Do you not have a car?

The court ordered the state to pay the women €50,000 in damages each for the suffering caused by breaking their ties to their mothers, home environments and loss of identity. It also said the government must pay “more than €1m” in legal costs.

The women had limited damages they sought to €50,000, because if they had lost they would be liable to pay the state compensation based on the original claim.

Ok that’s crazy. They sued the government due to their forced removal from their families, but if they lost the court case (which they did the first time), they would have to pay the Belgium government the amount they sued it for? That sounds exceedingly fucked.

Whenever I make the unfortunate decision to visit home, I have to drive through West Virginia. I always fill up before the state line, because I refuse to contribute to their economy. I also take back roads around the tolls, as they would have me pay upwards of $15 each trip through. The back roads inevitably lead me past wide swaths of entrenched poverty. Burnt down trailers, smoldering in the trailer parks, with their drumpf flags and “friends of coal” signs. It’s pathetic.

Feel like that’s just the message of the “Baby Shark” song. A big “Fuck You” to anyone unlucky enough to hear it

An entire state beholden to religious extremists. It’s wild.

that just sounds like you’re bragging about how corrupt and spineless your fellow republicans are

lol ok Manchin and Sinema, two big democrats! Yup! it’s laughable you’d try to paint them as such. your disingenuous trolling is some top tier useless garbage

show me where republicans put forth a plan to end gerrymandering and democrats blocked it.

Yup, everything evil republicans do is actually democrats fault. That’s a totally cool and not at all moronic position.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/us/politics/north-carolina-republicans-gerrymander.html

Whenever I see headlines like this, I always wonder if this is going to be the random little thing that escalates into WWIII.

Fun times during the great fascist creep of the new century.

DOTA 2 is my primary time waster, have over 3000+ hours on it. It’s endlessly entertaining, because there is so much variability in the games. You have 4-8 spells depending on the hero, with 6 active item slots, which means once your team has leveled up, team fights can be a burst of seconds, or a 5+ minute long affair, with each tank employing different survival strategies to block damage, heal, or escape, just to heal and get right back in it. There are multiple different game modes, but are a little challenging to find and play. Still, it is the one game I play with the steepest learning curve. I don’t think I saw myself as “good at the game” until I was around 1000 hours in 😶‍

Smite is the only other game I have 1000+ hours in. I started playing it as a break from DOTA 2, and as a way to connect with my little brother. It’s a lot like DOTA 2, but far more simplistic. Each god has 4 spells, with no active items. Instead of left-clicking for movement on a map, you use WASD to maneuver your god. It’s fun, and you can pick it up after like 30 hours. The different game modes are a lot easier to navigate than in DOTA, but it’s also a lot less engaging. The updates and quests are all very simplistic. I was going to try out the new Smite 2, but after watching some game play, it looks… exactly the same as Smite 1.

our country and legal system is a fucking joke.

I think long COVID has impacted more Americans than we realize. Everyone out there suffering from diminished capacities thinking that the fascist sex-pest goomba is somehow more reliable than the nice black lady. I dunno about you guys, but I’ve just been seeing a whole lot of mistakes lately. On television, in News, in articles, just… everywhere.

And while a lot of it is probably people quiet quitting and not giving a fuck, I think a lot more people are suffering from the extended brain fog of long COVID than we think, and it’s affecting everything around us. Unfortunately, that includes voting practices in elections.

her opponent went on the national debate stage and said Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs. What exactly does “being a phony” mean to you??

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Before I moved to the southern US, the only time I’d ever encountered one is when I was a kid. My older brother was in a science class that had “pet german hissing cockroaches,” and it was his turn to take them home with him. Well, I dunno if he let them out on purpose or what, but I was showering in our shared bathroom, and when I went to unfold and use my towel, I discovered that it was full of those disgusting creatures. I flew out of that bathroom, man. So my very first experience with them was traumatizing, and now I live in the South, and these things are the bane of my existence. Every few days (now that it’s getting colder) I’ll see one and it feels like a pustule of hate bursts within me, renewing my sense of bewilderment that man, in all his glory, cannot rid himself of these loathsome, vile things.

I need to move, man.

Used to like his podcast, now I’m embarrassed I ever gave him the attention. At least he had some interesting people on that I got to hear from, but I wouldn’t go near a rogan product now if you paid me.

I loathe trunk or treat. It’s not the same as trick or treating, it’s cheating. When I was young the only way I got a bunch of candy was to run all over the neighborhood, and then run to the other neighborhoods to squeeze in more. I was out and about, acting the fool, where chicanery abounds. I’d end up at home, exhausted at the end of the night.

Today’s kids walk around a parking lot. It’s just not the same.

When we were kids halloween was the best. As an adult, there was nothing more I looked forward to than handing out candy, seeing costumes, scaring some kids with all my decorations. But now it’s all sanitized and boiled down into the something as ludicrous as walking around a parking lot asking for handouts from cars. What, are they just prepping the nations children for a life of panhandling? Joking aside, it’s just not as fun for anyone involved. I don’t want to drive somewhere and decorate the fucking trunk of my car (especially when I decorated my house already?), and the kids don’t want to walk around a parking lot!

Trunk or treat is the worst solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.

I like to do that with great albums. I’ll listen to the whole thing, just, over and over and over again. Until I’ve got pretty much the whole thing memorized. Then I go on to another one. I’ll only do it that way if the whole album is banging, though.

Past examples include:

• Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
• My Morning Jacket - Circuital
• Wu-Tang Clan - Enter the 36 Chambers
• Kendrick Lamar - Good Kid Maad City (& DAMN)
• RadioHead - Kid A (& OK Computer)
• Jeff Tweedy - Warm
• The Tragically Hip - Day For Night

EDIT: couldn’t find the full Tweedy Album, so just linked my favorite song from it

Where does “letting women die during a miscarriage” fall on your scale?