'Democrats have a plan'

She lost me right there. As a Democrat, I feel confident in stating that we have never had such a thing.

It is a truth so old that Will Rogers was cracking jokes about it 100 years ago.

Oh, I see your mistake. Those are Samsung fridges. Nothing has a shorter lifespan than a Samsung fridge. Since there are two they will die together to maximize the inconvenience factor, and they thus must be clicked simultaneously. That is the only way a fake Samsung fridge could mimic the frustration caused by a real one.

Daily alcohol: blunts my emotional pain, causes awful feelings in my stomach, does damage to multiple organ systems, is physically addictive, and gives you a hangover the next day.

Daily THC and other cannabinoids consumed via edibles: blunts my emotional pain, blunts my physical pain, has a minor effect on working memory when used over years that does not further inhibit cognitive ability or motivation, is not physically addictive, and has no impact on the next day.

Used to self medicate in vaguely controlled doses, it is a no-brainer. MJ is not perfect by any means, but it is world better than booze for frequent users.

I think that you have internalized a version of body positivity that lies on the most extreme end of what is meant by that phrase. Body positivity - be comfortable with who you are and do not put down on others due to their body.

The odds are that I am significantly fatter than you. The odds also favor that I am significantly stronger than you, even if you lift weights. I can also probably walk all day much farther than you can.

Would it be healthier if I lose body fat? Absolutely. Have I tried for 20 years to do that? Yes. I am not ignorant regarding nutrition. I am not lazy. I am not overall lacking willpower. I am fat but otherwise healthy.

Body positively means that my doctor treats my body fat as what it is - one aspect of my overall health. He does not assume that every problem I have is because I am fat, even though changing that would improve some aspects of my health.

Body positively also means that I am not going to hide when I go to the beach. I am going to go shirtless and enjoy myself. If you do not find me sexually attractive, that is fine. If you are going to shame or mock me for my body fat, then you are an asshole. If I catch wind of you mocking me, I will quietly estimate how many times your bodyweight I will deadlift on Monday. If you choose to mock the scars that cover parts of my body from extreme, life-saving surgery, I may feel the need to firmly educate you on exactly what sort of asshole you are.

Body positively often conjures the image of a morbidly obese girl on OnlyFans who lets people pay to watch her binge and intentionally get fatter while she says being purposefully inactive is just as healthy as hitting the gym. The real versions of that person are extremely rare, but their radicalism, vociferous nature, and platform make their voices much louder in comparison. Their argument is also easy to find flaw with and mock, so they get used as if they are a typical example of body positivity.

You are right in that the woman I describe above needs help and is not behaving in a safe or healthy way. I also understand why you might think that is the norm. She is not, though, and I would encourage you to look deeper at the meaning of the "movement."

The "you" above is generic and based on broad assumptions. You, the reader, might be stronger than me and have way more endurance than me. You also might be fatter than I am. The odds are very good that you are also not an asshole. My point was to call out variances from the norm as convenient examples, of which I have plenty in both directions.

Senators were not elected by the people before the 17th amendment. The House of Representatives represent the interests of the people of their districts, so they were elected by the people. Senators represent the interests of their state as an entity, so they were elected by the legislature of their state or appointed by their governor.

The USA at the federal level is a republic, not a direct democracy. We elect those who vote upon the federal laws. I'm that easy, some worry that more voice of the people and less of the state as an entity runs afoul of that notion and the constitution itself.

I understand that point from a limited perspective, but it is now frequently used as a way to ignore constituents and beat the drum of fascism. Do not trust a politician that is worried about the 17th amendment. That ship sailed a century ago.

I am angry at how clever this is. Well done.

Sincerely, I wish her the best. I know it is common to jump in with hate-the-rich feelings here, but I don't know of anything she has done that makes her deserve cancer. Cancer sucks. The flight is awful, and once it is done you don't get to know if you are actually better for a long time. For the rest of your life you get to carry physical and emotional scars from the fight.

I did this fight. I would wish it away from anyone except the most evil. I hope her treatment and recovery are as smooth as possible.

Ooh, I actually know the answer to this! I had cancer a couple years ago, and it got really dicey for a bit. While my story has a good ending and I am now effectively cancer-free, I had to look the potential of death clear in the face and start making some concrete plans.

My answer is unequivocal - I would prepare my family for my untimely demise. My wife and I got together when we were young enough that we entered adulthood together and grew that way. There is no me and her - there is only us. This is not some creepy codependency thing. We just became adults whose emotional and mental shapes are highly complimentary. That happens when you are with someone longer than you were not. We also have kids for whom I am the primary caretaker and stay-at-home dad while she works. Both boys are autistic though you might not notice it, and I am their primary coregulator. My family needs me in ways that are not universally true across families.

Most of my plan can be summarized as follows:

• Prepare my wife for life without me. Ensure she has the basic skills that I have taken over in our lives. Impress upon her the notion that while she has been the love of my life, I sincerely hope I am but one of hers.
• Spend as much time with my kids as possible. Cement myself in their memories. Record messages and fatherly advice in writing and/or video for every major life event I can think of.
• Set up therapy and support services for my family once I die.
• Get my friends and family on board for specific forms of help as time goes on. People who want to help do nothing when they do not know what to do. They are more likely to follow through when told, "I know Jimmy really looks up to you. After I die, please take him out for some bonding time at least once a month. He is going to be lost without me, and Wife cannot be a masculine role model like I was."
• Plan my funeral and write my obituary. Make it clear that any of this can be changed.
• Basically, do anything I can to prepare my family for life without me.

I know this is not terribly exciting, but it found that what I feared far more than death was the fate of my family without me there to care for them.

I hear you and we are voting. That said, backup plans are a thing for good reasons.

My wife is Jewish and something she once said to me lives rent free in my brain. "The gross majority of the Jews you know are descended from people who left when they had a feeling. The ones who waited until it was obviously bad did not make it out."

Fascism is on the rise globally, but not every country will be led by someone who has actively courted neo-Nazis as part of their base. I saw how emboldened those people felt during his first term, and we anticipate it could only get much worse during a second. We do not want to leave, but we fear that staying may become unsafe for our family.

I do not mean to be pedantic, but this is topic I love.

Marsupials do not fill a niche by virtue of their lack of placement. Instead, they have survived so long by virtue of their isolation.

It turns out that the adaptions required for marsupials to birth and raise young without a placenta make them inferior to placental mammals in almost every scenario. They get out competed and die off in almost every instance. South America had marsupials, not placentals, until it formed a land bridge with North America. What happened then? All the marsupials died off with the weird exception of the American possum. The placentals straight up out competed them across the board.

Australia has kept marsupials only because of its extreme isolation. When any type of placental mammal has been introduced to Australia, it has ruined the ecosystem and taken over the niche it fills.

Independent of humans, marsupials are a dying design. We just happen to live at a time when we can see that extinction in process. Yes, humans have sped it up by more rapidly introducing placental species, but we can see how it happened without human intervention as well.

"We keep thinking like OpenAI is a company that has a clue what it is doing because they have this amazing product that is getting used everywhere in business. In reality, they are a startup, and startups are going to have startup problems. We cannot treat them or their product like they are established and stable."

-my wife, who leads work at another company with OpenAI tech

I know the above quote is from someone "unimportant" in the industry, but to me it encapsulates exactly what we have seen from OpenAI in the past couple weeks. She became simultaneously reassured and more worried when Satya Nadella, the highly respected CEO of Microsoft, became directly involved. I wonder what she will think of this development when she wakes up.

It is not a globally big deal, but I wish I could have heard the conversations between the doctors on my cancer team. Everything went very well in the end, but it got really dicey for a while. It would be interesting to know what they were really thinking and discussing behind the practiced facade they presented to me.