I’ve been wearing VFFs for, uh, fifteen years or so? Something like that? I think it might be a little more, I’m not sure now. I’ve also got a pair of VivoBarefoot hiking boots, and the Bellville MiniMil rough-out boots that end up being my utility shoes. The only times I don’t wear minimalist footwear is on a bicycle (I used SPD pedals), and on a motorcycle (I have Sidi Vortice and Mag-1 boots). I always wear socks with my boots, and always Injinji socks with my VFFs.

I’ve gotten so used to them that regular shoes feel very weird and uncomfortable.

I’ve had cats named Baldr, Hermóðr, Grendel, and Wotan. I’ve currently got a Valkyrie, Brynhildr, Freyja, and Freya (we got Freya when she was a year old because her owner couldn’t keep her, and we already had Frejya, so…). But our current boy cats are Svartur ('cuz he’s black), Robert, and Charlie.

Yeah, but a lot of insurance plans also have coverage maximums.

You’d be fine, aside from the attorney’s fees for declaring bankruptcy.

…Oh, and probably losing your housing.

I say, it’s your money, make the choice yourself. I’d rather donate time and money to an org like Food Not Bombs where they can use the same amount of money to help more people. But, let’s face it, I’m too busy these days to find the time to volunteer. So for me, if I have money–and I usually don’t–I’ll give them what I feel like I can.

This Russia can’t defeat Ukraine because of all of the assistance that Ukraine has been receiving from the US in particular, but other NATO and EU countries in general. If we truly ceased all military aid, and the EU countries didn’t pick up the slack, yeah, Russia would eventually roll over Ukraine. TBH, as far as the US is concerned, we’ve managed to bleed an enormous adversary almost dry, all without any American soldiers every being shot at (well, except for the people that had the guts and convictions to go to Ukraine and volunteer; I wish I didn’t have responsibilities…).

Without aid, the war would have been over in a year; Ukraine has the will, but they didn’t have the tanks, the anti-air defense systems, and so on. And on the other side of that, if the US had given them everything that they wanted up front, instead of slow-rolling ‘offensive’ weapons systems, Ukraine could have wrecked Russia in a year.

You don’t have to listen to it loud…

Reducing the US military budget would likely also have the added ‘feature’ of resulting in Europe being under the thumb of Russia, and Africa, Asia, and South America being under the thumb of China. A large military budget–even if the military isn’t used–has the effect of acting as a deterrent. We’ve already seen that Russia has no qualms about using their military when they think they can get away with it, and China is continually threatening Taiwan (among others).

Kind of. It’s still not nearly as effective as Firefox with uBlock and a few other extensions. The downside is that some sites are just broken on Firefox, and blocking ads, etc. makes a relative few sites unusable. Which, yeah, 99.999% of the time I’m fine with. Until it’s something I need to do for my day job.

Just 1" PTFE domes. Nothing super weird.

I mean, more weird than subdermal implants.

It’s mens rea, lit. “guilty mind”, e.g. intent. If you take an action with the intent to cause a death, that’s murder (in my state, that would specifically be malice murder). If you take an action that is likely to cause a death with reckless indifference, but not intent, that’s usually something like murder in the second degree. If you cause a death through negligence or by accident, that’s usually some form of manslaughter.

Most traffic accidents are negligent; people don’t (…usually…) get into a car with the intent to kill someone, nor are they usually driving in a way that the know is likely to cause harm to other people. There are obvs. factors that will affect this–such as driving drunk–but causing a death is usually unintentional, and not through reckless indifference.

Indeed. It runs smack into the problem of falsifiability.

I had to get up and walk down the hallway within an hour of waking up from a major spine surgery. I swear I could feel the muscles that they’d stitched back together trying to tear themselves apart through the stitches

That was 20-odd years ago; I look forward to never repeating that.

Uh. Shit.

And I’m going to have to get a tractor to power a snowblower pretty soon here…

It was definitely unpleasant, but not the worst I’ve had. The worst was sternum implants; even though they used a shit ton of xylocaine, it was def. wearing off by the time they were pushing the implants in, and suturing me back up was… Ow. Definitely not fun.

I had a ‘pastor’ try and witness to me yesterday, insisting that his spiritual experiences made him right, while the spiritual experiences of people that converted to Judaism or Islam meant they had been deceived by the devil.

If that’s the case, then surely there’s nothing wrong with police have military weapons and using military tactics, right?

You cant deal with or compromise with them

You kind of have to, since government relies on the consent of the governed. When enough of them will no longer consent to being governed, your government will fail. But if you really want to address that problem, you look at the reasons why people turn to fascism; it’s not something that happens in a vacuum.

In this case, the dems are handling it badly; they’re trying to move to the right in order to give the fascists the things that they say they want. But what they say they want isn’t really the root issue, which means that dems can never go far enough right to win their vote.

They are absolutely civilians, although they no longer believe they are. Technically the military is supposed to be under civilian control as well (e.g., the governor is supposed to have control of the national guard in their state, the president is supposed to control the six branches of the military).

Look at it this way: the military is not supposed to be used for civilian law enforcement. That very, very strongly implies that police are not military, and are hence civilian.

All of politics is a compromise. You can’t actually accomplish anything if you have a dogmatic approach to it. That’s why Sanders, who I very nearly wholeheartedly support, is so rarely able to actually get anything done. And bless him for it!, he’s the moral compass we need! But to get things done, politicians need to make deals, sometimes with shitty people.

I don’t like everything that Buttigieg represents. But I like him a lot more than Newsom, who throws trans people under the buss without provocation. I certainly like him more than Joe Walsh, the ‘former’ (?) Tea Party conservative that now claims to be a Democrat.