You mean some honorable people out there.
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That's true in a trivial sense: there's no law of nature that enforces verisimilitude in any work of fiction. However, most authors aim for verisimilitude, and the good ones achieve it. I'm not talking about the top speeds of balrogs because I think there's some objective answer, but rather because I think that Tolkein does achieve verisimilitude (at least in some regards) and therefore there is a foundation for discussing the traits of his fictional beings. He easily could have given balrogs rocket skates, but he didn't.
societies have utilized shame in order to shun unwanted or undesirable opinions forever
Using shame isn't new. Using shame in this particular way at this particular time appears to be a poor strategy. It's deliberately divisive and conservative reactionaries aren't the only ones who are motivated to vote against it. By now many people who call themselves liberal and have a history of reliably voting for Democrats oppose it too. I think Nate Silver does a good job of expressing why in the context of Israel, although he's looking at a much bigger picture. Most of these people are still voting for Democrats, because Harris is a centrist and Trump is, well, Trump. It's still not helping.
Lemmy is a place where it often seems like leftist views are almost universal among Democrats, but Lemmy is not representative of the large majority of Democratic voters. I don't think most Harris voters (as opposed to just the vocal Democrats online) despise Republicans.
The balrog in Moria was chasing the fellowship. If it could move at 400 mph (by any means) then it would have caught them immediately. We know that some balrogs are weaker than others since it is said that Gothmog was the mightiest. My conclusion is that if the balrogs literally flew by mundane means to Melkor's aid, then the balrog in Moria was particularly weak (and cowardly) and did not participate in rescuing Melkor. I presume that's also why it hid deep underground for so long rather than fighting and being banished along with the other balrogs.
With that said, I think Melkor summoned the balrogs to himself by magical means (but they can't teleport on their own). None of them could go 400 mph. That's just silly. They're not Sonic the Hedgehog. I also think that balrogs can't fly. The word "wings" is a metaphor for the way flames spread from them.
(I don't claim that the text rules out the possibility of wings and flight. The balrog might have fallen with Gandalf because they fought a metaphysical battle, dragged down by the "weight of its sin".)
Edit: I think we actually agree. I'm just elaborating.
Edit 2: I found a picture that shows what I think a balrog's "wings" look like.
In 2364 they have invented new ways of sitting that are far more advanced than any which exist today.
That always sounded like a huge pain in the ass to me.
She's a doctor so it was even more of a huge pain than usual for her, both times.
I knew a guy who had his wife’s name tattooed in huge letters on his neck.
If he gets divorced, Facebook can give him a list of all the other people with that same name.
The time I got married, I asked my wife not to change her last name because the women in my family don't. (Even if they did, I think I would still find it off-putting. It's my last name. You have your own last name.) She insisted on changing it regardless of what I wanted, and that was the "red flag"...
The joke is on her. She had to go through the trouble of changing it back after the divorce :)
The answer does say
The reason isn’t some special string of A’s, G’s, T’s or C’s found in dad’s DNA.
It's true that two same-sex parents of either sex have the basic genetic information to create a female child (a male child needs at least one male parent) but the natural process of embryo development is a big deal!
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So, uh, is the spider hotter in person? Because the picture isn't doing it for me.
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel.
You don't have to go to a specialist to get antidepressants; many GPs will prescribe them if you ask. I also see a lot of online clinics offering prescriptions without an in-person appointment, but I don't have personal experience with that. The standard antidepressants are fairly safe and I wouldn't be too worried about side effects to take them without a psychiatrist's supervision. Nothing except antidepressants worked to end my depressive episodes, as opposed to making them easier to bear.
Other than that, what helped me most was realizing that I couldn't trust my own thoughts. It's hard, because generally "X is true" and "I think X is true" are subjectively the same thing. When I went through periods of depression, I sincerely believed that I had never been happy and that my depression would never end, but as a matter of fact I had been happy (or at least reasonably content) for most of my life and prior episodes of depression had ended. Being able to realize that I had actually been happy and probably would be again, despite what felt true in that moment, made depression much more bearable.
Another key intervention for me was moving closer to my family. It felt like a huge defeat (here I was, an adult who couldn't handle living on his own) but I told myself "plan based on who you are, not who you wish you were". Having supportive people around helped a lot; when I'm depressed I don't want to be around other people but that is actually the wrong strategy. "I just want to be alone" is one of those thoughts that I shouldn't trust.
Finally, a really useful mental strategy is to consider what advice you would give to a good friend in a situation similar to your own, and then to act on that advice yourself. My depression was accompanied by a great deal of self-loathing but that loathing didn't extend to my friends (even my imaginary friends). I found that I often knew exactly what advice I would give a friend, and it wasn't to do what I had been planning to do.
I think the proposed approach would be perceived as defeatism. Voters would see one candidate saying "the problem is too big to solve" and the other candidate offering solutions. It doesn't help that Democratic policy is what has been making the "problem" bigger recently.
I also think that restricting immigration (especially illegal immigration) is not inherently fascist.
You simply can’t make the full case against Trump—or a compelling illustration of his fascist tendencies—without talking about immigration.
The Democrats' approach to immigration is genuinely unpopular, even with many people who are going to vote for Harris anyway. I think a strong case for Trump as an enemy of democracy can be made without talking about immigration, but if you (the general you) can't do that then it's probably better not to say anything at all unless you want to help him.
I oppose letting anyone define hate speech as a matter of principle, because even if I agree with the definition completely now, I may not continue to agree with the definition in the future. Look at what has been happening in the USA since the October 7 attack: a lot of people I had considered my political allies turned out to have beliefs I consider to be hateful, and meanwhile these people consider my own beliefs hateful. The solution is not to empower a single central authority to decide which sort of hate is allowed. It is (as it has always been) to maintain the principle of free speech.
I'm a little surprised to hear people so willing to let the government of Ireland determine who they are allowed to hate and for what reasons.
even many American Jewish people don’t like Netanyahu
The may not like Netanyahu but they're quite alarmed by what they see on the left side of the Democratic party. If they're concerned that Harris will be influenced by the left, either due to personal sympathy or political considerations, then Trump does have some appeal since he's making it quite clear that he's definitely not like that.
I don't think it's unreasonable that certain social reasons should be allowed to affect a person's choice regarding euthanasia. Love can't be brought, it can't be replaced by things that money can buy, and its presence or absence can be critical for a person experiencing intense suffering.
With that said, housing security is generally a thing that money can buy. There are people so severely mentally ill that housing cannot be bought for them through normal means, but I question whether these people have the capacity to consent to euthanasia. There are also people who express a concern over housing but whose circumstances would motivate them to seek euthanasia even if secure housing were provided for them, but I'm not confident that doctors can identify them accurately.
I hope that findings like these lead to improvement in the way that people seeking euthanasia are treated rather than a backlash against permitting euthanasia.
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What I read was that it's about 200mg per kg, so for a 70kg human that works out to 14 grams. That actually sounds remarkably high (14 grams is a lot). Did I mess up somewhere?
Googling this is unreliable because Microsoft keeps patching out ways to do it. I couldn't get what I read online to work when I got my Windows 11 laptop back in May, but what did work was using the keyboard button that turns on airplane mode.
I get why Microsoft (acting in its own best interest) wants to discourage offline accounts but trying to ban them completely is ridiculous (especially since Windows 11 works just fine with the offline account). I think I would have returned the laptop out of spite if I couldn't get an offline account to work, but I'm probably much more spiteful than most people.
I think you know much more about the legendarium than I do, but I want to nitpick one point:
I think I should have phrased what I said differently. No balrog was weak or cowardly in an absolute sense. Durin's Bane attacked and defeated all the dwarves of Khazad Dum at the height of their power. It wasn't initially afraid of Gandalf. However, Ungoliant was another matter. She had consumed the light of the Two Trees and overcome Melkor himself. She might also have been capable of doing something far worse to a Maia than destroying its body and banishing its spirit. I think that though the balrogs were able to drive her away, their victory was not inevitable and I can imagine even a balrog faltering when called to face such a foe.