Instigate

One thing alone would help shift the Overton Window MASSIVELY in a country like the USA - mandatory voting. If everyone who had the right to vote actually voted, Republicans would never hold federal government ever again and would only be able to hold onto a couple of states and a few dozen local governments across the nation.

Without mandatory voting, Republicans can become more and more egregious in seeking to rally voters while simultaneously painting the whole establishment as broken which essentially disenfranchises the non-voting centre. With it, they’d have to seriously moderate their platforms to have any hope of forming government ever again. It would likely cause a party split that would then coalesce again into a two-party coalition on the right, starting the efforts to break down the two-party system.

If you introduce ranked choice voting as well, that’ll speed up the dismantling of the two-party system, but just mandatory voting alone would prevent Trump and his ilk from ever being in power again.

It’s ridiculous and stupid, I know, but it comes from some pretty basic biology.

Depending upon size/thickness of a person’s thighs, it can be pretty impossible to put one knee over the other without squishing your dick and balls either on top of your legs or tucked underneath them. Wearing tight brief-style underwear, this can lead to situations where someone tries to cross their legs like this and inadvertently squishes their balls - a pretty uncomfortable circumstance in my own experience. Thus people with male genitalia (usually men) tend to prefer to cross their legs with the ankle over the knee to allow their genitals to ‘breathe’ and not be all squished up.

People with vaginas (usually women) in Western societies are also far more likely to wear skirts or dresses. In order to prevent someone having a peek at their underwear (or lack thereof) while wearing a skirt/dresses and sitting, these people are more likely to put one knee over the other.

Again, attempting to measure masculinity or femininity by this one preference is utterly stupid, but there are reasons why this behavioural pattern has become commonplace in Western societies. I (cis man) tend to do both in different circumstances; usually dependent upon weather, underwear and outer clothing I’m wearing.

I withdrew $11 dollars from the ATM machine using my PIN number to buy some DC comics which I converted to a PDF format to view on my LCD display e-reader.

Weapon degradation seems to be a serious and genuine complaint that a lot of people have with BotW and TotK but for some reason it never seemed to bother me as it has others. I totally understand the criticism but frankly I always had a full stock of good quality weapons - particularly with the Fuse function in TotK - and never ran low or out of decent weapons on hand.

I think they were implemented to try to force gamers to think about other options to take down enemies rather than brute-forcing every battle which appeals to me, but it seems to have angered a significant proportion of people. From my perspective, it helps to engender the puzzler aspect of Zelda games in a novel way - viewing battles as a puzzle to be solved for maximum efficiency rather than how well you can strike and dodge.

Thank you for that clarification; I was genuinely wondering why anything smaller than 2.5 millimetres would pass through an air filter! When it comes to filtering air, 2.5 millimetres is MASSIVE

I don’t disagree with you, but let’s try to at least understand the complexity of those decisions instead of viewing the world in black/white. That sort of thinking breeds fascism and authoritarianism.

We’ve seen now what happens in Israeli gaols - I can only imagine that they’d treat perceived “traitors” the same as Palestinians; perhaps worse.

They don’t deserve our sympathy, but they definitely deserve empathy. Choosing to turn off your empathy for groups of people is sociopathy and that’s a road I’m unwilling to go down.

Okay, but let’s at least try to remember that there is mandatory conscription and service in Israel and that there is probably a significant proportion of people who have no other choice but to serve in the IDF. I am in no way attempting to excuse genocidal and homicidal actions that anyone has taken, but let’s at least attempt to understand the complexity of the issue instead of trying to reduce things to an unnaturally binary state.

Life is infinitely complex. Let’s use the wonderful tools of understanding that complex evolutionary pathways have afforded us to try to scratch the surface of that infinity. Empathy is strength; don’t let right-wing propaganda teach you that it is a weakness.

To be clear, he wasn’t found guilty because it wasn’t a criminal trial. The judge ruled, on the balance of probabilities that it was more likely that he raped Carroll than he didn’t. That’s a different bar than for criminal trials which require that it is beyond a reasonable doubt that he raped Carroll.

Now my personal opinion is that he absolutely raped her beyond a reasonable doubt, and that he has definitely raped others on numerous occasions, but sadly those aren’t legal facts as he hasn’t been found guilty of them by a criminal trial jury or judge.

I don’t think that nobody will care, but I think the point you’re trying to make is that his supporters won’t care. That we can definitely agree upon.

Yeah I’ve heard that a fair bit too - thankfully I’m a high-tolerance Coeliac meaning my body can handle very small amounts of cross contamination but for those whose bodies can’t process a single iota of gluten this has become a significant issue for them. I find that when I order gluten free a lot of servers will ask me “is that for preference or are you Coeliac” and that gives me confidence that when I tell them I’m Coeliac they’ll take extra precautions.

Can I just say though, as someone who does have diagnosed Coeliac Disease, the gluten free fad really helped to open up my options both for products to buy and restaurants I can eat at and for that I’m thankful. It does suck that there aren’t more/better vegetarian and vegan options at mainstream restaurants though.

I know exactly what you mean. When I (cis man) was freshly 18 in the 00’s I was indecently assaulted by an older woman in a bar when I walked past her and her group of friends and I never reported it. I have friends who experienced similar who never reported it either. When I told my friends that night what had just happened I was told I was lucky to be non-consensually grabbed by a woman. I tried to tell myself that was the case for a long time; it took many years before I came to realise that I was assaulted and, by that point, there was nothing I could do about it.

Not sure how it works in USA but can’t you elect to not have your employer withhold your taxes for you and then have to pay your annual tax in a lump sum at the end of the fiscal year? That’s part of standard HR taxation forms here in Australia and some people do it in order to invest what they would otherwise be paying in taxes then divest at tax time, pay their tax, and hold onto the capital gains from their investment that they’d otherwise not have had access to. Sure they pay capital gains tax on that but it’s still a net windfall if their investments accrue.

Coal is dying as an investment but existing coal plants will likely run for a long while.

I think that might vary from place to place.

Here in Australia our most recent new coal-fired power plant was built in 2009 and very many big ones we rely heavily on are already past their original planned lives. We’re lucky to have such good solar generation here though that even residential rooftop solar is kicking some serious goals but have been leaning more on gas for base load distribution (trust me, we’re not gonna meet our targets). Coal isn’t gonna last too much longer here, but we’re not gonna be carbon neutral for a VERY, very long time.

Which leads in perfectly to another joke from the US version of The Office where Dwight claims that Kelly, of Indian heritage, doesn’t qualify for their parent company Sabre’s “Print in All Colours” initiative because Indian people are technically Caucasian

And herein lies a big issue - only a minority of men are creeps towards women, but because they’re creeps towards so many women it means that women ubiquitously experience creepy dudes. That causes women to become (understandably) more guarded and jaded and makes things harder for the majority of men who aren’t creeps.

I mean, Homo sapiens are apes. I never understood why calling a person an ape was an insult. It’s taxonomically correct.

People who ask that question are really telling on themselves; they’re saying that without religion they would have no qualms stealing, murdering, and raping. They’re very dangerous people.