Imagine if a great artist had some notebook sketches, and his son finger-painted all over them and then tried to sell them.

A flower would also be acceptable.

For the military, think about Amazon. They can get you a new dildo tomorrow because they have a huge infrastructure of warehouses around the country. The US has a world network of “supplies” for war that will be reduced and create more risk and a time delay if US interests are threatened. In practical terms, you don’t punch an American because America can punch you back tomorrow. If the US maybe can punch you back next week, you’re less concerned with ignoring their interests.

Practically, the local economies will hurt badly, like the Philippines after they reduced the US navel presence. There is also a “living next to a cop” effect that has had more value in the past, but has soured like the idea of living next to a cop.

For the US, we would now need to house all these troops locally, and would end up greatly reducing force size over 20 years. A big pile of active tanks training in Germany doesn’t get much news, but a bunch of expensive tanks training next to a huge line at a soup kitchen is a great photo op.

I was roommates with Dr. Funk.

If you are and you admit it, you’ll get more grace from intelligent people. Sometimes.

Can anyone read this comment? It won’t load for me.

I once was taking a nice old man to the hospital, when he stopped breathing. I gave him a second and tried to rouse him, and he was pretty stubborn about it, but he still had a weak pulse. I called to my partner.

“Hey, how close are we to the hospital?”

“About 5 minutes, why?”

“Well, he’s not breathing. So if you hit any traffic, hit the lights, will you?”

I bagged him for about 3-4 minutes. Traffic was light, and we were making pretty good time, so we decided not to freak anybody out. The guy came to, and looked confused.

“What happened,” he asked.

“You stopped breathing, so I was breathing for you.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“You are very welcome.”

He’s still the only person who ever said thank you when I tried to save their life.

86.9% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

There’s something important to understand about LLMs. You need to imagine them as a crowd of 1,000 people, who you use an algorithm on, to get close to the most popular opinion on the answer.

This won’t help your mom, she won’t change her mind and will try to drag the argument or will just attack until everything is destroyed. But here’s a clear rebuttal of the idea.

The failure of demanding everyone showing worth is determining what is worth and who gets to define and assign it. Every petty warlord believes they are the one to decide… and oh gee, amazing how they have the most worth.

If you tell your mom you will only accept her argument if she accepts you have more worth than her - and demonstrates it to you every day - it will probably make her go no contact until she needs you again for emotional affirmation.

Depression is real, I don’t have it but it’s real and I have friends that deal with it as part of their lives. It sounds like getting out of your mom’s sewer might help, but you might need medication as well.

Only Jesus takes the wheel. God is his copilot.

Santlantis

Our Onion is the OC for all my satirical news articles. Little things like that are the seeds of a community.

I feel like you have the ethical upper hand, keep doing what you’re doing.

A bit of a dry spell, huh?

Not only can you say it, you can get temperate responses and arguments on the subject and not the person. Sure, we have to deal with some absolutists like on .mil, but after a few weeks of blocking the bad actors, this is a really refreshing environment.

Edit: and to OP on .ml, that wasn’t against you. Be sure to search around for areas that interest you, it can be sparse but there are some real gems here.

I’ve started making claim email chains with the state ombudsman cc’d in the first email. Saves so much time.

Every drop of water makes the river, don’t forget you’re a part of the world, and you’re important, even if it doesn’t always feel that way.

Janet, I think someone set your language to angelic, fix that please.

If Lemmy could up its porn game, reddit would just be bots saying catchy things to each other.