There’s a guy on our dog walking route that put up several Trump flags last year. My wife and I actually wound up having an interaction with him because he was spying on us through his cameras and got mad that we referred to the flags as embarrassing and said that Trumpism was a cult.

By mid-April, he’d pulled down all the flagpoles and didn’t even take the flags off them, just laid the poles with flags wrapped around them in the dirt by his driveway.

In May I actually talked with him. Initially I had no intention of trying to be nice to him - he just had done something sort of shitty a few days before (encouraging his dog to bark at our dogs). I was going to be like “Look, if you wanna call me gay slurs over your ring camera, that’s fine, but don’t encourage your dog to be hostile to mine.”
But somehow he tied his dog to military service, and while I was fully prepared to connect the lack of a veteran license plate to his statement to call him a liar and a Reddit ninja, he fielded the license plate question and said that he’d suffered a TBI that resulted in an appreciable percentage of brain dying, and that made him unable to be rational when he felt any sort of threat or insult. So he didn’t use the military plates, because he’d had negative experiences with motorists while using them.
I don’t know if I believe that - it seems dumb on the part of the other motorists. But I’m not willing to keep pressing for the sake of picking a fight. I’ll throw a barb, but not over-extend myself. It’s just not worth it.
So I listened, and we chatted - for like an hour and a half. My wife left after a few minutes with the dogs. We talked about politics, the world, our community, and how fucked everything is. He supported Trump because of the 2016 (Obama) economy. He believes in women’s rights. He is conservative, anti-immigrant, and believes in stronger policing. I told him I believe in increased social support, so folks like him can get out of the VA benefits trap. I told him I think the way to stronger communities is through stronger schools and increased civic engagement - more pride, less punishment. He even asked if we’d be willing to help train his dog better, because he notices that ours don’t bark at other dogs, and don’t pull on their leads. I told him I’d have to think about it, and ask my wife, since she’s the one who really had the patience to get our dogs where they are.

We parted - not as friends - but certainly not as enemies. Just - neighbors with a better understanding of each other.

Tell us when you figure it out, because we’re all equally fucked.

My finger hurts and I spent the last of my gumption posting this comment.

Go on without me. Text my wife. Tell her I’ll be

Edit: I misread the comment I replied to as “But did you write that comment?” but it appears they said “How did you write that comment?”

I leave you with this, my final gift:

It’s weird that 4 people are in there for rape.

Like - I’m excited about sensors that uses higher frequency versions of this for health monitoring. I think that’s a perfectly valid use. But also, in my use, I’d be installing it as an IoT device on a network I control, feeding data to services I own.

This use - where it’s opt in for now, until they figure out how to monetize selling how much time you spend in front of the TV, in the kitchen, bedroom, or bathroom (paired with ‘anonymized’ data about what you’re looking at online in each space) is creepy as fuck.

I think it’s because left alone implies intention, and an explanation is only offered at the end of the headline. Whereas other phrasing can avoid that. Baby found alone after mother dies, for instance. Or even Baby found alone by police after mother dies.

Honestly, if I’m going to overthink it, I think it’s because of the cultural tropes of the U.S. and advertiser-driven media. Saying that the police rescue the baby sort of sets up the sentence for misinterpretation, but police rescuing the baby instead of merely finding it is more emotive - it drives engagement, it reinforces the notion that police are protectors.
And following, left alone vs found alone. Police rescue baby found alone […] is sort of narratively poor. There’s a disjoint that I’m sure someone smarter than me can describe, but Police rescue baby left alone […] is a better ‘fit’, even if it’s factually looser. It may have to do with cultural preconditioning where people expect police intervention only when the parent has taken an action.

Heck, Baby left alone after mother dies is saved by police, establishes the narrative without burying the lede, and it even keeps the left alone phrase intact while establishing context before moving to other narrative.

But anyway, my point, I guess, is that the title is editorialized for the wrong kind of drama, and that’s dumb. The situation has its own drama if they would appeal to empathy, rather than people’s desire to bootlick and see evil everywhere.

Why this is unneeded

Citizenship is already required to vote in state and federal elections. Every state currently maintains its own voter rolls. These voter rolls are administered at the state level and how citizenship is proved occurs according to state laws.

Why this is bad

This database represents a breach of state autonomy to administer their elections.
Some localities do not require citizenship to vote. This database could disenfranchise voters in those localities.
This represents a huge target for hackers, and given that every municipality will have access to it, there are a lot of potential ways in which it could be compromised or manipulated. The federal government is rife with inaccurate information, and is often understaffed to address the issue. These issues can and will disenfranchise voters. States and municipalities are better equipped to handle their voter rolls.

How this will be abused

This database will be used to both verify citizenship, and for election officials to upload who is registered to vote in a given electoral area. This will lead to its usage to disqualify people who are registered in multiple areas. If - 31 days before an election, someone uploads a list of conservative or liberal voters from a purple area such as Florida or Ohio to the rolls of another state using hacked credentials, then it’s very possible those people will be disqualified from voting and may not know until they try to cast their ballot - shifting the balance of the election.
With the Supreme Court recently discarding birthright citizenship without clarifying who qualifies for citizenship, a sufficiently malicious actor could ensnarl the electoral and legal system with arbitrary claims that people’s parents were not U.S. citizens.
Invariably, the data from this will be used to stalk hapless people — either by electoral workers, or by anyone, once it has been hacked.
And, speculatively - what happens if the scope of this morphs to a ‘voter eligibility’ database, where it tries to ascertain if someone is eligible to vote on additional criterion, such as criminal history? Will it be plagued with errors, such as not registering expunged records, or applying one state’s laws to another?

Unless something else happened, it has to do with the sign stealing scandal

Honestly, all the childhood trauma has given me an incredible sense of humor. Practice makes perfect!

100%

The administrative state may not give a shirt about you or the crimes that have been committed against you, but they care about your capacity to make life challenging for them. Police won’t investigate, but they will take a report. A report is a legal document. It implies the threat of real consequences if they don’t get their ship together.

I just got done reading the original post.

I don’t know if this is the right advice, or if this advice will help anyone, but if you have the delivery driver on camera mis-delivering the product, then stealing the product, I would have first contacted the delivery service/Best Buy with a photo of the front of your house with the house numbers clearly visible to say that the product was not delivered to your home. Full stop. The package was not delivered correctly. If BB/DD insist on that the package was delivered to me, I’d file a police report. Police report in hand, I’d respond to BB/DD with the police report and video of the incident and request to either be refunded or to receive the product you paid for.

Basically, give them as little wiggle room as possible before you invoke professionals into the mix who can advocate for you.

The internalized sense of failure because you cannot maintain friendships with (most) neurotypical people is honestly kind of a cancer until you figure it out. It’s one of the most damaging things that happened to my psyche as a result of having ADHD.

It’s one of the reasons why I so strongly advocate for everyone getting tested if they have any suspicions. The knowledge that I wasn’t wrong, and the disconnection I felt from others was not (necessarily) a result of my own failings was really freeing and lifted a lot of weight from me. I hope getting tested can help others by either preventing them from internalizing similar feelings, or giving them a path forward to working through those feelings.

And also rejection sensitivity, plus the common “ride alongs” like anxiety and depression.

Quick test: Do you have friends with ADHD?

More than 1? Ask them if they think you have ADHD.
More than 50% of your friends? You have ADHD.

It’s a scarily accurate meme that ADHD folks flock together.

For a more considered approach, I’d recommend getting started here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/tests/health/adhdattention-deficit-disorder-test

It’s non-comprehensive, but doesn’t require a login or email to see your results, and it gives you a starting point to talk to your doctor.

Depending on where you are in the world and how badly this is impacting you or the state of your local health system, you may want to investigate alternative diagnosis options.
In the U.S., it was a 6-month wait for a traditional psychiatrist. I resorted to an online option as my ADHD discovery coincided with long covid and depression (I needed a quick turnaround before it impacted me professionally), but there are now some chain psychiatry operations that, well, I don’t like their business model, but they offer fast turnaround if you’re willing to be a part of the enshitification of yet another profession.

Editing to add: That’s more a pointed comment at myself than anyone else. My regular doctor was not really getting my depression meds right to the point it was becoming an emergency, so I wound up with a company called LifeStance. They’re the McDonalds of mental health providers.

I have nothing of value to add, but this is slightly amusing. I promise I’m not all 51 of your votes for this comment.

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE PETE HEGSETH: Well, Mr. President, when you talk to the people who built the bombs, understand what those bombs can do and deliver those bombs, they landed precisely where they were supposed to, so it was a flawless mission, right down where we knew they needed to enter.
And given the 30,000 pounds of explosives and capability of those munitions, it was devastation underneath Fordow. And the amount of munitions? Six per location.
Any assessment that tells you it was something otherwise is speculating with other motives.
And we know that because when you actually look at the report– by the way It was a top-secret report. It was preliminary. It was low confidence, all right?
So this is a you make assessments based on what you know they don’t.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And they said it could be very devastating, very serious.
SECRETARY OF DEFENSE PETE HEGSETH: Moderate to severe, and we believe far more likely severe and obliterated. So this is a political motive here.

Each GBU-57 weighs 30k lbs (13,600kg), and contains around 5k lbs (2,270kg) of explosives.

So first, I’m really annoyed they dropped 6 bombs, because while I wholeheartedly believe that Hegseth thinks each bomb has 30k worth of explosives, I’m sure that if I make that assertion, someone will “well, ackschually” me that 5x6=30 and say he’s technically correct.

But second, his lie is fucking stupid. So they saw a report that said the strikes were ineffective and they knew exactly what was being referenced when the reporter brought it up, but they’re saying the report is ‘wrong and low confidence’ because it disagrees with how they think things should have happened.
You’d think a man that drinks like that has played cards. Does he only play poker with people that let him win? Has he never bluffed before? No guile, no finesse. Just vacant stupidity.
I wonder what the WH doc has them on this time around.

They often do, because they lack the courage to show the world their inner ugliness. Only through code and situational implication can they allude to what they hide away.
They’re in the closet. It’s a beige closet painted with a cheap sprayer, using bottom tier paint from a big box store. If it had wooden shelves, trim, or hardwood floors, they ripped it out and put up those flimsy wire shelves and that gray plastic faux-wood flooring. It’s a shitty closet, but it’s their closet. That is their soul, and where they feel the most comfortable being their true selves.

Sometimes. 😇

Not quite yesterday, but yeah.