I had understood it to mean, like, making an oath (“I swear to God…” or the whole hand-on-a-Bible swearing) and not following through, or making it lightly.

Jesus had a whole thing about it, saying that not only should you not make an oath in God’s name lightly, but that you shouldn’t at all (implying it shouldn’t be necessary, if you’re already an honest person). “Let your yes be yes, and your no be no.”

Which, honestly, makes way more sense than some nonsense about not saying their names.

Only if there are no Marine astronauts, otherwise they’ll assume it’s rations.

Linkin Park.

Look, I like them, so I’m not exactly knocking them, but a long time ago I was working an overnight inventory shift, and my manager at the time put on a Linkin Park album, and I predict how every song was going to go because they all seemed like the same song.

Yeah, they could have at least had a picture of Vegeta.

American Civil Liberties Union, and I’m not sure what they’re on about.

For me, i tell them “why” isn’t a complete question. If you can’t make a full question like “why does we need food?” then they don’t deserve an answer because they’re just trying to be annoying.

Or, for short, “why what?”

Much better way to organize. It’s how a lot of my files start:

YYYYMMDD-Name-Document-signed

So much easier to keep track.

the man who has openly declared since the 2000s that democracy is a mistake and that he wants to destroy the United States and European countries to establish city-states, each governed by a different corporation (fiefdoms), on our ruins

Wait. Did dude read Snowcrash and think “yeah, that future, that’s my utopia!”?

Boat.

Saving up for one now, but 20k should get me there.

I’ve heard about deaf people learning with horror that farts make sound.

An old buddy of mine commented once on the amount if minor havoc you could wreak with a handful of chain bike locks. Cheap, wrap around some door handles and lock, walk away. Yeah, somebody can bust out a bolt cutter, but for the amount of challenge to remove it, the low cost per use, and the speed of application, it’s pretty impressive for minor mischief.

Relatively harmless, too, as long as you aren’t doing any additional nefarious shit. Might work for some gated community gates.

BONE!

Oh, man, kind and fast. Hands down. Every time.

I don’t? I don’t think?

I’m honestly pretty light on any emotion except anger. But I don’t care enough to be anxious, and I’m pretty confident I’m not depressed. I’m reasonably unhappy about the state of the world (and my country), but I wouldn’t equate that to depression.

My biggest gripe about it is that it should mean sacrificing a tenth (or a small portion) in order to preserve the whole.

So many words that mean completely destroy, and we have to make the one meaning specifically not that to also mean completely destroy. The language is weaker for it.

So ultimately, the punishment for not believing is being destroyed? Like, oblivion?

Shit, this sounds like a win. I have no interest in eternal existence, even supposedly “blissful” existence. I feel like anyone who thinks of eternity on more than a surface level would feel nothing but existential dread.

The wars in the Middle East are tricky, though, because to have a “victory” you would need a clear metric for it, a clear goal. It’s not like the US was looking to conquer and annex those countries

If the goal was to completely fuck up a country with little to no (physical, not financial) damage to our home country, mission accomplished, one helluva victory.

If the goal was to stop Terrorism… that’s like the War on Drugs, there’s no winning that.

If the goal was merely to occupy them in order to (temporarily) prevent them from being a staging ground and financial support for Terrorism… I guess that worked? For awhile?

Vietnam and Korea were about stopping Communists from taking over the country. Huge failure on Vietnam, and apparently a draw in Korea (considering the North/South divide). But it was a clear enough goal. The Middle East? Who knows what the specific goal was (other than trillions of dollars to the Military Industrial Complex).

Honest answer, as someone in the military:

A LOT of military people lament how “soft” the military has become, and someone coming down on beards, fat, etc, as well as being up front with what the military is for (e.g. Department of War), scratches a whiny itch they’ve always had. Because every old salty sailor and sandy equivalent feels like they came from the Old Guard.

I came from the Old Guard that my peers are nostalgic about. It was terrible and unnecessarily cruel. It was inefficient and left new people floundering instead of supported. The whole thing feels like a cycle of abuse.

But back to the point, they don’t care if he’s underqualified, makes bad and inexperienced military decisions, or has a host of DUIs (“who doesn’t?”). They only care that he’s calling generals fat to their faces and getting rid of beard ememptions.

1. Don’t carry credit card debt. Save money if you can. Get a handle on basic finances

Credit cards are this weird thing. If you need them, you shouldn’t use them (if you can help it). If you make plenty of money and don’t need them, they are a very useful financial tool. I have paid interest on one of my credit cards once in the past 3 years, and it was only to have extra available funds for buying a house. But I have accrued well over 100k airline miles and several hundred (far more than the interest I paid) in cash back. I use credit cards exclusively for everything but my mortgage, and have them set to automatically pay the statement balance prior to the due date. If you aren’t extremely confident you can do that, you should avoid credit cards.

I definitely ran afoul of credit cards in my youth, so the banks have gotten their pound of flesh from me.

I talked so much shit about Heath Ledger playing the Joker before that movie came out. The pretty boy from “10 Things I Hate About You?” Ridiculous. Just getting a big name, you know? And then he was beyond incredible, and a perfect example of what the Joker should be.

That made me hold my tongue when so many questionable choices for actors came out in the future, like both Ben Affleck and Robert Pattinson for Batman.

Turns out Ledger was just an anomaly, though. So I’m still not going to be watching Tron: Ares.