Yeah, but lederhosen are just kind of neat. Who doesn’t like their men in short leather shorts, right? (Seriously though, the construction for very traditional lederhosen is kind of neat. I’ve tried it, and it’s a challenge without being able to skive all your seams.)

I wonder how much of the ‘lazy Mexican’ stereotype comes from a combination of an afternoon siesta (…to avoid the hottest part of the day, which could be deadly prior to air conditioning), and the chronic anemia that could be caused by hookworm infestations that used to be common in areas with poor sanitation (incl. the American south; some of the same stereotypes existed regarding rural southerners for many decades)?

The democrats had FIFTY YEARS to codify roe v Wade but cynically fundraised off it instead.

There is literally no way to do that without a constitutional amendment, and we haven’t been able to get the constitution amended in, what?, over fifty years? And as court cases in states that have passed constitutional amendments has shown, even a constitutional amendment is not sufficient to prevent litigation to unwind the intent of the law. Literally any law that congress could possibly pass to make Roe v. Wade the law* could be overturned by SCOTUS, and Republicans have been working strategically for decades now to build courts that are favorable to overturning laws that they don’t like.

And, BTW, Roe v. Wade was not the law of the land; Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992) was the standard that allowed states to really harshly regulate abortions, particularly when you had courts that were only looking at very narrow issues directly in front of them, rather than intents and realistic outcomes. If PP v. Casey had never happened 30 years ago, then we never would have seen SCOTUS tossing the whole issue back to the states (temporarily, anyways, because I expect the current congress to attempt a nationwide ban).

Yes, both Republicans and Democrats are exactly the same, except that one of the two parties wants to have a version of Christianity be the state-sponsored religion, not allow women to have rights to their own body, eliminate all regulations on corporations, destroy environmental protections of every kind, eliminate all rights for LGBTQ+ people, eliminate marriage equality across the board (incl. Loving v. VA!), prevent workers from unionizing or otherwise eliminating the rights of labor, ban books and criminally punish media sources that don’t align with their beliefs, eliminate progressive income taxation in favor of regressive sales taxes and tariffs, prevent people from protesting peacefully for the regress of grievances… But you know, other than those minor points, sure, they’re exactly the same.

Do I love Democrats? No, absolutely not. I think that they should be quite a bit more forceful in pushing things that genuinely benefit the majority of people in the US, I think they should be working strongly against regulatory capture, and against the entrenched interests of major businesses that are harmful to the people, and I’m ashamed that they are largely not willing to condemn Israel for the overt genocide against the Palestinian people while also wanting to punish people that have advocated for Palestinians. (And as far as the last one goes, there are a lot of reasons that establishment Dems are unwilling to work against Israel; for most Republicans, that particular issue boils down to religion, specifically an evangelical belief that a Jewish state must exist in order for Christ to return.)

…But anyone who says that "Republicans and Democrats are the same" is, at best, disingenuous, and at worst actively and intentionally lying.

People on the left in the west have plenty of platforms; they just don’t see the kinds of engagement that other ideologies do. To paraphrase, the right looks for coverts, the left looks for traitors. People on the left in the west are honestly their own worst enemy; they do a bang-up job at gate-keeping and pushing people away over minor ideological differences, and that drives engagement down.

TikTok does not have to answer to the US

Correct. But it does answer to China. And that’s a problem. Independent social media isn’t a problem; social media under the direct authority of a hostile authoritarian gov’t is.

Not leftist; pro-China. There’s some pretty clear indications that TikTok suppresses posts critical of China and China’s interests–despite those topics generating high engagement–while not suppressing information, say, critical of the US. They’re clearly acting as an agent of the Chinese gov’t.

No worries, 's all good. :)

‘They play stupid games, they are getting stupid awards … I have only begun … and won’t stop. I had a vision to destroy them from the angel of Moroni.’

100% guarantee that he’s Mormon, and likely some version of a Mormon fundamentalist (…as if regular Mormonism wasn’t crazy enough). “Angel of Moroni” is a dead giveaway.

20th, not 19th. The first mention of the dish by that name is from just after WWII.

Dismissing without prejudice allows charges to be filed at a later date. Kinda like Smith had done with Trump’s criminal cases.

Trump constantly rails against librul cities (he seems to especially hate Chicago for some reason); my gut feeling is that he would want to have the mayor of NYC in his pocket. Having charges dismissed–particularly if it was done without prejudice–would mean that he would effectively own Adams.

Propaganda goes both ways.

Ex.: guns cause violence. It’s a classic Dem. talking point. (And highly ironic that they say, “no one needs a gun, just call the cops!” out of one side of their mouth, and “police are the oppressors of the working class and are the enforcers of systemic racism!” out of the other.) And yet we’ve just seen two terrorist incidents in the past week and a half that involved cars. Do rental trucks cause violence, maybe? I know I would be filled with rage if I was forced to drive a vehicle made by Musk’s company…

p.s. - LGBTQ+ and nonwhite gun ownership rates are increasing, and I am so there for it.

He’s currently kissing Trump’s ass; expect to see fed. prosecutors file to have the case dismissed sometime after 20 Jan.

Neither was the SR-71. Both programs had a very limited mission, which is why neither was ever produced in quantity.

As far as I can tell, that is not correct.

You absolutely can. But you’ll have to buy them at the ticketing counter, and they will likely by 2-3x as expensive as they would have been otherwise.

Ticktmaster has gone to that kind of rolling QR code; a printed screenshot of your ticket no longer works, and you have to use a clean installation of Chrome/Edge with no VPN to buy tickets -or- their app (which won’t work if it’s sandboxed or routed through a VPN). Hence the reason that I drive the hour+ to get to the ticket box office to buy tickets with cash now.

Fuck, I’m so glad i’ve quit flying… If i ever go overseas, i’m going to hire a berth on a cargo ship.

I think that you’re thinking i2p torrent. It’s not necessarily encrypted, but it’s extremely difficult to trace.

(I’ve never managed to make i2p work for some reason. I assume I’m fucking up somewhere, but I don’t know where.)

The latter is what actually happened to air traffic controllers under Reagan. Reagan saw all of the strikers fired, and used military (?) ATCs until the airports hired new ones. I would not be surprised if the same tactics were used to break any strike by ‘essential’ workers. Longshoreman strike? Fire 'em all, use active-duty military to replace them, the hire new, lower-paid ones, and automate (longshoremen unions are threatening to strike over attempts to automate large parts of their job).