North Carolina is a lovely state, and I hope you’re able to bring a little more sanity back to it!

These are the same people that kept asking what do we have to worry about if we have nothing to hide during all the Patriot Act renewals and other monitoring and privacy violating bills, right? I just want to make sure… 🤨

Thank you for voting, fellow battleground stater! My voter sticker went through the wash, but I cast my vote in PA as soon as I could in October.

Second for TP Link. I’ve been on TP Tapo lights for the last year and they’ve been pretty painless. Amazon puts them on sale pretty often. I mainly use them as a wake up light and to turn on the inside lights when I’m carrying in stuff at night.

Not everyone can pull off the Edna look.

Intensity is a good word to describe that element. I feel the show is willing to bump off characters, but 2 of the leads have survived too many close calls and it lowers the stakes a good bit.

The individual that showed up with the surprise faction really threw a wrench into things that I enjoyed though!

I don’t recall how I heard about For All Mankind, and I never see it mentioned very much, but I have had such a great time watching that.

It’s an alternate history of the space race from the 60s onward, and it’s so exciting to watch what could have been. Each season jumps forward a decade, so the advances in missions and tech keep leaping forward.

If you grew up thinking we should be pioneering space by now, you will probably enjoy it.

Makes sense! Thanks for helping me understand. I’m glad drag has some good friends drag can be drag’s self with!

I’ve been thinking about that since I’ve been seeing drag’s frustrations on here. Is this the only place Drag gets to be Drag? I would think it would be even more frustrating IRL, so that makes me feel bad when people here give drag crap about it. This can’t be the most outlandish thing people encounter online, so I don’t know why it’s such a big deal for some.

One thing I’ve been unsure of yet is if it’s ok to use capital D Drag as drag’s proper noun, like calling someone named Jonathan John for short?

Glad to hear it! I like seeing drag’s name pop up in different places, so I’ve got drag’s back! It makes me smile seeing drag persist, when I know it has to be taxing at times.

I don’t disagree with respect regardless of pronouns. That was much the point I had intended to make. I just wished to emphasize that drag deserves respect.

The word “request” was also meant literally, as drag politely asks everyone to use drag’s pronouns when they ask drag about it. Drag doesn’t come at anyone harshly or give any reason or even show the slightest impatience, just mild confusion why anyone takes issue with it.

I do not have much experience with people using anything besides he/she/they, but if you are, I will always let you fill me in on my mistakes. I’m coming with friendly intent, so no need to be harsh, just let me know!

It’s funny seeing people get so worked up over drag.

When you think about it, it’s likely we speak different to at least some extent to almost everyone we talk to. We have our own internal dialog. We talk to our significant other different than we talk to strangers. We talk to kids differently. We talk to pets differently. Even between friends, there’s one friend you joke about X with and another you call Y as a nickname. But somehow when someone asks to be called drag, the system breaks down.

After I first got exposed to the way drag’s pronouns work, I wasn’t sure if it was a joke or attention thing, but after seeing drag around for a while, other than the pronouns, the comments are really normal stuff. So as long as drag is being thoughtful, considerate and friendly, I see no reason not to accommodate drag’s request. I’m not sure if I’ve totally got it 100%, but I’m giving it my best!

“Dear Penthouse…” 😆

With as much Russian Kool-aid America has drank at this point, I feel the country as a whole is still doing a lot to help Ukraine. I can get behind a plan for The West to take a more active role, but I would rather see that be lead by NATO or a European coalition that having the US go in with guns blazing. I don’t feel any county, including Russia, as far as the actual citizens at least, will benefit from a Russian success. With so many parties that should be concerned with the outcome, I’d rather see the US remain in a supporting role to put to bed any accusations of this being some kind of colonialism.

While this is somewhat of a bad take IMO, I looked up this guy and while he is a Republican, he has been steadfast in his support for Ukraine, and even has a very based official website discussing what aid is going to Ukraine, and as part of his committee duties has worked to come up with planning to ensure Ukraine does not give in to Russia and insists the US should increase aid to Ukraine.

From the Proposed Plan for Victory in Ukraine:

Ukraine needs the longest-range variant of ATACMS, F-16s, and sufficient quantities of cluster munitions, artillery, air defenses, and armor to make a difference on the battlefield. … A path to victory for Ukraine will require (1) providing critical weapons to Ukraine at the speed of relevance, (2) tightening sanctions on the Putin regime, and (3) transferring [$300 billion of] frozen Russian sovereign assets to Ukraine.

This strategy will ensure Ukraine is able to make the needed advances on the battlefield to force Putin to the negotiating table. If Ukraine doesn’t negotiate from a position of strength, there can be no lasting peace.

Russian forces have committed countless war crimes in Ukraine, including executions, torture, and rape. Russia has also kidnapped tens of thousands of Ukrainian children and sent them to so-called re-education camps in Russia and occupied Ukraine. Those responsible for these crimes must face justice. If Russia is able to conquer more of Ukraine, millions more innocent civilians will be subject to a similarly horrific fate.

The rest of the document is biased Republican garbage, bashing Biden and other rhetoric, but it is a plus to see there are at least some Republicans (2 others worked with Turner on the Plan for Victory) supporting Ukraine, despite some questionable motivation. This gives me a little bit of hopefulness that if Congress doesn’t remain under Democratic leadership that Ukraine may still manage to keep getting support.

Again, I’m not going to cheer for this guy, but I will give some credit where it’s due that he isn’t following the MAGA crowd in trying to drop support to Ukraine and allow Russia to get away with things. I don’t think the US actively escalating things is going to benefit anyone, but continued supply and support efforts still seem very crucial.

It’s funny, as I typically do not like attention, especially from strangers.

I do like researching and teaching people things though, so it is really fun to hear people say “wow, I never knew this was that interesting” or when they ask me questions I don’t know the answers to and I end up reading about something I never thought to look into. I got asked some especially good questions this week, and it was a lot of fun coming up with good answers to share, so we all got a little smarter together. Fun stuff!

The referenced article from Cardinal News goes into much more detail.

In an interview with Virginia State Police on Feb. 8, Bell portrayed his second visit to the polls as a joke, according to the special agents who testified. In a recording of the interview, he said, “I was messing to see if they were gonna let me vote again to see what kind of fraud was going on.”

He told the agents, “But I went in and gave them my ID and then it showed up [that] I’d already voted.” He added, “So I was doing a little detective work.”

Commonwealth’s Attorney Daniel Rutherford took a dim view of Bell’s account, and noted that he was not authorized to test the system. The crime, Rutherford pointed out, is “attempting to vote twice, not voting twice.”

Would punishment fix this guy? Probably not. But now that this judge opens the door for other people to conduct their own tests, where does this stop? How many Trumpies do we let test the system? The poll workers have real jobs to do, and they don’t need guys like this there. Laws like this are supposed to be good laws because they deter the action, rather than have to actually punish someone for doing one dumb thing, but if you allow the dumb thing, you negate the law itself.

Lots of great stuff in the Cardinal article too, like this nugget at the end that is very interesting:

The jury deliberated for an hour and came back with a not guilty verdict. When the seven women and five men were polled about the verdict, Juror 12 said, “That’s not my verdict.”

Judge Michael Doucette sent the jury back to work on the verdict, and while they were out for about 10 minutes before coming back with a unanimous decision, Rutherford said he’d never seen a juror announce that he did not agree with the verdict. Juror 12 declined to comment after the jury was dismissed.

A senior Taliban official told The Telegraph of frustration from moderates with the more hardline elements of the regime.

“Someone should stop the supreme leader. Many within the Taliban are angry and worried that, with everything the leadership is doing, we could lose Afghanistan as quickly as we took it,” he added.

“They are worried that as soon as an alternative to the Taliban appears, the people will revolt, and the West will bomb us again,” the official explained.

I don’t know if any country is eager to return after the failures of Russia and the US. The worry about another warlord type offering even a few lost freedoms back though absolutely seems like a valid concern though to the current regime.