This is also why I can’t respond ‘good’ to how I am. If I am ‘good’ then it means I’m better than average or median. But if I say I am good too often, it becomes the average.

There is no guarantee that they will get paid. For that to happen, congress will have to pass a spending bill that not only authorized future spending but also explicitly gives back pay for the time they were working without paying after the shutdown.

So far this has always happened, but I do remember some noises about not doing it around the last shutdown.

So especially after those comments last time, there is no certainty that if you come in to work for the government during a shutdown you will be paid.

There’s a reason the country lost credit rating, and it’s because people are slightly less confident that it will actually pay its debts, including simple payroll.

I can’t imagine coming in to work if I’m not being paid on time. Indeed, if there’s even a whiff of maybe I won’t get paid, I’m not coming in unless I’m paid in advance.

Every government worker that is told they’re not getting paid should do that. Money in my account now, before I come in to work.

That guy failed. It makes a big difference when they actually get killed.

The time to do this would’ve been immediately after it was discovered that Trump took classified documents and had them in his home during visits from foreign agents.

The Republicans would’ve howled about it, but I think it could have been done, at that moment. Like, have the first news about it not be talking about the documents, but simply that former President Trump has been detained and will not be allowed to communicate with anyone but his legal representation, because of suspicion of potential coded communication to enemy agents.

Nice attempt at using the curse, but I see another possibility:

She dies that night anyway. Comes back undead. Is killed at the appropriate time for the necklace curse. Curse fulfilled.

Ummm…yes! Of course I would make that compromise! If I have a choice between they both die or one dies, of course I’m taking the choice where one lives!

What wouldn’t I be willing to compromise on? Nothing. If I have a choice between bad and worse, I’m taking bad, what kind of lunatic would intentionally choose worse?

That gives a false picture since it only counts legal declared spending.

For instance, what’s the effective value to Trump’s campaign of Elon Musk buying Twitter and using it to explicitly promote right wing views? How much did Russia spend this time to promote Trump? What about Israel, cause I’ll wager Netanyahu prefers having Trump in office, since Kamala might’ve demanded at least some holding back.

Actual spending to promote Republican and right wingers was way higher.

Ice sinks to a certain point. If being attached to the shelf was holding that ice up higher than it would float, it’ll sink.

Don’t know if the movie shows it sinking further than that though, but the general assertion that ice doesn’t sink at all is definitely mistaken.

Things in Russia might not be great, but they’re not on the same level as North Korea by far.

NK is genuinely quite successful at isolating its population, Russia is not. Russian living conditions aren’t horrible, they don’t experience famine and such, etc. They have internet, and many of them that are otherwise not technically inclined seem very well versed in how to evade the state censorship and control of communication. Other day I was playing D&D with some Russian friends when they started blocking Discord in Russia, and we figured out a workaround within the hour and within a day they had Discord working again, and these guys aren’t otherwise heavily inclined to towards computer shit. They’re above average level of user knowledge, but they’ve become knowledgeable in this very specific area.

From what my Russian friends say and I gather from their descriptions, it’s a lot like Republicans here; the ones that support Putin and the current government are doing it in spite of obvious evidence they have no trouble seeing.

Now I would assume they’ll isolate these North Koreans quite a bit, the language barrier will prevent them from talking to the average Russian and so on. The ones they bring home, for domestic propaganda purposes, will be the most loyal, willing to go on with whatever story they’re told to tell about their experiences.

Are they running anyone in elections they might actually win? I might vote for a party like that for mayor or something. But I wouldn’t even vote for them for state house representative unless they were well known enough in my state that they might actually win.

‘Third’ parties in this country can show themselves as serious if they try to establish themselves from the bottom up. If all they do is run for president and occasionally Senate or House, then they show themselves as unserious parties which are probably nothing more than attempts to siphon votes that might have gone to a real candidate.

It’s better if the police budget is spent on replacing tires rather than purchasing even more unnecessary surplus military equipment which they will then try to justify using.

Don’t feel like a dick for that! That again is management’s fault!

Remember that bagging your groceries used to be part of the service and part of the price, they eliminated that job to increase their profit margins!

At least around here Walmart still bags them for me, except they now have the cashier doing it instead of a dedicated employee for bagging.

Self serve gas was actually lower priced than full service back when the transition was happening, so there was actually a reason to do the work yourself.

If it had been the same price, only I have to do the work of pumping it, damn straight I would have felt the same.

In retrospect it was a bad deal because once full service went away entirely, so did the price difference, so I’m smarter now and wouldn’t use self checkout even if they gave a discount.

To be fair, there is someday going to be a generation where that doesn’t happen (assuming humans don’t obliterate themselves first). Eventually it’s practically a certainty that we will develop the means to preserve humans indefinitely.

I can’t think of a single thing built in the last century that will still be there in a thousand years. We may still build some cool stuff, but none of it is durable anymore it seems.

It’s really just about what markets well. Come up with a catchy name and that name will stick.

The Democrats didn’t go far enough accepting the Obamacare name. Obama was all ‘sounds good to me, yes, I care’ or something along those lines when he was asked once, but the Democrats should have officially renamed the bill to Obamacare. Because there’s people who support the ACA but are against Obamacare and don’t realize they’re the same thing. If they’d changed the name there would only be Obamacare and a few of those people, a very slim amount, might realize that the bill thats helping them is Obamacare.

Norfolk has four carrier strike groups and the entire Atlantic submarine fleet. Even without the ability to repair or resupply, just with what they currently have as far as ordnance goes, that wins the war immediately.

You take a week at most to position submarines in the right spots and then eliminate Axis leadership in a single simultaneous strike.

There is a place for actual conservatives, people who want to change things slowly and make sure we aren’t breaking shit with our changes.

But what calls themselves conservatives these days would be more accurately referred to as reactionaries, who want to reverse many changes that have been made and go back to some old time they preferred.

I am not sure if the relabeling of reactionaries into conservatives was always a global phenomenon, I think in many countries, at least until recently, conservatives were really just conservative and not reactionary. But I can’t say for sure.

The irony is that if they put it at or near the end of the video, after I have learned that I like whatever I watched, I am much more likely to do so, because I often really do just forget to like things, and a reminder near the end would in fact make me go ‘yeah, this was good, I’ll do that’.

But if they ask me to do it at the beginning, I won’t do it until I have seen enough to decide I do in fact like it.