I mean, the melting pot never meant a blend of races or cultures. It meant immigrants were melted down and out came an Americanized person who fit in with the existing culture. So the application in China is almost exactly spot on, only you’re assimilating into Han Chinese culture in this case. Same shit, different continent.

Here’s another: the human ear is phenomenal at determining where in 3d space a sound is coming from. Most animals can only determine direction and can’t really place a sound vertically. Watch what your cat or dog does when they’re looking for the source of a noise, it takes them a lot longer.

Just remember, this is the worst things have been so far. The Trump admin still has shovels in hand, it can get much, much, worse.

+1, I absolutely loathe the twitter model of discussion because it’s a huge mess of out of order replies and random spam. Individual discussion posts with tree threaded comments are way, way, way more effective at keeping discussion relevant and directed. Also +1 re: moderation, social media functions best with effective, vigorous, moderation and the twitter model just sucks there.

When you’re coming from a position of extreme privilege and you’re either a bit stupid or lack empathy or general social awareness being treated equally with “lesser people” (like women, brown people or people from particular religious backgrounds) can seem an awful lot like you’re being discriminated against.

It’s a grey, I’ve never met one that wasn’t a ridiculous ham

I rarely turn the sound on for video content on social media, the audio track is very rarely worthwhile

It’s not even much of a skill anymore now that there’s so much focus on natural language question and answer. You can straight up Google “how do I X?” And get a relevant answer for just about anything.

Edit: I’m not even talking about generative AI here, googling simple questions without using AI worked well before the AI craze.

Propublica is funded by recurring donations from a wealthy couple. Common dreams is subscription and donation driven. Relying on the wealthy to fund free content isn’t sustainable at scale.

Because high quality content needs income to continue existing, and you generally get that income via a subscription or the people making your content run out of money and go get jobs.

Edit: just look at what’s happened to journalism over the last 30y if you’re having a hard time understanding why paying journalists and other writers is important. Very few high quality outlets have survived, and they’re largely on life support if they’ve not been bought up to push some billionaire’s politics.

Why take the rest of the planet down with us? Hack into the bioweapons labs and release those.

The scientific community would just collapse and we’d be worshipping cats as a world wide religion.

You’re a couple thousand years late on this one

This 👆 - you stop noticing that you smell when you smell all the time. Setting up tests is just avoiding the real solution which is an uncomfortably honest conversation.

Get him some of that crystal stick deodorant, it actually works until your armpit bacteria adjust to it. Usually you’ll get a year or so use out of it before selection grows exclusively resistant bacteria.

I had a housemate who was into Facebook health influencers at one point, absolutely nothing would reach him when we told him “you stink, you need to keep yourself clean.” We had to punt him, the BO was just one of the problems we had with him.

Oh yeah, that’s the cheap part when compared to medical care

Edit: imagine monthly premiums ranging from $700-1200 with an out of pocket (monthly) max spend of $16k+. Oh, and dental and vision are separate policies.

“The rapture started and I was sent back here, God really wants us to stop using fossil fuels”

Cuba, for medical and/or dental care I can’t afford in the US

I prefer buying refurb laptops on eBay personally. eBay’s buyer protections are top tier, you can return the machine easily if it’s not exactly what was represented in the listing or if there’s any undisclosed damage or loss of function. Essentially you’re getting what the listing showed you or it’s like 5 clicks for a seller paid return label to send it back for a full refund (including any shipping costs both ways.)

Amazon is hit and miss in my experience, they care about their cut of that particular transaction and moving product out of the warehouse ASAP and not so much about whether you’re coming back to make more transactions in the future. Their customer service is atrocious too, you have to fight for a refund a lot of the time.

Edit, more detail in case you really want fleaBay to work for you:

If you’re going to shop eBay regularly go look up their buyer protection policies (so you know what they can and will do for you) and also take a look at the item condition and listing policies that apply to sellers.

Sellers often list items under the wrong condition category (like selling broken things in “Used” condition with an “AS-IS” disclaimer) and try to weasel in “as-is no refunds” or similar wording into the listing description. Well, they can say whatever they want, but unless the item meets the condition specified in eBay’s listing policy you’re still entitled to an easy refund at no cost if that item arrives at your door in less than fully functional condition (and with all cosmetic damage clearly described in the listing before the sale.)

Once you understand how eBay handles policy disputes (they always adhere to policy, and almost always find in favor of the buyer when they don’t) you can hold scummy sellers over a barrel and demand a partial refund when items arrive damaged, or just ship the whole mess back to them at their expense and wash your hands of it.

TL;DR: eBay is a great place to buy, not so much to sell

That’s just resting cat face. If you open the door he’ll come in and be chill.