So many people can’t even change their shopping habits to make more ethical choices. There’s no way a sizeable population is going to forego passing on their DNA just to send a message.

As a teen, I figured I’d adopt kids when I got older. The amount of people who were dead-set on “b-b-but my genetic lineage!” was startling. As I’ve aged through my 20s and now my 30s, I’ve seen them stick true to their word and have their own babies, even with the world circling down the drain. The biological call to reproduce seems to override a lot of other matters.

Now consider how hard it is to get people to quit something without a biological imperative, like shopping on Amazon…

Anyway, I admire your initiative. I just can’t imagine people participating en masse in a protest that involves forfeiting something so dear and intimate to them as their choice to reproduce.

this country allowed the idiots to breed and there are no easy way back.

It’s even worse than that. The school system is fucked. A lot of people that could’ve wound up mildly intelligent were denied the skill of critical thinking and the benefits of well-rounded education. Instead, they were taught to game tests and to obey their authorities without protest. Don’t rock the boat, don’t “talk back” when you’re wronged, just do what you’re told and keep your mouth quiet about it.

It’s no mystery why so many people rely on talking heads to direct their political opinions.

You mean even my Steam games are actual steam? Neat.

If we’re lucky it’s furry porn. I’m more worried about the non-consensual porn of real people, including simulated CSAM.

Some aircraft engines, too. The old single-engine Cessnas I trained on were air-cooled. Though that’s pretty easy when you’re pushing cool, atmospheric air over the engine at 100 knots.

I can’t help but wonder what exactly is going on here. Are the good contractors scared of ICE taking them away, leaving talentless MAGA hacks as the only ones participating in this project?

Or maybe they’re aware Trump never pays others for their work, and this is an example of “you get what you pay for”?

Or it could be an example of top-down incompetence, where the workers are faithfully following a boss’s orders, but the boss is such an inept loser that this is what following their words gets?

Or maybe the workers hate Trump and this is their small way of protesting/sabotaging his plans?

So many possibilities!

Interesting. Although users in Philadelphia can cross the river to New Jersey to buy legal cannabis, it’s only available in Pennsylvania with a medical card. I have to wonder if these cases are coming from people who bought weed legally in a neighboring state, or is it happening with people who consumed unregulated alternatives (like Delta-8) from places like smoke shops and gas stations?

Spongebob is an odd one. He looks like a manufactured sponge, yet he’s the child of natural sea sponges. I don’t know if he himself has a genetic variant that makes him rectangular, or if he went through some sort of horrific surgery to make him that shape.

So, the goal is to make our skin rough as a leather bag?

Even black people can get sunburnt, despite having far more melanin than a pasty old man like RFK Jr. There’s no way white people can approach that level of natural skin protection, yet even the darkest skin has its limits when it comes to blocking UV. But I guess if RFK’s ilk wants to fuck around and find out, they can have at it.

As for me, I’ll keep using sunblock. And avoiding sewage wastewater. And getting my vaccinations. And taking my anti-depressants. And washing my hands…

Me: Makes a list

Also me: Checks list “I’ve got time before I absolutely have to do this one, and I don’t feel like doing it/the weather’s not right for this/I don’t have enough money for this right now.”

Later me: Never checks list again

If checking the calendar isn’t incorporated into a daily routine, it’s obviously not going to work. It’s a shame your former boss was so disconnected from the experiences of those they’re supposed to be helping.

If it weren’t for my anxiety, I’d never remember anything. That, and putting things to remind myself in places that I know I’ll look. Lately I’ve been putting my keys on a particular table, next to my medicines, so that I remember to take the medicines before leaving for work. (Note - I tend to forget my meds on weekends when I don’t go anywhere, but it works 5 out of 7 days!) Sometimes the feeling of anxiety, the thought of, “Have I forgotten anything?” compulsively makes me check my pockets and look around. Apparently I’ve worried myself enough about forgetting lunch, that the “look around” routine has started to include a fridge check every morning.

Anxiety sucks, and sometimes it amplifies my ADHD, but other times it helps fight the battle against it. I almost fear treating my anxiety, out of worry that my executive dysfunction might get worse. Ahh, the neuro-spicy life.

Indica edibles work better than any sleeping med I’ve tried. For me, it’s hard to turn my brain off, but cannabis throws my train of thought off track so well that it’s perfect to keep myself from ruminating instead of sleeping. It’s a shame it isn’t legal in more places, and a shame that my state doesn’t recognize it as a treatment for insomnia (so I can’t get a medical card/discounts for it.)

Otherwise, I’ve been prescribed hydroxyzine (brand name Vistaril) for insomnia. It’s an antihistamine, so there’s a chance of drowsiness in the morning, and sometimes I find I’m too sluggish the following day. I use it on occasion, but nothing works quite as well as the edibles I mentioned. No drowsiness in the morning, no remaining high, and I haven’t experienced any side effects.

Thankfully, a lot of YouTubers are making content to fall asleep to now. When I can’t get my mind to stop wandering, sometimes having such a video on low volume with a sleep timer does the trick. Sometimes.

Also, Inb4 someone suggests melatonin. Fuck melatonin. When I tried (just half a dose) I ended up so irritable the next day that I quarantined myself to keep from inadvertently snapping at anyone. I’ve never felt so annoyed for no reason before. I hated it.

Haha, I’ve done this, too! My brain only wants to sleep when it has shit to do I guess. Or something about napping on the couch is easier than falling asleep in the bed. Luckily for me, falling asleep is the problem, not staying asleep. So when I wake up from the couch and get up to go to the bed, I’m already sleepy enough for the trick to have worked.

At one point after Google bought YouTube, I signed into YT and was horrified to find that my username was replaced with my real name. I hadn’t been asked or alerted to a change, it was rolled out silently. I changed it back immediately, because holy shit that’s invasive. But yes, Google/YouTube forced real names (at least at that point in time.)

She compared that to a “real woman,” a subtype that she said was meant to “catapult a man.”

“We’re powerful women, we are, if we use it in the right way,” Isaak said, specifying the necessity to use that energy for men.

Instructions unclear; man stuck in tree.

But the noise! Figuring out the optimal way to zone so it’s not too noisy, polluted, and people have space to park is one of the trickier parts of the game. (But I like the challenge.)

I love the use of “trump” as a verb here. Totally stealing that.

I second this. I’m almost always too hot and realized years ago that polyester fabrics made it worse. It’s one of the reasons my ex and I used different blankets - I used a 100% cotton sheet, but he was the type of person who’s usually cold, so he used fuzzy polyester blankets. He thought my blanket was too light, while I thought his was too hot.

The struggle to avoid polyester is the hardest part. I have a significant yarn collection for all my art projects, but over the past few years I’ve been trying to avoid polyesters (to avoid contributing to microplastics.) The only polyesters I bought since then were either made of recycled materials, or were special glow-in-the-dark kinds (because I haven’t found cotton or bamboo yarn with that feature yet.)

have such hubris that they believe those averse effect only affect others

TBF there is a lot of variability in how cannabis affects different people. I’ve got a friend who had to quit because it made him extremely paranoid, to the point that he’d hallucinate. That isn’t universal by a long shot. I haven’t experienced paranoia or hallucinations, the biggest side effect I’ve experienced is sleepiness. Meanwhile my friend found it harder to sleep while high because his brain kept playing tricks on him. Very different brains, very different results.

Though I don’t doubt that plenty of people misjudge their abilities while high, just as they misjudge their abilities when drunk. But it’s important to note that it isn’t necessarily hubris that makes a person say, “Weed doesn’t do that to me.” Some of us genuinely experience different effects. You can’t truly know what’s going on in someone’s head unless you’re the one living in it.