Spin off company - McJeanolds

That’s also highly valid, and not something I factor heavily into my thoughts about the future of U.S. support.

Shit. Huh. I gotta rethink that.

Support your claims.

Edit: With like, actual sources.

And I didn’t call you stupid. I insinuated that your motives were suspect and that you are dishonest. But I am beginning to think you lack the ability to actually make supportable claims or debate people - which would probably mean … eh. *shrug*

I don’t deny that. I really can’t wait for the transition away from petroleum.

But … power, and the economy is power. Sigh. The U.S. gets billions for its oil.

Why are Jews settling Palestinian land in the first place?

Maybe, after forcing them from their major cities, laying claim to the most fertile land in their country, and then refusing their right to assert their own statehood (and using a superpower to back them up in that), then spending 70 years depriving them of ever-increasing amounts of their country, and blockading imports (why blockade spices for traditional foods?!?), that the presence of anything taking more of their land in the open air prison they’ve been forced into to offer a ‘peace settlement’ is not welcome.

What are you on? Is there no ability for inductive reasoning there, or are you hoping that for all your words, there’s no logic, facts, or grounding in reality?

Oooh. I attracted a 1-day old account that conveniently doesn’t know about U.S. statecraft toward the Middle East for the last 70 years, doesn’t know about the long history of arms transfers to Israel, doesn’t know about the Balfour Declaration, the Jewish terrorism against Britain and Palestine until Britain left the area, or the genocides that happened as soon as Britain stopped offering protection to the Palestinians. You conveniently seem to fail to understand geopolitics in any meaningful contexts.
And then you “Source?” my (very well informed) opinions.

lol. No. Don’t waste my time.

A bunch of folks without many rights, property, education, or jobs in a country where they are basically hostages is quite different than Iran.

But after 30 years of lack of movement, this situation offers pretext for war without restraint. I don’t believe they plan to stop.

They don’t have to kill each person to achieve their aims. Sometimes just making sure the water is undrinkable is enough to kill tens of thousands or force many times that number to leave and never return.
2 Days Ago: Israeli strike kills Gaza workers trying to restore drinking water – The National.

Yeah - it’s about regional control, and defensive positions.

This comment is sort of a continuation of this one, but not exactly. (Sorry about the link to my instance, I’m new and don’t know how to do the thing.)

The U.S. has long needed a bully in the area to prevent the Middle East from being too unified, so the west can get relatively inexpensive access to its oil.

The state of play right now is that the U.S. actually produces enough petroleum for its own needs, but our western allies do not, and supplying them with enough oil will raise the cost to an unacceptable level/a level where they’ll have to channel money to the Middle East (which hates the U.S. for its meddling, or to Russia, which also hates the U.S.)

In about 10-15 years, technology and renewables will advance to a point where oil demand is going to have decreased to the point where the U.S. can supply all of its needs and those of its western allies without jacking the price up.

That means the U.S. won’t need a bully. But it will mean that the U.S. will cut funding to Israel, and more or less stop coming to their defense. Israel’s plan is to push out every non-Jew, using Zionism as an excuse for awful statecraft, and they’re going to push their borders to easily defensible geographic areas.
Once they do that, they’re going to basically become North Korea of the Middle East - armed to the teeth and hard to get into. Because if they don’t, everyone they’ve been bullying for the past hundred years (yes, this started before the declaration of statehood), is going to wipe them from the map - potentially leading to them launching the nukes they keep pretending they don’t have, so they don’t have to undergo international monitoring.

Assuming, of course, the plot by other countries to destabilize the U.S. fails and U.S. is still major player by the time Israel’s plan is accomplished. If the destabilization effort succeeds, we may see a full scale war against Israel before their aims are achieved.

That’s my take on it, anyway. They won’t stop because they don’t think they can stop, due to how horrible they’ve been. (At the behest of the U.S., who will begin dropping them once their usefulness has ended.)

They control the borders and they are systematically destroying infrastructure while stealing the land to be ‘settled’ by right wing Israelis. (They done let liberal folk become settlers.)

The right wingers have no issue with being bad neighbors or otherwise murdering Palestinians. And they are backed up by the military. Any resistance is returned 10-fold, with an associated grab for land.

If a cease fire can be forged, the control of the border will mean that the they will continue their existing blockade on imports of building materials such as cement, so new infrastructure cannot be built. They are even using construction equipment to remove or bury rubble, so it cannot be repurposed/recycled.

The plan is to do to Gaza what they have already done to the West Bank. Turn it into fragmented enclaves that lack access to basic resources. It’s clear they even want to block total access to the beach, to prevent fishing for food. It’s why they are literally selling the land that is currently being bombed. They want to make it impossible to live there if you’re Palestinian. They want everyone that isn’t part of their theocracy to die off, or emigrate.

Not related, but totally related.
I’ve watched these interviews with white supremacists in the U.S. who talk/fantasize about the creation of a ‘white’ ethnostate. They always talk about how there will be a nonviolent transition to this, saying that people who don’t match their racial parameters will be relocated to places outside of the state, or those who won’t have children will be allowed to live out their lives, etc. And that’s widely regarded with a ‘sure buddy’ and you know they’re full of crap. People don’t want to move away from their homes. They don’t want to go where they don’t know anyone. They don’t want to lose their jobs, their savings, all their stuff, the land they own and the effort they’ve pored into their home and land or the resources their home/land offers them.

But the situation in Palestine is literally that. People are ‘voluntarily’ relocating (after their homes, jobs, neighborhoods, and often, families) have been blown up by bombs. Or they’re staying and living out the rest of their lives - until they’re shot or a bomb goes off, or they die from malnutrition, thirst, or contaminated water. Hm.
I suppose it’s (relatively) nonviolent to the aggressor.

Honestly, no. I have mentioned it to my doctor, but for something that occurred once every 2-4 years from the ages of 9 to 22 (Oh, crap, I guess it’s been almost 20 years since the last flair up), they viewed it as a low priority when I got health insurance and got over my fear of asking for medical help in my early 30’s. (Cost reasons, not doctor phobia.)

Which I get - “Hey doc, I have an allergy to something - I don’t know what it is and it hasn’t occurred in 10 years. What do we do about it?” They gave me the advice I was already following - which, 10 years ago, was to take Benadryl and record the ingredients for everything I ate, so we could try to figure it out. I will slip a line into the document I keep for my yearlies to ask after what is an appropriate replacement for Benadryl, however.
Although, with my current knowledge and economic level, I’d probably just rush to the ER if anything above my chest swelled up. My insurance will blunt the cost just fine and I’ve got too much going on to choke to death.

Try putting a space between the octothorp and the text.

# Try putting a space between the octothorp and the text.

What’s the consensus on the rules of the game for the chosen card?

Would a Cards Against Humanity black card, which does not require mana to play, be playable? Would other players have to ‘respond’ with a card from their hand?

If you get multiple of these (or recall from graveyard) can you play the card if you also bring in the activation mana/cost whatever?

Is mana equitable across games? If you pull a card from a game that uses the same color mana as your deck, can you play the card? (For example, the game Not Enough Mana uses blue mana that is represented by a water drop.)

Thank you. I appreciate the head’s up. And I appreciate that you’re out here spreading the word. We need folks looking out for others.

I am aware of the risks, but I have a use case, as much as I don’t like that I do. I have an unknown food allergy that crops up randomly. I’m not even sure if it’s a singular food allergy or if it’s an allergy that only occurs when certain foods are combined.         
In the situation above, my face swelled similar to how Will Smith’s face swelled in the movie Hitch (except it was my forehead/scalp). I was 17 and did not know what an anaphylactic reaction was at the time, and we were all so poor that we just did not go to the hospital. Fortunately, the last time it occurred was 15ish years ago (and we got the reaction before any swelling occurred), but I do still keep some around, just in case. It’s definitely not something I use normally.
I hope that my daily allergy medication use (Allegra) will help stave off any future reactions.

Today I feel like telling you all some trauma because I’m avoiding work while I wait for Adderall and coffee to do their thing.

Many years ago I was a highly ignored, heavily traumatized kid. Despite living in a fairly big metro area, I lived on a long dead end street that was accessed via a 4-lane road that was technically a highway. The side near to the highway had several businesses with no close homes along the highway, and the 7 houses on the street were deeper in. There were some kids my age and they also were mostly ignored and heavily traumatized.

The neighbors parents were interesting. They were sort of like mine. Dad was blue color, an addict/drunk. Mom was a nurse. They weren’t financially okay as us. My dad had been given a successful plumbing business by my mom’s dad, but their dad drove a dump truck for a construction company. Their mom was an LPN (licensed practical nurse/lower paid nurse), and my mom was an RN (registered nurse - higher pay).
Weirdly, our parents didn’t seem to get along.

I always regarded their mom as being a better mom. She loved having kids, and really cared about her boys. And me, too, when I stayed with them. When she went to work, she packed lunches for us. At my house it was ‘find what you can.’ Anyway - their dad, though. He would spend his entire paycheck the day he got paid. Sometimes he’d buy something dumb - a new TV to set on top of the TV he’d bought just 6 months before, a bunch of fishing gear he’d use once before realizing he didn’t like fishing, shitty plastic chrome ‘upgrades’ for his car. But mostly, he spent it on booze. He even sometimes took us to the bar with him. We loved it - ordering virgin daiquiris at the American Legion and poorly playing pool at a table we could barely see over while he got intensely drunk. Then he’d careen down side streets to take us back home. He came across as jolly and even happy to most folks, but when his guard was down he was intensely angry, and very emotionally abusive. Once, and only once, in my teens, he even attempted to become sexually abusive, but apparently it is possible for two 14 year olds and a 13 year old to topple and hog tie a 500lb man.

I’d already started to fall out with the boys by then. My life path had taken my different places. My parents split up when I was 6, and by the time I was 8, we lost the house, and my mom had moved across the country to escape my dad, who died maybe a year and a half later. We came back to the area and I resumed my friendship, but from a different part of the city, and different schools. The older brother, who I’d always been friends with had changed. He got mean. He started picking on people for fun. Started thinking being an asshole was funny. The younger brother became more of my friend. He was kind, but always tried to please folks. He kept getting traumatized by now not only his dad, but his brother.
We hung out a few more times, but really, the last time I hung out with them was when I was 17ish. I drove over intending to hang out for a bit, but ate something that triggered an allergic reaction and wound up taking a bunch of Benadryl and staying the night. Their mom out to work a double overnight - I think I saw her in the morning before I left. At that point their dad had stopped working due to health issues. They had a girl there - 15-16ish, and apparently the dad was giving her his Vicodin, presumably in exchange for money (god, I hope it was money). She was gone in the morning before mom came home, but apparently she just hung out there while mom was at work and went into the nearby woods while she was home.

Their dad died about 5 years later, and at the funeral, I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. I had nothing nice to say. There’s a lot more that I cannot convey in this comment to you, reader, nor that I can even fully recall, but I remember looking at this family with that deep well of experience and emotion. They were my childhood best friends. Two damaged people that really, really didn’t get a fair shake. Both boys wearing stained T-shirts because they didn’t have nicer clothes. Didn’t finish high school. Didn’t have jobs. And the mom, who loved them all, and never got supported.

Leaving, I talked to the oldest. He said he was ‘working with’ a cousin that was showing him how to drive a big truck on the sly, so that maybe he could start driving dump trucks.
We stopped at his car, and he asked me if I wanted to go drinking with him - he told me he was gonna get shiftfaced. It was a Tuesday at 11 AM.
I politely declined as I read his bumper sticker - the first time I’d ever seen one - “Ass, Grass, or Cash, no one rides for free.”

It struck me as really sad and appropriate.

We do what we must. But sometimes the best self care is just those few minutes we claw back from the hustle and bustle.

I don’t need business cards, but I want to get some nice ones with just my name that I can write the information I want people to have.
I guess it’s more of a calling card, really.

6/9 Blaze it

For those who saw the word “never” and had a record scratch happen in their head.
(As I did, so I did some furious research to play the role of the smartest person in the room, and merely came away more educated than before.)

This fellow died of H5N2. The strain that has been infecting cattle (and humans) is H5N1.

Same. Then I got diagnosed for ADHD, went on (prescribed) methamphetamines and realized I was binge eating.
In the last year I’ve lost 40 lbs (~18 kg) because I no longer eat second meals after a meal.