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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • I once drove through Ohio, don’t remember my exact route, but came up north from Kentucky to Cincinnati, then east into Pennsylvania

    There may be more boring drives out there, but I haven’t made them.

    Cincinnati seemed like a nice enough city though. Can’t think of any particular reason I’d ever want to go back, but I didn’t hate it, so that was pretty much the high point of my time in Ohio




  • I take part in a lot of outdoorsy activities, there’s kind of a split. Lots of conservation-minded folks like myself, and lots of assholes who don’t seem to realize or care that they won’t be able to go hunting, fishing, etc. if they develop over all the woodlands, poison the waterways, etc. and just want an excuse to shoot something or justify their much-larger-than-needed, lifted, coal-rolling truck.

    Also a fair amount of people who don’t feel particularly strongly either way.

    Sales of hunting/fishing licenses and such do end up funding a lot of conservation efforts, though arguably in a lot of cases the money doesn’t necessarily go where it’s most needed.

    The more conservation-minded folks tend to be quieter about their interests and don’t make it their whole personality, they’re usually not the ones posing with a deer or fish in their profile pic.





  • Has there ever been a repeat mass shooter?

    I don’t have hard data, but probably not. Most probably don’t get the chance. If they don’t kill themselves and aren’t killed by police, most of them are probably facing decades if not life in prison or even execution.

    At least if we’re talking about the sort of “classic” mass shooting scenario where a lone wolf type walks into a soft target like a school and opens fire indiscriminately.

    If you open up the definition a bit, you might find some examples, though I don’t really like doing that because they really seem like different kinds of scenarios to me.

    You could probably find a couple gang or mafia types who have taken part in more than one incident where multiple people were shot. Same for certain terrorist/guerilla groups and such.

    The beltway sniper attacks took place over about 6 months, though most of their attacks individually wouldn’t count as mass shootings

    After the Boston Marathon bombing the bombers shot an MIT police officer and then later had a shootout with police. Not mass shootings, and you could probably argue that everything that followed the bombing was just an extension of the original incident.

    The shootings in Maine last year might count, since they took place at 2 different locations, but again you could probably argue that it was all part of the same incident.

    That’s what I can think of off the top of my head. Nothing that I’d personally feel comfortable labeling as “repeat mass shooter” but they are incidents that kind of lean in that direction that show that they may not be just one-off events and that the perpetrators may try to continue if not stopped immediately.

    I feel like I’ve also seen a few cases where it was discovered that the shooters had plans to commit other attacks. We’ll probably never be able to say conclusively if they actually would have followed through with those plans if given the opportunity.



  • The house behind my parents has had a string of terrible tenants. Loud assholes, people who let their dogs run loose, people with unruly kids, etc.

    Otherwise a pretty decent neighborhood.

    There was a younger dude living there for a while, kept kind of weird hours, but my parents never thought much of that, figured he was going to school, working night shift somewhere, etc. Mostly kept to himself, never bothered my parents in any way, always dressed professionally, etc.

    He was probably the best neighbor my parents ever had in that house.

    Then one day cops raided the place, turns out he’d been dealing a lot of drugs out of there and had a punch bowl full of cocaine sitting out on the kitchen counter.

    Some of the other neighbors apparently had noticed some pretty sketchy characters coming and going from the house, they must have entered from the front door though, because my parents never really noticed anyone.

    My parents would still take the drug dealer over pretty much anyone else that’s lived there.



  • I think what qualifies as “large” really depends on the space you’re putting it in, what you’re used to, and how old you are.

    When I was a kid, unless you were rich, there’s a good chance the TV in your living room was a CRT in the 30-40-ish inch range. I bought myself a 50" TV for my room when I was 18 with money I saved from my first job as one of my first big purchases for myself,and with the bezels at the time it was probably closer to a modern 55 or 60 inch tv in overall size. That thing seemed huge to me, especially given how small my bedroom was, even though it’s probably pretty standard these days.

    So to me, 50" is kind of the benchmark for where I start calling a TV “big” even though I have a 70inch in my home now, and if I were filthy rich I could have one that’s over 100" now.


  • Politicians lie and use all kinds of weasely doublespeak bullshit all the damn time, it’s pretty much their signature move, everyone knows it, it’s been the punchline of countless jokes, no one likes it, but anyone with half a brain understands that it’s part of how the game is played and how you get the morons that make up a lot of this country excited to show up and vote for you.

    So why are Kamala and so many other democrats so bad at just doing that when it counts?

    How many undecided idiots does she think have fracking as their big tentpole issue, who are saying “gee, you know, I kind of agree with everything else she’s saying, but I don’t know if she agrees with me that fracking is the greatest thing since sliced bread, so I guess I’ll stay home on election day or maybe vote for the guy who’s skin looks like it was stained orange by fracking chemicals”

    Compared to how many people in her base who are strongly against fracking, and feel that by supporting it she is just plain not listening to them and who may choose to stay home on election day because they feel so alienated and hopeless about the state of politics in our country.

    How hard is it to just say nothing about these kinds of issues? Or if it’s something you absolutely have to comment on, why not just dance around it and say some vague bullshit about making fracking safe?

    Play the fucking game, and play it to win.

    I know she’s in the pockets of megacorporations that support fracking, her record speaks for itself for anyone with half a brain who cares to look into it, most people aren’t going to look into it though.

    I don’t support fracking, but I also know if Trump wins then it’s game over, and oil and gas companies might just start a fracking operation from my bedroom and dump their waste in my dog’s water bowl just because they can, and since we’ll be living in a fascist dictatorship hell scape, there’d be no clear path forward to do anything about it.

    If Harris wins, fracking stays more or less as it is now, and there’s a path forward, even if it’s a narrow one, to get a better candidate next time around.

    But like I said, a lot of people are idiots who refuse to see that bigger picture, they’ll see Harris doing shit like this and just lose interest and not show up on election day or throw their vote away to some third party because they think they’re making a stand.


  • My mental health is pretty solid, but it’s in spite of capitalism. I do pretty well at managing stress, I don’t have any real mental health concerns or other issues. I’m physically pretty healthy, have a decent head on my shoulders, and am lucky enough to work a job thats very secure and for me is pretty enjoyable and pays well enough that I’m not struggling in any significant way.

    But damn-near every ounce of stress or anxiety I ever experience has to do with money. What if I lose my job, what if I have a health problem, what if I need a new car, what if my house burns down, etc.

    Big one-time infusion of cash or a decent enough raise would eliminate just about every source of stress I have.


  • Poland and Hungary have historically been very close allies since the middle ages, lots of shared culture, history, they’ve faced similar struggles over the years, and generally they’ve always held each other in pretty high regard. They each even have a little poem about how much they like each other

    Them polish version translates to something like

    Pole and Hungarian brothers be,
    good for fight and good for party.
    Both are valiant, both are lively,
    Upon them may God’s blessings be.

    The Hungarian Version

    Pole and Hungarian — two good friends,
    fighting, and drinking at the end.

    Unfortunately there’s been a lot of tension between them in recent years over the war in Ukraine, and their relationship has been deteriorating.


  • I don’t know, I’ve met a decent amount of Canadians over the years, never got any bad vibes from us. I think the problem is America has more than our fair share of assholes, so they approach us a little skeptically, but if you show you’re not an asshole, I think they like us just fine.

    Of course, my biases should be disclosed. Most of the Canadians I’ve met have been from roughly the Toronto area, plus a good handful of French Canadians.

    Couple of the officers at the border when I went to Montreal were kind of dicks, but I think that’s more of a universal feature of border crossing and customs officials around the world. Once I was there though no one gave me any shit.


  • Shave it all off

    I’m bald

    I do go to get my beard trimmed occasionally though, I just describe what I’m looking for- I like the length, just kind of square it up a bit and make it look neat, and fade in my sideburns.

    It helps that I do a decent enough job of keeping it trimmed on my own, I just go in a handful of times a year before weddings and other fancy events when I need to look particularly nice


  • It was good enough for the ancient Greeks

    Probably boost viewership a good bit

    More environmentally friendly, no micro plastics from the synthetic fabrics

    Avoids the inevitable arguments about which teams uniforms are too revealing or look stupid or whatever

    One less expense for the smaller/less well-funded teams to worry about, and harder to argue that one team has an advantage because they have better equipment

    Probably would scare away some of the prudish religious assholes, good riddance.

    Sucks to be you if you play a winter sport though.