It might be possible that dice took over in usage because most people are never introduced to the concept of dice being singular. Very few mainstream dice based games from my childhood used less than two dice: Monopoly, Yahtzee, Farkle, Risk, Parcheesi, Backgammon. Trouble is the only one I remember that used a single die and that game didn’t even let you roll it.

I think the tipping point was in the early 2010s when all of a sudden everyone and everything hitched their wagons to Facebook. Facebook as SSO, Facebook messenger instead of email or SMS, Facebook marketplace dethroning Craig’s List, etc. Once people from elderly relatives to local business centralized all of their online identity into Facebook, it was over. To this day, Facebook is still the only way to see info for community events and small businesses (and instagram is the platform Facebook used to sequester musicians and artists).

It didn’t have to be Facebook, of course, but there needed to be a networked service that people trusted enough to give it every thing. Remember check-ins? People would post their location at restaurants, jobs, theaters, and shops. Public profiles that listed jobs, homes, family members and relationships, pets, children’s photos, and hobbies all under real names (I remember when Facebook started the purge of pseudonyms and aliases).

I deleted my Facebook account over a decade ago and people panicked and warned me that it was a bad idea. The craziest thing someone said to me was that it would make me un-hire-able since there’d be nothing for people to snoop to see if I was a good fit. The only “bad” thing that happened is that I lost contact with some old acquaintances, but that’s just life.

Regardless of all the other tech stuff in the past 20 years, I think that convincing people that it was okay to let a company like Facebook exist will the explicit goal to transparently harvest personal data was what opened the floodgates. Facebook (and other social media) demonstrated that people will willingly exchange privacy for digital errata. Once governments and corporations saw that, the future wrote itself.

I think that those things are only meaningless because the parents/grandparents didn’t or couldn’t engage with the next generation about it. Heirlooms, trinkets, and tchotchkes have to be imbued with stories and sentiment otherwise they’re just junk.

20th century hyper-consumerism sold the idea that you could buy sentimentality and proceeded to replace things that were valuable because of their unique stories with things that were valuable because of “the collectible market.” There’s a big difference between “this Coke sign was in your great-great-grandpa’s soda fountain” and “this Coke sign is valued at $100.” Likewise, a box of old family photos fails to have value when you can’t identify the people in the photos and the relative you inherited them from didn’t bother taking the time.

I don’t really check out library books because when I want to read something I need it on hand to start. Like, I literally finish a book and pick up a new one. Instead, I buy exclusively used and then discard them in one of the little free libraries in my neighborhood. I also have always had access to different library networks than my local public library system, so I often find myself using those instead when I need access to research databases or articles.

However, I have always had a local library card wherever I lived. Currently I use my local library for Kanopy and for checking books out for my kid, who loves going to library and loves books.

Edit: There have been municipalities known to introduce emergency service subscription/tax models and firefighters have literally watched someone’s house burn down because they didn’t pay the fee. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39516346

The Garden of Eden is in Missouri!

This is such a non-thing that it hurts to even consider how stupid it is.

But, let’s consider:

1. The Super Bowl is a private corporate event; any song may be performed ceremoniously. That’s protected speech.

2. Not standing up for the Black National Anthem is whatever. That’s protected speech.

3. The Black National Anthem is a colloquial title and has no legal status. That’s protected speech.

4. While there is a statute outlying etiquette for performances of the National Anthem, there are no penalties for not adhering. That’s protected speech.

5. “America the Beautiful” was also performed and there’s no legal basis for etiquette or participation. This song also has a long history of being performed alongside the Star-Spangled Banner to the point that it’s sometimes referred to as the National Hymn, even though that is a colloquial and non-legal designation. That’s protected speech.

6. This is apparently the fourth year that “Lift Every Voice and Sing” has been performed at the Super Bowl. That’s protected speech.

Definitely a misdirect from the corporate takeover of everything.

I grew up in a shitty small rural town, but while I was in high school I watched the shitty “mom and pop” stores slowly disappear and the local factory vote against unionization only to be closed a few years after I moved away. You know what immediately moved in to fill the void? Wal-Mart and Dollar General.

My dad was so focused on immigrants taking his job and other insane republican economic talking points that he lost that job when the company decided it wasn’t cost effective to operate in the US anymore.

He conveniently left out that Rader was former Air Force and a devout Christian. That last part is actually how he got caught (by using the church’s PC to write his letters taunting the police and sending them a floppy).

Another thing that separates Pretti and Rader: Dennis Rader is fucking still alive.

The axe and bundle of sticks is called a fasces. It is an ancient Roman symbol of absolute power of the law displayed by magistrates to indicate they had the authority to kill you. It evolved in meaning over time and generally became a symbol of the power of the state.

The word fascism is derived from fasces and the symbol was used by the Italian fascists in the 1930s and 1940s. It is also prominent in US iconography predating the rise of fascism in Italy in the 30s and can be found inside the Congress building, the pediment of the Supreme Court building, and was once featured on coinage, specifically the Mercury Dime.

The other flag is the is the Flag of Falange. The Falange, like the fasces, is an old symbol of power; however unique to Spain. The yoke and arrows symbol date back to the 15th century and were created when Isabella and Ferdinand married.

The Falange was the symbol used by the Nationalists, specifically the Falangists, during the Spanish Civil war in the 1930s. The Franco dictatorship that emerged was a brutal autocratic regime (and the Falangists are part of the European rise of fascism in the 1930s).

The yoke and arrows, like the fasces can be found on flags, documents, and statues prior to the rise of fascism. But, like the swastika, there’s no going back once associated with a fascist movement. These are nationalist, fascist, and authoritarian symbols.

Unfriendly? Fuck you. We’re wicked nice.

First time I visited Boston, I was lost somewhere in downtown and walking in circles. Must have passed a postman one too many times because he just briskly walks up to me and, gesturing with a handful of mail, abruptly asks, “whadaya, fuckin lost?”

He then proceeded to give me very clear and accurate directions to where I was going.

It’s an appeal to vanity (a troll). Trump is wildly vain and if he thinks this qualifies him for a Nobel (it doesn’t) then he might just put the worm back in its jar for awhile.

These zones would allow wealthy investors to write their own laws and set up their own governance structures which would be corporately controlled and wouldn’t involve a traditional bureaucracy.

As if a corporation isn’t just another form of hierarchical organization with departments and redundancy.

The new zones could also serve as a testbed for weird new technologies without the need for government oversight.

Ah, there it is.

They also want to build on Federal land, which is mostly national parks. So obviously conservation is not a part of our future.

And this is just a fucking speed run into a cyberpunk dystopia. Like an extra stupid mix of Snowcrash and BioShock. If the Federal government allows a bunch of technofascists to build independent cities free of Federal regulatory oversight, then what’s stopping them from just not being part of the US at that point? They won’t be paying taxes, they won’t be represented in Congress, and they won’t be subject to Federal law, so why should we allow this?

It’s also part of the antagonism towards the federal workforce and an extension of the “deep state” conspiracy theory.

I can’t remember what this specific rhetorical device is called, but he’s luring people in with something that appears true at face value so that they arrive at a conclusion they wouldn’t logically arrive at otherwise: Hitler personally didn’t kill millions of people, but the Nazi bureaucracy and military did. Therefore, Hitler isn’t to blame for all the Nazi atrocities, the bureaucracy was.

Musk is redirecting blame, like you pointed out, away from leadership and instead leading people to the conclusion that if government were smaller, then evil wouldn’t have happened. What is especially stupid about this line of reasoning is that it will eventually lead to ideas like, “if we give the president more power and consolidate all decision making to a small group, then public servants won’t mindlessly perpetuate evil,” as if this isn’t exactly what happened in every authoritarian regime right before they started doing real evil.

The Latin translates to “the word became flesh,” which is pretty damn metal to put on a sword used for decapitation.

Edit: I just noticed that the inscription reads et verbum caro facum est instead of et verbum caro factum est. Not sure if this was a mistake or abbreviation, but I think the actual inscription would read “the word burns flesh”?

I’m basically Brian from the Latin lesson scene in the Life of Brian, so if anyone has an actual grasp of Latin grammar, please correct me.

The honest answer is this: Salami (sliced salami), pepperoni (sliced spicy salami), and sausage (pre-cooked fennel-flavored uncased/crumbled pork sausage).

In the US, “sausage” tends to generically refer to uncured, fresh, or raw sausages, often really meaning “ground meat mixed with herbs and spices sometimes in a tube or casing (but not always).”

Whatever you decide to do, remember this: You have spent a lot more time thinking about this than they have.

Keep it simple, don’t overwhelm them, don’t talk about the far future, and don’t have this conversation in a place where they can feel trapped or coerced.

Their racism is ancillary and it’s not that simple. MAGA exploits several rotten elements in rural American society; racism is just one of them

I think the simplest explanation is that they have been conditioned to hate and fear first and do not consider any person innately equal until that person has proven themselves to be worthy of value. To enter the American south, you walk into a minefield of social faux pas and a mire of shibboleths. You fucked up just by driving in with “Yankee” license plates. Hell, you can fuck up by having the wrong county on your plates (which is a thing in the south). For a group of people who hate anything “woke” or involving critical theory, they are a textbook example of intersectionality; their identity is complex and why they don’t like you is even more complicated.

They have been conditioned to distrust anything they don’t immediately understand, dwell peacefully in contradiction, be selectively empathic, and ignore their own self-interests whenever it does not exclusively benefit them. This is the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” and “my true reward awaits in heaven” crowd. You can’t reason with them because they answer to a higher power and it’s all part of god’s plan. And if you make the mistake of quoting scripture at them, they write you off as a know-it-all who has read the Bible but hasn’t read it with your heart.

They are generationally impoverished, both financially and intellectually. The south suffers from massive brain drain and financially successful people are just those that God has blessed. There’s no charity for those outside of their immediate social circle. There’s no such thing as southern hospitality, just public manners. Bless your heart, they’re talking shit before you walk out the door.

Southern society craves authoritarianism and aristocracy because blind respect for authority and power are deeply rooted in their culture and religion (and that’s exactly what the antebellum south was; that’s their “heritage”). Trump promises to make it all great and lift them back into their rightful place because they all think they will be the plantation master.

It works like this:

• Teach at a public school
• That school receives funding directly or indirectly from federal programs under the executive branch, including the Department of Education
• DEI support disqualifies institutions from receiving Federal funds
• Supporting DEI and trans rights while receiving Federal funds counts as defrauding the US government
• DOJ takes up the case

While EOs are not laws, they have the potential to do massive amounts of damage because most of the government runs on agencies under control of the Executive. And while universities and public schools are not federal, they receive shit tons of funds through grants, contracts, and subsidies from a wide array of federal agencies (see: academic panic at the NSF and NIH halting grant review and funding as a result of Trump’s recent orders).

The larger context of why anyone is talking about what is sung at the Super Bowl should have been enough of a set up, but apparently not.

This entire stunt is predicated on the right’s frustration that they couldn’t do anything about black athletes and allies being disrespectful during the National Anthem (a legally defined song with etiquette spelled out in the US legal code), which is protected speech.

Now, in my opinion, they have a Super Bowl to posture about eight months before a presidential election. They want sound bites and over-the-top reactions so that they can paint themselves the victims of a hypocritical, leftist, anti-freedom conspiratorial media machine. This part of that “projection” plank in the modern GOP.

My original post was simply outlining that no matter how you slice it, there is nothing to be mad about them “protesting” the Black National Anthem. I added in a rhetorical refrain to drive home the point while beating a dead horse for effect.