That’s totally fair. Although I’m not sure how you figure that the Portland area isn’t a big part of the PNW.

Hold my beer…

Burgerville is pretty good if you live in the PNW. It’s downsides are that it’s overpriced for what you get and it’s had some labor issues that don’t put ownership in a good light.

In the first movie he is searching for The Ark of the Covenant, but otherwise you are correct.

Windows is emphatically not the same thing as Android. They’re two entirely different OS’s. No doubt you know this, it just seems like you momentarily lost the plot and made it about Windows vs Mac, when what we’re really talking about is iOS vs Android.

Also Columbia owns brands like Prana and Mountain Hardware, so if you want higher quality stuff that’s still basically Columbia, you have plenty of options.

The same is true of many other companies.

I think it’s a case of the tyranny of minor differences and what people are used to. My personal phone is an android and I’m used to it and like it, while my work phone is an iPhone and I use it for entirely different work-related reasons that it’s great for.

Never shall the two meet! I actually like having my work and private lives segregated into two separate OS’s that have little if any overlap.

Not really. The real answer is that different parts of the federal government are underfunded or overfunded according to political ideology and expedience. This is a great example; the SSA is underfunded while the military is overfunded which results in clear performance differences.

You’ll never hear a conservative bitch about the US military saying that it can’t do anything right, and it’s like, yeah, duh, because it has a huge fucking budget and basically gets anything it asks for.

Social safety net programs? Not so much.

There’s a relevant and oft’ cited Churchill quote to the effect that while democracy isn’t great, it’s better than any other governing system we know of.

In other words, leave us not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

As for why democracy is the best system, it’s simple; in theory democracy gives everyone a stake in governance. While it rarely if ever works out that way, Churchill was correct that it’s better than any other system we know of.

My father in law doesn’t like music. He doesn’t dislike it either, he’s just indifferent. Apart from that he’s just your garden variety somewhat-curmudgeonly 80-year-old dude.

That’s only one relatively minor factor among many. Anyone who points to it without also mentioning the much more significant impacts of things like global supply chain disruptions and the war in Ukraine is either ignorant, or is trying to spin a particular narrative while being intellectually dishonest about their priors.

This is a phony bullshit talking point. The possibility of a cooling climate was briefly raised and entertained in mainstream media for about a year in the 1970s. It was never even remotely a scientific consensus view. Contrast that with human caused warming which has been settled science for decades. There is no comparison. As I said, it’s a bullshit talking point.

Dana Designs Arcflex Terraplane backpack purchased in 1994 at Teton Mountaineering in Jackson Wyoming for $400. I’ve since used it to travel the world and apart from having had to replace its foam back-liner and a buckle, it is still perfectly sound in every way.

Dana Designs doesn’t exist anymore, but the guy and organization behind them is still alive and well and making handmade backpacks in Bozeman Montana under the name “Mystery Ranch.”

You can get a Mystery Ranch Arcflex Terraplane that’s basically the same thing as the original Dana Arcflex, only made with newer, better materials and technology.

I’m pretty happy with Google Fi. I realize it’s Google, which isn’t great, but at least they deliver exactly what they say they will and the price is always exactly as advertised.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they are taking a loss on it just to gain market share. They can afford it.

You have to be a tribal member to get casino money. You can’t just roll up and say “I’m a 16th Cherokee, where’s mah money?!” Some tribes have even started to disenroll people, which has led to some ugliness.

You have to be a tribal member to get casino money. You can’t just roll up and say “I’m a 16th Cherokee, where’s mah money?!” Some tribes have even started to disenroll people, which has led to some ugliness.

You have to be a tribal member to get casino money. You can’t just roll up and say “I’m a 16th Cherokee, where’s mah money?!” Some tribes have even started to disenroll people, which has led to some ugliness.

That 99% claim seems ridiculously high to me. Do you live in Oklahoma or something?

On the flipside, it’s also true that if we all simply give up and don’t have kids because the future looks so bleak, by definition we are admitting to a kind of psychic defeatism and epistemic hopelessness. Having kids is one of the best ways for regular people to have any hope of influencing the future.

“the US is a Republic not a democracy…”

Thanks for telling us that you don’t know WTF you’re talking about.

This idea of yours, that republics and democracies are somehow mutually exclusive concepts is a deeply stupid category error that has zero basis in political science (to say nothing of practical reality) and almost always is the redoubt of those who wish to justify the dysfunction of the current status quo.