My dad likes Dire Straits, Clapton, The Police, Tracy Chapman, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison. I know a few more from what he’s told me later in life, but those were the casettes/CDs he had around when I was a kid.

When I was a teen I tried to introduce him to the Pixies, but he looked like I was making his ears bleed.

It was my mom that introduced me to Pink Floyd though, which is really the only musical common ground I have with my parents (although I will definitely get whiskey drunk and belt out Dire Straits on occasion, or sing along to Orbison).

Not that these are wrong, but I wonder about recency bias. Have these indicators been trending downward for 20 years, or is this just a response to our current crop of morons?

If Obama v2 was elected tomorrow, would these instantly reverse, like the international opinion seemed to when he took over from W?

Imo’s in St. Louis is my favorite overall. Thin, crispy crust, square cut, Provel as the base cheese. It scratches an itch that all other pizzas don’t. I’d eat it 7 days a week if I could, hot or cold.

I’ve had pizzas with superior ingredients, made in fancy ovens, served with wine instead of cold beer, but if I could get any pizza right now, it’d be Imo’s black olive or veggie pizza.

Another person of refinement and good taste, I see. Both gone way too early. I have been rationing Discworld since Pratchett died.

Absolutely no argument from me on that, but there is no getting away with it - once we start shooting back we’ve opened Pandora’s box. The government is dying for an excuse to get even worse.

People just want to make snarky comments about the second amendment because we’re not shooting ICE agents in the face. They don’t want to hear about the things our communities are actually doing.

My own community hasn’t been hit as hard as MN but we’ve got rapid response hotlines tracking ICE, getting people with cameras and signs on them at the blink of an eye, and resource support groups for the undocumented.

Apparently that counts as nothing to a bunch of people that probably haven’t lifted a finger against their own government despite the fact that fascism is almost certainly rising there too.

Oh, that makes more sense, but then “unsigned” void?

Okay, U8, sure, but a boolean is U0? Surely U1 if you absolutely must…

He doesn’t need to actually stop them, just make them appear illegitimate. Also, in places where Republicans are in power already, they will absolutely do this and suddenly we’re looking at a midterm where the best outcome for Democrats is losing no power instead of gaining any.

I don’t get why anyone thinks this will be consequential anymore. We already know what’s in them, Trump’s base does not care. The Supreme Court basically made Trump untouchable by the law…

I mean, I’d take some legal deus ex machina to get us out of this shit any day, but at what point are the Epstein files the distraction from the fact that Americans are being wantonly murdered by the state?

This made me laugh. This is the same shit we’ve been doing for 100 years. “Illegal orders” aren’t a thing when you use your imperial military to do imperialism. The last time we had a President that wasn’t a war criminal was never.

Admittedly, no, I just remember it being taken that way in 2020 when his age was an issue. Definitely possible the media misconstrued it, but regardless if he was acting in good faith in 2024 instead of out of ego, he would have declined to run.

So much of his last year bumbling would have been totally forgivable if he never went on the debate stage, never made the Dems run Kamala without further discussion etc.

Eh, hard to lionize Biden for this when he also overstayed his welcome and pretended to be fit to run in '24 for as long as he could. Kamala was a meh candidate, but she certainly would have had a better chance if she’d been the head of the ticket from the get go… Or, you know, Biden actually kept his promise not to seek reelection early enough that we had a real primary.

Look on my works Sim Mayor and

So traditional it’s like a Norman Rockwell painting.

I put this on expecting a trainwreck and a cash grab too, but it still had me laughing my ass off. It really felt like they understood why the originals were so funny.

Yeah, my parents are still basically the same liberal Democrats they were when I was a kid. Meanwhile I’ve gone farther left and the rest of the family mutated into a virulent strain of fascist.

Seriously. I want a personal HUD for navigation and reminders that also corrects my vision (like normal glasses), not to become a walking surveillance device / info mine.

I don’t think AOC has that baggage. Democratic voters want someone that isn’t a corpo-centrist running like being not-Trump is enough. Every argument that can be made against AOC could have been made against Obama in 2006 too, but he had a message that resonated and won. AOC could be in a good position to do something similar. I’d sure vote for her, even if she’s become more mainstream she’s still miles ahead of every other likely candidate.

I used the communicator chime for a long time, but these days I’m basically permanently in do-not-disturb. My phone only makes sound when a close contact calls, or for a timer/alarm. Anything else can wait.