Lemmy doesn’t want to hear it, but you’re correct.

Democrats want Biden to drop out because they don’t believe he can beat Trump.

To this point: for those who think that, do they think anyone else realistically could, at this point, other than Biden?

While I’m not thrilled with his chances, I will say that if he wasn’t to be the nominee, that decision needed to happen in 2021. At this point, I do believe that statistically, he’s got better odds than anyone else, so regardless of his debate or mental state, he’s our guy.

Well said on all counts.

Reddit was never perfect, but in my 12+ years there, it was never as bad as Lemmy has been the entire time I’ve been here.

Basically I’m only still active here because Reddit’s mobile app is such trash and Lemmy is more convenient to browse from a phone.

This is a good point, although maybe I’m just unlucky, but quite a few times over the years, I’ve encountered friends, and friends of friends, who were vegetarian or vegan and seemed to make a primary hobby out of shoe-horning that information into any and every conversation they could. And every time, it was very deliberately and openly presented in a way to praise themselves and demonize anyone not like them.

Not only is food very foundational, as you’ve said, but I also strongly feel that a reason this particular set of -isms is such a lightning rod is because (perhaps due in large part to that foundational aspect of food in society), it seems like vegetarianism and veganism very much becomes who someone is, as opposed to simply describing an aspect of their lifestyle.

Not only that, but it becomes a part of their Identity in a way that frequently impacts the people around them.

So someone is a Catholic. That’s cool. I’m not one and I might have my issues with the Catholic church, but unless they’re extremely devout, chances are, their Catholicism is more “how they worship” and less “who they are” in everyday interaction. It just isn’t likely to affect me, and as such I’m much less likely to really care. As such, I’m cool with Catholics. Add to that: most Catholic people aren’t painting their religious belief in superiority either overtly or implicitly these days. They’re just going to mass on Sunday and doing their thing.

On the other hand, someone is vegan. That’s also cool. I might have preferences and a lifestyle that conflicts with their views and vice versa but we can coexist, and our preferences on what to eat won’t ever lead to conflict between us, right? Well…if they’re a coworker…or a member of a friend group, now any and every time that group of people wants to eat, that foundational aspect of society, now the group must accommodate that -ism which they don’t share. And that’s probably fine for everyone in the group sometimes…and some of the group all the time…but generally speaking, looking at all of the group, all of the time, that’s statistically likely to eventually rankle at least a few people. Then, depending on the individual, there’s a very real chance that they eat with this group, some of which may already be annoyed by having their food options limited by the choices of this individual…and on top of it, that individual takes that opportunity to make a comment that invokes morality into the situation…and it should come as little surprise that this type of person gets a generalized negative reputation.

If you’d like to break the stereotype of insufferable vegans, you might consider starting that process by not being one.

Your first two plus AoE2 were my tween years.

Oh man I need to dig out my old Distillers stuff and listen to it again!

Very recently…burning out.

GW2, job, relationships, most hobbies…not even like a major depression or anything, just too much stress and frustration from too many angles, to the point that I can’t seem to generate the will to even care enough to start up the GW2 client or call a friend to hang or anything.

Still going to work and eating and stuff, but I just feel like life’s been go, go, go for months now and I’m just fucking spent. My gf has been mostly a positive force through all of it aside from a few isolated things, and that’s honestly been one of the biggest things keeping my head up through all the rest.

Hopefully, things are turning a corner here soon. A job change, getting the holidays behind me, and carving out a little time for myself…with the days as short as they’re gonna get now and starting to get longer…should give my mental state a much needed shot in the arm.

But that was way deeper than what I think you were asking…so in specific answer: just finished the Gen 3 legendary greatsword (to go into the armory alongside Bifrost, Frostfang, and Bolt) and started H.O.P.E., currently on the second chapter of the precursor and getting bogged down in the ascended mat sinks.

That’s not a cloud, it’s plasma.

Not that I recall!

The towel thing attained a new level the next year: he moved in with two of my other friends (who didn’t think to ask me instead, or even ask me about how he was to live with), and when they noticed the same behavior, they decided to test him: they put a few pieces of fruit under the other towels in his towel drawer to see how long it’d take him to get down there and find them.

The fruit rotted and was stinking up the whole apartment and attracting flies before he noticed.

Well duh.

They’re selling your data to these companies, so that they can then sell them the ad spot.

They’ll also sell them access to the analytics around the ad campaign.

I had a roommate in college who just never washed his towel (singular) all semester.

It was fucking disgusting and made the whole bathroom smell like BO, to the point that every time I needed to use the bathroom, I’d put on my trusty rubber gloves and throw it up against his door.

His argument was that he only ever used it after he showered, on his clean body, so using it to dry a clean body was effectively washing it too.

It became routine for me and the other roommate to warn him when we were bringing a girl over that if he didn’t get his towel out of the fucking bathroom, we’d exact nuclear revenge.

Ugh I would happily trade GoEs for GoBs.

Maybe not at a 1:1 rate, but I have I think 17 GoEs sitting in the bank but even the thought of WvW makes me not want to play GW2.

I know I should take advantage of this event to try to just grin and bear my way through another GoB, but WvW is just so fucking awful idk if I can do it without burning myself out on GW2 as a whole for months. Again.

Since you’ve made the distinction, what’s an ale for you?

In America, at least when I worked in the industry, stout was part of the larger category of “ale”, which compromised any and all “warm” fermenting beer styles. Basically “ale” was synonymous with “not lager” and not any specific variety.

Did they encounter 6 inches of snow in Africa?

It’s also worth noting (though Lemmy is a horrible venue for discourse on the topic) that the prevalence of firearm ownership in the US is itself a function (likely an intended one, by the framers) of 2A.

So many of the measures that could, immediately or eventually, be used either directly or as a legal springboard, to move toward gun restrictions or confiscations see immediate and stiff resistance from the GOP, gun lobby, and most importantly big chunks of the population who are fun owners, who are basically given a personal stake and being incentivized to do so.

So many of the gun control measures being proposed would be dead on arrival due to the dual truths that guns are already widespread in the country and that many such laws would make criminals out of law abiding citizens. This makes it hard or impossible for them to gain any traction whatsoever.

While I agree that the “I need my guns for when the government turns on its people next week” crowd is delusional, I also feel that it’s a chicken/egg situation: part of the reason why that’s an unreasonable threat is because guns are so ubiquitous. The government doesn’t even attempt to go down that rabbit hole partially because it’s such an impossible feat.

I also think that while yes, that doomsday scenario isn’t happening anytime soon, that it certainly could happen, after many decades of gradual change and gradual decline. And while personal gun ownership may not do much good against the government now, in the event that the course of the future took us down that dark route, personal firearms could very well do a private citizen a lot of good then in resisting any opponent, government or otherwise. But of course they wouldn’t be able to get their guns back in that scenario if they allowed them to be taken away beforehand…and prevalence of ownership and political resistance is the best and easiest insurance against all of that.

All great information, but none of it really answers the original question.

Not meaning that as an insult, but I was also wondering what point it serves to have the weapon at home but to not be allowed to have ammunition for said weapon.

It being part of the “army kit” certainly makes sense, but that only reinforces the validity of the question; if the rifle is part of the kit, surely the ammo is too. And if the ammo is part of the kit but has to stay on base, then it seems nonsensical to have the weapon stored in a different location…for the same stated reason.

While I agree with you in principle, I’m not sure the newspaper example supports your position, although it is an apt analogy.

I would imagine that the counter argument would take the form of something like, “Yes, you don’t have to read the whole paper, but you can’t just buy the comics. You buy the whole paper, get access to the whole thing, and the ads come with it. Similarly, with our web presence, in order to access everything, whether you choose to consume it all or not, the ads must come as a part of it.”

Personally, I don’t fully agree with either that argument or yours, can see the merits and flaws of both, and fall somewhere in the middle.

I’d argue that while they’re within their rights to create, distribute, bundle, and price their content as they see fit, just like the current debate with social media companies, your monitor is your own personal, privately owned platform, and you shouldn’t/can’t be forced to offer a platform to any content you don’t wish to publish (to your audience of one). So you’re perfectly within your rights to want and attempt to only view the content you wish to see, while they’re also perfectly within their rights to want and attempt to package their content in such a way that links their articles with the advertisements of their sponsors.

So at that point, it’s just an arms race between the producer doing their best to force ads onto screens and consumers doing their best to avoid same. Neither side is morally right or wrong, and while there likely is a middle ground that wild be acceptable to both parties, there’s zero good faith between the two sides which would be necessary to establish that middle ground.

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