For a long time, Weight Watchers has said that if you just follow their points system, the weight will melt off and you won't need supplements or anything else. When most people think of Weight Watchers, they're probably not thinking about the weight loss drugs they now support; they're thinking of the years of points gimmick that make you feel like you can't lose weight unless you pay $10+/month to see if you can eat that food or not (rather than teaching anyone about calorie intake vs. output).

Weight Watchers relies on a subscription based model to "save" people from their fatness, and Oprah was the biggest WW pusher. She had tons of money and resources, was even on the board of WW, and still needed medications to manage her weight. I don't give a fuck, but people who bought into her ads and promos probably feel a little pissed off.

I'd kinda favor 401(k)s or something more like that

I'd rather not have to rely on market gambling to survive in my old age. Many people probably agreed with you until about 2008, when a LOT of retirees lost most of their retirement money during the recession and a lot of really old people went back to work. It was pretty bad, and I'll never forget it.

Not that it matters. I can barely afford to live week to week now, let alone save money for retirement. I'll probably just die, I guess. 🤷‍♀️

Normally, I don't respond to "bOtH sIdEs" comments, but I was worried that other people might listen to you and won't show up to vote, or will throw it away on a 3rd party candidate when our country unfortunately isn't set up for that to work. We'd have to reform how voting works and campaign finance laws to even possibly make what you're suggesting a tiny bit workable.

Things Biden has gotten done that are important to me in no particular order:

• Ukraine response
• Bipartisan (barely - 13 Rs in House, 19 Rs in Senate) Infrastructure Law (spending on fixing bridges, roads, etc.)
• CHIPS and Science Act (semiconductor chip manufacturing)
• Inflation Reduction Act (capped Medicare drug costs at $2k out of pocket, capped insulin prices for Medicare to $35 per month, increased funding for IRS to modernize and audit the wealthy, increased corporate taxes, investment in green energy)
• Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (strengthened background checks on guns, incentives red flag laws)
• Paused federal executions after Trump undid the previous freeze
• Repealed Trump's ban on trans troops in the military
• Attempting student loan debt relief
• Released oil from the National Reserve to make gas prices less painful
• Signed bill for veteran burn pit care
• Postal Service Reform Act (modernize and fix the USPS)
• Respect for Marriage Act (forces ALL states to recognize same-sex marriage and interracial marriage rights)
• Renewed Violence Against Women Act after Trump let it expire
• Declared Juneteenth a holiday
• Pardoned federal convictions of marijuana possession
• Spent over $10.7 billion on federal, state, local, and tribal land conservation and has protected over 12 million acres of national public land (some of which had their protections removed by Trump)

(edited to fix a bullet point)

Kinda fine so far? As of a couple of weeks ago, he still hadn't paid a dime to any of the Sandy Hook families because he declared bankruptcy. He's still spending a bunch of money and still doing Info Wars. It'll probably catch up to him eventually? I hope? https://apnews.com/article/alex-jones-sandy-hook-shooting-bankruptcy-34192bd7d89ed786f64580682f6ea89e

If someone by now isn't concerned about defeating Trump, there's literally nothing we can do about it other than to call them out for being a shitbag for voting 3rd party.

It must be nice to have the luxury of making a protest vote. They must think their life wouldn't change either way.

Honestly, I thought the same thing about Obama. I didn't think there was any way a black guy who'd been living in Chicago would win. But he did! You never know!

Though I agree that the risk would be crazy high to run a black/Indian female president with a gay vice president. Maybe not this psycho election.

Yeah kinda. You can see her hands in his crotch, although they seem to be over his pants instead of inside then, and he's very handsy with her chichis. https://www.mediaite.com/politics/lauren-boebert-caught-on-cctv-seeming-getting-extremely-handsy-with-man-at-beetlejuice-performance-she-was-booted-from/

Hey. Be nice. Feel free to go back to reddit with that shit attitude.

That "cosmetic surgery" saves lives. It definitely did for my daughter's friend. He was not doing so well before his top surgery, and now he's so much happier. It's a crazy difference.

They're clearly trying to win if they got so scared about polls they strong-armed Biden into resigning. The panic has pretty clearly set in. We'll see if this works or not.

Probably also the country of Ukraine, our ally that was invaded by Russia.

I followed it a bit, and I followed the one that preceded it in England. Oddly, some evidence that was allowed in England wasn't allowed in the US, and some evidence allowed in the US wasn't allowed in England, so a lot of opinions are different based on which trial they paid more attention to.

Basically, they're both awful people who were regularly blackout drunk/high, and had a mutually abusive, toxic relationship. A lot of the arguing online is about who was the mostest abusive/toxic, partly (imo) based on the parasocial relationship they have with their celebrity of choice and who had the best zingers in court. In the US trial, Johnny Depp was charming in court and had GREAT lawyers, and Amber Heard came across as very fake (like she was performing for the jury) with terrible lawyers. In the England version, Johnny Depp admitted he didn't remember what he did or didn't do to her because he was really high and drunk a lot. They both have witnesses with pretty convincing stories. There was also a lot of fighting about who pushed whom down the stairs, who hit whom, who cut whom with a bottle, etc.

TL;DR - They're both emotionally unstable trash and would be AWFUL to date. You didn't miss much.

That's so easy to go back on. Like the promise to not nominate Supreme Court Justices right before a presidential election. I would be deeply disappointed if any Democrats believed any promises from Republicans.

It's scarier than that. I saw some of the comments, and they said he couldn't have chosen the next president, but he could've held off while some states did more to investigate the votes that were supposedly stolen. They make it sound so plausible to each other, and it just makes them even scarier because more people say "Oh that sounds reasonable" when it's completely nuts. The state of Georgia and counties in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Texas already had vote recounts by Jan. 6th. What the hell did they expect to find??

So... who should we vote for instead?

That game is impossible. I can't believe how many people in the comments say they've beaten it. I never beat it as a kid, and when I tried it again on the switch a couple of years ago, I still couldn't make it very far.

Another good one

The intervention from the Justice Department prompted Aaron Zelinsky, the prosecutor and Mueller deputy who led the case against Stone, to recuse himself from the case in protest. Mediaite reported last week that Stone was caught on tape in December 2020 urging Greco to “punish” Zelinsky.

“He needs to be punished,” Stone told Greco in the audio. “You have to abduct him and punish him. That has to be done. It will be easy to abduct him because he is a weakling.”

Wow that's a huge hail ball! I get excited when they're marble-sized.

I was also surprised by that, but I'm still surprised people have them in their living rooms. I guess it's like upgrading from a baby monitor??

That line literally made my jaw drop because I had just been thinking, "Wow this is still kinda messed up. I thought their society would end up much more equal" and then BAM! that line hits. That movie was so good. I've been trying to get everyone I know to see it.

You forgot the implication that black women couldn't possibly be skilled or smart enough to be hired. Because they're black. That's the racist part. It's devaluation stemming from racism.

I don't know. I think it depends more on where they grow up and who/what they're exposed to (in person and online). At the high school I work at, we have a bunch of lgbtq+ teens whose conservative parents have no idea they're queer or go by a different name. But I also don't live somewhere like Wyoming with a much higher conservative population. I live in a college town in a (barely) blue county surrounded by red counties in an ultimately very blue state.

I hope we find a way to kill the online radical right pipeline and continue to expose more teens to other ideas, other cultures, and other ways of life, and maybe it won't matter so much who their parents are.

I work in a high school in a California school district where they're discussing banning cell phones.

Most teachers I've talked to about it think it's really fucking stupid because you're not going to be able to ban them, partly because a TON of parents showed up at the school board meeting to say they would send them with their kid anyway for a variety of reasons. The board also talked about different things they could buy to take phones and lock them up during class or as students come in. Most of the solutions were pretty expensive, and some of the schools are literally falling apart, so that also pissed people off.

A great start would be to have a campus-wide rule that is CONSISTENT. Some teachers give out a detention if they even see the phone. Some do activities with QR codes and use them as tools. Some have boxes on the corner of their desk and students are required to keep their phone in the box so the teacher can see if they reach for it. We have students with free periods, and if they don't go home, they hang out outside around campus or in the library. Should phones be banned then too? Or just during class?

There are so many ways to try to deal with it, and at least in my school (not even the district as a whole), every teacher deals with it differently. I doubt the state of New York is all that different.

China was first. This is from March: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/time-money-love-china-brainstorms-ways-boost-birth-rate-2023-03-15/

Yeah it just came out yesterday.

https://www.cnn.com/cnn/2024/02/28/politics/donald-trump-appeals-court-new-york/index.html

Associate Justice Anil Singh, however, lifted a ban on Trump’s ability to obtain loans from New York regulated financial institutions, which could allow him to access the equity in his assets to back the full bond amount.

Nah, I'm sure they won't want any "handouts" right? Lol

Yeah that message would haunt me for life.

It was higher in Paradise for sure. They stopped reporting more bodies found after the initial count. I'm friends with a couple of locals that worked on the cleanup crews, and they personally had to stop and call the owners of multiple houses about bodies, and they had no idea who would've been there. Probably transients or anyone looking for shelter.

Ugh. We caught a kid doing that in my high school library last May. We radioed for help. The campus supervisor walked him outside, talked to him about it, and sent him back to us to finish the test he was working on. I couldn't believe it. Later, we told admin about it and had to write witness statements. He was a freshman and said it's what he does at home when he's sitting around, and didn't realize he was doing it. None of the students know, as far as I'm aware. We all kept it very quiet.

No one should get any time for abortion, but it's not like this man and woman are hardened criminals. They bought into a fad, did what they saw LOTS of other people doing, and tried their best to put out a fire they couldn't put out. They fucked up, someone died, and lots of lives are changed forever. Over a million dollars in fines, some jail time, probation, and lots of community service doesn't seem inappropriate to me. I feel bad for the family of the guy who died doing his job, and I feel bad for all the people who lost their homes and probably some pets, but... I guess I don't understand how much more you need to feel like justice was done.

because the DNC can't put forward a decent candidate

Hold up. You think either party would endorse someone other than their own incumbent president?? That's insane. If you don't vote, you're okay with throwing it to the Republican candidate?

Do you know how Republicans feel about the rail workers strike? How about my right to healthcare as a woman? Or the insane environmental policy they just came up with? The constant attacks on schools, libraries, and LGBTQ+ people?

There are so many more things I could list out. Cutting Medicare and social safety nets, slashing taxes for the rich, defunding the IRS, privatizing the internet, etc etc etc. Deciding not to vote because of the rail workers strike is INSANE. Was I happy about it? No. I'm still angry. But holy fuck there's so much going on. I can't possibly understand how you could ignore all the rest because of that. I also hate the DNC. I hated them in 2016, and I will hate them forever. But I guess I'm not selfish enough to throw a tantrum and withhold voting when it matters. And it DOES matter.

I try not to do this, but here's a reddit comment from 6 years ago that breaks down the voting records between Democrats and Republicans on major legislation.

bOtH sIdEs arguments are fucking insane.

So you support how Republicans are voting then? They're historically great with collective bargaining agreements. 🙄

I (F) have always played video games (started with the NES and AD&D games on PC) because my dad had bought them for my brother, and they were fun. Nearly all of my female friends in junior high played N64 games along with our male friends, but now having friends in my upper 30s, very few of them play video games unless they're on mobile. And even if they do play mobile games, it's not Stardew Valley. It's the shitty ones that come pre-installed or they found through ads on Facebook. There are a few from my junior high nerd bubble that I'm sure still play, but I keep it on the DL at work because everyone is mostly frustrated with their husbands and kids and how much time they sink into games. They're judgy about it. I've started occasionally admitting I play games, but feel like I have to say we play them as a family, and relate it to board games.

The article surprises me. Although my daughter had tons of friends to play with online during the pandemic, so maybe it's more zoomers and 20-somethings?

I'm confused, and you seem to be a lot more familiar with the term. I read the wiki link that explains tankies. I don't personally know any left leaning people who support Russia/Stalin/China regimes. Maybe because of my America-centric viewpoint and where things are today, but typically people who are economically left are also socially and politically left (equal opportunity is more important than individual freedoms), which is very anti-fascist. I've heard people say how great a true communism could be if it were possible, but no one's ever made it past a dictatorship to get there.

Are tankies people who are economically left but socially and politically right, and think someone has achieved a communist utopia without knowing anything about the corrupt oligarchies in Russia or CCP China?

Okay, so what would you rather happen instead? Biden... not look for ways to relive student debt? Hope to vote for a 3rd party candidate that won't get elected? Or you could vote for Trump or another Republican, who want to charge back interest for the student debt pause during the pandemic?

I'm just trying to figure out where you're going and what you're trying to accomplish with your rage.

You're really busy today.

You have to be joking. No one could possibly spin this as legit. From the article:

Tuberville began his blockade in April in protest of a Pentagon abortion policy enacted late last year. The policy, which covers travel expenses for abortion care, hit the six-month mark earlier this week.

Was it difficult to emigrate from the US to Taiwan? Are there stringent requirements?