Who is original artist / source?

I feel like we were saying the opposite? I am not in any sort of relationship presently.

Eh, I’m not sure I would say that. Someone can love/appr ciate and want something even knowing that procuring the thing has ethical problems. Desiring something isn’t the same as being okay with the problems that come with acquiring it. It’s the being okay with procuring a diamond despite the ethical problems and bullshit that would be a massive red flag to me.

For myself, I’d be having serious second thoughts about a relationship with a person who felt an expensive ring was somehow necessary. But merely wanting it, particularly if out of a sense of tradition or symbolism rather than as some silly signal of wealth, wouldn’t perturb me.

While Park said an [sic] seeing an enrollment cliff isn’t occurring just yet, […]

None of those people are 18 yet. The 2007 kids, from when birth rates last peaked, are just now 17. The declining birth rate hasn’t caught up yet.

The article says it’s multifactorial, but predominantly cost and the need to work;

The cost of college is the number one barrier to enrolling in higher education for adults not enrolled in such a program, according to a 2024 report from Gallup and the Lumina Foundation. That report also found that for more than three-quarters of the more than 3,000 unenrolled adults polled, cost and the need to work were preventing them from pursuing further education.

Should have been Wookiee ragings instead of Ewok shenanigans.

Could have just made Snoke be the guy cloning himself instead of Palpatine. 🤷 It would have made just as much sense.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise.

Tuberculosis, a bacterial infection of the lungs.

Can you imagine what it’d be like if mandatory childhood vaccines are eliminated? Can you imagine what a resurgence of measles or even polio would be like?!

No, you probably can’t, because vaccines made them non-issues before most of us were even born. And now they might come back because some dullard thinks he knows better than actual doctors and scientists. Dunning and Kruger must be crying themselves to sleep these days.

Decades of propaganda have convinced Christians that Republican=Christian, and the last decade of propaganda have convinced them that Trump is a good Christian man anointed by God and all the bad stuff they might hear about him is just Democrat lies. Many, if not most, honestly don’t know the half of Trump’s evils, let alone believe them.

The only way it gets easy is by going through it repetitiously until you’ve become desensitized. Which is obviously easier said than done. It’s a gradual process and will often involve periods of regression in between periods of progress, but if you’ve been through years of fixing then you probably know this. Are therapy or medications an option for you? They can make the process easier.

CPR. Doing 2-3 chest compressions, seconds apart, and then some mouth to mouth, followed by 2-3 more chest compressions. Or the needle into the heart thing. Or the shock a flatline thing. All of it. It’s just all wrong.

On Andromeda? I believe it was, a villain used the stereotypical twist the head to break the neck and they fall over dead bit. The character proceeded to be not dead and did the stereotypical express their love while dying in the protagonist’s arms bit, talking and moving their neck as if it wasn’t broken. And then died.

I work in a hospital. Unfortunately, people don’t stop being sick on holidays, so someone has to work. I don’t see how it could be different in any other country.

C. All of the above.

If she says she’s on birth control but you haven’t seen it, dont believe her. If she pressures you not to use a condom, don’t consent.

Don’t marry someone before you’ve known them well for a few years. Don’t ignore red flags, such as them telling you that they see other people as pawns or them pressuring you to empty your 401k to put it into their financial/realestate schemes.

If your partner doesn’t treat you with kindness and respect right now, then they are never going to, no matter how many times they say they will if you would only just do this or be that - nothing will ever be good enough for that kind of person, period, full stop. And, no, they won’t change, no matter how much you do, and no matter how much you love them.

Do learn what “love bombing” is. Then find out if someone is grossly irresponsible with money or hiding a severe alcohol problem before you move in with them.

There are a lot of people in this world who will take advantage of your kindness and naivety, if you let them, so be mindful of how people treat you and those around them before you make commitments to them.

Not everyone is awful.

Edit to add: don’t ignore your friends or family telling you that they think your relationship is unhealthy, or that the person is mistreating you or others, or may be taking advantage of you. Even if you don’t have much respect for the person telling you this, stop and listen and reflect, because red flags don’t stand out to you when you’re wearing rosy tinted glasses.

Oh man, we’re trying! Fortunately the governor’s “school choice” voucher plans have stalled in the legislature for now.

It’s a toss up between

1. R telling me she was on birth control, I guess thinking it’d keep me around if we had a kid, then when our kid was age 4 she said she had cancer and disappeared for several months. Turns out she never had cancer and just said that so I wouldn’t think poorly of her for abandoning her child to run off with a guy in another state. …Her child that she was barely present for anyway.
2. D getting me to empty my 401k to buy a house as an investment property for “our” retirement, only for her to keep it in the divorce. I could have pushed for it to be sold and gotten at least some of my money back, but she would have put up such a fight that I’d have spent in attorney’s fees as much as I would have won from the sale, so it wasn’t worth the fight to me, and she knew that.

What’d I learn from these? Not a whole lot, it turned out: my next relationship wasn’t much better. But at least I figured out to end that one before it got TOO too deep.

Got hired at the same time as another guy. Don’t recall why, but I was in my boss’s office when he decided it was time to assign us offices despite us being in training and not needing them for another few weeks, so he grabs his admin assistant and off we go to verify which offices were open / available. I got the one with a window.

Where can I buy a pair? … No, seriously, I’d wear these.

I’m not optimistic about her winning - this is Tennessee, after all. Outside of Nashville and Memphis, it’s a sea of painful ignorance and R voters. Even relatively purple places like Knoxville can’t seem to elect anyone other than R’s who are hellbent on destroying civil society for no particular reason - the pro-wrestler mayor dismantled the county health department in the middle of the pandemic, for crying out loud. And people applauded him for it!

I’ll donate to her campaign and cross my fingers, but I’m not holding my breath.