I hate to be a downer, but…

Building, running and maintaining a website isn’t free. Building, running and maintaining a popular website is fucking expensive. Somebody’s got to pay those bills.

As the saying goes, if it’s free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product. Corollary, if it’s not free, you still might be the product.

Furthermore, these days I would assume that 99.9% of profiles on a “free” dating site are scammers, or bots, or scammer bots, many of which are probably run by the people running the website.

And to double down on the downerism, subscription based dating sites/apps are financially motivated to keep you paying for as long as possible. They are not motivated to help you find a match, cancel your subscription, and live happily ever after.

In an attempt to not be a total downer jerk, my suggestion would be to find local meetup groups that interest you (even if just barely) and start going to those consistently.

That’s how I met my spouse almost 14 years ago. We were both on the dating apps but not finding each other. Eventually we met through a meetup group that I ran, and after months of casually chatting occasionally at group meetings, sparks spontaneously started flying. 🤷

The research concludes that policymakers need to better explain the purposes of environmental legislation in culturally sensitive ways

I am so sick of the willfully ignorant expecting society to repeatedly bend over backwards to slowly drag them out of the dark ages without hurting their feelings. Fuck!

The community is more highly affected by poverty,

Durable reusable utensils are wayyyy cheaper in the long run than disposable. So, bullshit. Poverty has absolutely nothing to do with this.

and families are often large, making affordable disposable kitchenware useful in easing the heavy burden of housework.

Wut? With that many people you can very efficiently distribute the work load and get things done a lot faster than one person living alone can do the equivalent amount of housework. So, again, utter bullshit.

This just sounds like self-righteous laziness.

Even fucking goldfish remember what he’s done.

And that’s saying something.

Down 3.79% today, but that might be due to a report of another month of falling sales in Europe.

I don’t suppose anyone here has a link to a high(ish) resolution version of it? Asking for a friend.

until I saw the picture of him in the polka-dot with the stupid fucking hat

Who hurt you?

There’s even an official manual for those interested in joining the fight.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26184

“Simple Sabotage Field Manual” by United States. Office of Strategic Services is a historical publication written during the early 1940s, amid World War II. This manual acts as a guide for ordinary civilians to conduct simple acts of sabotage against enemy operations without the need for specialized training or equipment. Its main topic revolves around promoting small, accessible forms of resistance that could collectively disrupt the enemy’s war effort. The manual outlines various strategies and techniques for citizens to engage in sabotage that could be executed discreetly and with minimal risk. It provides specific suggestions for targeting transportation, communication, and industrial facilities to create delays and inefficiencies in enemy operations. The manual emphasizes the power of many individuals acting independently to contribute to a larger campaign of disruption, encouraging simple acts such as misplacing tools, delaying communication, or damaging equipment with household items. Overall, the “Simple Sabotage Field Manual” serves as a unique historical artifact that illustrates grassroots resistance efforts and the belief in the collective power of ordinary people during wartime.

the sewer system definitely can not handle neither either of those.

Wait. You’re saying that sheep aren’t plants?

However, searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo found no news media outlets credibly reporting that West Point cadets organized to refuse to shake Trump’s hand. We were unable to locate any evidence to confirm or disprove the rumor about a planned handshake refusal, as of this writing, and as a result we have not rated the claim.

Before they’re charged, the brothers must be extradited from Romania. That won’t happen until a criminal case there is settled.

They’d somehow have to escape from where they’re being held in Romania and get to the US before that would do them any good.

20 years for 299 victims. That’s just over three weeks per victim.

Although…

Le Scouarnec, 74, has been dubbed France’s most prolific paedophile. He is already in jail after being sentenced in 2020 to 15 years for raping and sexually assaulting four children, including two of his nieces.

He’ll probably die in jail, so … there’s that.

Future queen I guess means she is a princess. Just say that.

“Future queen” is more specific than “princess.”

They call her Princess Elisabeth repeatedly in the article, but she’s not just “a princess.”

The princess is heir to the Belgian throne, as the eldest of four children born to King Philippe and Queen Mathilde.

Her siblings are also a princess and two princes, but she’s the eldest, and thus the only one that can currently be called “future queen.”

That’s not very typical.

gonna get me in trouble.

Use your head and make good trouble.

a typically male-dominated and controversial Mexican music genre that’s soared into the spotlight in recent years.

The male-dominated part seems to make this an excellent choice considering the subject of her song. Not being familiar with it though, I wondered what makes it controversial. If anyone else is curious about that part…

Quintana’s new music goes further. She uses “corridos,” a type of northern Mexican ballads that has seen both an international renaissance and a backlash, with critics claiming that “narco corridos” — songs that glorify cartel violence and use misogynistic lyrics – have dominated the form.

The topic has grown so heated that the United States even revoked the visas of members of one band who projected the face of a drug cartel boss onto a large screen during a performance.

Instead of banning the corridos as a growing number of Mexican states have done, the country’s first woman president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has proposed that the government promote a new style of corridos that avoid glorifying violence and discrimination against women.

“We’re not banning a musical genre; that would be absurd,” Sheinbaum said recently. “What we’re proposing is that the lyrics not glorify drugs, violence, violence against women or viewing women as a sexual object.”

You’re thinking of London bridges. 🥁 (I’ll see myself out).

a bumper sticker that says, “Have the day you voted for,”

Want!