While vanilla ice and kid rock have attached themselves to MAGA, several other artists were mislead on the ‘America 250’ banner for the actual ‘Freedom 250’ group. There is another fun rabbit hole of corruption and money laundering to look into if you have not yet been informed…

I mean… cool. I will buy it and all, but if you are putting this much effort into it can we just get a new BG4 instead?? The article just says it’s ‘inevitable’ but not confirmed, or even rumored. Don’t get me wrong, I think BG2 is up there with some of the best storytelling in games out there, but are you telling me that out of the entire forgotten realms history of Baldur’s gate, there have only been 3 stories to tell? It costs so much to develop a game already, just put in the last bit of effort and make it a new story. Alternatively, use the BG3 engine and give us a massive expansion that feels like a full extra act. I would pay 20-25$ for that.

LegalEagle on youtube has already talked about this. There is already a law I place that covers this exact scenario, and with punishments and fines already in place. It’s 1,000$ per incident to the victim and up to 180 days jail for the offender. Keep in mind, the law was written to protect the IRS and fuck over the peons who would be glad to receive 1k$ and don’t really have anything to hide.

3 of the 4 panels are on topic, the smoking one I would say doesn’t belong. The topic is about labor exploitation. Slave labor was cheap brute force labor. Then it was banned. So people pushed for more child labor (not that it didn’t exist in parallel to slave labor, just not as utilized). Once child labor was banned from being the dominant labor exploitation there was also the rise of things like company script and company towns. Also banned. For the past few decades we have lived through globalism as the main method of exploitation, pushing for remote jobs filled from cheap labor countries and shipping factories overseas. Now we have AI. And we are seeing that for specific tasks it can be exploited for cheaper labor. Humanity will always find ways of exploiting cheap labor.

In 100 years this will be about cloning slaves and arguing that they aren’t real people. Capitalists will control the cloning farms and use the clones as exploitable labor. And in a short time after the exploitation of clones, they will argue that it is already here and there is no point in stopping it.

This is a simpsons reference.

They thought there was an alien in the forest. Turns out it was Mr. Burns who did his medical treatments (quoted above) and he would be high as a kite wondering through the forest at night and the glow is from working at the nuclear plant for so long.

I like how you throw in ‘even the Americans’ with the spying groups. We definitely spy in all our allies. And in return we encourage our allies to spy on us. It is a very calculated political game where we (all the allied countries) pass legislation and safeguards in our respective home countries and declare our citizens free of authoritarian government surveillance, but then work with the other countries spy agencies to do it for us. We intentionally put in the backdoors in our peoples networks and hand the keys to our partners just so we can say ‘well I wasn’t spying on you. That would be illegal!’ But in the end it is effectively the same. If the allied government finds anything of interest they just send a notification over. We each have boundaries that we respect in spying on each other’s people too. It is almost a formallity by this point.

This is exactly what I have brought up so many times. I shit on academy for being lowest common denominator shitty writing and people bring out the pitch forks as if I am gay bashing. No, I’m shitty writing bashing, they just wrapped it up in a pride flag.

Remember when DS9 brought in lgbt+ identity discussion through thought provoking situations with deep characters making hard choices that were influenced by their lgbt+ backgrounds or morals?

Now we have- He is so conflicted because he is a peaceful klingon. Life is so hard in our utopia. By the way, did I mention he was gay?

I watch star trek for its deep politics and nuanced pushing of boundaries, not to preach to the choir with a mallet.

DS9 arguably did it just as much, just wrote it better. They were the first to have a lesbian kiss. They pushed social and political boundaries in deeper than ‘my skin is different than yours’ ways. It debated the morality of war, peace through killing, and how slavery can take forms beyond chains (examples include the bajorans, cardassians, and ketracell white). It was the deeper trek in so many ways. And it was just as liberal, just as DEI, and just as open to explore sexuality in every direction (basically any episode with dex, then countered by the omni sex of odo). It did just as much as any of the nu-trek, but didn’t dumb it down to lowest common denominator to spoon feed it to you with forced dialog and in-your-face preaching.

If you really want to blow your mind, look into the theoretical alternatives to DNA. we are all taught about RNA and how it is a precursor to DNA, but what if it went another way? Look up PNA, PNA-O, or even GNA. If life existed on other worlds, there is a decent chance it follows an xNA structure, but not necessarily DNA.

I missed you by 1 min. Read my addition to the other comment.

Good easy explanation. No disagreements here. Just going to tack on:

We also don’t know what consciousness is or how it happens. The drugs used to put you under (the general anesthesia) work under one of two paths. Block sensory information from being written to memory, or block the process of writing the memory. Some drugs do it one way, some drugs the other, some do a little of both. We know both methods are true, and both put people under.

This leads to one major theory, that your brain needs memory to have consciousness. We also have the theory (from observing this exact question) that it is easier for your brain to write to short term memory than long term. Now there is the issue, if the general anesthesia wears off or goes below threshold needed to write to short term, then the person is awake and starts to act funny due to impaired sensory information (think of all the funny anesthesia YouTube out there) but the person isn’t writing the memory to long term memory because there is still just enough in the system to block it. Which is why they can’t ever remember the funny things they said or did.

Now combined this with the paralytic from the above comment. If you start to cross the threshold of short term memory coming back online, and this is a major signal to the anesthesiologist to increase the dosage. But you have a paralytic, so they don’t know you are coming out of it. Then you drop below the threshold for long term memory and now the person truly has “woken up” back to consciousness and rightfully complain of the terrifying experience.

Ah yes, the 4X buisness strategy. Building an empire through four core pillars:

eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate

Lots of research has been done on this. But I would highly recommend watching the YouTube video that was posted by the top commenter instead of trying to dig through what’s out there.

Kind-of. If you open the first document attached to the page it is the “order” , essentially the “ruling”.

Page 4 really outlines the crux of it all:

“Granting or denying a temporary injunction is a discretionary act arising from a court’s equitable powers.” May v. R.A. Yancey Lumber Corp., 297 Va. 1, 18 (2019). It is an “extraordinary remedy” dependent on the “nature and circumstances” of an individual case. Levisa Coal Co. v. Consolidation Coal Co., 276 Va. 44, 60 (2008). As a threshold requirement, a court may issue a preliminary injunction only if it first determines that the movant will more likely than not suffer irreparable harm without the preliminary injunction. Cartograf USA, Inc. v. Comerica Bank, 85 Va. App. 1, 19 (2025). If that irreparable-harm threshold is met, the court must then determine whether three additional factors support issuance of the injunction: (1) the movant has asserted a legally viable claim based on credible facts that will more likely than not succeed on the merits; (2) the balance of hardships favors granting the preliminary injunction; and (3) the public interest, if any, supports issuance of a preliminary injunction. Id. Separately, Virginia law provides that no temporary injunction shall be awarded unless the court is satisfied of the plaintiff’s equity. Va. Code Ann. § 8.01-628.

So basically step one is they have to show “irreparable-harm”, and judge agreed that they do, therefore, go to step two, check these three specific things per each argument.

The Republicans had four key arguments:

First, plaintiffs claim the creation of the 2026 maps was unlawful because the legislature lacked the authority to engage in redistricting prior to the enactment of the amendment. (Plaintiffs’ Memorandum in Opposition at 6-8). Second, Plaintiffs allege the creation of the 2026 maps exceeds the legislature’s limited authority under the amendment to “modify” districts. (Id. at 8). Third, they argue that the amendment, as passed, continues to require compactness. (Id. at 8-18). Finally, Plaintiffs claim that the resulting districts fail to comply with that compactness requirement. (Id.).

I will save pasting the other giant paragraphs that went into it, but basically they get told “no.” On all 4 claims. The maps were made legally, they followed the state constitution, and they were drawn with the correct restrictions.

The Republicans also tried to argue that the compactness was part of the state constitution 2020 amendment, even though there was specifically a section on mid-decade redistricting that threw out most all rules in this exact scenario. The amendment was written the the word “except” in it, and they were arguing the except applied to the words before it, not after. The court said that is absolutely absurd and not how words work.

In the end, the judge said:

Many a tradition and law has been laid down in the advancement of a national quest for political power, and the winds that will blow cannot yet be known. Nonetheless, this Court knows its role is clear. It is not to assess the wisdom of public policy nor to engage in policy making from the bench. Instead, it is to decide if those with whom we have entrusted power have exercised that power in conformance with their constitutional mandate. On this question, the Court’s answer is in the affirmative. For these reasons, the Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction is DENIED. It is so ORDERED.

Saying, it is his job to rule on following law, not make policy through rulings, and the democrats followed the law.

So now, the Republicans can appeal it higher (not enough time to matter), or they need to refile with different reasons (but they already threw all the spaghetti at the wall and nothing stuck).

I always just remember ‘an affect is not a thing’ as in, effect is a thing (noun) and affect is a noun. Then I just avoid the second one, the effect verb form.

Alternatively: We can remember for you, whole-Dick

I feel like anyone saying ‘there is a third?’ Hasn’t followed anything about Dune -both book or movie. If you know the books, you know Paul has a story arc that continues past the first book. If you were following the movie, Denis Villeneuve was loud and clear when making the first movie that he wanted it to be a trilogy that followed the main story arc of Paul (through Messiah. Not counting the preacher Paul of Children).

Are the movies worth it? Fuck yeah. Is this the last movie? Denis Villeneuve was clear about not wanting to adapt beyond the second book. So if it did happen, it wouldn’t be with him, and he is the real talent and driver behind these movies. So most likely this is the last movie. It was never going to be some Marvel 30 movie slop fest or Avatar shoot-plot-from-the-hip saga.

I have a clinical doctorate and can make about 110k. I have also chosen to work on a PhD for research in my field. When i finish at the end of the year, my additional doctorate and an entry research job should bring my earning potential to… 110k. Or I can do a post-doc and earn 65k. I can also go into industry and make about 170k. I did my clinical fellowship at NIH and saw the research first hand and know how needed amd impactful it is. Science in this country was already getting strained, under trump it has become a joke.

No one else has -yet.

Disagree. You and so many others throw around the word communism as if it is a specific type, rather than a general type. Not only that, communism and capitalism as not mutually exclusive. We have communism in capitalist societies and there was capitalism inside the USSR’s communism.

We have fully functioning communes within the USA. Those are communists living happily inside a communist community, with communist leadership, and communist ideals, all as a sub community within normal American cities. And it is successful.

The US has communism/socialism even within its own government. We have communist firefighters. There was a time all fire brigades were private and sold memberships and private insurance. It was communism that made it a public service. Even the socialist healthcare in the military was not always that way. Up until the Civil War it was private healthcare and the medics were for the battlefield only. All after care was out of pocket. Even for a time after the Civil War large amounts were not covered by the military.

And even looking at the previous poster’s comment about not seeing true communism- that is a category- are they referring to Lennonist communism? Maoist? Marxist? It’s like saying all capitalist governments are the same, as if the EU and the US, and Nigeria are all the same types of government.