I can earnestly say that, as a former 13-year-old boy myself, none of the other girls my age really compared me to George Clooney. All of us were ugly and awkward at that age, and if you think otherwise, I might grow a little leery of your intentions.

Are you describing cops?

Boy, that is going to just encourage companies like RealPage. 😬 How much more can rent go up before it starts cutting into people’s grocery or medicine budgets?

This guy looks like his dick is real red.

That makes sense. If I understood everyone clearly, it’s not the idea to use a fresnel that’s new here, it’s the fact that we just haven’t yet had anything capable of withstanding those temperatures and still allowing for the piezoelectric effect to happen.

I am not a scientist so please correct me if I am off base, but did it really take them this long to attempt to focus light onto PV cells using a fresnel lens?

My hobby as a 15 year old was buying broken projectors to harvest the fresnel lenses in the lamp on top. They could focus sunlight so powerfully that you could burn shit. I didn’t do that, surprisingly. I was like Marge Simpson, I just thought they were neat.

That is not necessarily true.

A giant part of the engine that powers the Great Wheel of Conspiracy Theories is the intoxicating allure that anyone who follows along will be ‘in the know’, and once all is revealed, everyone will come crawling back them begging for forgiveness and fawning praise on them for being so ahead of the game and in-the-know.

The desperate attempts at convincing everyone around them are an early sign of Conspiracy Brain, and is what then leads to the further effects of Conspiracy Brain, which is everyone around them getting annoyed, yelling at them or pushing back with an attempt at a serious debate, and then self-isolating and choosing to only associate with a clade of similarly-online weirdos who self-reinforce one another and enable a greater separation from the plot that the rest of us are following along to. The overwhelming majority of these people are not grifters, they are rubes. They are believers, not the cynical, power-obsessed, fascist element that is using them to put a bridle on federal power.

I know I asked the question originally, but I only asked because it has been such a present thing in my (meatspace) life. I’ve seen friends and family disappear down the same hole, all the same way, and all the same end up here, at ‘crazy asshole filling every square inch of his 1989 dodge hooptie with magic marker writing’ all the same. I don’t get why it happens this way.

My best guess is that this is the last way possible for people who have been deeply isolated by anger and rage to communicate their dumb theories to people they haven’t exhausted yet. Perhaps the effect of utterly exhausting everyone around you is the common cause of it all.

What makes people do this, in particular? Writing little screeds on every square inch of their car?

I swear I have seen this exact psychosis develop and present in the exact same way dozens of times over my life so far, and it has been convincing to exactly 0 people in that time. I don’t know that for sure, but I mean, look at them. Who, besides other cranks, is that really speaking to?

This is going to be especially interesting once Republicans of retirement age realize that ‘no Medicare’ means them, too.

I am honestly suicidal over how blithely these ghouls are playing with our health and safety. Every day, I read a new article about how some white dipshit from the fringes of InfoWars and Christian grifting thinks that he knows better than my fucking doctor. I should just start treating my congresspeople like doctors and start mailing samples of my piss and shit to their offices. After all, they’re the ones making my medical decisions.

That’s the flag of Transylvania. It’s where trans people were invented.

It honestly shocked me so much that I had to do some research before bed just to make sure that number was right. Seems like it was. But I also was there in Pittsburgh during the riots that happened during the 2009 G20 summit, and that also saw similar numbers of people arrested and charged.

No city has resources, especially right now, to find charges that stick on all those people, so they put everyone in front of a judge on a rapid fire basis, and that judge basically triages the ones with charges that would actually matter. I saw something like 80% of the cases get dropped entirely, though, many months later, which is still plenty of time to ruin a worker’s life.

I saw on the news last night that here in Philly, there were almost 70 arrests by city police of a group of union demonstrators doing an organized sit-in. When they were hauling one middle-aged black lady away, the news shoved a microphone in her face and asked if it was worth it. She just replied, “solidarity forever.” ✊🏻

Honestly, I know a lot of companies that would be absolutely fucked if Backblaze went under in a dramatic fashion.

I deeply respect anyone who chooses any alternative to monogamy, but y’all have no idea how stoked I am that I get to call my partner “wife.”

It’s totally fair to be as vanilla as an unsalted cracker if that’s what you feel! The ‘Q’ part of LGBTQIA is super duper important, as how can you be sure you’re straight without ever asking?

“Steamed Hamming” is my new phrase of the year.

My MAGA / Q-ANON mom said she wanted to run for school board to prevent trans kids from using litter boxes. Mind you, her last kid (me) left that high school in 2006. I asked her what a school board director does, and she got mad at me because she didn’t know.

Like if you’re a parent just trying to make a good childhood for your kid, how do you even fight bored boomers like this? They have no dog in the fight, nothing to lose, and worst of all, nothing to do. That is just so dangerous.

I was raised with civic resources, and they wanna pull the damn ladder up behind them. Despicable.

Imagine restaurants being BYOC

Am I nuts, or would legal coke just result in people switching to meth and other amphetamines?

Idk. I have watched people discover Darknet markets for years now, and the most common line of thinking that I see whenever someone tries good cocaine for the first time is “I wish I could sustain this feeling for longer, and cheaper.” Everyone is always eventually disappointed by what cocaine can offer.