I believe it’s a hormone thing because otherwise nobody would have a second kid. Apparently the hormones kick in and make you forget the pain while also giving you a big hit of dopamine so that you connect having a kid to being happy.

Got you pushing too many pencils, Dillon!

I mean, I’d personally rather see an anime girl themed desktop than those weird statues rich people sometimes have in places like on their coffee table that are stuff like a woman in the boob + butt out pose with no limbs or head. That shit is just creepy looking. I know it’s supposed to be reminiscent of broken Greek and Roman statues, but why do they always have to be posed and objectified like porn stars? At least with the anime girl, I know that I’m talking to an otaku rather than Hannibal Lecter.

Yeah, my personal experience is the opposite where I find myself having to outright block people because I generally don’t have an issue until outright blocking them is needed.

It would be great to have a “mute post/thread/comment” option that just stops any reply notifications for that specific item of yours. That way you don’t have to select specific people to mute/block and it doesn’t affect anything outside of that one specific comment of yours.

And I’m the opposite. When I block someone, it’s because I’m sick and tired of that one person in particular and never want anything to do with them ever again. And for my own protection, I don’t want them to be able to see me or interact with my comments ever again, regardless of whether I’ll see that interaction or not.

The block feature is wonderful for this. I’m starting to use it liberally when I just can’t be bothered to deal with someone anymore. I don’t know if there’s a mute user function as well, but that would at least let them yell into the void instead of being blocked outright.

The Republican party is a cult - especially the cult of Trump. All these grifters selling hate to conservatives have made it that much harder to convince them when they’re wrong, and the odds of them doubling down on those beliefs when they are challenged get more and more likely the deeper in they are. There’s a point where it becomes almost impossible to pull people out of a cult and there’s largely no line that they won’t convince themselves that it’s okay to cross.

I think that’s where we’re at and have been at for quite a while. Republicans convince themselves that they’re the good guys fighting the good fight against whatever the party tells them is bad, and believe that their bigotry and hate is justified.

A lot of these minorities also always think that they’re different because they’re “one of the good ones” and will reap the same benefits.

My friend told me once about how people in cults have a sunk-cost fallacy to the cult’s beliefs that makes it harder to get them out the longer they’ve been in.

People are more likely to double down on their beliefs when proven wrong because they’d have to admit that they were wrong and so were all the things that they did following those beliefs. And nobody likes to admit when they’re wrong, because nobody wants to believe that they’re the bad guy.

There’s also the fact that many of those houses have sat vacant and have been left to rot for many years, meaning that plenty of them need to be demolished and rebuilt before they can be lived in. Small towns have been dying for decades as suburban sprawl consumes ever-increasing amounts of land and bleeds our cities dry of tax revenue, forcing them to continue making more suburbs to pay off the previous ones.

I would assume that figure takes into account not just how many homeless there are, but renters and home prices vs wages as well. There isn’t a single county in the US where a worker with the average annual wage can afford to buy a house at the average price range in that area, for example.

This is like the defining case of “just because it’s legal doesn’t make it okay.” An 18 year old and a 16 year old is one thing. It’s very different when it’s a 30-something year old and a 16 year old. That’s like a high school senior trying to get with a 12 year old.

There’s a massive power imbalance in a relationship like that where the 30-something has basically total control. Even a 30-something with a college kid has issues imo, let alone a kid who’s a sophomore or junior in high school. That’s some Quamire from Family Guy shit. “I love high school girls. I get older, they stay the same age.”

Half your age plus seven is the rule of thumb that I’ve heard. At 18, that means the lowest you should be dating is 16. At 32, it’s 23. Etc.

Also, echo chambers are good, actually, and you can’t change my mind. Life isn’t supposed to be a constant argument, and the criticism of surrounding yourself with people who generally agree with you is a tactic that’s been used to prevent people from simply cutting toxicity out on social media platforms.

“Mr. President, why do you hate Cahtolics?”

Not quite accurate. If you leave an instance, you do lose any posts or comments you had. Not a big loss, but there is that sense of investment in an account and reputation.

Honestly? They are. America is so right-wing that “The Left” encompasses a wide spectrum of ideologies that would all have their own political parties in Europe. Socialists have as much in common with liberals as liberals do with centrists, yet the Dems expect the first two to vote for them while they try to court the conservative leaning side of the centrists.

Don’t forget that time he wore a tan suit! Or when he didn’t wear an American flag pin that one time. What a commie.

Same as it ever was.

Tear out the lawn and re-wild the yard? Wild flowers, clover, etc. Less watering and mowing, and not just bees will love it - all kinds of insects and wildlife from birds to deer.

All those darn African killer bees! Stealing all the jobs!