“We consider our sphere of influence to be half of europe so abandon them or we will consider ourselves forced to attack” is NOT a legitimate grievance.

That’s a terrible take. Those nations have soverignty and their own right to self-determination.  If they want missile batteries because they fear being bombed by russia (which isn’t exactly a foolish fear, they’re bombing a nation they promised not to attack right as we speak) it’s not right to say “oh we can’t…

Nice try, but a miss. The US promised the Ukraine defense against Russian aggression in exchange for them giving up their nuclear weapons as part of the dissolution of the soviet union.

Of course, but if you have nothing good to say, keep your damned mouth shut.  Trying to make it all about how it’s really related to your pet cause is insulting and offensive.

I’m sure it does, but beverage sales to restaurants dwarf retail sales, and make up a significant portion of the profitability of restaurants as well because they’re the only real high-markup item they sell.  As a result it’s way more important to have a cola to lock up those exclusive supplier deals than it is to…

the FDA’s reasoning is, more precisely, the colorant contains an unapproved ingredient— silver, as a result it cannot be approved for human consumption.

Sprite did it first, with Remix circa 2000.  And honestly, I miss Sprite Remix, yes I know there’s Tropical Remix available intermittently now but it’s just not the same.

Honestly, I believe rumors that pepsi really only makes a cola anymore so they have a cola for pepsi-only shops  and bars they sign exclusive supplier contracts with (like all Yum! brand restaurants: KFC, Long John Silvers, formerly Taco Bell who inherited their exclusivity, etc) because I don’t know many people that…

If Fallout has taught me anything, if you use this instead of normal coke when adding turpentine and powdered laundry detergent you get a larger explosion that does additional fire damage, and in a pinch the resulting grenade sells for 50 more bottlecaps to a weapon merchant.

I have no doubt it’s true, but I would love to see some scientific work on the impacts of mass contamination with hormone-mimicking compounds.  Estrogen weakens bone development, among other effects of hormones, and since the 70s we’ve been living in a world saturated in hormone-functional-group containing polyphenols.

I have a book about Hecate through the ages that amazon shipped me by accident (didn’t want it back when I asked) and I found it fascinating. I’ll look through my books to try to find it I think it was “Liminal” something or other.

It’s always a little awkward when you’re not sure if someone pronounces something the native way or the anglicanized way. There’s a lot of personal identity and politics tied up in how that choice was made, probably by their grandparents or whoever immigrated.

I mean if you want to judge the danger of the clientel, the vintage Afterlife had all the barely-keeping-it-together cyberpsychos (back from when it was fully treatable in 2020... gotta love technological progress— then again cybernetics back then were much less invasive and more traumatic, they treated it like major…

Bingo. It’s a whole category on some personality scales. Would you say someone who exhibits 4-5s for each narcissistic trait yet is not diagnosed NPD is *not* a narcissist? that makes no sense.

this is excellent, and I love that you called out that “gaslighting” is especially and egregiously misused— I saw a woman’s friends tell her a date was a dangerous gaslighter because he said he “had a nice time” but she didn’t think the date went well, and clearly that meant he was trying to subvert her perception of…

I’m sure it wouldn’t cope well with Mumbai, Shenzen, Jakarta or Sao Palo either... this isn’t news.

it’s a very clear attempt to shuffle the money into the “people won’t care” pile. BLM disproportionately, compared to many organizations, benefitted from an outpouring of small donations (fair disclosure: I made several of those small donations), many of them from people for whom even that small donation was impactful…

I don’t think it’s especially egregious that most benefactors were the most vulnerable people.

They aren’t ruling on that at all, this ruling is narrowly tailored to creative acts. It’s already settled law that NON-creative acts can be forced— you have to sell to anyone that comes in your door a product that you generally sell, even if you hand made it.

You can, however once you make a game free-to-play you can NEVER go back to charging for it. It is forever free.