Depends. Is his name Luigi?

Airplane mode can be used at the same time as airplane-provided Wi-Fi.

Suck it, Manifest Destiny!

Then once you go into your polling place to actually cast your vote, they check your name/address to see if you’ve been registered, and if you have, then you are allowed to vote.

They also check your signature and compare it to what’s in your records. Over the course of my young adult years, my signature became more sloppy as I got lazier. I didn’t realize it until I went to vote and the person working there scrutinized my signature because of it.

These policies work out for the business as well, especially when the store shares a plaza with a pet supply place.

People bringing their dogs to store A might see store B and want to shop there, too. If store B bans pets, that means people either have to bring their dogs home and come back (which is a pain, and people might not return at all), or leave the dogs in their car (which is dangerous or even illegal.) Smart business people don’t want people leaving without shopping, and people with any sense of decency don’t want dogs left in cars.

So when store B explicitly permits people to bring their pets, people can go straight there from Store A without worry. Customers are happy, dogs are happy, business people are happy, and no pets have to suffer in a locked vehicle.

Lucky for you, now’s a great time to snap up cheap, used Teslas without giving a cent to Musk. Plenty of people that already bought them now want to sell them because they are worried about vandals. But if that’s not a concern for you, then good news!

He added that the merger would, “unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach."

He already owns and runs Xitter as a propaganda tool. Now he’s openly mixing it with his own bots.

Does anyone else get a really bad feeling about this? I see a lot of comments talking about this financially, but I haven’t seen any comments talking about the disinformation potential that comes with artificially seeding a social media site with his own AI bots. Granted, Grok’s responses have been based (so far), but that’s not guaranteed to last.

I don’t know exactly what the game plan is here, but the pieces are all laid out for Musk to spread his influence behind AI anonymity. That worries me.

Assassination would just make Trump into a MAGA martyr. They would be riled up and energized.

Yes, then the next question is, whom would they rally behind after Trump? We can see a chain of command for the line of presidency, but without Trump, there’d be a power vacuum at the top of his cult. Either it gets filled with an acceptable substitute, or the obligate-followers in his fandom won’t know where to direct their energy.

I wouldn’t be surprised if such a power vacuum created drama. Would Musk still be pulling so many strings in the government if Vance were president? Would he find a way to usurp even more unconstitutional government power, like how he controls DOGE? Would Vance tolerate Musk’s intrusions at all?

Or would his loyalist followers rally behind someone completely different, like a media personality? They’re looking for charisma in a leader, after all, and neither Vance nor Musk have that the way Trump (or someone professionally on TV) does. It’s possible some right-wing boner rises up through the crowd. Then, since Trumpsters naturally orient themselves toward the biggest dick around, he (Trump’s successor would almost certainly be a “he”) would get all their attention.

The way I see it is, fascists are going to paint their opposition as an extreme enemy no matter what, so why not just be real?

I’m reaching back into my heart here, but I see no difference between the fascists in charge and the bullies of my past. The day I stopped giving a rat’s ass what bullies thought of me, and decided to be myself despite what they said about me, was the day I first made real friends. People respond strongly to integrity, it’s just that we haven’t seen that much of it from politicians in the past few decades, so it’s easy to forget how powerful it is.

As a country, as voters, and as potential politicians, we need to do the one thing few Democrats have had the guts to do, and make it absolutely crystal clear who we are and what we stand for. People want politicians who aren’t the status quo, and who have the strength not to fold just because those in charge don’t like it - that’s why so many “ordinary” people voted for Trump. Those of us who’ve stood up to bullies and thrived afterward already know - a lot of people would absolutely agree with us, they’re just waiting to hear a strong voice they agree with.

Fuck their fear. We need to stop molding our identity around what old conservatives think. The youth aren’t scared of socialism, and they’re the people we need to reach. We need a party that will stand up for us, and that starts by not neutering ourselves to appease our opposition.

I feel you. I’ve been thinking a lot about my options lately (as I’m sure we all are.) As appealing as the idea to leave the country is, there’s some part of me that’s screaming, “No. Our place is here. These is our home. These are our neighbors. This is our fight.”

I hope those most vulnerable can find a way to stay safe… But as for myself, this system has kept me too poor to afford having kids, let alone owning a house, or any other assets, without hope of affording retirement, trapped in a system where I’m basically a slave running in a hamster wheel… So what have I got to fear? I’m going to stay here and organize.

You’re a good parent.

Meanwhile, my (immigrant) partner and I opened up about our fears to my family last Christmas, and my mom told me not to worry because my partner is “one of the good ones.” Ugh.

So yeah, thank you for being rational.

You nailed it with your username.

(I also hate that I agree with everything you said. It’s so hard to be hopeful these days.)

Thank you for the links. I already knew about prions, but I’d never seen the Med Twins before. A channel where an attractive young man talks about medical science in a foreign accent? You just found my catnip.

He gets angry at being called out, then uses those victims’ anecdotes as an excuse to express that anger without getting attacked for it. It’s all calculated, one of many manipulation methods that bullies use.

I think the point is - scary threat isn’t scary, because such people already feel the constant threat of poverty every day. Being regularly pumped full of cortisol over worries of simply surviving, there are no fucks left to give when additional threats are piled on.

I just came across this relevant article this morning.

“If vandalism involving Tesla vehicles continues to rise and doesn’t go back down, we could see rates rise for comprehensive coverage in the future,” he said.

Martin explained that when carried, vandalism is covered by the comprehensive portion of an auto policy. While vandalism claims typically don’t increase insurance rates as much as collision claims, they can impact rates, she explained.

Martin added: “Since the recent rise in vandalism is focused on Teslas and not other make vehicles, drivers who carry Tesla Insurance may see a higher premium hike than those who have coverage with other carriers, since the risk of loss isn’t as diversified.”

because my offer (see in person, handle pickup myself).

It’s been a long time since I’ve used any sort of online classifieds, and this line confused me. Do people expect stuff mailed nowadays or something? The last time I bought something through a local online seller was during Covid, and even then, with facemasks and sanitizers, I met up with the seller in-person (in a populated public location.)

Or is it still normal to personally pick up items that you inspect in-person with legit vendors, it’s just scammers that expect something different?

Now I wonder if a cheetah would follow a laser pointer.

As someone from the U.S., it seems like that concept has practically disappeared from the country. The nuances of civil debate, including the acknowledgement of differing opinions as valid, don’t exist in most of our popular media (both traditional and social.) We’ve been conditioned to react to things immediately and intensely using our emotions instead. There has been a slide toward this state for decades, but it’s come to the point where a lot of people genuinely struggle with separating “thing they personally disagree with/don’t like” from “thing that shouldn’t be said/heard/shared.”

(Not saying that’s the case with OP, just that it’s definitely a thing that’s been going on.)