Quick! Someone remind them to have a warrior mentality!

I feel like this would be very entertaining.

Ah, sweet! Man made horrors beyond comprehension.

Pretty sure anyone who’s ever grabbed a live wire has felt electricity. I guess you could argue you’re still only feeling what it does, but that’s like arguing you only feel what a punch in the face does…

I wouldn’t mind hearing about him falling down a flight of stairs, being bitten by a rabid bat, or getting lockjaw.

Climate change deniers.

Is climate change bad? Very bad, existentially bad. Do I want it to happen? No. Do I try to take steps to mitigate it? Yes, I put my drop in the bucket and vote for people who support policies that would help.

But we’re eyeballs deep in Brandolini’s Law at this point and by the time we get ourselves out of the quicksand, massive change will have taken its toll.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t take action, but working ourselves in to a spittle-flecked outrage everytime someone says something stupid on social media is a waste of energy when we’re already in damage control mode. The battle lines have been drawn for decades and the backlash effect is a very real phenomena.

Economics is going to win this fight before logic and debate does.

It was beautiful in the movie, but as someone who lived through that time, it feels pretty dated these days.

The new look is boring, sterile, and reeks of faux-minimalist wallet flexing. Not my thing either.

There’s got to be a happy medium between everything has extra detail and patterns and bad sci-fi set.

Don’t I know it.

My hairline is receding because my hair is marching down the back of my neck towards my ass crack.

It’s an easy way to drum up support from people who have never or rarely traveled, are already conservative, and have bought into the culture war that has been created to justify MAGA doing MAGA shit.

Yeah, there are people who will repeat the same talking points you’ve listed and even defend them with a surprising amount of anger, but they’re mostly ignorant, predjudiced dipshits confirming their biases and parroting what they’ve heard. If you’re a popular Republican and you blamed their problems on sunspots, they’d hate sunspots just as bad as they hate California.

It’s not that they hate blue states because they went there and had a bad time or because of some kind of personal history. They hate blue states because that’s what they think people in red states are supposed to do. If it someday goes out of style, they’ll quit talking about it.

Common folk, salt of the earth, you know… morons.

Does your partner make you happy?

That’s all that really matters. Define it in whatever way you’re comfortable with. Or don’t define it. You don’t owe the world an explanation.

If you’re worried about someone else questioning your relationship, you can always just reply: “I’m with [my partner] because I love them.”

Anyone who can’t accept that isn’t worth engaging in conversation on the subject anyway.

I’m a big fan of better living through pharmaceuticals, so I treat symptoms with over the counter meds as much as I can (but buy single ingredient meds rather than multi-symptom ones so you’re not getting unnecessary drugs). I start them early if I feel a cold coming on.

Relieving any cough or congestion and being able to comfortably rest goes a long way towards feeling better. Talk to a pharmacist if you’re not sure what to get, they know a lot about OTC meds as well as prescription ones.

As others have mentioned, fighting a low-grade fever is sometimes counter-productive. If I’m not feverish, I even like to soak in a hot bath to get my body temp up. If I’m running a fever, I’ll bundle up with blankets as much as is comfortable. Drink a lot of water, Gatorade, or OJ to stay hydrated and keep an eye on your temp so you can get help if the fever gets too high.

Other than that I try to sleep as much as I can.

It’s a low/no carb variety and just a pretty generic raspberry lemonade sort of flavor. Nothing to write home about.

EDIT: In general, it’s all basically just soda or diet soda with extra caffeine. You can probably find a diet drink mix like MIO or Crystal Lite that tastes the same without the cost and hype, just less caffeine. I’ll drink 'em sometimes if I want a little pick me up and I’m not feeling a coffee, but I won’t go out of my way for one because of the flavor.

I think it’s just gotten to the point that US culture has become so commodified and saturated by business that for some people, the brands they consume just become part of their identity like that, and businesses encourage it.

They advertise and merchandise as if your whole life should revolve around the car you drive, the soap you use, or the kind of overpriced cooler you prefer. Product placement saturates TV and movies, sometimes subtly and sometimes blatantly, advertising saturates every other form of media, and if you have no other exposure to culture beyond ad riddled media and the required reading from a public school system focused on standardized test scores, why wouldn’t what you consume become part of who you are?

I don’t think this necessarily reflects badly on them as human beings, it’s just part of the environment around them, and they’re adapting to what is. Couple that with a decline in third spaces, it kinda seems inevitable that some people would try and differentiate themselves from others via their grocery list.

EDIT: While I won’t condemn individuals over just this, I generally think it’s a shitty cultural trend and we’ll be far worse off if it continues. I’m rather anti-advertising in general, and I view the ad industry as utterly dishonest, morally bankrupt, and partially responsible for just about everything that’s wrong with the US these days.

Even for him.

I like him. I don’t always agree with him, but I think he’s one of the few that really gives a shit and actually walks what he talks and I deeply respect that. I value the perspective that comes with age too. But it’s time for age limits, man. It’s past time.

Grasping the idea that things don’t always make sense, and that’s it’s okay when they don’t, is like setting down a heavy load you didn’t realize you were carrying.

I had a high-school friend who got involved with violent criminal activity. He was from a lower income family, but he still had some opportunities, he just never committed to making them work. He decided crime was the best path to what he felt he deserved out of life.

He did some bad shit and died violently at a young age while trying to rob someone. He wasn’t in the right, there was nothing romantic or justified about his criminal career, and I believe that he brought his sad, early end upon himself. His choices made him a bad person in many respects.

It’s still a fucking tragedy that he died so young and I still miss the friend he was when we were in school.

No one should demand you revere these soldiers as martyrs, however, you don’t have to be a die-hard MAGA or even agree with their choice to enlist to feel bad about these people being killed, especially when it’s because of such senseless bullshit. Sympathy and empathy just work like that sometimes.

Imagine picking a lawyer based on them backing the same insane insane conspiracy theories you do rather than their legal acumen and ability to get you out of trouble…

My grandmother’s go-to cure for nausea was 7-up and orange juice. Any grandkid that wound up staying home from school got it. She swore it had to be 7-up, even though the stuff had the same ingredients as any other lemon-lime soda. Gotta wonder how much this kind of marketing played into that insistence.

I’m just glad it was OJ and not milk.

FWIW, it works okay as a nausea remedy, but my theory is that this is just because it’s got fluids, calories, and is usually palatable for someone with mild nausea.

Honestly, I respect that stance more than I respect the folks with a dozen half-assed definitions and assorted conditions on what people should or should not own.

I disagree with it, but I respect it.

Lol

At what point in this conversation have I ever pissed and moaned about the M-16 being a classic American rifle or complained about magazine capacity? At what point did I ever deny or disparage the effectiveness of the 90’s Federal ban?

And you’ll get that court about the time you get rid of Citizen’s United. But why not at least encourage lawmakers to get rid of the low hanging fruit that gives them an easy excuse to strike new gun laws down and force the lobbyists to spend more of that money to defeat it?

Or you can blame people for pointing out obvious flaws in these policies and accuse those people of arguing for standpoints they’ve never held…

Take whatever approach you think is most effective.