We’re both. Apes are a subset of old world monkeys.

e: sorry, old, not new

I see several specialists. No solutions so far, unfortunately.

Yeah. I move very little now, except for very low-impact PT, because of dysautonomia and autoimmune issues. Something radically changed with my system several years ago, though, so I can’t really eat, yet I don’t lose weight. My body doesn’t tolerate most food now, other than small amounts of rice and meat. I can’t process fruits or vegetables at all.

It’s steadily got worse over the last decade, and yeah, it is slowly killing me, but my doctors haven’t been able to solve it.

I always hated sugar, and ate 3 large meals a day. Huge breakfast, lunch, dinner, midnight snacks. Never gained at all.

That all changed after my pregnancy at 28. Suddenly I seemed to gain weight through osmosis. I mostly lost interest in food, and only started eating sensible quantities twice a day.

Now I can’t lose weight at all, even with nearly a gallon of water per day and one small cup of food every day or two (to be fair, my body now rejects most food because of an autoimmune disorder), but I can actually gain weight on less than 500 calories a day. It doesn’t make sense by conventional logic, yet here I am. I mostly live on Ensure and Pedialyte, yet I weigh more than I ever have. It’s really weird.

When I was younger, I could eat superhuman amounts of food and not gain an ounce (I was even accused of having anorexia by strangers because I was so thin).

Now, if I even think about one serving of ice cream, I gain ten pounds. Oh shit, I’ve done it. Back to the treadmill, I guess.

Good news – a degree or experience is not a requisite in trump’s administration. If anything, it’s a liability.

Anyone visiting the Capitol, presumably.

And be prepared to tell this guy he has to use the ladies’:

Aren’t prophets basically god using a VPN?

Okay, but what the literal fuck.

Someone with a shred of ethics on this ethics committee better fucking leak this.

That’s not the reason, though. Imperfect witnesses are quite often at the heart of criminal cases – co-conspirators, jailhouse informants, etc. If that was an obstacle, no mobsters or drug lords would ever have been convicted.

The real reason is cronyism and political privilege.

MAGA is fascism, full stop. That’s not just my opinion – if you can read this list with honesty and not conclude they’re fascists, you’re lying to yourself:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
4. Supremacy of the Military
5. Rampant Sexism
6. Controlled Mass Media
7. Obsession with National Security
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
9. Corporate Power is Protected
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
14. Fraudulent Elections (or claims thereof)

It’s outright fascism. That is not hyperbole. And fascism is always a suicide cult. It destroys everything it touches, including itself.

I’m a user experience designer. My favourite story is from aviation engineering. I don’t remember the year or all the details, but the US Navy had put stupid amounts of money and time into engineering a new fighter jet. It was worked out on paper and built to exact specifications. Then, during the first human test of it, the pilot ejected on the tarmac before it took off. The plane crashed, obviously, but the pilot couldn’t explain what happened (apparently he had a concussion from his unscheduled landing).

The plane was built again, and shortly after takeoff, the pilot again ejected without explanation.

What the fuck was going on?

In the retelling I heard, someone finally noticed the design of the cockpit was to blame. In trying to cram all the standard controls plus new ones into the smallest amount of space, the designers had moved the eject lever right next to the lever to adjust the seat position – they’d coloured the eject lever red, but the pilot couldn’t see that since it was below and slightly to the right of his ass, and both levers were the same size and shape. Nobody noticed this was a problem until at least two pilots accidentally ejected on takeoff.

This might be apocryphal, I don’t know, but I learnt it as an example of how things might look good on paper, but you can’t really know until a user fucks everything up.

Oh, in that case, yeah. I’d also love to know that. Sorry, I was having two conversations in this thread and may have mixed up the overall point.

If you ever get an answer, please let me know.

I’m old enough. First had internet in 1994, made my first website in 1996. Back then everything was DiY, and most regular people didn’t really see the use in it until AOL convinced them by giving them email and easy-to-access yellow-pages like thing (which was AOL’s website bundled with a browser they could install without knowing anything technical). At the time, computers were sold in furniture stores along with entertainment centres.

I vividly remember explaining to multiple clients in the early aughts that AOL wasn’t the actual internet. They couldn’t find their new website because they had no idea anything outside aol.com existed, and they were entering their web address in AOL’s site search.

I remember the hopes very clearly. I remember before that when BASIC was fun and magical.

I gotta agree – this is the natural culmination of those hopes, if not actually better. ISPs are comparatively cheap, everyone can access most sites for free and with zero technical expertise, and anyone can say anything they like on one site or another. In the beginning, it really seemed that it would be very expensive and not very accessible. Those are massive hurdles that I don’t feel get enough credit in these conversations. I’m typing this on a small computer in my hand, ffs.

If you didn’t watch all that happen from the inside (I’ve been a software and firmware developer since the mid 90s and a user experience designer since 2002, and began fucking about with programming and hardware in the mid 80s), I can totally see how many people are more cynical about expectation/reality. From the relative outside, the internet seemed to pop into existence like magic in only a few years – and it really did seem like magic, with early-adoption consumers rightly believing it could change the world.

I think the bigger issue is that knowing what all humans are thinking is not as fun as we thought it would be.

Rat?! You rodentiphile shrew!

Every sign has a story. I’d love to know this one, and is it working?

You can work for cash and pay cash. If you really think taxation is theft, why would you work for someone who’s a slave to The Man and insisting on payroll taxes?

There are plenty of libertarian employers who also think taxation is theft and would rather not report your earnings. Hell, there are plenty of employers in the US who don’t report earnings because they mostly use undocumented workers.

e: it’s called ‘under the table’

Last July. My property taxes are crazy high, because I live in an area with good schools and nice parks and amenities (eta such as a boat launch, public rock climbing along cliffs, a nice library, and near monthly open-air festivals in summer).

I no longer have a child in school and I haven’t used the parks in years, but guess what? I’m happy to contribute so other kids and my community can use those services because I’m not a narcissistic asshole.