I loved it when my dad held my hand.

I’m nearly 30 now, and our political and religious views are (as an understatement) wildly different in most respects. But I still love my dad, and I would do damn near anything for him. Because he did damn near anything for me.

Trying to get PulseAudio to behave, and trying to figure out how to roll back Bluez and Blueman.

Piratebay.

I mean, you’re not alone. I got so fed up with ads because it was always junk I needed but couldn’t afford, or shit I already knew existed and had otherwise already acquired with satisfactory results. Not to mention ads following me around. I hated being haunted by a pair of sneakers across four websites.

It’s not paranoia if you’re right, dammit.

Eh. In my experience, DeWalt tends to have more power and punch, and the batteries last longer. Makita’s impact drivers (at least the ones my company got) really just never had the torque to tighten bolts down to the right NM or ft/lb. I needed. They’ll do, I’d rather use an impact driver than nothing. But if I get to pick, I’ll pick a DeWalt.

Hey, you know, maybe he got the good ending. It was pretty strongly implied he was adopted by the firefighter reincarnation of King Agamemnon/Sean Connery.

I don’t.

Money can’t buy morals or ethics. If I hate the company, guarantee you I won’t be there in six months, let alone five years.

Maybe other people can. I can’t. Inevitably, I get into some kind of spat with a boss or a manager over morals, ethics, or how we’re being treated. Or how I’m being treated. And they make up a reason to fire me, or I get so mad that I quit.

Insert funny porn joke.

But in all seriousness? A fully immersive, 100% realistic Dungeons and Dragons game with my friends. Exactly the same as we would run it at our table. We’d hop down to the replicators and holo-disguise generators and make ourselves up like our characters, and I’d just follow them around in a spooky mysterious robe and narrate the story.

That’s it. I would run the best D&D game ever, the game of a lifetime, for my best friends.

A one-state solution with a robust diplomatic and internal affairs structure to support claims of hostility and bigotry, run by a nonpartisan and multiethnic Arab-Israeli human rights coalition. Dismantle the Gaza wall and blockade, and integrate Hamas as a political party (if the Likud are fine, then the Knesset has no god damn excuse.) Maintain a UN-managed board of human rights as counsel and a referee in matters concerning integration. Review the arrest of every political prisoner in Israel, and release nonviolent offenders. Extend a formal apology to conscientious objectors. Revoke the mandatory IDF draft policy and switch to volunteer primacy. Take every step and every measure to ensure that Palestinians ARE, IN EVERY WAY, equal in a state that is no longer an ethnocracy. REBUILD GAZA, with Gazans in charge, starting with homes and hospitals.

Furthermore, extend right of return to Palestinians, irrevocably and in perpetuity.

Because they fucking stole it from me! I’ll be damned if I let a machine–intelligent or not–force me into changing the way I, an individual, choose to express myself in my own language!

Depends on the place and the people around.

Pride? 0, easy.

Anti-Trump protest? On my side of the line, easy 2-3.

Need help at the grocery store? Eh. 4. If it ain’t that important, it ain’t that important.

Texas? Inside Austin, 7.

Outside of Austin? 10.

Big sea of red hats like it was a sea of red armbands in Berlin? Fuck that.

I might just be a massive god damn nerd, but I would rather build my own with an old Pixel, a printer, and a Pi. If I can’t be up to my elbows in its guts, from board to code, then it isn’t mine.

Right? AI-generated pictures of Scarlett Johansen as a flight attendant praising Jesus, or an African kid making sculptures of Jesus out of trash. And all the comments just being ‘Amen’ spam. Bots on top of bots. It’s just fucking dystopian.

Not maintaining artificial connections with people who would reach out to me if they actually gave a damn about me has genuinely been liberating.

I like how Discord- and Slack-like socials are set up. It’s just more natural. Instead of a feed, it’s a forum. It feels more like a physical place, with couches for discussion, corners of the room where people take conversation, and a hall outside for privacy. And if you understood that metaphor, then you know how I feel.

And if I don’t like a server, I can just… leave. Never have to run into them again, but still have access to friends. No holes in the conversation where an obvious block or ignore leaves gaps.

This is true. While I appreciate Al Jazeera’s coverage of Gaza, at the end of the day, they’re a mouthpiece for an autocracy. And their primary media contrast is, well, other mouthpieces for other autocracies.

I hate watching the news. It’s terrorist empires and wannabe empires having pissing contests with each other.

It’s 50+ countries in a trenchcoat. Pan-Americanism, in the US context, is laughable at best and absolutely a shambling nightmare at worst. There’s several reasons why our government sucks. But the sheer size of this fucking empire is the top of the list.

Before the end of the century, it’s going to Balkanize hard.

Having to explain how you ended up in a death camp in El Salvador when you came to visit legally as a tourist.

So… a nation and a religion that was defined by its thousand-year exile by an evil empire forces another nation into a thousand-year exile as the acting hand of another evil empire.

Please understand that this is, on every conceivable level, insanely fucked up and flies in the face of both reason and morality.

The best solution would be to have an integrated, secular government and plans for reparation, return, and reconciliation.

Oh, take my damn upvote you punny bastard. 😂

Ditto what the others said. You might have just rolled bad RNG (DNA) at character creation (birth) and just gotten stuck with immunity to certain painkillers. It happens. Bad luck, friend.