As for the suicide attempt, that’s something incredibly heavy for anyone.
The irony is that some of the people I had mistakenly believed were friends were (are, I believe) in an anti-suicide advocacy group. I guess it was easier for them to say the right things than to do the right things. 🤷 Lessons learned, etc.
I wonder where the cool emotionally available people all are?
I met some when I was a member of The Satanic Temple. And then Lucien Greaves/Doug Mesner went full-on authoritarian, I bailed because I'd already escaped from one cult, and the people I knew stayed. Now I'm the out-group, rather than a friend, because group/social identity is harder to let go of than individual friendships. I met some when I was in art school; hopefully the world hasn't beaten that tendency out of them yet.
I suck at making friends
I hear you. It's hard to make plans with anyone now; no one seems to follow through. And without spending time with people, you can't build those bonds of friendship.
My divorce was nine years ago. I got remarried a whopping five days after my divorce (...because that was the statutory minimum time; my ex-spouse had dragged their feet so long with a divorce they initiated that I'd had three serious relationships, met someone, gotten proposed to, and was ready to get married before the divorce was complete). I can say without reservation that my current partner is leaps and bounds better than my ex-partner. I've long ago accepted that many people that said they were friends were not friends, even if it still sticks in my throat. In the time since my divorce, I've lost an average of 1.1 cats per year, and it never gets easy to hold someone that's been a friend and companion for over a decade as they take their last breath.
Am I okay? I'm as okay as I ever get. I've been through therapy multiple times, and I'd probably still go to therapy if insurance was affordable.
Do I have friends? Not really. If I make plans with people too far in advance, they forget and make other commitments. If I try to make plans too late, they're already booked. It's possible that I'm simply unlikeable; I tend to lean that way.
My only point was that, anecdotally, this is the experience that a lot of men have when they try to be emotionally vulnerable and honest with their male friends. Perhaps Gen Z isn't getting this kind of shit; maybe they're able to be more emotional. I kind of doubt it though, because young Gen Z men are trending far more conservative than Millennials, and conservatism isn't friendly towards emotional intimacy among men. I hope that they do better than my generation did.
It also opens buds to help you if they’re up for it.
My experience has been that being emotionally open tends to make people withdraw. Should it be that way? Of course not. Should I get better friends? Yeah, that would be cool, and I wish that was as easy to do as it is to say. I've found that many relationships and friendships end up being somewhat transactional; people are there for the good times, but aren't interested in the emotional labor when shit gets real. I try to be there for people when they're going through shit, but that doesn't seem to be reciprocated.
If I sound bitter, well, I am. And cynical.
A lot of people I had thought were friends ghosted me when I failed to complete suicide and had a 72 hour hold. My ex-spouse held me in utter contempt because I was struggling emotionally. A lot of people I had known for a decade or more ghosted me when my ex-spouse and I were getting divorced; in fact, I only got to keep one friend in that divorce.
I suspect that this is part of the experience of being on the autism spectrum.
What am I supposed to do? "Oh, hey, yeah, so, I just held my cat in my arms as he died. I had to euthanize him because he was had congestive heart failure, and was slowly drowning from pulmonary edema. I miss him so much, and I want to believe that he's in a better place, but he's just dead and gone, and I'm never gonna see him again. All I've got are memories, and they're going to fade with time until one day I realize that I haven't thought about him in years. But yo, how are you doin'? Any big plans for the weekend?"
You get up, and keep doing the shit you have to do, because it needs to get done. Telling people you're really depressed tends to make them feel really awkward, they don't know what to say, and then they gradually start ghosting you. Shit sucks, but you put a happy face on because no one wants to know that you aren't happy.
Here's one source on immigrations, although the numbers are slipping as the cases of illegal and wrongful deportations continue to make headlines. Even with that, Americans are fairly even split. Here's a solid source on transgender policy; while some things that are positive for transgender people have broad support, some things that are unequivocally bad--like preventing minors from accessing gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers, bathroom bills, etc.--have net +10 and greater support. (+31 on only allowing people to play sports that correspond to the gender they were assigned to at birth means that it's about a 65/35 split, with 65% in favor of preventing transwomen from participating in womens' sports.)
I'm really tired of voting for better candidates that are in favor of reproductive rights, and LGBTQ+ rights, that want religion out of politics, that support genuinely free speech, and then also want to eliminate 2A rights. We're already seeing what 75 years of libs and progressives working to disarm themselves has done, and the result is that ICE agents aren't getting gunned down in the streets when they're kidnapping people, and the fash are free to do whatever the fuck they want with zero fear of consequences.
Most people are for gun control
There's a big problem with that.
Right now, the majority of people in the US are in favor of deporting all undocumented immigrants. Right now, the overwhelming majority of people are opposed to transgender rights (e.g., using bathrooms that correspond to their gender, participating in sports, having access to gender-affirming care, and so on). Going back to the late 80s/early 90s, most people would not have believed that Satanists had the right to free exercise of their religion (and many people still don't today). If you go back 75 years, the majority of the country believed that 'separate but equal' was entirely reasonable; sure, let those negroes have rights, but letting them live in our neighborhoods, go to our schools, get married to our women...? Absolutely not!
This is what is referred to as "the tyranny of the majority".
The whole purpose of the bill of rights is that they are RIGHTS, and not intended to be something that is up for a popular vote. All gun control is intended to prevent people from exercising their right to keep and bear arms.
I agree with the older Dems, but not for their reasons.
No, we should not support the candidates that Hogg supports. Because Hogg is very opposed to 2A rights, and ipso facto any candidate that he supports will also be opposed to 2A rights. And if you think that we're gonna just vote our way out of this, I've got some very, very bad news for you.
Primary the old fucks with young leftists (hopefully ones that actually understand economics and tax policy)? Absolutely! Primary them with ones that ideologically aligned with Hogg? No.
A coworker that got pissed when things didn't work and threw them across the shop floor was getting fired. He was getting fired mostly because the owner of the company--hereafter referred to as Asshole Boss--was a dick, and the coworker scared him. (Note that the coworker was never violent towards people. Just machines.) Anyway, the Asshole Boss got a bunch of cops there on the day that he was gonna fire him, but the employee heard what was going to happen and just... Didn't show up.
This is the same Asshole Boss that fired me maybe a year, year and a half later. He fired me because I had a 'bad attitude' because my partner of ten years had said that they wanted a divorce two days earlier. I got driven straight to the hospital and checked in after telling my supervisor that I was going home to commit suicide. Yeah, the suicide part didn't work out after all. (The divorce was ugly; they tried to bankrupt me and saddle me with all of their debt.)
...But it all ended well. Asshole Boss fired the management team that was making the whole business work in a fit of pique; the management team got some funds together and started a company that was in direct competition with Asshole Boss. I ended up being their first hire. Asshole Boss ran his business into the ground in less than a year and a half, and the company the management team started is growing and expanding a decade later.
Permanently Deleted
Related to this - all fabrics used by the military need to be both Berry-amendment compliant, and NIR compliant. What that means is that, first, they need to be made in the USA (because you don't want to outsource military equipment if you end up going to war with the country that makes shit for you), and second, it needs to not show up like a sore thumb under infrared light, A lot of fabrics and dyes will show up as hot spots under IR, which means that they show up great with night vision. NIR-compliant fabrics will still appear camouflaged under IR.
That's why those nylon-cotton blend Crytek combat pants are something like $450, when the Chinese knock-offs made in poly-cotton are about $70.
They're eggs taht have blue-tinted shells. Really. AFAIK, aside from the color, there's no real difference between them and brown or white eggs, if the chickens laying the eggs are treated equally. Free range & cage-free eggs, particularly with small flocks that aren't just eating chicken feed (e.g., they're also foraging) should have a slightly better nutrition profile. People with more discriminating palates than I have say that the yolks have a more orange color, and a better flavor.
Sadly, I have no way to import a KMR L--02 Orca OR, since the ATF makes it such a pain in the ass to import onsey-twosey, and the tariffs mean that if they ever get a US distributor, it's going to be out of my price range.
But I did get a CZ Shadow 2 Compact a week ago, and that's going to be my carry and competition gun for however long these tariffs last.
I'm going to have to get a few pounds of powder, primers, and a few thousand bullets (the projectile part), because all of that is going in increase in costs, too. I was quoted a price of $315 or so for 8# of Vihtavouri N-135 powder; I'll probably try to get 16-24#, 15,000 small rifle primers, and at least 8-12# of Ramshot Silhouette powder. About half of the raw materials to make bullets--lead, copper, brass, nitrocellulose, etc.--end up being imported, because we simply can't keep up or don't have the mines.
I spent $7/dozen on cage-free, free-range blue eggs a few days ago. They were delicious on my gyudon.
Stoning for being gay is mentioned all over the bible...? There's a mistranslated part in the old testament that says that it's an 'abomination', but textual analysis indicates that it was a condemnation of pederasty--which was common among the Greeks at the time--rather than a condemnation of being gay. Paul def. had a problem with gay people, but that appears to be a revulsion with Roman practices and customs, rather than anything strictly religious. Jesus said nothing about it directly. On the other hand, Jesus DID say that you should gouge your eyes out rather than look at a woman in lust, and yet, evangelicals elected an unrepentant, thrice married, multiple-adulterer as president.
For starters, you actually join the League of Nations you proposed at the end of WW1.
...Which doesn't address the issue. How, EXACTLY, do you enforce anything without the willingness to use force? Have you seen NATO Peacekeepers? They rarely--if ever--use force, and as a result they are almost entirely ineffective at preventing shit.
Open borders, international business ties, and populations with international relations deaden the enthusiasm for interstate military conflicts in between neighboring states.
Tends to, but the accords that ended WWI required Germany to pay absolutely ruinous reparations; even with open borders, international business ties, etc., the economic depression caused by that treaty would have laid the foundation for WWII. Moreover, I note that both the US and the EU had fairly solid trade ties with Russia prior to their invasion of Crimea, and that has done pretty much fuck-all to temper Putin's imperial ambitions.
So, again: how do you enforce ANYTHING without being willing to use force?
Arguably, the biggest deterrent to a Chinese naval invasion of Taiwan
Do you really believe that? Or is it maybe that the US always has a naval detachment close by, and has pledged to use military force to ensure that Taiwan remains free? Because China has certainly been ratcheting up their insistence that Taiwan is theirs, and that they intend to take it.
Christians have already de facto decided that parts of the bible aren't a good basis for laws; otherwise, we wouldn't have laws allowing someone to declare bankruptcy. As far as I can tell, most countries that are majority Muslim allow for bankruptcy procedures when a person or business is insolvent and will be unable to pay their debts. Israel also has bankruptcy laws that dissolve debts.
The number of countries where a debtor must pay back every single farthing they owe, regardless of solvency or ability to pay, and the debt passes on to heirs, is vanishingly small.
And how, exactly, do you enforce the accords--the accords and reparations that directly led to WWII--without the use of military force?
People want to be safe
I think that, in order to make it work, you also need to have a national single-payer healthcare system so that when someone does get infected with an STI, they can get treatment without breaking their bank account. But you also need to ensure that they aren't unable to pay their expenses during a course of treatment, and you certainly don't want prostitutes infected with HIV working until their viral load is so low that they're effectively unable to infect other people. (And yes, free PREP would help, but given that a number of sex workers are prostituting themselves in exchange for drugs, I don't think that worrying about exposure to HIV or getting PREP is very high on their priority list.)
I do think that a bare minimum would be for cops to have to take reports of sexual assault against prostitutes seriously. ...Which would require major criminal justice reform...
I dunno, bourbon is nice too. And it has the benefit of usually being a lot less expensive than a Caol Ila, Bunnahabhain, Ardbeg, or Lagavulin. Rye whiskey is another one.
But Jack Daniels can fuck right off.