We're all android and Linux here, but thank you!

I knit and crochet, and sometimes pattern writers will try to forbid people from selling the items made with their patterns, which is nonsense. The pattern itself is copyrighted, but not the item made with the pattern. I always find it vaguely annoying, and hope people don't buy into it.

She's surprised that the supreme court would strip rights away from Americans? Good thing she doesn't need an abortion. I have only contempt and tiny violins for her, while I am filled with rage and terror for my trans kid and hir trans wife, and my gay mother and her gay wife. And for my disabled self, of course. When they come for one of us, they come for us all. It's the code of the freaks, and this woman forgot that.

My great grandmother used to put out saucers of Coke to kill mice. She believed it worked because rodents can't burp. I have no idea whether any of this is true.

It's ruined art for me. Someone posts something, and I don't know if it's real art or a theft of other people's work.

Someone who will treat you well won't need to tell you that they will treat you well. It's kind of like how liars and scammers make a big deal about how honest they are. Another big clue is that he was telling you this while both of you were with other people. He cheats on one partner, he'd cheat on you, too.

Most of the popular ones. Especially Game of Thrones. As soon as the incestuous couple threw the little boy off the tower, I was outta there. I'm so tired of shows about horrible people doing horrible things.

Texan here. Yankee is definitely not a neutral word to refer to everyone from the USA. Some people down here will fight you over it, but most would just give you a confused look.

I've always understood gringo to mean white person, especially one who can't speak Spanish. The term is sometimes used in Mexican restaurants to let the staff know that you can't deal with too many jalapeños.

To quote Kenan Thompson, "ain't nothing gonna happen." It doesn't make the slightest difference what any of these monsters admit, or how solid the evidence. None of their crimes are news. They've been blatant all along, and we all know it. There is no Big Fix for us. We have already fallen for Lucy's football too many times. Look at history. When it's fascism time, the fascists will fascist, and the rest of us will just have to get down there in the trenches and fight. Together.

I'm afraid so. There are a lot of people still fighting our Civil War, the one that supposedly ended over 150 years ago. Even without those troglodytes, there is a distinct cultural difference between the North and South, as I think there is in many countries. We tend to rub each other the wrong way sometimes.

Old joke about the difference. Walk up to a Southerner's house, and they say, "can I help you?" Walk up to a Yankee's house, and it's, "whaddya want?"

My favorite part of this is "Real people are suffering..." Oh no! Real people, you say? I better take that seriously, unlike all those fake people whose suffering is both imaginary, and completely justified. Who the hell cares about any of them?

Go to bed early so you can get a good night's sleep. I have heard this so many times, and I'm convinced it was the cause of many sleepless nights. It's probably great advice for people with a normal circadian rhythm, but it's useless for those with a non-standard chronotype. That shit is baked into your DNA, and medicine currently has no idea how to change it. Especially since it's so much easier just to blame the night owl.

The older you get, the more of your belongings fall into this category. But my favorite ones are the wool blankets I've knitted. There's one I've been wrapping up in for about six years, and I kinda hope they bury me in it when I croak.

Let's turn the question around. You benefit from the many things other people's taxes have provided, even before you were born. You were probably born in a hospital funded by taxes. The hospital staff was educated by public schools and federally subsidized student loans. You drive on public roads, and are (at least in theory,) protected by publicly funded cops, firefighters, and military. (I did say in theory.) You probably get your electricity, water, sewer and trash pickup from a public utility - even though you pay for your usage, you still benefit from the public expenditure to build and maintain that infrastructure.

So the real question is how is not paying taxes not theft? You'd be a freeloader, stealing from the rest of us.

Maude. Everyone remembers Bea Arthur for The Golden Girls, but forgets about the hit show she starred in before that. Like GG, Maude was bold, especially for a show about a middle class marriage. At one point, Maude even had an abortion.

This sounds like an example of the "crab bucket mentality." It's very common, especially among groups who have experienced trauma such as poverty, war, or racism.

You can absolutely live your own life, and learn the things you're interested in. Still, it's good to keep some compassion for your family members. They probably do love you and want you to be happy. They might just be frightened of you stepping outside their reality.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality

I never travel with black clothes, because I never travel, and don't own any black clothes, because I never wear black, or attend funerals.

Awwww, thanks. Isn't life just full of these messy, scary, oddball realities that no one ever tells you? I found so many of them in parenthood. Aging looks like more of the same.

I sob like a baby when I watch Practical Magic (Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman.) Same with Disney's Moana. Neither movie is really advertised as bring particularly deep or philosophical, but both of them have more profundity than appears on the surface. PM is about love, death, and family. Moana is about determination, joy, and redemption. Big emotions.

I'm really glad you at least partially qualified what you mean by forgiveness. Or at least what you do not mean by it. The type of forgiveness I think you're trying to suggest is more of an internal process. It's not really about the other person at all. For example, there are some family members of murder victims who say they have forgiven the killer. They are not saying the killer deserves to go free. They're just saying they don't want to carry that hatred through the rest of their lives. By that definition, I don't think any of us know what we might be able to let go of.