My best friend is a librarian, and they’ve stopped buying ebook licenses because the terms were awful.
The publishers only allowed an ebook to be checked out a few times before the library had to purchase a license extension. The argument was that pylhysical books face wear and tear and eventually have to be replaced, so ebooks should have to be replaced too.
“No member of my immediate faimily has never been formally accused^1 of the sex crimes my husband has been covering up.”
^1 statement does not include civil judgments holding my husband liable for sexual assault
Imagine you’re having to choose between 2 meal plans for the next 4 years. The default option is a bag of broken glass for every meal, but you can instead choose to have a diet with real food instead.
You’re choosing the bag of broken glass because the other option doesn’t have the salad dressing you like.
The millions dying from the end of USAID, familes of people slaughtered in Iran and Venezuela, people whose lives have been shattered by ICE, and those who have had their Healthcare taken away can take comfort that at least you get to feel superior about tacitly endorsing their suffering by refusing to simply vote against it.
Do you think the world would be in a worse place with Harris than with Trump? If not, then choosing not to vote for Harris was a profoundly stupid thing to do.
Do KitKats even have chocolate?
Yes, but it also hurts their case when they’re demonstrating clearly that they can filter out ads they determine to be harmful.
Following the 2021 winter storms in Texas, power bills have been incredibly unpredictable. The variable rates being charged to the utilities jumped up hundreds of times because our laws fucking suck. So for the next 20 years, we’re having to pay off the power co-op’s debts, and we never know what the additional surcharge is gonna be on a bill. We’d get an electric bill for our usage and on top of that would be a fixed provider debt service surcharge of $300 that anyone connected to the grid had to pay regardless of use. Then the next month the surcharge would be $50. Then the next it would be $750. Then it would be $12. But it was usually far higher than the actual electric use portion of the bill.
It also has really hurt solar adoption rates, because the vast majority of the bill isn’t tied to use, so solar doesn’t offset that much of the bill while having its own payment plan. And code requires a connection to the electric grid, so you can’t just choose to completely disconnect to avoid the surcharges.
Microwave imaging is used militarily, and in 2025 the US military did a public test of the Leonidas microwave weapon system to simultaneously knock out nearly 50 drones.
Acting President. One part of the 25th amendment that’s actually been used a few times (Section 3) is related to anesthesia. When the President is going under general anesthesia they can formally tell congress they’ll be temporarily unable to discharge the duties of the office, so the VeeP becomes acting President.
It’s been done 4 times - all related to the colon, funnily enough. George HW Bush was Acting President during Reagan’s colon-cancer surgery. Cheney was Acting President twice for W’s colonoscopies, and Harris was Acting President during Biden’s colonoscopy.
Between all 4 instances it still adds up to like 11 hours total that a VeeP has been Acting President.
The other parts of the 25th Amendment that have been used are Section 1 (Presidential sucession in case of death, resignation, or removal from office) for when Nixon resigned, and Section 2 (Vice-Presidnential succession) following Spiro Agnew’s resignation and Ford’s elevation to the Presidency following Nixon’s Resignation.
Section 4 (removal by the cabinet) hasn’t been used. It probably should have been when Reagan was shot and incapacitated, but Bush was on a flight and wouldn’t have been able to do anything, so it was tricky.
It definitely should have been used with Ttump on January 6th - and about 900 other times.
The little ones were worse in my experience. They tended to turn better on the axles and with couple guys spinning on the outside you could really get them going, then have the people riding move to the inside and it blue-shifts.
Isreal stopping it’s assault on Lebanon was one of Iran’s conditions of the 10 point-plan to end the war in 2 weeks, so Israel decided to accelerate the bombing to wipe them out before the 2 weeks is up.
Honestly, it’s especially troubling with a cease fire. The lesson taken from there is that openly threatening the mass-murder of civilians is a legitimate strategy.
Harris at least held the powers of the office for an hour one time while Biden was under for a Colonoscopy. So that’s something.
Congress can and should have her ass dragged in there by force if she refuses to appear.
Some things require years of specialization and simply can’t be done by novices. You don’t want volunteer engineers, pharmacists, etc. Some of those specializations are also unpleasant. We need to support people and not require that all humanity be profitable, but we also need to incentivize people to do shitty and/or difficult jobs. That balance is extremely difficult to find, and the most effective solution we’ve found is paying people for that work. There’s an incredible imbalance in our system right now that values non-productive ownership over all else, but the solution to that isn’t saying “Fuck it - nobody gets paid and it’ll all work itself out.”
The easiest solution is to tax the shit out of the uber-wealthy. Right now we have lower classes defined by income and an upper class defined by wealth. If we remove the wealth and make work and productivity more valuable than ownership, it moves us much closer to equity.
Everyone can’t do everything, and some specialized jobs with specialized skills are extremely unpleasant. Are you suggesting that we just hope things get done, or that we force people to do it while giving nothing in return.
One is delusional - the other is just slavery.
Sure is a good thing doing this dishes is the most complicated and least-pleasant thing people can do…
Who’s gonna volunteer to go through years of training specializing in commercial diving in wastewater to treatment plants for free?
“We are not a theocracy, and God willing, we never will be” is a fascinating statement.
It’s a call for a secular state from a religious perspective, and I think I actually like it a lot.
Well… were you?