“Oh please don’t throw me into the briar patch Mr. Fox! Anything but the briar patch!” -Br’er Rabbit, who was born and raised in the briar patch, and knows Mr. Fox can’t follow.

My advice is to know that, unlike dogs, a cat’s personality is not built into their breed, with maybe very minor behavior exceptions. Quite frankly, dogs were bred specifically for their behaviors, artificial selection created breed personalities— cat breeding was never for personality, but usually appearance instead, leaving personality to go whatever which way.

And secondly, you must know that a cat will not fully develop their personality until they’ve grown up a bit— you can’t learn a cat’s personality when they’re still a kitten. If you are adopting, adopting a kitting will mean rolling the dice on what you get. But adopting an adult cat will mean you can pick out a personality while at the shelter.

Seriously. You can learn a cat’s personality from 10-30 minutes hanging out with them in a room at the shelter… but only if they aren’t a kitten. And some personalities will fit with you and your family, and some will not.

Do you want a cuddler? An active playful cat? Or one that avoids you mostly and does their own thing? Or are you just looking for something pretty that matches your furniture? (I don’t really recommend you get a cat in this case, but historically, you’d be in good company)

We’re still in the bad timeline where Biff went back in time with the sports almanac. That one doesn’t get flying cars.

Learning a second language AND professionally teaching English to speakers of said language. English is not broken. English is actually much better than many alternatives. We don’t need to worry about noun gender. We don’t have to worry about tones. We have precise ways to indicate number and time. Formality levels are not baked into word construction. The pronunciation of words can generally be inferred from the spelling, despite learning this skill being a little complicated— but that complicated nature even has its usefulness.

We rag on English, but it is by far not the worse out there, not even close. It’s just contempt for the familiar.

I will genuinely never understand racism against tribal members or descendants thereof. I know, I know, racism in general is not rational. But this particular form of it still baffles me.

The question is how many of those suicides were conducted by jumping off the bridge. And don’t say “they’d just choose another way to end themselves”. Studies and historical evidence shows that making suicide even slightly less convenient to perform actually does save lives. People get fixated on a method that seems easy. When that method is no longer easy, it gives them a chance to not go through with it.

Feels like they took the best ideas from Mario Maker, polished it up to a glowing shine, mixed in some great movement, threw in a metric fuckton of whimsy and joy, and overall made a great game.

It is superglue. That was what superglue was invented for. The only difference between it and what people use for making plastic model kits is quality control for cleanliness.

Media reports help as they influence and are influenced by larger numbers of people. When a media outlet no longer feels it necessary to specify to their readers that meta was formerly known as Facebook, that is an indicator of wider acceptance. Local anecdotes are less useful. Your friends and acquaintances don’t say meta. Mine do. That doesn’t really say anything about broader trends.

I feel like meta is slowly succeeding at getting people to call them meta when not referring directly to the Facebook website specifically. Like for their idiotic VR initiative and whatnot. Slowly. And it helps that it’s in the context on non-Facebook-the-website activities.

Twitter has no such advantage.

…and the swastika is just a Hindu good luck symbol.

I’m sorry, but sometimes someone horrible takes a neutral or good thing and does something so profoundly evil with it that it forever changes that thing, tainting it by what has been done. Doesn’t matter what the salute was originally. Now it means only one thing.

Rich people have always had the freedom to be who they are. You think wealthy gay men were beaten up in back alleys? Maybe they couldn’t announce it to the world but they pretty much got to live their lives in peace. When you don’t have to work to survive and when the world bends to your will it’s amazing how culture doesn’t seem to effect you so harshly anymore.

It’s not that culture isn’t important. It’s that the ability to live in peace for who you are tends to come automatically when you have your living taken care of.

Better plot than Twilight.

Hey, I’m pretty darn leftist (democratic socialist, not tankie) and pretty opposed to the current state of affairs regarding CEOs, so I feel this is targeted at me… and yet totally misrepresents the position.

CEOs are not useless. CEOs absolutely set the “tone at the top” and create the entire culture for a company. At the same time, CEOs do not work 400 times harder than the average worker, yet that is what they are paid. CEOs are also capable of doing great abuse to those beneath them, and have next to zero accountability for it. CEOs are kings in their little fiefdoms, and I say down with all monarchy. Note that “down with kings” does not mean “down with leaders”, nor does it say or even imply that kings aren’t leaders, or that leadership is useless to have.

I don’t know that stealing is morally wrong no matter what. My rabbi taught that if a man steals to survive, the crime is not his, but of his community because they did not save him from poverty. That teaching really stuck with me. Yes, stealing indicates something is seriously wrong in the world, but there’s a big difference in where the evil lies— is it in the thief, or in the society?

That’s literally what it is. It’s people who want humanity to die out, but without suicide, war, or murder, but instead merely by not reproducing. I’ve seen their communities and it pretty much comes back to misanthropy— hating humanity.

I love the analysis done by zompist, here: https://www.zompist.com/chance.htm

In summary, having a few purely coincidental similar words is extremely likely. In fact, if there were no such similarities that would be weirder, from a mathematical perspective… especially (but not necessarily) if you stretch what might be considered a “similar meaning”, which people often do.

Uhhh… you got this meme format literally backwards. Red delicious apples definitely did not draw 25 on this card, because they look great but are dead inside.

That face doesn’t look grumpy at all… not sure why you would need to protest the point? That’s a happy cat!

What I don’t get is why they don’t just hire a mathematician to make a map that looks fair, meets all court requirements, but still wins them the elections? Alphaphoenix did a pretty clear video showing how it’s basically always possible: https://youtu.be/Lq-Y7crQo44?si=8Y6b7xblWm6FhcFc

I mean, I’m happy they aren’t getting away with it. I prefer my enemies to be stupid and incompetent. It just befuddles me that they are.