As somebody in a conservative county with kids in school, that is the point to them. They frame it as "parent's rights" but the purpose is to try to out closeted Trans kids to their parents so the parents will "fix it". To them it is all upside. The kids with supportive parents? They consider them a lost cause anyways. The kids with unsupportive parents they hope they can "fix", or at least force them to hide it.

That is because one party at least tries to be ethical most of the time and the other doesn't even have the courtesy to pretend. Ethics shouldn't be a party issue but here we are.

Honestly, him dying is very real concern to me. If Republicans keep the House and he passes away, I can certainly see somebody trying to do something to Kamala Harris, as the Speaker of the House is next in line after the Vice President.

That said, I'd vote for Joe Biden if he was fucking 110, if the other option was Donald Trump. Or any Republican honestly.

I can't speak for OP, but some people sleep through alarms if they haven't slept enough. My oldest will legit just sleep through his phone alarm if it has been less than 5 hours since he went to bed. I've just heard his alarm go off in his room for 20 minutes straight before I walk in there and shake him awake. Shit is a problem.

It was Epic exclusive on PC I believe

Running. Not as expensive as a lot of the things posted about here, but my shoes cost ~$150 and I have replaced them a couple times a year. I'm planning to get in to trail running soon (as opposed to running circles in my neighborhood, so now I want to add a running vest and a GPS watch, which is not cheap.

Considering that in theory all you need to run is your body and an open space, I feel like I have spent a lot of money.

EDIT: I forgot the ~$140 bone conducting headphones I bought! I for sure feel safer with them than my old headphones though, since I have been doing almost all of my running till now on the road.

I recommend using Tor browser as an alternate option. For anybody who can't use a VPN or doesn't want to.

I've worked adjacent to customer service people in a call center. Honestly, they might not have known. Call centers are frequently terrible about giving their reps news BEFORE customers start calling in about it. Plus, low level call center reps generally aren't exactly star employees and may or may not pay attention when told things.

Obviously you do or else you wouldn't live there

Very much not true. Moving to another country full time is not particularly easy for a lot of people.

I am pretty sure he didn't actually promise it. I know he said he supports decriminalization and getting it rescheduled to Schedule 2, but I am pretty confident he never went out and said "I will get it moved to schedule 2" or anything along those lines.

I have seen a lot of people say about what he promised to do while campaigning but I am pretty sure it is mostly people taking him saying he wants to do something and reading it as him saying "I will do this". Joe Biden has been in politics a very long time and knows what the president can and can't do, I doubt he overpromised.

It isn't like he ran as a progressive, he didn't make a ton of big promises while campaigning. It was basically him saying "I will make things somewhat normal" after the Trunp presidency.

Closed. I have an 18 year old who has been working the closing shift a lot this summer. I don't want to be woken.

I remember my friends and I doing this in 2008. This really is super old

Yeah, his voice and his body always don't seem to match. It was even more striking when he was younger imo

And honestly, it might have been shot on a phone. Some of the shots are styled like he is holding a phone and filming on it. Plus, he seems to just take things pretty easy ever since he came back in ~2018. A low budget video shot on a cell phone seems very on point for his current image.

I am assuming he won't be able to go to bed at a decent time. I wake up at 6:30am most days and I know I couldn't go to bed at 6:30pm. If he woke up at 3pm, it would be a tall order to fall asleep before ~4am I'd figure. Which gives him ~3 hours of sleep.

I have 3 step children (I am step dad) they were 13, 10 and 8 when I met them, currently 18, 15 and 12 (birthday soon). When I met them, the primary family activity they did with their bio dad was watching movies and playing video games. They also all slept with a TV on in their room. My girlfriend at the time, now wife, had nothing but an old xbox 360 for video games and they had an old CRT box TV in the bedroom the 3 kids shared. As a result, they did not watch a lot of TV at her house or play a lot of games.

Currently, we do not limit the screens of the 18 year old at all. He has a job and is moving out in <2 months, he can do what he wants with his free time as long as it is not disruptive to anybody else.

Our youngest REALLY likes video games. As a result, we let him play pretty much as much as he wants if he is not at school. That said, he is on 2 soccer teams (middle school and travel) and he works out extra at home. As a result, he usually has about 30 minutes of screen time a day during the school week. Plus he has his phone to play games on the school bus. He does not have Youtube or any streaming apps on his phone though. He is allowed to sleep with the TV on Friday nights only, to celebrate the school week being over. Weekends are screen heavy as well, except for tournament weekends or regular game days. Honestly he is a good and active child so we let him use more screens than would maybe be healthy. Summer is a bit different t, where we force him to go outside and play at least a few hours a day, but otherwise let him do what he wants, so lots of screens there.

Our middle child is not big in to screens, they like to draw and listen to music and use makeup kinda like face paint. They also play volleyball and are not home till 830 most school nights anyways. As a result, they probably only use ~3 or 4 hours of screens a week, not counting changing songs on Spotify.

If they were my bio kids and I'd been there their whole lives, I think they would all use screens less, except maybe the middle. As is, I am mostly glad it is no longer the primary form of entertainment for my middle child and that my youngest is so active.

Honestly, I didn't super care for it. Thought people might be interested though.

Music video was fun

My job got everybody branded hydroflasks ~3 years ago. I don't work there any more, but I pretty much never leave the house without that bottle.

My house bottle is a 1.5L Bubba bottle from Walmart. Had that about a year and a half so far and it is holding up well.

I agree with you, at least under Joe Biden. And I hate that nothing will change under Joe Biden. I'm just saying that he didn't advertise himself on things changing. He advertised himself as being sane and stable compared to Donald Trump. Which he has pretty much fulfilled.

Nobody here is really defending Joe Biden or making excuses for him. We just acknowledge who he is as a politician. Personally, considering Joe Biden's track record on drugs/weed, I'm pleased with what he has done and with this. It isn't what I want, but this was a man who wrote anti-drug legislation while in Congress, this is more than I'd have expected from him if you asked me prior to him running for President.

I have been busy this week so I have played mostly Slay the Spire. Being able to get up and walk away at any time let's me play in my limited down time at work, or while I am working on dinner.

I've also been dabbling in a mobile game called To Arms.

If only so I can see how they get him/her inside Air Force One, yes.

Visiting from !hiphopheads@sopuli.xyz !

I'm not a huge Alt/Indie music listener, but I do like folk music so when I saw her with Folk Rock as one of her labels on Wikipedia I was excited to check this out. I also really liked the track she co-wrote for Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.

This whole album is so sad for me. I love music that makes me really feel something, but it is rare that the emotion I get out of my music is a deep and genuine sadness. I won't pretend I'm not a pretty emotional guy, but I was surprised when started to tear up during Heaven. I'm a happily married man and the combination of

as I sip on the rest of the coffee you left
a kiss left of you

and

and the dark awaits us all around the corner
but here, in our place we have for the day
can we stay a while and listen for heaven

made me NEED to walk over and hug my wife. Her ex-husband passed away a couple years ago and watching my step-kids deal with that grief made me very aware that seemingly healthy people our age can vanish suddenly.

I also want to mention Star. As far as I can tell it was released as a single the same time as Heaven, so maybe it is appropriate that it is my second favorite song on the album. When it starts to build at ~1:45 and then peaks at ~2:35, I got goosebumps.

I also really liked the hard piano on "When Memories Snow", leading in to the orchestral build. Maybe I'm just a sucker for a good build.

The only take I wasn't super feeling is I Don't Like My Mind, but I think that is just because it is following Heaven which hit me so hard. I was emotionally recovering or something, idk. I will be giving this album another listen in the near future and my opinion may change once I'm no longer gut punched by Heaven.

Last thing to mention is that the dog barking sounds on the back part of I'm Your Man made me genuinely uncomfortable. I don't know why exactly but I disliked it on a very guttural level.

Overall I really liked this album. Not as folky as I had hoped when I Wikipedia's her, but I think that was me setting false expectations for myself. Their was a bit of country going on though which is folk adjacent! Overall the the choral and orchestral pieces on several of the tracks sounded amazing and her lyrics combined with the general vibe of many of the songs had me all in my feelings. I'll have to check out some of her older albums after this if they are anything like this. I need to give it a few days though probably. Partly so I can re-listen to this, but also because I think I can only handle so much sad music in a short period of time.

It was a 3 day music festival in Maryland! It was right on the beach, two of the three stages you were standing in the sand. Artists there people are most likely to recognize are Jack Johnson, Alanis Morissette, Jimmy Eat World, Weezer and The Lumineers. Lots of other stuff too though. My favorite was Fitz and the Tantrums, though Jack Johnson's set was crazy good. Man puts on a really good live show.

Before I go in to this, I want to clarify that when I say "children", I'm mostly talking about teenagers. I mean it more in the "not legally an adult" sense than like...little kids. Moving on.

I think the issue isn't parent's rights overall, just how the concept is being used by certain groups at the moment. Some choices should be made for the child, especially when they are very young. If I wasn't able to make choices for my children, my 14 and 12 year old would never have gotten a flu shot because they don't like needles. That said, I don't think the parent has the right to know EVERYTHING about their child. Kids have secrets and that is healthy. I certainly don't think that a parent has the right to force their child to hide their gender identity or sexuality.

I am specifying all of this and pushing back because I think the problem is how the conversation is framed. A lot of this conversation is either started by right wing fundamentalists (who obviously frame it in a way to push their agenda and want children to have basically no rights) or children. The problem is, children talk about their rights and wanting freedom about dumb shit as often as they do about legitimate things. My 14 year old step-son got mad at me about his "privacy" a couple weeks ago when I went in to his bedroom while he was at his after school sport. He was big mad about me not respecting his rights. Except the reason I went in there is because we had 7 missing cups and I knew they weren't anywhere else. One of the cups had old apple juice in it and we haven't had apple juice in our house for at least 3 weeks. His overall point (children deserve privacy and the ability to have their own space) was valid, but I deserve to both have a cup to drink out of and also to not have fruit flies upstairs.

I think the only solution is for people who agree that kids do deserve rights and privacy and some autonomy are more vocal about it, even if they don't have kids themselves. Because as it is now, the only people very vocally arguing against it are literal children and while they might be right overall, they don't pick their battles wisely and it makes the entire point look silly to an outside observer. If we don't frame the conversation around things outside observers can agree with and not to the extremes that the right wing wants to push it to AND not the extremes that the children effected by this stuff will push it too due to the naivety of youth. I think it is very easy for a parent to go "well I SHOULD be able to make decisions for my kid. My kid doesn't know better, " if we let the argument be controlled by people who will push it to the farthest limits.

That said, I do want to specify that I think children SHOULD be part of this conversation. I know I remember being a child but I also know my children know MUCH more about it than I could possibly remember (they are living it). I also know my children can and do bring up valid points that I may not have thought of. This effects them more than anybody and if they aren't a huge part of the conversation then we can never reach something that is actually good I think. As an adult I know I risk falling in to "well this is how it was when I was a child" or "well I know better" because that is just easier. The children keep us honest.

Potentially weird question, but how did you get in to CSMing? I started in customer service and moved over to the training department instead. I've dome that at various companies since 2017, including training new CSMs for 2 years. That said, there is no real room for advancement for me with my current path I feel because I really don't want to move in to management.

Is there a route you would suggest, outside of starting over at the bottom of the totem pole somewhere and working my way to CSM?

Creeper World 4 is fun and not terribly long. It is basically a tower defense game, but instead of guarding a set path toy build towers to defend against, then push back, physics simulator liquid that kills whatever it touches.

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, you play a small group of ninjas (and a samurai) in a top down stealth game. Takes place in feudal Japan and you assassinate your way through the plot.

Superhot. FPS with a weird plot about VR and a rogue computer program. The gimmick is if you stop moving, time stops around you (almost), allowing you to slow down and plan.

Lastly and is a game called Soccer Kids Alpha. It is literally the alpha version of the game so it is SUPER short. It is a turn based soccer game, but without the grid based system that some other games use. The alpha is great and we'll worth the very short time it takes to finish

I'm not familiar with Raw Story, can anybody confirm their reliability in general? This article seems solid but the name makes me think of all of those weird right wing "news" websites. Looking over it a bit it definitely doesn't seem to be one of those though so idk.

They didn't make that argument. They just pointed out that it DOES happen

That game was one of my favorite games. I moved somewhere with fast enough internet to get Xbox Live for the first time like 2 months after it came out and I sank so much time in to it. Ended up playing Halo more because that is what all my friends played but man that game was good.

I found a couple versions of it. I liked this one best

Not my GPU but my friend's. He has nothing but good things to say about it. $600 USD which translates to ~£540, but obviously buying it over there the price might be different .

Honestly, we normally burn them for ~6-7 hours at a time when we light them. We both work from home and I'll usually light it up the first time I get up from the computer. It doesn't happen with nicer candles, but some of the cheaper 1 wick ones we get from Walmart or Aldi will tunnel like that even with the long burns.

Hahaha, that is what I get for not checking the comments. Thank you for pointing that out!

I'm hoping they fix it so it will actually use all my power. Both my graphics card and processor sit at ~50% usage and low temp, while I drop frames when locked at 30fps. I'm still in act 1 but as it is now, I am concerned about when I reach act 3, since they say that is much harder on performance.

Health is actually half the reason I started running. I've lost ~50lbs over a couple years and want to lose more.

And I want to agree on SLOW. When I first started I did C25K and I was running my little 1 minute increments at like a 15 minute mile pace, then walking in between increments. But eventually I got to where I could run that 15 minute mile pace for 30 minutes at a time, and then I started working on speed. I'm down to almost being able to run a 10K in 35 minutes in a hilly environment, or being able to run for ~45 minutes at a slower pace. I tried many times in my 20s to start running and I always got discouraged because I'd try C25K, but do the running parts at a ~9 minute mile pace and it was killing me. Realizing I needed to start slow got me where I wanted to be.

Very much true. Dude has been kind of off the rails since at least like...2004? It is a shame when somebody who is legend and pioneer in something turns out to have some pretty gross thoughts/opinions.

I'll check them both out, thanks!

If you liked this, consider joining us over at !hiphopheads@sopuli.xyz

This is off of Blac Sabbath by Blacastan, which is the topic this week for our Weekly Book (Album) Club.

Hahaha, I hadn't noticed that

This is the route that we go too actually, I just hate having to wait for sales haha

Not in my part of Virginia, but I assume this would be a pretty regional if it is happening