Absolutely based.

Hmmmm what do you call it when you STAGnate the economy (like by shrinking it $5.1T) and cause inFLATION (by returning to fucking mercantilist economic policy)? Sounds so familiar…

I think the dems have been losing for decades in essentially every political arena because the repubs have cartoon villain mastermind Mitch McConnell pulling the strings and the dems have fucking Nancy Pelosi behind the curtain fixing races against Bernie, etc.

Thank you so much for the reply! That is extremely helpful.

What rifle and in what caliber do you most recommend for home defense and cheap, relatively plentiful ammo that is shortage-resistant?

I am considering a cheap Palmetto State Armory AR kit chambered for 5.56 NATO rounds so I could also fire .223s. Is brand particularly important, or are most ARs on the market good enough for practice and emergency use?

I don’t think it’s possible to abolish prisons for all crimes. But why does a thief or a drug dealer (or worse, just a drug user) need to be in prison? What about the nature of their crimes necessitates imprisonment as a reasonable method of corrections?

If the point is stopping people from reoffending, prisons don’t do that. Like objectively. Recidivism in the US is super high, and going to prison predicts increases in the severity of crimes people commit.

So, what reduces recidivism? Eliminating the factors that drove them to crime in the first place. So, you monitor them closely - house arrest, assigned social/case workers, etc. Like a more robust parole system for nonviolent offenders. With enough surveillance, you can reduce the likelihood of reoffence by making the chances of getting caught much higher. This enhanced monitoring would be temporary.

For violent offenders and more serious criminals, maybe prisons are still necessary. But they don’t have to be dehumanizing and can provide necessary health/psychiatric, educational, social, and job skills training.

You could make the corrections system more effective by making society easier for criminals to reintegrate into. If you’re a felon and you can’t find work because you’re a felon - how are you going to afford to live within the confines of the law? Step 1) jobs programs for felons with a path to eliminating non-violent offenses from your record as it relates to work with exceptions as necessary. Step 2) improve the education system to prevent people from turning to crime and to help give former criminals relevant job skills to earn an honest living. Step 3) provide healthcare to people - having access to healthcare for mental and addiction-related conditions is super important to reduce crime.

Basically - prison abolition isn’t about just letting rapists and murderers go free with no consequences. Instead, people in favor of prison abolition are typically in favor of reducing the societal pressures to commit crimes and preventing reoffense.

We kind of did create israel in utah. But for people who thought Jesus came over to America with the pilgrims and that they have magic underwear that will shield them from harm rather than for the people who thought that their God told them to cut part of their kids’ penises off, they couldn’t eat shellfish, and used to commit genocides on the reg but has inexplicably stopped for the last couple thousand years or so.

Having potentially thousands of years of embarassing moments of social awkwardness to think about. And, over the aeons, being relieved when the people you know and love die because they won’t remember the things you’re so ashamed of.

Weekend at Bernie’s for president

Well… uhhh… that was Amazon’s plan. I thought we were on the same page.

People have weird ideas about seasoning. It is literally oil polymerized and bonded to the metal with high heat; but people act like it just rubs off. You can scrape seasoning off, but it’s hard. I need steel wool to do it.

I think these people complaining aren’t really seasoning their pans - just using dirty pans (i.e. the oil hasn’t fully polymerized).

Ah. Yep that’ll do it

The “suffered from alcohol abuse” may have played a role here. I can’t imagine being so out of it on shrooms that you dismember yourself. But maybe it makes more sense if he was drunk too

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has been very useful to me. My cardio has improved dramatically, I am much stronger than I used to be, and I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment out of going from absolute trash to slightly less trash over 2 years.

But I don’t expect it to really help me in a fight. If I did get into a fight, I certainly would do better than if I hadn’t trained; but one thing I’ve learned from fighting people for like 8hrs a week is that it is REALLY easy to fuck up and get hurt in ways you wouldn’t expect. The outcome of a fight is unpredictable - especially when the other person could have a weapon. The best martial art for self defense would be running.

If it were actually a true story, maybe autistic OP thought he was returning the joke in kind. “Lol shouldn’t you be starving because the British stole all your crops but potatoes”, “lol shouldn’t you be bombing hospitals”. Seems like a fair trade if you don’t understand what was intended. Signed: an autist.

The children yearn for the mines!

Yeah those LIEbrals are always pRoJeCtInG! Probably because they’re fascists.

It’s always projection. They pre-empt criticism by taking whatever words are (rightly) being directed at them or could be used against them in the future and just flipping them around, making them lose their original meaning in the eyes of their adherents.

In home ec class in middle school we watched a food network video about making stuffed hotdogs where they took a straw and cored a hotdog out and then filled it with white, melted cheese from a piping bag. They squeezed too hard and it jetted out the other end and the camera was perfectly positioned to catch the hotdog’s thick ropes. Then they played it back in slo motion. The class was very amused.

Really well argued and explained, I hope people read and don’t just reflexively downvote.