Heck, between the media, The Donald on Reddit and the whole pandemic, people were rightfully getting burned out on everything. I don’t really have any active memories between march 2020 and early 2023. That whole time period feels like a big blur. And that’s just me as a European. I can imagine it’s way worse for people in the US…

I hear the Mariana Trench is lovely this time of year.

He stood by his wife, then-US Representative Gabby Giffords, after she was shot in the head during a 2011 assassination attempt.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tucson_shooting

Basically, he also gets points for just being a good husband.

When he followed up the debate by calling Zelensky Putin and confusing his own VP with Trump, there’s really nothing else to be said. You can’t make those mistakes. Not in that office. There’s simply no denying those clips.

‘Could lead to chaos’. Ma’am, that ship has sailed. When even high ranking party members openly doubt the president’s ability to get elected, much less actually lead, you’ve clearly lost control of the situation.

Will replacing Biden at this stage be easy? Of course not. But he shouldn’t have been in the Oval Office in the first place. Running a candidate this frail once was a gamble… doing it twice is suicidal.

Democrat leadership only has itself to blame for this predicament.

Hmm, the Wiki does say say her office prosecuted a higher amount of weed crimes, but also that they weren’t for mere posession. She was tough on gun crime and also created a hate crimes unit focusing on LGBT-related hatecrimes. And also that she’s opposed to the death penalty, and that she actively went after truancy.

Any of those can probably be argued to be good or bad, depending on how they were applied. I can certainly see the combo of anti-truancy and anti-gun crime as policies that might disproportionately hit minorities. Not to mention that weed simply shouldn’t be illegal anyways.

Still, all of it’s hypothetical for now. We’ll see what happens the next few days…

When you say cop… i see she worked as District Attorney, and the Wikipedia doesn’t really list anything that seems wildly objectionable? Of course, some will hate everything even remotely cop-adjacent…

I’m not in the US, so I might not always be aware of every political thing happening… but Harris feels completely invisible to me.

Biden was very visible as VP, and I actually have memories of Cheney, Gore, even Pence had some notable things.

Gun to my head, I couldn’t tell you one notable or controversial thing Harris did. So I’m reallllllly hoping US voters have a more positive mental picture in regards to her VP tenure. Being ‘not Biden’ only gets you so far…

Nooo, let’s not. We’re gonna need those pretty soon from the looks of it.

Even really niche content like LockPickingLawyer on YouTube has nearly 4.5 million followers. And I actively see people referencing him. Libs of Tik Tok really only pops up in articles like this.

Of course, I also don’t really hang out in places where fans of it might congregate. But from my perspective it’s just not something that seems to have a large influence.

Heck, maybe he’s hoping Hannibal Lecter likes Mexican food, if you know what I mean.

God only knows what Trump’s thinking. Though he’s likely to be as confused as the rest of us mere mortals…

I’m honestly baffled as to why a movie character would even come up in a political speech, much less this incoherently.

And yes, it’s a quote, it’s a funny line… why is he using it? It’s utterly silly. I’m also confused by the ‘late, great’ as if this was an actual person who had died, as opposed to a fictional character who hasn’t died in any book, movie or show I’m familiar with. And Anthony Hopkins is very much alive as well, as is writer Thomas Harris.

It doesn’t make any… goddamn… sense.

Please don’t elect this guy again.

That doesn’t sound good. Just the past week I read about it showing up in dolphins, walruses, now cats…

I can avoid the first two just fine. But cats is cause for concern.

You’re certainly not wrong with that interpretation.

Policing is a murky concept in general. They themselves aren’t even clear on who and how they serve.

In general, police should enforce laws that we ‘as a society’ deem important. But we’ve insulated ourselves from that by several layers. We elect politicians who make laws and appoint people who appoint others who appoint others who do the actual policing. What should be a community service and community responsibility is now effectively its own separate branch.

Basically, the police exist because… they exist, and it’s a system that perpetuates itself. It’s not like with firefighters or garbage men who have clear responsibilities and directly help their actual communities.

In an ideal society, a community would appoint their own police officers from within their own community to enforce (or not) their own set of community laws. But since we’ve effectively deferred that responsibility to higher political offices, that’s pretty much impossible. It’s also why the public and police are at odds with each other: the public rightly feels that officers tend to be separate from their community, rather than a part of it.

No matter what field you’re in, NOBODY wants outside oversight. And certainly not by people who’ve never worked that job.

Considering the current climate of public-police relations in the US, their resistance to oversight is rather understandable.

To be clear: there SHOULD be oversight, but it’s never ever going to be easy.

I own a few Minolta’s, including the X500 and X700. Those were basically the last of their manual focus SLR’s. I love classic bodies like that; metal built bricks that feel solid and chunky to use. I also bought a ton of Minolta glass back in the 2010’s when they stuff went for pennies on the dollar on Ebay. Good glass is good glass, right?

I’ve never shot HP5 myself; I tend to be more of a Fuji shooter in general with Acros for my B&W needs. I’ve developed my own rolls, especially when I had to shoot that in cut-down form in Minox cartridges. Not exactly the kind of thing you take to a one hour photo place :D

Though I’ve also shot stuff like Tri-X 400, Ektar and a bunch of other stuff from Kodak and Fuji over the years. But the thing I absolutely LOVE to shoot is slide film. Velvia 50 & 100 in particular. Absolutely amazing to see slides on a lightbox. You get a lovely depth and color that you just don’t really see in other negatives in my opinion.

I actually just bought a Fuji X-S20 camera which includes a bunch of film simulations, including Acros and Velvia. That’s how much I love shooting those, that I want to bring that fun factor to digital as well :D Also own a Fuji X100S, which I found out is a ‘TikTok trend’ apparently…

I’ve got plenty of stuff that’s older than I am. I’ve got mechanical cameras dating back to the 1930’s, electronic camera’s from the 70’s, watches dating back to that time as well. And there’s game consoles dating back to the NES, like many here.

I like old tech. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s bad or unreliable. If you treat stuff well and maintain as needed, a lot of things will outlast you. I’ll be shooting film in cameras that are a hundred years old in a few years.