It’s starting to seem like none of them were doing anything illegal, but most of them were cowards at best.

Shit, you’re right. We can’t have that. Can’t wait to watch read about Josh Hawley breaking Booker’s new record with a speech about how freedom of religion is discriminatory against christians and only christians.

Yeah I’m pretty far down the comments here and am just dumbfounded, as a 40+/m. I’m married, so maybe my perspective is skewed, but I’m anxious, introverted, and also don’t feel like dating would be that much of a challenge if I found myself in that scene again.

For one, rejection isn’t personal. They’re doing me a favor if they decline or ghost me because I’m not going to waste more time on that relationship. I figured that out in my early 20s. I may need a couple weeks or months between because I don’t have an abundance of social energy, but it’s not that big of a deal either.

And then having hobbies is a great way to meet like-minded people. The more people you encounter with similar interests, the more likely you’ll encounter someone with whom you may connect on another level. It’s more difficult online, so I’d probably spend more time doing my outdoor things (birding, photography, surveying frog calls, etc) rather than gaming. They’re mostly solo hobbies, but I do often find myself meeting people who want to chat about it while I’m out and about.

I thought I was one of the most socially inept people I know, but I can’t relate to what I’m reading here. Maybe we need to work on our personal boundaries more and understand ourselves better before we’re pursuing relationships.

The book bans are a war on romance fiction. I think I live in a state where it’s the most egregious though, so maybe this isn’t as wide spread yet as the porn bans.

I’m not sure if this helps, but I use uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger in Firefox and can read it.

Gun bans next?

I think it’s a reasonable assessment of the current situation. He wants/they want to put us in a situation where our military must or can be used to restore order. They want to normalize military use against US citizens.

Or use it as a product search engine, then go to the supplier or an alternate online store to buy the one you want. I don’t have it on my phone but do go to it in browser occasionally for that.

That’s my thought as well. A one day boycott like the “no shopping day” does literally nothing, but 40 days can reform habits. To the extent practicable, I’m doing all my shopping at Costco now. I generally eat a lot of the same things, so bulk quantities aren’t that big of a deal to manage.

Sure was. After Pell Grant and whatnot, I only needed most of my subsidized loan to live on campus at a private four year college.

It feels weird to be old enough to watch us repeat that cycle but with more fascism this time. At least I learned to always live in fear and anxiety that everything could be lost in a moment, so now my emergency fund is decent.

I’m not an economist, but is this where we

1. Lower interest rates to “help the economy”

2. Normal people still can’t afford things because we’re in a recession

3. Normal people start losing their homes

4. Rich people have cheap loans to buy said homes due to interest rate drops

5. Rich people rent out new homes to normal people for more than they were paying in mortgage, after normal people rebound or figure out how to make it work with two families in the home

6. America is…great?

Oh we are. Can’t really call ourselves “Iowa Nice” at this point. No one is trying harder to get 45’s attention than Governor Reynolds, aka The Kim Reaper. We’ve got private school vouchers, we nuked our progressive tax brackets in favor of a flat tax, and we even started our own DOGE.

The UK vs EU and the states vs the USA is not apples to apples. As I understand it though, we’re actually approaching 20 US states requiring such verification. Iowa is trying to pass something similar. This is a trend across the country, which is why I generalized the USA.

https://www.ipvanish.com/blog/us-age-verification-laws/

I moved a couple states away from my family to minimize any interaction. It’s not just politics. Their politics are, however, and indicator that they’re not the type of people I want to associate with, so the extra distance facilitates less contact.

Of course, I moved to Iowa, which has since shifted from purplish to red. At least I’m on a blue city.

They’ll ultimately just have to cut off the US Internet from the rest of the world, right? As long as we can access other countries with more freedom, we can enjoy that level of freedom on the Internet. Or am I not understanding how the Internet works (entirely possible)?

He has a very low bar by most of the developed world’s standards, but he refused to lower it further for maga, so he’s history now.

I was about to say, old reddit in browser works fine, but I use Mullvad, so I never noticed. I’m increasingly spending more time here too.

I work in college financial aid. Students are eligible for federal/state funds if they’ve been granted asylum and in the country for at least a year since being granted asylum. So many still have an application pending. The process shouldn’t take more than a year, but I’ve personally seen someone whose application has been pending for seven years, and I’ve heard of longer ones. In the interim, they get a temporary status and work authorization, but I can’t imagine the stress they’re under while waiting this out and watching the new administration work against them.

Back-office college financial aid at a larger state college. Financial aid mostly disburses by batch process, so my job is to audit that. Some things, like external scholarships, are manual and require a quick reassessment of the financial aid package to ensure the student is still eligible for everything (if anything, loans need reduced sometimes per regulations). Some things require “professional judgement,” like when a student is not yet 24 but claims to be independent due to unusual circumstances. There’s more, but it’s really just an accumulation of batch work, queues, and audits which require a reasonably good working knowledge of regulations.

Works in mysterious ways, right?