Are they being sold to Russia directly, or is Russia buying them through an intermediary to skirt around sanctions.

Essentially nation-level straw purchasing.

Unless you’re a giant tortoise.

It took 300 years to properly classify them. Specimens never survived the voyage back to Europe because they were too delicious.

Tolerance is a social contract. Those who deny it to others aren’t protected by it.

That made me swell with a sliver of American pride. Which is a pretty remarkable achievement this week.

I’ll gladly lose money and comfort for a few years to protect the people I love from what Trump and his minions will to do.

Every day they’re in power is a threat.

Down economies are the number one predictor of whether a political party will be voted out.

American here.

Please embargo us. Make it clear that you will not work with a fascist state.

I want our economy to be in fucking ruins come 2026, when 20 Republican senators are up for reelection. If we take the house and a 2/3rds majority in the Senate and we can end this shit in January 2027.

But we need the anger and pain the Republicans have tapped into to fuel the fire to wipe the GOP from existence. And we need the Dems to stop playing fair. We need to go scorched-earth on these motherfuckers.

You don’t happen to be an electrician and a central-Texas scuba enthusiast?

I have a friend who I haven’t been able to hang out with for several years because his wife is insane and posessive, and he’s decided to just ride it out until the kids are all 18 so he can divorce her without having to pay her child support.

He’ll still support his children, but he’ll do it directly instead of through her.

The same could be said of all religions.

Also - trailing zeros after the decimal serve no purpose but to define precision. With the resolution of the image, there’s no way the bar is precise to 1/100,000 of its width.

Sig Figs matter.

I have an impeccable driving record and only have liability abs gap on my car since it has so many miles it’s basically worthless as far as the insurance company is concerned. If it were to be totaled they’d give me like 500 bucks if I carried full coverage.

I work for a tiny city that’s basically a private enclave for the ultra-rich in the middle of a major city.

Literally every household is millionaires or better, and we have a lot of citizens whose names you’d know.

I pay about $450 a month for my mini cargo van and another $80-ish for insurance. I also drive about 3,000 miles a month (my commute is long and I spend most weekends out of town helping my parents), so I average about 350 dollars a month in gas. Let’s call it another 100 a month on average for maintenance (I do my own oil, the tires are pretty cheap, but there will be occasional large expenses).

So that comes out to pretty close to a thousand dollars a month total. That’s a lot of money.

But by living in the middle of the country far from work, I can rent a trailer home that costs about $1500/month less than a tiny apartment close enough to work to walk or bike, and I have the freedom of owning a car and being able to go anywhere and haul anything I need.

So yeah, it’s expensive, but it would be even more expensive NOT to have it.

Cops love busting rallies regardless of politics because it makes them feel superior.

We might as well channel their worst instincts to target Nazis.

My last remaining ties with them are my parents. I know they’re not hateful people - they raised me to be a loving person. Their brainwashing has taken the form of simply not trusting legitimate news sources, which is the hardest kind to overcome.

How do you reason with someone who doesn’t trust any sources of information?

First thing is to ensure your safety.

Once you have that taken care of - what do you know about your brother’s out-of-state trip? He sounds like the kind of person who will ignore the local gun laws of wherever he is going if they’re stricter than where you live. If he’s going to a fascist meet-up, a tip that he may be illegally armed may give law enforcement a reason to start searching the Nazis for weapons.

Yeah. I’ve simply stopped associating with Trump supporters. My life doesn’t have room for that kind of hate, so i cut them out.

Same for lots of jobs here.

Honestly, Wednesday and Thursday are the worst days for Christmas for those of us who also get Christmas Eve because they’re the only days that don’t result in 4 days in a row off from work.

If it’s on a Friday, we get Thursday through Saturday. If it’s on a Saturday, Sunday, or Monday, they give us Friday through Monday, and if it’s on a Tuesday, they give us Saturday through Tuesday.

But this year, we’re off Saturday and Sunday, work Monday, are off Tuesday and Wednesday, and return to work on Thursday.

It’s the same total number of days off, but it’s way less useful - especially if travel is involved.

No disagreement here. I work there for the paycheck and make no illusions about it. Everyone on the entire staff feels the same way. We’re absolute professionals, but we hold zero personal loyalty to the city or its citizens. They may be super rich and have the power to crush any of us, but as far as I’m concerned, they’re all beneath us.

And, oddly enough, that attitude is why we’re good at our jobs. Rich assholes loving together are gonna have disputes, and having a city staff that looks down on them instead of being subservient like their household staff means we’re uniquely qualified to make them be better neighbors to each other.

Just this week, I got into an enforcement discussion with an Oscar-nominated filmmaker. It takes a special kind of officious prick to disarm entitled assholes and their lawyers with the power of bureaucracy.

For about 50 hours a week, I am that prick.