You have my sincere sympathies.
Mostly for economic reasons, my wife-to-be and I moved out of the San Francisco Bay Area and plunked down in South Texas, between San Antonio and Corpus Christi. At the time, there was exactly ONE “Chinese Food Place” within a 30-minute drive from our house, and THREE outside that limit…

The point being to guide the country into becoming one in which “social studies education [isn’t] mostly focussed [sic] on whiteness”. Given the stranglehold that revisionist regressives have on the major textbook-publishing corporations, we literally need to build a new generation of diversity-respecting activists,…

Nice trick, but unfortunately all it takes is one bright young mind to mention this to their parents. White fragility is as sensitive as a fresh bone-bruise, and it obviously covers entire regions of the country; the slightest touch of the truth and documented facts that prove ‘white supremacy’ is incorrect provokes a…

And there’s no easy way to change it, either, considering that dyed-in-the-wool proponents of this idiocy made certain to basically chain themselves to the desks of the corporations that make textbooks for public schools AND packed every H.R. department with similarly-delusional idiots so that it’s extremely difficult…

The Republicans have altogether too much practice in flinging bucket after bucket of whatever manner of ‘biomass’ at the walls to see what will stick. They have perfected that game at the expense of actually learning how to govern or legislate, true responsibility they have demonstrably handed over to their…

For whatever my opinion may be worth, the idea of a series of articles on as many of these kinds of products as you (or your team of volunteers/victims) can stand.
Speaking as someone who did earn the “Cooking” skill award and merit badge in Boy Scouts, I can attest that I am perfectly capable of following a recipe.…

i like the closing line. It resonates with my mental image of the Wisconsin Republicans (if not the Republicans as a whole) as fundamentally abusive toward... well, anyone who isn’t them.
Consider Lenore Walker’s depiction of the “cycle of abuse” she included in her book, “The Battered Woman”:

One of the fringe benefits of having overcooked pasta where normal humans have spines: they can perform acts of moral and ethical twisting that would shatter anyone else.
Which is why cold logic and dry facts (seasoned with humor) are the best weapons to use against them.

I figure that him going to the ‘sleazy’ areas to get his jollies as opposed to ‘bringing it home’ arises from some need to keep his own ‘sleazy’ activities separate from his ‘respectable’ home. Kind of like how Dr. Jekyll had a really nice house from the front, and Mr. Hyde only entered and left from the dirty…

Sorry, the 5yo brother has the writer-credit for “Axe Cop”. I guess his big brother is more of a proofer/editor...

Have you heard about a webcomic basically driven by the imagination of the artist/writer’s 5yo brother? It’s called “Axe Cop”.

Two centuries’ worth of practice, at the very least. (“John Brown” and “Nat Turner”...) But then again, there’s a LOT at stake between ‘maintaining the status quo’ and ‘allowing all Americans, regardless of ethincity or any other status, to have fully unimpeded access to the protection and support of the law’.
The…

At a guess, it’s an overly-fancified way.of saying “turd”. Because ‘proper’ conservatives would never tarnish their reputations by using such plebian (read: obvious) language.

Must be nice, to actually earn significantly more than your expenses for weeks or months or even years at a time.
Must be nice, NEVER having to empty your literal piggy-bank to fix your car (because the American public transportation system is a cruel and bitter joke). And may all the gods have pity on you if you need…

Speaking as someone who used to devour “cyberpunk” fiction back when it first hit, I feel vaguely bemused at myself for asking this, but here goes:
Could we please get some kind of justification for having any kind of digital assistant...
... AT ALL?
I mean, never mind the big, scary stories about back-end security…

It’s not a question of ‘psychological readiness’ for altogether too many people. Far and away, it’s a question of “can we really afford to travel out of our ZIP code?”
As Robert Heinlein once opined: “Animals can be driven insane by forcing too many of them to live in too-close proximity. Man is the only animal that…

Calling career-based failures ‘instructional setbacks’ only applies during or after actual employment. I speak from repeated experience with job-hunting: you CAN NOT learn from a ‘failure’ to acquire the job of your dreams (at the moment) when you get no feedback as to WHY you were not offered the job.
And I simply…

Strictly speaking, it’s not the ‘natural’ part of the pandemic that led to a drop in birth-rates. The blame for that rests quite squarely on the shoulders of government policies. While decrying the “immorality of rampant sex before and outside of marriage”, I’ve yet to see any government policies at any level that…

Heh. Point of order: most sex-toys recommend the use of lube with their products. So I would expect that the sales-figures for water-based lubes are quite acceptable.
Anyone from the industry care to support or disprove my theory?

I’m not sure whether it would be preferable for most of your conversations to focus on real-life politics (which runs a strong risk of sending *someone* into a frothing rage, these days) or debating the goings-on within completely fictional realities...