It’s not much of a protest when many of the people participating are doing so involuntarily because they can’t afford to buy things anyway.

Many people in the US have that “fear of the other” drilled into them starting at a very young age.

You are so very right. I was born in the mid-70’s and I grew up in a rural area, lots and lots of low-income farmers outside of the valley, no minorities. There was a city to the west, and a notorious maximum security prison to the east. The news focused almost solely on the non-white people inhabiting both, and as a result I grew up absolutely terrified of those “others”, because the bad things was all I ever heard. I had no real contact with any minorities until I was an adult and had to get a job in the city. One morning driving in to that job, my car broke down a couple miles from where I worked, in a pretty run-down area. I had to walk the rest of the way to work. Not a soul bothered me, but that fear of the “other” was so strong that by the time I got to the office I was physically ill from it. Reactions and fears like this were the norm with the people I knew back then, and the media and those in power continue now with the propaganda that the “other” are to be feared and distrusted, because keeping us on edge and divided makes us easier to control.

I like how in their slippery pizza cheese example, google’s ai referenced a really old Reddit comment about how adding glue to the cheese will make it less slippery. Lol

Based on my own experience, this is how most cities handle their PD/FD funding, unfortunately. The fire department is just not important… until it is.

Same here. Freshman English around 1990. We were not prepared lol

Are you a woman? Not asking for any accusatory reasons or anything, I’m just curious about why you’d say that - if you’re a girl with lots of friends with nude photos, a guy who’s received a lot of photos, just a guy assuming, etc. Again, not asking to attack, even if you’re just assuming. I don’t have any nudes on mine, and I’ve had talks about this with a few friends and they were all “helllll NO” to the idea as well.

Edit: Though I do have some wicked sexy pictures of my bare legs. They are covered with horrible lumps called erythema nodosum, though, so probably no one would be looking for that lol

I have thyroid issues, and when one of my hormones is out of wack, it feels like microscopic bugs are crawling all over me, especially in my eyelashes. That was A TON of fun to deal with until I realized what was going on.

A swank and a… swish?

I had to clink on the link just to see why the asteroid in the image was shaped like boxer briefs. Lol.

Good for them. I made tacos for the first time in ages a couple of days ago, and I could not believe the size of the shells now. I would have called them child-sized, they were so small. It’s disgusting.