Man, this hits close to home. Just yesterday I decided to get in touch with an old friend from college and I found out that she had died in a car accident years ago, not long after I lost touch with her. Don’t put things off, folks.

Why not both?

How big does a human hand thriving in the UK get?

Yes. Good for him, and for everyone who got to use his road too!

Note that

Despite the Kelston Toll Road not being approved by the local council, Watts hadn’t committed a crime.

The road was in use for 14 weeks before the council asked for retrospective approval and the nearby highway A431 reopened early.

He stopped because there was no longer construction for drivers to avoid by paying his toll.

What fraction is under 18? It’s hard to tell by looking at the graph. I want to calculate what ratio of combatants to civilians killed a number of 70% implies.

Many senior Democrats were calling on Biden to resign long before he got covid, but he repeatedly made defiant announcements that he would never resign (and Harris supported him). He’s the guy who said that he would only resign if God told him to! His covid infection appears to have been mild (lasting less than a week), and he resigned not because of it but because pretty much the entire Democratic establishment (led by Pelosi) told him that he must.

There are two components to this question. Did many in the working class feel that Democrats had abandoned them? And is Trump’s economic policy actually better for the working class than Harris’s? I think the answers are “yes” and “probably no”. However, voters don’t listen to economists. If they’re not happy with the status quo, they vote for disrupting the status quo even if experts tell them that that’s a bad idea.

I suppose Sanders thinks that the working class would have supported a Democratic candidate who proposed a leftward (as opposed to Trump’s rightward) disruption. My guess is that that isn’t true and socialism is still a dirty word in America, but who knows?

If the quotes are accurate then I think my original reply still stands, just without that first paragraph. I don’t understand how anyone could argue that the Israeli army has already achieved all its objectives in Gaza. Maybe it should withdraw because the remaining objectives are impossible to achieve, but that’s a different matter.

Petty leftists weren’t even a significant part of the problem, IMO. Biden is very unpopular, people didn’t want more of the same, and Biden’s vice president looked like more of the same. However, the Democratic party was too hierarchical to nominate the sort of candidate that they needed to nominate.

Hell, they nominated Biden himself even though his age could have given them a perfect excuse not to nominate a sitting president. He was only forced to step aside once his inadequacies were undeniably obvious to all, and even then he was like a child throwing a tantrum. History is going to remember him as the emperor with no clothes.

I see. That makes this hard to interpret, given that a lot depends on the specific language that he used.

I’m not sure that the problem was going too far towards Republicans rather than not going far enough, because I expect that the leftists staying home stayed home in solidly blue states. I think that the political positions that many people here on Lemmy wanted Harris to take would have been extremely unpopular with the electorate.

With that said, it might have been impossible for Harris to move to the right convincingly, because she couldn’t plausibly distance herself from Biden’s unpopular policies. I wish the Democrats nominated someone who could have criticized Biden in a way that Harris could not.

There’s no quote of Gallant saying that the army has achieved all its objectives in Gaza. It’s just something an anonymous source said that he said. What the article quotes him saying on the record is

He reportedly told the families that the idea that Israel must remain in Gaza to create stability was “an inappropriate idea to risk soldiers’ lives over”.

and

“The IDF commander and I said there was no security reason for remaining in the Philadelphi corridor,” Channel 12 reported him as saying. “Netanyahu said that it was a diplomatic consideration; I’m telling you there was no diplomatic consideration.”

That’s strong criticism but far from “nothing left to do”.

(I’m not sure how fighting this war but then withdrawing from Gaza without creating stability would be in Israel’s long-term security interest.)

“Don’t talk about politics on the first date” used to be a thing but now even as a man I think I would need to know someone’s political views in detail before a second date. It’s not enough to just vote for the same candidate. Plenty of people who despise each other’s ideology voted for Harris. I’m even afraid to talk to some old friends about politics. I know they’re Democrats but it’s still possible for one of us to say something that would seriously damage the friendship.

It’s like being Goldilocks. This one is too far right, that one is too far left…

lemon and sugar

Ah, memories. I can’t drink that any more unless I don’t want to eat for several hours until my teeth stop being sensitive, but during my childhood it wasn’t just delicious, it was a way to bond with my older relatives.

Impra Gold orange peoke. Get the loose-leaf kind that comes in a metal container.

But one time, I was dragged into helping a guy I didn’t know move a couch up stairs. Afterwards his wife (they were an Indian couple) made me some chai tea that was the best thing I ever drank in my life. I would happily carry another couch for one more cup. I was a fool and didn’t ask what that tea was, and since then I have tried different chai teas (including when I went to India) and I never even found one I liked at all.

But… Do you want to? I don’t feel like this is a country I want to contribute to anymore. I’m not going to leave (because that’s very impractical) and I’ll still support myself, but the goodwill I had towards my fellow Americans is very much diminished.

It’s easy for me to say that because I could leave if I needed to. The situation is very different for the people who can’t. Maybe I should have more concern for them than I do right now, but instead I just keep thinking how one upside of Trump winning the popular vote is that whatever happens, most Americans will deserve it.

All that and also Eärendil’s voyage to Valinor was the most important mission of all time.

If God intervenes but He’s not powerful enough and things go to shit anyway, does that count as a miracle? I mean, I hope that doesn’t happen but I wouldn’t be calling things miracles yet.

He’s not wrong about the squirrel…

Note that I’m the original commenter rather than the one you’re replying to. I don’t want to talk about fertility but I do have a few questions for you.

As an elder Millennial, I have zero interest in someone half my age. Or younger.

I think you and I are about the same age. What do you mean by “interest” here?

Emotional intelligence and availability, shared experiences, and common ground are also factors in potential mates. Add societal factors like education, financial stability…

Those sound like your criteria for long-term compatibility rather than your criteria for sexual attraction. I think they are different things. I have met people who would have been great long-term relationship partners if not for the fact that I was not attracted to them. I have also met people I was very attracted to who turned out to be terrible partners.

Some people (usually women) say that someone who wasn’t initially attractive to them became attractive once they learned what a good person he was. I was taught that judging people based on their appearance was shallow and wrong, so I tried very hard to make relationships with good people I wasn’t attracted to work. They never did. They were doomed from the start and there would have been less pain for everyone if I had been honest with myself immediately rather than pretending that my initial lack of attraction didn’t matter or that it could change with time.