Moron is no longer enough. Republican voters at this point are malicious, not stupid, not poor gullible fools, they are malicious people who actively seek to harm others, no matter how ‘nice’ they may seem.

I am not interested in hearing about how someone knows a Republican who is such a nice pleasant person, willing to help just about anyone, kind, caring, etc. It is a mask, like that of…I forget the precise medical term, either psychopath or sociopath. But the irony is they are worse because they do have the capacity for empathy, but they choose not to.

And this is, and always has been, who they are. This is not new. This is exactly who they have always been, people who, if they lived in a different time, would happily own slaves, or watch someone tortured for the evening’s entertainment at the coliseum, or any number of such things.

That’s the people we’re dealing with, and they are a significant portion of the population as they always have been.

Consider this question: how is it that anyone under the age of 40 today has ever smoked?

By the time they were born, the bad effects of smoking were well understood. By the time they were teenagers, not smoking should have been as obvious as not jumping in front of a train. People already addicted find it difficult to quit, but it in no way explains anyone starting.

The question is different and yet very similar, because the things you mention wind up in a similar way. Somehow people start in that route even though it should be obvious not to. And these things you mention are much easier to fall into than smoking because parents, family, etc are all pushing it on people. Smokers generally aren’t pushing their kids, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, etc to smoke, and somehow smoking still proliferates to some degree, just consider how much more difficult to avoid it is for those whose families are actively encouraging them to fall into these methods of belief and hate.

“AI”, especially art. I’ve spent years trying to learn to draw on and off and have never gotten good at it, but now I can use words to create illustrations I want in a level of quality and detail I could never dream of.

Now I just want the interface to be easier and more able to understand natural language and be capable of making directed changes better.

Because so-called second amendment advocates are really just gun nuts, and so over the years they have worked hard to maintain the right to keep and bear guns, rather than arms.

Thus knives, swords, halberds, maces, and all other ‘arms’ have had restrictions go unchallenged, or at least, not challenged by an extensive and well funded network of advocacy.

That first edition version looks like a dog’s head with horns and pointy ears to me at least, and that’s kinda what I was referring to.

Admittedly the 2nd edition version looks a bit less doglike, but I still see similarities with some breeds.

It’s not a mistranslation that caused it, kobolds were both described and illustrated as doglike until 3rd Edition where with no explanation they simply changed it and decided they were lizard like/draconic.

I do think the new version of kobolds is an interesting creature, but truthfully they should’ve just come up with a new name for this new creature instead of just completely changing the kobold.

This is why PS3 is the last PlayStation that I owned, and I didn’t even buy it retail.

After they discontinued the backwards compatible model I sought out and bought one secondhand, and swore never again to buy a PlayStation product unless they release one on which I can play all my PlayStation games all the way back to 1.

Yeah, Trump is a stupid target and this is bad timing. Now if someone had gone after the Supreme Court a year or three ago, that would’ve been a good thing. Even now it might still be. But Trump? Terrible choice of targets. He’s…his relevance has already happened. It’s too late for his death to be positive in any significant way.

Hell, I suspect that it might boost the Republican candidate, whoever is selected to replace him, unless they wind up having a really nasty fight where various supporters get extremely entrenched against each other. But that’s not likely - Republicans are very tribalist, once they select a candidate, most of them are going to support him, regardless of how badly they were speaking of him five minutes ago when they were in full support of his opponent.

I’d go the other way, adhering very strictly to the letter of the law without the tiniest bit of wiggle room or interpretation of anything as nebulous as the ‘spirit’ of the law.

Trouble being that natural languages that people use to converse are ill suited for that level of precision and detail. I’ve thought that perhaps a constructed language, something between a language and programming code may be a better way to write laws.

Prosecutorial discretion is a big problem really. It’s what allows laws to be applied unequally, why black people are prosecuted way more than white people, and, as you mention, provides justification to jail anyone at any time because you ARE violating some law every day, almost certainly.

If prosecutorial discretion did not exist, if agents of the law were required to prosecute all crimes to the fullest extent of the law, it would require the entire legal system to be restructured in a more precise way, and would have far less room for racial, sexual, and class discrimination as well as far less capacity to be weaponized against enemies of those in power.

And yet, instead of answering a simple question, you’ve launched into a ‘if only we could change the past’ screed.

If there was a good answer to the question, people like you would just answer.

I don’t think ‘going’ anywhere would be an option. If you’re in basically, most of the civilized world, and not in a very secure structure, you’re immediately fucked. I said more than 50% but I guessed that as a very conservative estimate. We don’t normally realize just how many living things are around us, mostly bugs, but also small rodents and the like. If every one of those within a significant radius of every human suddenly went berserk and wanted the humans dead, most people are not in areas where the number of attackers would permit much survival.

Those who currently live in certain desert environments, in certain cold environments, and so forth, would probably survive the first day, and then might have a hope of making it longer. But most environments in which there isn’t enough animal/bug life around to immediately kill you present serious other problems such as food supply. If you live at McMurdo Sound Antarctica, you’re probably not going to immediately be killed. But you will soon have issues feeding yourself and keeping warm.

People in Iceland or northern Norway and other similar places might have the best chances. Probably not quite enough things around to kill everyone immediately, but the environment is one in which they might be able to become self-sufficient, but in the long term I have my doubts even for them. If the bugs and animals and such are so focused on killing humans that they no longer perform their normal functions, then you’re looking at immediate and total ecological collapse. If they’re not, then the population of bugs and animals will increase in all areas other than the most extreme environments, and sooner or later what few humans survived in those extreme environments are going to have to attempt to emerge.

If humans had prep time, maybe. Assuming we could get over our normal difficulties cooperating and actually prepare for the event. There’d at least be a lot of survivors. But if it came as a surprise, suddenly someone flips a switch and the entire animal kingdom is trying to make every single one of us dead? We’re pretty much fucked.

If this means that every animal immediately goes berserk and tries to kill all humans, and ‘animal’ includes bugs, then the animals probably win.

Those people in relatively secure places without enough animals when it starts could survive, but there’s probably be 50% or higher casualties among the general human population in less than a day.

Yeah, that’s an excellent example. Those protests posed a credible threat to that specific business - indeed, to some degree they even already carried out some of the threat, just to show it was credible - which made changes to what they had the power to affect - their own actions.

I think the best way to put it is that protests can be effective only when they present a credible threat of some sort against the people who have the power to make changes to whatever the protest is about. That threat may be direct violence, it may be electoral change, or it may be something else, but a credible threat of some sort is absolutely required.

Protesting against Israel, therefore, is of little use in most situations. The protesters pose no credible threat to Israel, so their decisions aren’t going to change. And the protesters generally are not representing much of a credible threat against their own governments either, so their own governments are also not moved to change.

Schlock Mercenary. Amazing webcomic, by one of only like 2 webcomic authors that I’m familiar with that have the simple capability of putting out a comic on time (although this no longer applies as the story is finished) and is a fantastic story from beginning to end.

Yet, none of the friends I’ve ever recommended it to have been willing to read it

Well it doesn’t specify dragon type/color. Not every dragon has an innate alternate form ability, so hopefully you get one of those.

Age is also an issue. Depending on how old you are, you’ll probably be somewhere between young to young adult. If you’re at least 50 you can hit young adult. This means you’re pretty limited in a lot of things, and if you have your innate spellcasting at all, it’s gonna be pretty limited.

If you’re one of the dragon colors that doesn’t get innate alternate form, you’re probably gonna have to hide for the better part of a century just to get old enough to have some decent spells.

So there are downsides, if temporary ones, to the dragon option. Still, it’s probably the best choice, yes.

If I understand correctly they have some kind of explanation where the sun works like a spotlight or something. But it also requires light to curve in weird ways to make any damn sense, soooo…

Yeah, to Duke, I think a hot chick is a hot chick no matter what.

Some of these actually do have an effect, but it’s difficult to impossible for a person to know whether this particular one is a placebo button or not.

This is especially the case with elevator close door buttons. Those buttons are always hooked up, because they are needed during emergency operation with the fireman’s key. They are sometimes programmed to cycle the doors marginally faster under normal circumstances, but more often aren’t.

Also, some of the traffic crossing buttons don’t make the walk cycle come sooner, but they occasionally are needed to insert a walk cycle at all, because some intersections don’t trigger a walk cycle unless the button has been pressed.