we already know the do's and don't. of another country and culture not of our own. all without needing to be told that it is wrong.
I would recommend reading the first section (quarter to third, forget exactly how long) of C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity for a Christian perspective on this. Because he agrees on your premise about a set of morals which is widely accepted across many cultures, and discusses how he thinks that came about. (Of course, as you'd guess from the name of the author and book, he comes to a very different conclusion than your initial assumption of "I know we as humans made it up").
Gotta side with Imp here. I see no reason why any man should take this.
I'm very skeptical about the claims that it is safe and fully reversible, given that it is changing a significant part of how a man's body functions.
And, correctly used condoms have nearly the same effectiveness as this pill. So, why risk messing with your body's functionality when you don't have to?
Colorado GoP already publicly said if Trump is not allowed on the ballot, they're changing from a primary to a caucus to get him back on. So, regardless of what happens, Trump will be a candidate in the primary.
That leaves the other candidates with two options:
- Side with Trump against the Democrats' insane manipulation attempts or
- Not side with Trump against the Democrats' insane manipulation attempts
DeSantis chose option 2.
The bill is super petty, and is targeted specifically at Chick-fil-A as evidenced by what the bill sponsors have said.
However, the headline is also mostly fake. As written, the bill will only be enforced on new leases. So the existing Chick-fil-A rest-area locations will not be impacted at all.
Oh, I 100% agree. The Colorado Supreme Court is absolute BS. But, there's 3 entirely partisan judges on the US Supreme Court, and I think Roberts is a lot more concerned with ensuring he has a legacy than actual effective rulings. So if Barret or Kavanaugh knuckle under, he'll jump over to the Dems and it's a done deal.
because they'd rather let him on the ballot and be decided by election
Honestly, I'll believe that when I see it.
Thomas and Alito will vote to let him be on the ballot, Gorsuch I'd say probably will (80/20 on him IMO).
Sotomayor, Jackson and Kagan will vote to not let him on the ballot,
Kavanaugh and Barret and Roberts are wildcards. If we get a 4/4 split, though, I think Roberts will side against Trump.
For unprepared people, especially in cities, yes. (And MRIs may well be hard to get back). But, doing a little study and/or preparation now, sterile bandages, painkillers and limited anesthetics are quite doable. I'd say it's probably better (and certainly easier) to stock up now (it's not like bandages or gauze goes bad) but if you want to make a sterile bandage take a section of cloth, wash it, and then either have it under a hot iron for a few minutes or wrap it in foil and put it in an oven at lower heat for a bit.
Painkillers and anesthetics are a bit harder (especially general anesthetics), but asprin and nitrous oxide were developed in the mid-1800s (not to mention a wide range of less effective but still better than nothing alternatives depending on your local area), and medical xrays in the late 1800s. Is it possible that things get bad enough that we regress 100+ years? Maybe in certain areas but I don't see it happening universally and it's not hard to stock up now so that even if things do go horribly you and yours are set for a couple years. At my local grocery store, I can pick up gauze at 50 cents a yard, a box of bandaids for $8, and (depending on your preferred dosage and brand) painkillers at <$10 per hundred.
This is Lysenkoism and will cause us to lose medicine. Or at least set it back decades as ideology trumps medicine.
Honestly, there's not much to lose IMO. Sure, there are some really cool, cutting edge things which are not doable without massive medical infrastructures (cancer treatments, non-invasive surgery robots, stuff like that), but the biggest things that modern medicine have found out - or rediscovered in a number of cases - are mostly going to survive a collapse unless it is truly massive.
If we can get rid of most heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity and substance abuse that will solve a huge proportion of western medical issues and if a massive collapse hits it will forcibly get rid of those (one way or another) pretty quickly.
And a lot of the knowledge we've gained (hygiene, nutrition, antibiotics, how the body works, etc.) all that should survive. Sure, you won't be able to just pop down to the drug store to pick up a prescription when SHTF but just having a few extra tubes of topical antibiotic in a first aid kit will help a ton and hopefully last a bit - at least for immediate family - until things stabilize.
I'd say we can go, at a minimum, back to Jules Verne (sure, people call him Steampunk today, but he was science fiction at his time). Maybe I'm forgetting things, but I can't recall anything remotely progressive in most of his works. Heck, "Around the World in 80 Days" is almost a minor celebration of the British Empire having conquered most of the world, and you could make the argument that Captain Nemo an early view of someone going Sovereign Citizen.
Specifically, 15-20% of people who said they voted by mail said they filled out mail in ballots for other people, or even signing other people's mail in ballots.But, I'm sure this can just be ignored since it was The Most Secure Election Ever(tm).
Nah, that role was already taken by Narwhal Tusk Man a few years back.
Anyone else getting #bringbackourgirls flashbacks? That worked so amazingly well that I have no doubt a Taylor Swift Instagram post will immediately end the conflict that's been raging in the Middle East for millennia.
I do empathize when it the person being laid off is in the situation of "deliver this turd to these exact specs on schedule" and they do and then "this turd didn't sell, we're going to have to let you go."
I generally don't anymore. Because it's always the same story: "Evil Executive X made us implement Terrible Feature Y and that's why the game has issues!" But, the fact remains that the devs implemented it. That predatory monetization scheme? The devs coded it. Those awful facial textures? The devs included them. That awful gameplay loop? The devs implemented (or, in some cases, "didn't implement" may be more accurate) it.
If you recognize that the thing you're being asked to do will make a terrible product, then either get your project manager to grow a set of balls and tell the suits no, or (if the manager agrees with the suits) grow the balls yourself and tell him no.
"Oh, but I might get fired!" Yes, and? Playing along didn't save the jobs of the people at Luminous after the turd that was Forspoken or the people of Volition after the Woke Row reboot, or the people at Hairbrained Schemes after the rushed, unknown Lamplighter's League. And while the studios survived (for now), playing along didn't help all the people recently let go at Bioware and Creative Assembly. And those are just the ones I remember from 2023!
And on top of that, video games are an industry where it's relatively easy to have moderate (or, in some cases great) success if you do a good job and are able to budget things properly. Even ignoring the occasional massive indie breakout, there's huge numbers of moderate success stories from smaller, competent devs. Just on the RPG front (because those are the games I like the best) Larian is an obvious one as they were around for 2.5 decades before BG3 was a huge critical success for them. Obsidian and inXile both crawled out of the wreckage of Interplay. Stygian (Underrail) and Owlcat (Kingmaker, Wrath of the Righteous and now Rogue Trader) are two more indie RPG studios. And there's certainly more, those are just the ones that come to mind. Whether you like or dislike any of those games or any of those studios, the fact remains that those are all (or were, since Obsidian and inXile both got acquired by MS over the last few years) commercially successful studios for years without having large publishers over them.
Are you guaranteed to make it on your own? No. But if you actually want to make good games and it really is the publisher holding you back then grow some stones and either stand up to the publisher to make the AAA game good or go make your own thing.
I know it won't happen, but in the event of a war between China and Japan I really want Japan to suddenly unveil that they've been working on a secret Giant Mecha program for decades now and have hundreds of the things ready to deploy.
So, you claim to want a discussion about morality (which for the overwhelming majority of human history and for the overwhelming majority of human population is based on religion) but someone pointing you at a religious perspective on it is an asshole? You might as well say "I want to have a discussion on the history of sports, but anyone who plays or watches sports is an asshole if they want to contribute".