Ha! That’s wild. You can literally just buy it at the farm store in town here.

I’m sure it’s far cheaper there too.

That’s certainly… An opinion.

Not to downplay your point at all, but didn’t John Edwards do exactly that with a staffer when his wife was dying?

She should lean harder into supporting the genocide. That’ll help.

Above everything, lack of curiosity. If someone is uncurious, it’s a big red flag to me.

Hey now, he’s just an excitable boy.

If you’re not afraid of picking up a wrench yourself:

I just switched to an OPNSense router on protectli hardware.

You don’t have to use something like that to use OPNSense though, you can just put it on nearly any old machine with a couple of nics. The out of the box config isn’t terrible and you can find a ton of guides on how to set yourself up securely.

Nate Silver is a prime example of this thing that happens a lot with technical people. They get good at describing what is and then they start to think they understand “why”. Sometimes a good understanding can lead you to the why of a situation, but often you need actual experts to analyze the data you’ve collected.

The whole thing about the way his methods work is based on not actually understanding the interactions of the inputs he’s selected.

His book was interesting, but I wouldn’t trust his analysis too much.

“Lo, should thine enemies strike thine cheek, thou shalt goatse.”

I talk to my stepmom more than I talk to my bio mom these days. I’m sorry you had to deal with that.

Nobody hates the poor like the newly wealthy.

Generally speaking I do things myself because it’s cheaper, in that it lets me allocate cash in higher quality versions of things than I would otherwise be able to afford. I grew up pretty poor and that was how my family did things. Car breaks, that’s why you buy a Chilton’s. Appliance isn’t working? You can always order the part for a tenth of what it costs to have the appliance guy tell you what’s wrong. AC quit working? Those capacitors are super easy to replace and only cost $7.

Now I could pay people to do more things for me, but it’s only under certain circumstances.

Sometimes it just boils down to something my Dad told me underneath a car (or a house maybe) like 30 years ago: “Nobody is gonna care about your shit more than you do.”

Oh was that with the rail workers Union?

I forgot, how did he treat them?

That’ll work out well for them. Fascists are famously tolerant of people who are slightly different.

If you ever find yourself reaching for the phrase “unwashed masses” unironically, you’re the baddy.

It would be such a shame if some people who lived near there read this article but disregarded all the warnings printed clearly on it.

Alas, I cannot grow hair on the top of my head, so I must grow it on the bottom.

In Boolean algebraic notation A+B+C literally means A OR B OR C.

I’m aware this isn’t a useful comment with regard to your original point, I just thought the coincidence was too funny to not point out.

Let’s say that the ship is actually sinking, for arguments sake.

There’s a whole bevy of rats swelling out of those fetid waters, the smart ones jumped ship some time ago, given that there are only two viable options in the United States, where do you suppose that they will go?

How will that affect composition and policy of those that remain as The SS Trump slips below the murky waters?

The “normal” government machine is broken. Attempting to rely on long established norms as guardrails is not something that will turn out well. “The tables could be turned” is not an argument that applies to the current state of US politics.

The Republican party literally told the Obama white house that they wouldn’t even hold a hearing for his supreme Court nominee (Garland March of 2016) “because the American people needed to weigh in since it was an election year.” Which many people properly identified as complete and utter bullshit.

Then Republicans went from a nomination on September 29th, 2020, to a confirmation on October 26th, 2020, of Amy Coney Barret, who I’m sure is eminently qualified for the position.

Less than a month.

The Supreme Court is effectively meaningless as an institution attempting to maintain a facade of impartiality.

The “system” as it once existed is gone now. Republicans have been waging a war on public institutions for decades and they’ve won. It’s over.

Attempting to continue to play by the old rules doesn’t do anything but multiply the effectiveness of the grift.