EldritchFeminity

Considering Biff was based on Trump in the 80s...

Yeah, the short of it is that it used to be used clinically to describe developmental disorders but fell out of use around the mid-90s because, like so many other words, it was used maliciously to the point where it lost its original meaning and context.

If you were a 90s kid, retard and gay were as close as you could get to actually swearing without getting in trouble and basically carried the same cultural weight as outright slurs. The stigma around being gay was so bad that in the 2000s they made up a sexuality to describe men who were straight but liked to shower and dress in nice clothing so that they wouldn't lose their jobs. And the stigma around mental needs little explanation, I think. It wasn't that long ago that they were electrocuting people and cutting out parts of their brains for being sad or having a stutter.

The US used to be a lot like this too. Food service workers smoking cigarettes while they carve meat and then throwing the butts in the drain. Smoking sections in restaurants being most of the restaurant while the non-smoking section was a corner of the restaurant where they just sat you between all the smokers like the smoke was gonna hit an invisible barrier. Everybody was smoking all the time. My grandma once served my grandfather his breakfast in an ash tray because she was so sick of him putting out his ciagrettes on the plates.

It wasn't until around the 2000s that things really shifted in the US, and now the thought of a smoking vs non-smoking section of anything other than a little room at the airport where the smokers all squash into to smoke is unheard of.

Considering that studies have shown that conservatives have smaller regions of the brain than normal in the areas that are attributed to things like empathy and compassion - yes, yes there is.

That was the implication. Somebody's getting a blow job on my 65th birthday, and it sure as hell isn't gonna be me.

I can't say anything for sure since I haven't had a real vacation in 15 years (that wasn't just staying at the nearest major city for a 3-day holiday weekend), but the cost of flying is a very sore point even in the continental US.

There are tons of beautiful and fun places to visit in the US, but especially if you're driving, time becomes a limiting factor. I know people who drive from Massachusetts to Florida pretty much every year to go to Disney, and it takes 2 or 3 days of travel to get down there. The stats say that we have less vacation time than similar countries (Europe, Canada, etc.), and the average American will never leave their home state and will die within 25 miles of where they were born.

I used to work with a guy who had a Tachoma that he loved and he only used it for offroading. He kept a pair of spare axles in the bed to swap out on the trail if he snapped one.

I think he means that the engine, transmission, and frame are the same, not necessarily the body.

Also, I don't think you two really disagree with each other, as his first comment was:

The big one is a work truck and should not be driven as a commuter. It really shouldn't be allowed on roads where cargo trucks aren't allowed.

The horrible sightlines of modern pickups is a different issue, and I was actually going to post that same chart in this thread because I was thinking of it too. I will add that the pickup is about the same size as the tank, though, and has a worse view.

The average American has less than $300 in their bank account. There is no county in the US where somebody making the median salary can afford the average cost of a house for that county.

Vacationing in Europe and going on wine tours would sound like a once-in-a-lifetime trip for the majority of Americans.

The average lifespan in the US has fallen 3 years in a row and is the same as the part of the UK with the worst average lifespan. With the destruction of the CDC and the removal of food safety inspections they keep attempting, I don't think many of us will have to worry about it.

Besides, Berretas are cheap.

His speech patterns and dialogue match up surprisingly well with Jim Jones of the famous Jonestown Massacre. Once somebody like that has a following, it doesn't matter how crazy he gets, the diehard believers will literally die hard for the guy.

The first campaign drew the cult together from a cult that was already there (a groomed voter base who will vote Republican no matter who) and the first term bonded them together against an enemy (everybody with common sense) while the Republican party and the entire media insulated them from how bad he is. There were some people who saw what he did and turned away - he got less votes this time around than he did last time, and that's even with the questions of election interference that keep cropping up - but that just means that the people left are the crazies who would defend him even if he personally started shooting up schools.

American politics is so screwed up that most people have little clue of what exactly happens in this country. A coworker of mine just the other day was effectively saying that daddy Trump had to hurt us because big-meanie Biden ruined the government deficit.

I believe it's a hormone thing because otherwise nobody would have a second kid. Apparently the hormones kick in and make you forget the pain while also giving you a big hit of dopamine so that you connect having a kid to being happy.