Considering the Klan is recruiting there now…

Oh definitely. Dude thought “wow this is my chance to be a hero”, I’m sure.

Behind the Bastards did a great two parter on how liberal media basically let Mussolini and Hitler rise to power unchallenged because they were so busy trying to appear “fair” and “neutral” and “objective” even as journalists and editors were being executed in the streets.

Yup. The trans community has been doing this with HRT meds for YEARS because it was either straight up illegal, or almost impossible to obtain access because of the dozens of hoops you had to jump through.

My issue, as a younger grognard, is that point and click character builders and sheets have led to a lot of players who don’t actually understand how to play the game without their buttons. They don’t get what I mean when I say “roll a spell attack” unless they have a button that does it. They don’t get how to build a character outside of something like D&D Beyond where it does everything for you.

Really the only trend, from my friends and coworkers who have done wine tasting, is that once you climb above the absolute bottom tier, the field is…kinda flat until you start paying hundreds per bottle. That $14 Yellow Tail white will, without a lot of outliers, taste just as good as a white that’s $150. The more expensive one might have a more depth or complexity, but they will be fairly easily comparable overall.

And the other half is so caught up in appearing “unbiased” that they won’t pass anything that seems even the slightest bit politically charged.

Pokemon Emerald? So long as I’m not the protag, life is generally OK. Aside from Team Aqua/Magma and the whole “causing disasters to expand the sea/land”, I should be OK.

Ohio as well, same with Indiana.

The Behind the Bastards episodes are pretty enlightening as well.

Yup, regulatory capture at work. You see this a lot in EPA and OSHA as well - “we’ll take your word for it until serious shit starts happening a lot.”

Oh they fucking tried a LOT. The public at large, and a lot of the lobbying groups, kept up the pressure really well to get this through.

It’s even weirder, because it was a flintlock - likely because you don’t have to actually register those in California, and Elon is paranoid about interacting with the government in a way that isn’t begging them for cash.

They likely won’t do anything. The IRS is extremely gun shy about enforcing that doctrine ever since the Church of Scientology thing.

One wonders whether instance companies will incentivize these vehicles with lower rates.

A lot of it is run by Mormons not just because of their religion, but because a lot of these places are in the Southwest for two major reasons - they can be EXTREMELY remote and isolated that way (try walking 2 hrs in Arizona or Utah in the middle of the summer, without water, after probably living on starvation-level rations for several weeks), and the laws down there are pretty lax on what constitutes child abuse IIRC (especially Utah). The worst ones are out-of-country - one of my former boyfriends was sent to a gay camp SOMEWHERE in the Caribbean, and a lot of them operate in places that are normally tax shelters for similar reasons (although I know some of the islands have managed to push these places out of business).

+1 for If Books Could Kill. They’ve kinda run out of shitty famous self help books, but they still do good rundowns on other books now.

I’ll also recommend Michael Hobbes’ other podcast, Maintenance Phase, which is largely about health grifts.

China has been doing this for years. We’re just playing catch up in the Horrible Things Olympics.

But of course, he will spin this as “fostering peace” with China and Russia, because presidents who don’t simply Art of the Deal their way out of wars (read: selling off countries that aren’t theirs) are losers. The whole “oh no we’re in a war now” thing will be studiously avoided until the next election, or at least the US getting involved in such a war, because then it’s some other sucker’s problem.

Unironically, they absolutely do. Children are the punishment for having sex out of wedlock, and not only must the woman suffer for having this child, but the child must suffer because they’re the product of sin.

I knew a number of people at my old church who ABSOLUTELY thought this way.