated servicemember. “I like people who stay on Earth.” Well I don’t!

I’m a man, and that’s how I feel about boxers and being nude. I don’t like that dangle feel of uncontrolled swaying on a sensitive part.

Trans Exclusive Radical Feminist. The main example is J.K. Rowling, who thinks shitting on trans women is in service to feminism, instead of harming some women in order to pretend to protect others.

Basically feminist but only for cis women.

I’ve seen stuff like that on helmets, but not flight suit. My service is pretty strict on what you can put on flight suits, though. Helmets (while still against the rules) are generally acceptable as long as they are not inappropriate.

Especially hot sauce. I missed that the cap wasn’t closed on some… I think Sriracha, and ended up pepper spraying myself. The waitress was very concerned.

BTW, actually getting pepper sprayed is MUCH worse. Getting bear sprayed is worse and also disgusting, because on top of the pain and misery, it also has a really gross musk stank. It took A LOT of washes with vinegar to get the smell out of the clothes I was wearing.

Do not recommend getting spicy stuff of any kind in the eyes.

I had thought the recent understanding was they were likely small wings, like emus or ostriches, to help with balance. Angled back instead of forward.

Okay, but pop-tarts are raviolis, not sandwiches. That doesn’t even make sense. What kind of sandwich is enclosed on all sides?

A put a hole in the side of a helicopter that left it grounded for a week.

I accidentally tapped it with another piece of the helicopter. I’m happily working on helicopters that are made of metal now, so no more of that nonsense.

Edit: also, honorable mention because it wasn’t my fault, but I made a helicopter drop an external fuel tank when it took off… by replacing a light bulb. It was on the button that makes the helicopter drop the external tanks, but there are failsafes so it will only do it in the air. Apparently the internal switch got stuck, so the second the weight was off of the wheels CLONK… and a tank was laying on the active runway. Excellent.

If it’s something you want and your partner doesn’t care one way or the other about, it shouldn’t factor in.

If you want to make the candles you use around the house, maybe they smell nice, maybe they get used, maybe they’re cheaper than store-bought, but that’s a hobby.

If you do a bunch of baking, especially for people outside the home but even inside it, and your partner isn’t all about you cooking, that’s a hobby, and you clean up your own mess. That’s not chores (unless you’re getting paid).

Chores are necessities to keep the communal house going, not anything that takes effort.

This is the type of thing that could be answered if people followed banal statistical data the way sports people follow sports data.

“This is the first time since 2017 they’ve scored over 30 points in the third quarter in a home game during the pre-season.”

You’re missing the point. It’s not a one time thing. Evidence existed, that evidence was found, and that’s what made it change to being accepted.

That evidence still exists, so if you claim dinosaurs don’t exist, we can just point to the evidence that still exists. That evidence didn’t get spirited away like golden plates to heaven. We’re still finding dinosaur bones.

If you claim dinosaurs don’t exist, I would point to the wealth of evidence that they do. If you were raised in some religious cult that never taught anything about dinosaurs and taught that the Earth was 6000 years old, and therefore didn’t think giant creatures existed hundreds of millions of years ago, it would absolutely be on the person claiming they exist to show you dinosaur bones. Which is evidence.

Your premise is incorrect. The burden of proof for quantum mechanics is on the people claiming they exist. They provided those proofs, which is why people believe in them. I haven’t studied quantum mechanics, but if you asked somebody who does, they could offer proof or evidence. And if they couldn’t, then your claim it doesn’t exist (until proof was proffered) would be correct.