I live in Latin America, and most of the people I talk to consider themselves to be white.

Race doesn’t have a valid scientific basis, so I guess it’s one of those “eye of the beholder” things. But I doubt that the MAGA crew would look at your average Colombian or Venezuelan and think, “Oh, yeah, that person is on our team.”

That’s just a vending machine with extra steps.

Username checks out along with the math.

I’m sorry that was your experience. I’m sure it was hard, but I’m glad you made the choice that means you’re still here to tell your story.

And people don’t seem to notice that more people came out after they could live authentically and do other jobs.

All of this Boomer nonsense about “There were no trans people in my day.”

No, grandpa, they were just too afraid to let you know it, so they lived quietly miserable lives with a socially acceptable spouse and 2.5 kids.

Every time that a conservative equates the mere existence of trans people with sex, they’re just outing their own kink.

He got an entire art supply empire with franchises that sold painting courses (and maybe still do?).

I think he also got screwed out of most of the proceeds and possibly even the use of his own name because he had a shady business partner.

Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker shot a cop and survived. They threw him in jail, but ultimately the charges against him were dismissed and the city of Louisville settled with him for $2 million.

This is very much the exception and not the rule.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63953359

The “unprofessional conduct” that he’s alerting us to is his own behavior, right?

I read that and thought, “Whatever is coming is probably a huge breach of business etiquette.” And I was right.

Edited to add: If the candidate’s behavior in the interview was so egregious, why would you even waste your time with follow-up calls? It sounds like they wanted to hire the guy, but he wasn’t interested in working for them after the interview. Sour grapes, anyone?

A properly darned sock doesn’t feel any different from a new sock. And if you match the color of the yarn, it can be nearly invisible.

I think visible mending is more fun – my husband’s socks have colorful little patches that make us both smile.

I mean, it’s Don Jr. and not Eric, so probably daddy sent him.

If the tunnel has decent structural integrity, Musk will be long dead before he would need to pay the piper on this one.

50 years from now, teenagers in Las Vegas will tell stories about the “secret tunnels under the city.” And at some point a very expensive building is going to collapse into a tunnel and the kids will be shocked that the urban legend was real.

And everyone will have basically forgotten that Elon Musk was responsible for, and later abandoned, this ill-conceived vanity project.

South America, too.

No, I haven’t had to deal with the VA.

But I did move from the US to Colombia. And I’ve received more thorough care from the national healthcare system here than I ever did in the US. Instead of simply treating my symptoms (which is the general practice in the US), the doctors here actually found the underlying conditions that I’ve apparently been living with for years, possibly even decades.

The healthcare system here is concerned with keeping the population healthy instead of increasing shareholder value. It takes a bit longer than in the US, but I have the peace of mind of knowing that (1) my doctor isn’t getting kickbacks for prescribing me a specific medication, and (2) regardless of what is needed for my treatment, I won’t go bankrupt paying for it.

So, while I don’t necessarily believe that a government can manage much of anything without any corruption or profit motive, I do have some evidence that a government can manage healthcare in a way that provides greater benefit to its citizens than the privatized healthcare industry in the US.

I’ve since left the church and I don’t disagree with you. It shouldn’t be necessary to involve religion in providing needed services to a community.

But I also haven’t seen a lot of non-religious organizations offering practical services directly to the people who need them the most.

Don’t get me wrong: there are a lot of great nonprofit organizations that do amazing work. But they aren’t necessarily offering subsidized daycare or affordable housing on a scale that meets the needs of the communities where they operate. And very few of them are reaching out to people in rural areas. Churches still have something of a monopoly in those places.

I think this is largely due to the fact that faith communities have more cohesion than secular groups. All of the small secular groups I’ve been involved with have fallen apart after a year or two because the bonds that hold them together are simply not as strong as those in churches.

The whole bit about giving 10% of your income to the church as a duty to God is a fantastic racket. It means that the true believers think that God is keeping a ledger, and therefore they are more likely to support their church financially. So people in churches are literally more invested in their religious community, which gives their church the resources to provide services as social outreach.

And that’s not even getting into the power structures within the church and the role of a pastor as leader (that was missing from all of the secular groups I had experience with). Or the organizing power of a group of dedicated little old church ladies.

There are a lot of elements that churches are better at harnessing. And I haven’t encountered a good solution for creating a secular organization with the same kind of strength.

You have a valid point about the historical unfair distribution of labor in heterosexual relationships, but for the love of Jesus, can you not just let the guy have a win?

Your whole response is very “all lives matter,” and it’s extremely off-putting … even to me, a woman who is very firmly on your side about the unfairness of the emotional and domestic labor workload that is foisted upon women.

Read the room. This conversation is an opportunity to recognize that men could do with some encouragement sometimes for doing things well. That doesn’t mean women don’t also deserve encouragement when they do something well.

Both things can be true simultaneously. But we’re not talking about both things here. Don’t derail the former conversation to try to make it about the latter. Surely you can see from the downvotes that your digression isn’t getting any traction.

People who might otherwise listen to what you have to say are actively dismissing your ideas because they are not receptive to those ideas as a part of this conversation. If you find that is a common theme in your experience, it’s probably because you aren’t making ideal choices about how to start these conversations. (Unless your whole goal is just trolling, in which case … congratulations, I guess?)

The old saying is trite, but it’s also true: you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

No, it’s government-subsidized privatized healthcare.

Socialized healthcare wouldn’t have a profit-driven middleman involved.

One of the best things my family church did to reach out to the community was running a low-cost daycare center in our tiny rural town. It helped local families, bolstered the church’s finances, and brought new families into the church.

Unfortunately, it was an Assembly of God church with toxic teachings that I’m still working through decades later. So … straights and roundabouts, I guess.

This sounds very similar to the Kentucky online portal for teacher certification. It looks like it was made in 1996, and it functions slightly less well than it looks like it should.