Ah, I see how it could be read that way. I was agreeing, trying to back you up. I could’ve been clearer. Apologies.

“That’s not really the same at all” is a very confusing way to agree. My bad.

Yeah, I’m not saying Hegseth is trans. But “That’s gender-affirming!” is not the gotcha people think it is unless you fundamentally have a problem with affirming gender. It turns “gender-affirming” into an insult that is okay to use against people you don’t like, similar to declaring all homophobes to be closet-cases. Both perpetuate the specific type of hatred that the speaker is supposedly opposing.

Not saying it’s the exact same thing, but it’s similar.

It’s in the same vein as people lashing out at Hegseth for wanting to give testosterone to troops that want it with, “That’s gender-affirming care!”

Like… yeah? So? Do we not want gender-affirming care to be available to people?

Queen of the Damned was an abysmal movie with a surpassing solid soundtrack with some of the biggest names in music at the time collaborating.

Jonathan Davis of Korn wrote half the songs and sang in the movie, but his record contract stated that he couldn’t appear on an album put out by another label, so the solution was to bring in guest artists to sing instead. Chester Bennington from Linkin Park, Wayne Static from Static-X, David Draiman from Disturbed, and Jay Gordon from Orgy. If you were a nuMetal fan back then, this was an all-star lineup.

Also, honorable mention to Batman & Robin for being absolute dogshit but having one of the Smashing Pumpkins’ best songs on it.

There’s an argument that could be made for Iroquoia or Haudenosaunee. The Iroquois Confederacy was an alliance of five different native tribes who cooperated and jointly made decisions for hundreds of years before European colonists arrived, and that confederacy did serve as a point of reference when the earliest drafts of the Constitution were being written.

That said, the US is absolutely massive and there are way too many tribes with different languages and cultures. No one word is going to be a good fit for everything.

I drove a rental that had collision detection in it. Three or four times, it suddenly slammed on the brakes for no discernable reason, and with no regard to how close/fast traffic behind me was moving. I had to pull off, download the manual, and figure out how to turn it off before the car killed me.

One of the most important things in safely operating a vehicle is using gradual, predictable movements. My car braking without my input makes predictable movement impossible.

“It’s Never Been a Fair Fight” from Craig Finn

They said there weren’t any rules But there were so many goddamn rules They said that they’d be cool But there were so many goddamn rules

If the cops shut down the shows Just remember that we tried And I’ll meet you at the place we crashed In 1999 If you’re still staying there I’ll take that as a sign That the drugs all ganged up on you It’s never been a fair fight

Growing up in the punk scene and losing a lot of friends, the whole song really hits me hard.

While I mostly agree with you, it is worth noting that vehicles can (and often do) have passengers accompanying a driver. They would be free to mess around on their phones when the alert goes out.

As a part of the famous Democratic circular firing squad, I was extremely critical of most of Obama’s administration. But I voted for him twice, and I’d take him over Trump in a heartbeat.

Edit: autocorrect-induced typo

I don’t think this is a hot take. People valued Halo because it brought the PC multiplayer experience to the console, not because it really innovated in any way.

I had a couple of friends who gamed on PC and would come over for LAN parties before Halo came out. After Halo came out? I hosted a Halo 2 launch party where we wired together 4 XBoxes and got 16-player games going. So many more people had an XBox than a PC, and they were much easier to travel with and wire up.

Red meat in general. Even pork has gotten out of hand.

My family is eating poultry two or three nights per week and entirely vegetarian the rest of the week just to cut spending.

There’s a lot of people clearly using red lights as opportunities to check their phone. If I can see a phone in their hand when the light turns green, I’m honking immediately.

Reminds me of an old joke:

My car was in the shop, so I asked for a ride to the grocery store from my neighbor. He agrees, no problem, and we’re off. The first time we come to a red light, he floors it and we dart through the intersection. There’s a cacophony of horns and squealing ties, but we’re unscathed.

I whip around to him, wide-eyed, and yell, “What the hell are you doing?! That was a red light!”

He smiles and says, “Don’t worry, I watch my brother do that all the time. No problem.”

I try to argue, but he keeps doubling down: “Never seen my brother get hit. Everyone just stays out of the way. It’s totally fine,” as we fly through one intersection after another, ignoring seemingly every red light in town.

Finally, mercifully, I see us pulling up to a green light. I reassure myself that we’re almost there, and I’ll be home soon.

But as we roll up to the green light, my neighbor slams hard on his brakes. The car behind us lays on their horn and skids to a sharp stop right behind us. I’m white as a ghost as I turn to my neighbor and demand to know why the hell we stopped at a green light.

“My brother could’ve been coming from the other way.”

As much as I hate nearly everything about my job, the one thing I can get behind is that they have a rule: the first time an acronym is used in a meeting, an email chain, or a chat, it needs to be defined parenthetically so that everyone with access to the conversation knows what the fuck we’re talking about.

Because if we’re just going by what I know, OP asked where to stream music and you told them to get some comicbook TPBs (Trade Paperbacks).

On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.

I was just explaining this absolutely ancient meme to my partner yesterday. They weren’t terminally online in the '90s, so they didn’t know that it’s all just dogs telling lies.

There is no point in being self defeating, I already have all the treasures and items I would get from that battle

I mean, OP said it started with Westboro. WBC formed in the '50s and really started getting headlines in the '90s. So, before the Bush millenials grew up under.

Mine is a two-in-one where the keyboard can fold fully backwards and it puts the laptop in “tablet mode.” I use it constantly for reading comic books, as rotating to a portrait frame and swiping through pages is much easier than scrolling/zooming on each page with mouse and keyboard.

I also occasionally use it for doodling when I’m traveling, but I’ve got a nicer setup for that on my desktop. So that’s a corner case.