I live in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and regularly drove my standard transmission in San Francisco (one of the hilliest cities in North America), and used my hand brake all the time to maintain my position while I engaged the transmission. I’m not really sure what you’re on about…

“Why should I change my name? He’s the one that sucks.”

~Michael Bolton, probably

seconded

I’m not an etymology expert, but I did see a few sources that all claimed scot came from a Scandinavian word “skat,” which was a redistributive tax (Source)

I do like your explanation, too, though. The other explanation I’ve heard a few times was that it was related to the Dred Scott case regarding an escaped slave who petitioned the Supreme Court in an attempt to gain his freedom (it didn’t work, though, so I’m not sure why people would claim that to be the origin of the phrase “Scott free” anyway)

Like, I’ve been saying it since he was accused, he could very well get off Scott scot-free

FTFY. I agree with everything you’re saying; I just have this weird compulsion to correct misused homophones. A “scot” is an archaic word for a tax (unrelated to being of Scottish descent, AFAIK), so the term isn’t anything to do with a person named Scott. Pedantic, I know, but I really can’t help myself, so… Sorry? You’re welcome?

Either way, have a nice day.

Are we not gonna talk about Kelso’s mug shot? The man’s eyes are so close together that he’s singlehandedly the best evidence I’ve ever seen that humans are descended from cyclopes

Is stating the self-evident truth considered a meme now?

It does get legitimately used both ways. In a chemistry textbook, seeing it written as “unionized” is pretty common, and wiktionary says that the hyphenated form is predominantly used in contexts where it might be confused with “having a union” (which matches with my experience).

However, I still assert that it’s just not a word chemists use that much as there are other, less ambiguous synonyms available.

Plus, they are amazing as mixers, so you can always make them alcoholic

See, I’m a chemist, but I also believe in the power and importance of organized labor, so I still read that as unionized.

Plus, I think most chemists would say “neutral” or use protonated/deprotonated rather than un-ionized

I think it varies by class of drugs (edit: and how they interact with your personality). I’ve used opiates and benzos before and enjoyed myself without feeling like I’d really care to try it again, but I definitely flirted with disaster/addiction with stimulants for a decade plus and alcohol for my entire adult life.

And it didn’t take long; the first time I tried any stimulant, I chased it (and I’ve tried a lot of them).

Psychedelics, on the other hand, I love and in most people there is little to no danger for addiction. I’d go so far as to say that unless you have a family or personal history of schizophrenia, psychedelics are almost a must for understanding or coming to peace with life, death, and society.

A good psychedelic trip is literally life-changing, and even a bad trip is life-changing if you go into it with a decent trip sitter and the attitude that a bad trip is still just showing you yourself and the things you need to work on.

I’m partial to Nazi Punks, Fuck Off, originally by the Dead Kennedys. Napalm Death does a great version, too, if you’re more into grindcore

“you know how you get to Carnegie Hall?”

I don’t know; Vance is even slimier and has more devout and regressive religious beliefs, so Trump dying actually might make things worse (as satisfying as it might be)

Yeah, the tone of the article just reeks of American exceptionalism

Seven Tenets for life, friend! Card-carrying member over here, and yes, I too distance myself from the leadership. But that’s the thing; flawed people can still have a positive impact on the world

I am here for more Barbie’s Dreamhouse memes

I teach college chemistry, and half the time it’s to STEM majors that see the obvious applications, but the other half the time, my students are going into nursing or other “STEM-adjacent” fields and I try and try to get them to see that the applications are there, if they just look, but many of them never do.

Sierra Nevadas resident: glares with envy at your measly couple inches of snow

edit: For context, I live near Lake Tahoe and in the 2022-2023 winter we got more than 50 feet of snow at the pass near my house, and IIRC it was something like 39 feet where I live. Since that was mostly spread out from December to March, we averaged 4 inches per day for 4 months straight. Not that we actually got 4 inches per day; it was more like 2 storms per week which each dropped a foot of snow over a 12-hour period. It got to the point I had to get my snowblower onto my roof to clear off 15 feet of snow so the roof didn’t collapse from the weight.

Man, fuck that winter.

yeah, but at least we can vet that shit better that the unsourced and hallucinated drivel provided by ChatGPT