Tariffs basically never help except in a few select situations. For instance, “infant industry” situations where a country needs time to scale up some industry and there’s real promise that once they do, it’ll be competitive. If a country is trying to corner some critical market by dumping, targeted tariffs can be smart. But mostly, tariffs are stupid.

There’s a legit national security argument for steel and probably aluminum but a better solution for materials used to make things would be to just subsidize those companies for domestic sales so you don’t screw over every industry that uses them. Steel definitely isn’t an infant industry. We have the technology.

An even better solution is to not piss off all your most reliable allies and trading partners. But I guess that cat’s out the bag.

I’m not saying they’re not an annoyance sometimes. But they’ve been in Louisiana (possibly a different species as ours are fully black in color with the same big orange noses). But we have termites, mosquitos, and probably everything else. And the birds, lizards, frogs, etc. have learned to eat them so they probably keep the population in better balance than if they were new to town.

They’re pollinators that don’t sting, bite, or eat your house. They’re not locusts that ruin the harvest or whatever. And in Spring/Summer, it rains basically every day here around 4pm. That probably mostly cleans them off cars and stuff. They’re just part of the ecosystem. If you want birds, you need bugs.

For real. Love bugs are harmless and kind of cute. The main problem is that if you drove anywhere when it was mating season, you had to get a car wash. As bugs go, they were amongst the least annoying. I don’t want to call them “the best” bugs because some butterflies and lightning bugs are pretty cool but love bugs don’t care about us and we don’t care about them. They don’t bite or try to get in your house and birds and other animals have a feast.

They might be the best behaved bugs. They’re just trying to get their freak on.

I think it requires 60 votes to overrule the parliamentarian. They just want to make a show of it.

Not anywhere close, in my opinion. People have these ideas that only right wingers have guns and red state vs. blue state but my conservative relatives who live in the country and hunt are afraid to go to cities. They ask me all the time if I’m nervous living in one and there’s a school bus stop by my house where kids get dropped off.

A related point is that in the last Civil War, there was a somewhat blurry but pretty clear regional divide. Now, it’s an urban vs. rural divide. I live in Orleans Parish (aka county) in Louisiana and we went 82% for Harris/Waltz, roughly the same as Manhattan. I’m pretty sure California had more Trump voters than Texas. If a gun brawl breaks out, it’s going be local and contained.

Also, what’s Meal Team Six gonna do in a real battle? Most Trump voters are like 60+ years old and watch Fox News all day. Nobody wants the smoke.

The sterilization part is what I was concerned about. People who make jam the first time don’t necessarily know how critical that is. You really cannot take shortcuts and be like, “I just washed it. It’s fine.”

It’s just WeChat. It’s basically like Venmo. It’s been that way for awhile. Even rural farmer’s markets and street vendors and stuff took WeChat last time I went and that was 7 or so years ago. It’s not a digital currency.

It should be noted that WeChat is very much more expansive in China than in the West where it’s just a chat app. An American friend lived there for awhile for work reasons so I’d go visit her. My WeChat was just a chat app and hers was the “everything app” Elon Musk dreams of making X into. (Which I seriously doubt will work in America because we have different apps that do all that. China didn’t and WeChat filled the void.)

Hey, they stole that idea from centrists!

I like it but I’ve always been a very restless sleeper so I’m ultimately happier if I don’t. Like, I put my glass of water far enough from the bed that I’d have to sleepwalk to knock it over. It’s obviously nice to fall asleep cuddling but I (apparently) roll around and throw my arms around. And getting into a (very minor) argument about something you literally can’t consciously control is not fun.

So, I’d rather cuddle (or “cuddle”) and then go somewhere I can fling my arms and roll around randomly.

You can just freeze them for smoothies. Everyone is saying jam and that’s a good idea but it’s a whole process and has to be sanitary. It’s not super hard, obviously, and it’s worth learning how to do but the first time can be a bit daunting and you really have to follow every step. A smoothie is easy.

Another pretty easy thing is to make ice cream and freeze it. A restaurant I cooked at had fig trees that would go nuts once a year and we’d have buckets of figs. We basically made vanilla ice cream and added figs. That was delicious and ice cream obviously freezes well.

Rolling Stone has been doing surprisingly good work too. I don’t know how Teen Vogue and Rolling Stone became more reliable than all the other legacy media but come the fuck on. I guess they just had to reinvent themselves sooner because of their younger readership but I don’t know.

For non-Americans and you’re wondering about bias, they lean left but in a youth way and not a “we’re trying to spread Marxism” way. They’re just able to say, “Fuck that old bigot.” and that’s kind of the real divide in the country right now. But they were rarely overtly political when I was young.

Vote blue no matter who, you centrist assholes.

What job has he ever had that wasn’t funded by taxpayers? He was a football coach at public colleges and is now a Senator. And he lost to Vanderbilt.

On the one hand, I’m against censorship. But on the other, every bit of content on Facebook and X should be removed and all their hardware run through industrial shredders. It’s quite the conundrum.

We keep acting like Netanyahu isn’t going to jail as soon as there’s no war. He’ll bomb the Seychelles before he goes to jail.

They act like the mayor of NYC rules with an iron fist when there’s a whole city council and even borough presidents and shit. I don’t live there and don’t know the local political structure well but I’m pretty sure mayors can’t just make decrees and have them be binding law.

Every spy in my vicinity is going to be dancing to The Meters - Cissy Strut.

Has someone told him where his house is?

Edit: I fixed some grammar.

Expert on shooting plants with laser beams here. Not quite enough power yet but a swappable battery system and a renewable source with a molten salt reactor could easily solve that problem.

I know there’s rights issues and all but if they made a real BBC streaming service with their back catalog and every David Attenborough special in 4K, it’d be one thing but Americans are inundated with news and streaming services. I pay for my local newspaper’s digital site — mostly because if I don’t, who will? But even The NY Times has to have recipes and word games to keep people subscribed. Why would anyone pay more than a dollar a month or something for BBC News?

The U.S. seems like an odd place to trial this. It’s the most competitive media market in the world and we’re all already sick of being asked to pay for 40 different services. In conclusion:🏴‍☠️