Hmm. OK. Thanks for chatting.

Well, "shutting down the conversation" is most effectively done by walking away from it, and I feel like most people know that. So, with that in mind, I think we often accuse people who bring up what's bugging them of acting to "shut down the conversation" when what they're really doing is refusing to play by the…

Interesting. I guess I can understand why someone confronted with the term for the first time might be a little annoyed to discover someone who is not, themselves, cisgender, has invented a word for what cisgender describes, and is now insisting that cisgender people make themselves comfortable with the term. Maybe…

Bitten bullet, though, AndiG: "Just because bigots want to infer some offense from an inoffensive term doesn't change the fact that the term is correct."

Hmm... mightn't we recognize someone's right to have or not have a particular label applied to them regardless of the degree to which such label carries oppressive overtones, and regardless of their reason for asking to be identified or not identified in a particular way? I seriously don't mean to rehash your silly…

*cackle* nicely done.

Fair enough. I guess my point was more to do with the judge's recognition that this was some total bullshit and recommending a course of action to remedy it. Generally, I appreciate it, as a matter of principle, when judges follow the letter of the law in criminal cases partly because that leaves little room for the…

Well that's one hell of a disgusting legal loophole. The judges are doing the right thing by following the law but recommending a new trial such as the net result is that the asshole still gets hit with rape charges... but I should hope the California legislature doesn't "fix" the law by making it "fraud". They should…

*yawn* how blasé.

1.) Not bitter, just an acerbic sense of humor. I assure you my response was written with the utmost cheer. 2.) You sound like you might have a tiny wiener. They make pills for that, these days. 3.) That was also written with the utmost cheer and humor. 4.) Happy trails, pardner.

Maybe... or maybe he's got small junk and feels the need to compensate for his shitty middle management job by buying himself a big ol' pickup truck and pretending he's a cowboy, y'know? Could go either way, is what I'm saying, and I fear in many situations that it does. Soccer moms hauling their kids around in SUVs…

Trucks have all of this capability, you're right, and when they're used for those purposes they're a marvelous thing... but think about the last time you spent 20 minutes on the road. How many pickup trucks did you see not hauling anything, with one driver who was probably on their way home from an office job?…

Actually, scientists have some pretty good ideas on how life "actually happened," and the evidence for those ideas (a standard creationists never, ever bother with) keeps appearing in bits and pieces to either confirm or, in some cases, modify the thinking. In any event, I'll throw in with those who admit what they…

Not accidents. Billions of years of biochemistry that, when you take the time to understand it with an open mind, works out and makes sense, basically, from beginning to end.

Yeah. How do we know if we were affected by the leak?

Ahh yes, it wouldn't be a post about Facebook's advertising tactics if there wasn't some self-important jackass here to remind us all how Facebook is "free." Good thing you've tuned into comments around here long enough to know that line backwards and forwards (with the exception of your odd double-negative)... I'm…

I should think Diesel might have a square nozzle of the same size as the gasoline filler's round nozzle. This way, they're mutually exclusive (or near enough that it'd require some force to get one into the other)... and then, yes, a really inexpensive adapter plate for the vehicles already on the road.

I'm not sure I'm picking up what you're putting down, there... but I'll say this. The issue you want to table? It's the most important thing in the whole discussion: The experts agree with regard to the science. Anyone claiming to be an expert who's arguing that same-sex attraction is inherently a choice isn't…

It matters, in some sense, because it gets at the self-actualization of being able to tell your own lived experience apart from anyone trying to tell you you're wrong. I know I didn't decide to be gay. I just know I didn't. It's not even just that people are wrong when they tell me otherwise... it is that it is…

Actually, in some sense, yes we did. Most of the loud screaming our community did after about 1990 was pretty ineffectual, and some of it even set us back. It wasn't until we learned how to talk about ourselves as fully realized people instead of framing ourselves as a marginalized minority that we started gaining…