Dolly belongs on the $100.

And while we're at it, put Harriet Tubman on the $20. And maybe John Brown on the $10.

Cycling: Get a bicycle and start exploring your area. It doesn't need to be a nice bike; check garage sales and Craigslist and get whatever fits comfortably. Wander off your usual routes and you will encounter new corners of your town that you never knew existed.

Music: Pick up a used acoustic guitar, electric keyboard, banjo, or whatever you can find. The world is full of inexpensive books and free YouTube videos to teach new students.

Drawing: Make doodles, little comics, or sketches of whatever is around you. A pencil and paper are all you need. Look up YouTube videos for daily sketching practice exercises.

Amateur radio: An entry-level license involves a basic quiz and a nominal fee. Cheap radios can be had for less than US$100. If you meet an old timer with a garage full of gear they might hand you a pile of old equipment for free.

Of course, any of these can become expensive and time-consuming hobbies if you go down the rabbit hole. But that just means you have found something you love.

Studies have shown that a life imprisonment costs less overall than seeking the death penalty (in the US at least). So in addition to the ethical issues of execution, and the clear risk of convicting and executing the wrong person, we have a financial incentive to abolish execution. Getting rid of capitol punishment is a win-win-win proposition.

The risk of harm to my kids.

Most common fear by far.

Hair seems to carry more weight than other visual cues. I have a son with long hair and a daughter with short hair, and people constantly address my son as a girl and my daughter as a boy. It doesn't matter how they are dressed or how we are addressing them.

My Norwegian great-great-great-grandparents saw this and said, "Let's move to North Dakota and live in a sod hut."

I mean, it saved them from famine at the time. But today I'm thinking it's about time to change direction and return to the old homeland.

That's Hermann Staudinger. He won the Nobel Prize for his work on polymers.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1953/staudinger/facts/

Supposedly, when he first synthesized a polymer he didn't realize the significance of what he had and poured it down the drain. Though a quick Google search isn't coming up with any sources for that story aside from the Reddit post OP's image came from.

Should we all start smoking cigarettes again? asked the author Xochitl Gonzalez, in a viral essay published by the Cut.

“With each passing day of this absolutely deranged year, my desire to contemplate how to make sense of it all while puffing on a cigarette grows,” wrote Gonzalez, later admitting “I’m no longer certain that the future I’ve been preserving myself for is all that promising.”

Ballpark numbers: USS Abraham Lincoln has about 5,000 people on board. And it is part of a larger carrier strike group that totals maybe 7,500 personnel. You need a long, strong global supply chain to serve that many people for months on end as they travel halfway around the world. Iran has apparently broken the chain in some key places.

Mental health is a separate problem. The Abraham Lincoln's planned 6-month deployment is now at almost 9 months and counting, with no publicly announced return date. Wikipedia says the ship has only stopped at port twice in that time. So the sailors on board have been stuck in close quarters, away from their homes or loved ones, getting shot at in a war zone, for 3 months longer than expected, and with only two brief breaks. It's not hard to understand that they might be exhausted and strained. Multiple sailors have tried to jump overboard and at least one sailor actually did it without being stopped. That's not a supply chain problem; it's a top-down organizational fiasco.

No military background here. But through family and friends I have had a lot of interactions with military folks, and I'm loosely interested in military stuff.

My username is due to living near water my whole life, and enjoying being in and around it. I love fishing, paddling, swimming, skipping stones from shore, watching osprey catch fish, all of it.

Well put.

And just like that, an antique meme gets new life!

US Constitution Article 1 Section 9 Clause 8, "Titles of Nobility and Foreign Emoluments":

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

It's literally unconstitutional. In the past, foreign gifts to presidents were typically turned over to the National Archives to avoid breaking the law. If Congress was a functional governing body they would rake him over the coals for this, among the hundred other laws Trump has casually flaunted.

Echoes of late 2022 when Twitter abruptly fired thousands of people, then turned around days later and tried to rehire many of them. I'm sure it's purely a coincidence that one person is closely tied to both incidents.

In case anyone forgot, Rittenhouse went to a protest with a loaded rifle looking for a fight, shot two three people, walked away untouched, was acquitted, and got speaking gigs on conservative TV shows. You can do whatever you want as long as you're on the "right" side.

Relevant quote from St. Basil:

"Who is the covetous man? One for whom plenty is not enough. Who is the defrauder? One who takes away what belongs to everyone. And are not you covetous, are you not a defrauder, when you keep for private use what you were given for distribution? When some one strips a man of his clothes we call him a thief. And one who might clothe the naked and does not—should not he be given the same name?

The bread in your hoard belongs to the hungry; the cloak in your wardrobe belongs to the naked; the shoes you let rot belong to the barefoot; the money in your vaults belongs to the destitute. All you might help and do not—to all these you are doing wrong"

TL;DR, the AG asked for a bench trial, Trump's defense team didn't respond, and so Trump gets a bench trial. It's possible that a jury trial would have been disallowed in this particular case under New York law, but the defense didn't even bother to ask.

Whelp, that's on your people, Donald. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Dutch is not a language. The people who "speak" it are Germans who suffered severe head injuries. The place we call "the Netherlands" is a German hospital colony where those unfortunate people can live while they recover. That's why it's flat and everyone walks or rides bicycles; their head injuries make them unfit to drive cars or to manage difficult terrain.

/s, please don't send the actual Dutch after me.

@[email protected] is a meme god.

@[email protected] keeps history alive and the Confederacy in check.

@[email protected] is our resident owl afficionado.

There are many others, of course, but I seem to notice these three a lot in my Subscribed feed.