The worst and most insidious part is that having the ability to defend yourself and affect the world around you are still the most effective ways to maintain sovereignty enough for self-determination, so there’s a wicked kernel of truth around which layer upon layer of lies, half-truths, and certain-point-of-view justifications are wrapped.

What we were buying was safety and stability, but what we were sold came bundled with as much fine print as the American public can stomach, which is a lot, as it turns out. All you have to say is that we have to attack them to prevent them from retaliating for attacking them and that’s enough.

I really thought we made strides in shaping the military into a more thoughtful force during my tenure in the wake of OIF/OEF so it’s doubly disheartening to see it’s all just coming back to business as usual.

If any other country was pouring millions into our elections everybody would be up in arms, but because it’s Israel they somehow get a pass.

(oops, it’s John, not Jon)

That makes sense and I’ve felt the same with a few bits they’ve done recently, and they harp on things a little too long sometimes (Lyndon Johnson’s nuts, for example), but I still think he/the writers make compelling arguments and present them in interesting ways.

It’s amusing and informative, perfect for laugh-crying about the state of the world.

And Last Week Tonight with Jon Oliver.

For the late shows I like Kimmel well enough, but he just doesn’t have the same charisma as Colbert.

I eat asparagus rarely but I can always smell it in my urine. I drink black coffee regularly and I’ve never smelled anything of note in my urine afterwards.

Unless there’s some Tourette syndrome going on I don’t see why anyone should have to tolerate hateful speech.

I started by picking a lot of indexers, trying to cover my bases, but every search would take forever because it sifts through every match to find the best one for your criteria. In the end I pared it down to just to just a couple big ones that even I’ve heard of and it’s been fine 98% of the time.

I’ve always heard the private indexers are best, but I don’t have experience with them.

My first thought was a gun, that’s pretty American, and if you show them how American you are they are less likely to want to try to arrest you

Maybe it’s just my algorithm but I don’t think I’ve been presented any slop videos. Surely not long videos, right?

Walking backward is just walking negatively forward by another name

Sorry that it came across as bitching

I don’t think they posted on Lemmy to get search results

This is why online discourse is so hard! Beyond the anonymity, which causes its own problems, the absence of nonverbal cues and lack of immediacy in feedback leaves a lot open to interpretation, so anything can be taken in any way.

Opinions become accusations and idle musings become absolute certainty in the vacuum of supporting information that is text-only communication. I worry that the only real solution is for people to–like you–embrace the uncertainty and gracefully admit that their interpretation could be wrong. And it seems likely that the only way to collectively get to that point is to fuck it up a lot for a long time.

Yeah, the US and Europe do DST a couple weeks apart, presumably because of latitude differences but it could also be spite, I guess.

Just to make sure I’m understanding you correctly, you’re talking about an exchange like this?

Person 1: It sure is hot today.
Person 2: I know, right?

Thinking about some other conversational ways to respond, I think saying, “It sure is, isn’t it?” or, “Don’t I know it!” feel pretty similar. I wonder what it is that makes us ask rhetorical questions like that.

It’s so crazy that 10 million subscribers is huge by YouTube standards but practically meaningless in the larger context.

That’s a good one. I like this guy’s series on the topic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttG90raCNo

I don’t clap when planes land safely, but I’m sure I would celebrate if the train I was on landed safely!

Noooo, getting the bay leaf is lucky!

I bet it has a few vibrate modes