Also sure, Mamoa is a big guy and fit, but he's an actor, right? Not a fighter?

It's kind of like how Nick Offerman said in an interview once. Everyone sees him as this manly man because of the roles he plays and because he wood-works. But he's from a real "country" family. A rural farming community where everyone was self-sufficient and real "manly" men type. He's the one who wanted to be an actor who never has to work with his hands again.

What I'm saying is those men have jobs where they protect people from physical violence with physical violence. Jason Mamoa pretends to hit people on camera.

I believe at least 1 or 2 of them said specifically their goal was to take all his money to remove his ability to create further harmful content.

I think a lot of people here are pretty spot on with the "cats are just weird, IDK." But more than that, there are a couple things that I think it might be. A lot of cat quirks are just instincts for outdoor activities that don't translate indoors but they still have the pull to do it. IT sounds like she's "digging," which is a thing wild cats would do for a couple reasons.

Sometimes they will dig a hole to poop in, then cover it up, but since she's not then immediately taking a shit in your salad bowl, that's probably not it.

It could be a hunting action. Cats dig for bugs often.

But the most likely, I think, is for fun. Cats are pretty intelligent creatures who's minds require stimulation, which means they just find a thing to fidget with sometimes and get stuck on it, like a small child making toys out of random junk. If she doesn't have enough scratching posts, she could be getting that scratching itch out. Or could do with some more toys. Or, again what I find most likely, she did it once and found that bowl to just be a lot of fun. Maybe it's the texture or she likes the way her paws slip on it differently than other surfaces. Cats are curious, so it being a different surface may have drawn her attention and now it's a fun toy for her.

TLDR: cats are just weird, IDK. 🤷

So... what were they mistaking the aliens for?

I mean, the actual verified "alien craft" in America is actually more of a "not sure what that is" grainy footage in an age where Donald Trump tweeted out classified satellite images that showed the cameras we use are actually far more advanced and show far more detail than any we knew existed. And that technology was over a decade old at the time!

What? If there's someone walking around punching a bunch of people in the face and I'm very anti-face-punching, 100% I'm going to go against my principles of not punching the one time to punch that person in the face. They should then, hopefully, understand what their actions were doing to those around them and develop a sense of empathy.

What risk? They take away the mod position you didn't really want in the first place?

I'm nearing 40 and haven't been required to write in cursive since grade school. Don't every use it unless more than a word or two a year probably. I have no problem writing in it on occasion. It's just curvier versions of letters that you link by not picking your pen up. Sure, there are some weird capital letters, but generally, knowing the concept is enough to get it mostly right. I don't really understand how some people struggle.

It really just sounds like DnD is not for you. Dice probability is the core that DnD is built around and 5 of your 8 points are just disliking that. But I've known people who do ttrpgs with no dice rolls. Just the GM making judgement calls that leans heavily into the group story telling process and not on the mechanics. And that's the best part of them! They're customizable. But I'm wondering why you even picked up BG3 if you disliked the game its built around so much.

The thing is, if the place you're getting your information from doesn't list it's sources, you can't trust it. Whenever I'm researching a thing on the internet and I find an article or a paper, I don't just stop there, I check where they got their info, then I find that source and read it. I follow it all the way back until I find the primary source.

Like the other day I was writing a paper about a particular court case. In the opinions, as in most cases, they use precedent and cite prior cases. So I found the other cases that referred to the thing I was writing about, and it turns out they were also just using prior cases. I had to go 6 deep before I found them referencing the actual constitution for one of them. On another I found it interesting that the most recent use case was so far removed from what the original one was about and it was could probably be questionable to even use it as precedent if they had used the original instead of another case.

Anyway, the point is, always check sources. If anyone says anything on the internet, assume it's just their opinion until you check and follow the sources..

I'm looking at them buddy. No one is buying into your bait. They agree with your assertion that we should tax people as rich as Biden. I think you're talking about the guy who was trying to show you that if you have a problem with Biden's millions, you should be even more troubled by the billionaire it seems you're defending.

People aren't obsessed with Biden. Biden has done some good while in office - a lot more than people were expecting. The best thing he's done by far is not being Donald Trump. We all know why we voted for him, and it's not his progressive policies.

in Kate Manne's "Down Girl," about misogyny she wrote: "They put women in their place when they seem to have 'ideas beyond their station.'"

"Misogynist hostility encompasses myriad 'down girl' moves . . . to generalize: adults are insultingly likened to children, people to animals or even to objects. As well as infantilizing and belittling, there's ridiculing, humiliating, mocking, slurring, vilifying, demonizing sexualizing or, alternatively desexualizing.... and other forms that are dismissive and disparaging in specific social contexts."

Emphasis mine to point out the most relevant portions in this case. It's a solid read on misogyny that I definitely recommend to anyone.

You have thin soles so you can tell where you are in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

You're allowed to disagree. This man wasn't killed by police because he disagreed with the shop owner having a rainbow flag. They killed him because he murdered her and (presumably) didn't surrender when they caught up to him.

I think what you're talking about is the rest of us calling out your bigotry. That's not oppression or control by the government. That's society leaving you and your outdated beliefs behind.

While it doesn't work as well with or as your joke, the ATF is actually now the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. So we need to add the E as well and we can spell FACET, which is less fun. Or use M for Marijuana and spell FMEAT.

So building on this I did some light perusing on the internet and got a little hyperfixated, but found some tiny things.

This was the closest Solingen I could find, but the caps on the end don't match and I doubt the little rivets would be completely hidden by the patina, so that's probably not it.

Then on Etsy I found this posting That has one that looks identical but with no further information on it and listed as "Richards" (Richards, Sheffeild). And This one that just doesn't have the smaller blade but is listed as Solingen.

I went to try and double check that patent number and I'm not finding what they did, but I also don't know what I'm doing. The German patent office has 2 companies with that patent number, one for Naproxen and one for the moving blades on hair trimmers.

But then I found This guy with the exact same patent number on it but marked as Hammer brand. It's very similar but has 3 blades instead of 2.

This leads me to believe that the patent is not for the whole knife but the blade specifically that was made by Solingen and sold to other knife manufacturers who affixed them to their own pocket-knife-pieces. With all this in mind, I'm starting to think it's likely from Richards, so I refined my search again and found this guy as the best bet: knife. But instead of the patent number on the tang they have their own stamp. So my best guess, after a tiny bit of research, is that Richards probably made it, but it's not their top of the line stuff with their branding but something akin to a "store brand" where they used their typical parts but used the blades from Solingen. I'm still assuming it's Richards because they were the only brand I could find that made knives with all the parts (Same end caps, 2 blades, pearl handle with no rivets showing, shape) together. Other brands seemed to have some, but not all parts combined. But with the tang stamp being off, I can only assume it wasn't an "official" Richards brand but put together by them and sold by another party as a cheaper alternative.

If you're still curious, that All About Pocket Knives site seems to have active forums with knowledgeable people who could probably (almost definitely) find or know more than me. I don't know anything about any of this and was just a bit bored this morning while drinking my coffee, so I definitely suggest asking them for legit advice.

Weird they call it shorthand. That looks like a lot of writing just to say "Gregg."

As it was explained to me by my therapist during my eval, ADHD diagnosis is generally a diagnosis of exclusion because of the huge overlap in symptoms with depression and anxiety. They basically have to rule out both of those and assume it's ADHD.

Depression:

-Unable to focus

-lack of motivation

-executive dysfunction

Anxiety symptoms (sometimes a result living with ADHD):

-Excessive worry over things needing to be right

-Sensory input overload

-Difficulty sleeping

-Lots of fidgety behavior

So my advice, in this singular case, is lie to the doctor. Don't give any impression that there might be potential depression or anxiety issues. Mine was cool in that they also have ADHD so they understand that it can cause some of those symptoms. But it's real easy when talking to a doc about it to just answer their questions directly and they fill in the gaps with emotional reasons. Especially for women getting diagnosed (There's still sooo much bias for women getting diagnosed and doctors will subconsciously assign more emotion to things). "Does this worry you?" "Does this make you anxious when it happens?" The answer should be "no." You feel frustrated because you know it's something you can do, but those small mistakes still happen." Be honest about the symptoms, but don't admit to being actively depressed. You may know it's caused by life stuff and not brain stuff and the ADHD symptoms are always there, even when the depression isn't, but that's tough to communicate.

So when talking about the symptoms, admit to them, but add where you think they're coming from.

-Trouble sleeping? - Because I'm finally sitting still, my brain is constantly planning what I need to do. Don't associate negative feeling with it. You're not worried about what you need to do, you're thinking about and planning what and how you need to accomplish them and you can't turn that off.

-Unable to focus? - NOT "my brain drifts off and I'm not sure what they were saying" DO say "The person will say a thing that reminds me of something I forgot earlier and while they kept talking my brain continued the train of thought from when I was thinking about that thing before."

-Excessive worry over things needing to be right? - That's a tough one since it's got "worry" right in there, but you want to avoid talking about actual negative feelings. So you say that when you do a thing, often you'll make small little mistakes that you would know are mistakes, but you just don't catch it in the moment (actually another ADHD symptom), so you spend extra time making sure you get it right to avoid that happening.

That sort of thing. Also, if you're going to a doctor first, maybe cut them out. Find a therapist or psychiatrist in the area that specializes in ADHD. You can just go right to them. They may have to send their diagnosis to a doctor, so if you don't trust the ones that have failed so far, you can ask for a recommendation. They know the ones that don't question their diagnosis unless the patient is clearly drug-seeking.

How can a crime vary by ideology? Criminal implies legalities. How can your ideological point of view change whether or not a law was broken?

Ooh! I've got a thing about this!

In an Episode of the Youtube series Under the Blacklight, David Blight, a Yale professor brought something up that I think brings the American idea of "freedom" into a different context. He says “This whole new idea of what’s liberty and liberty for whom, can also kill. Especially when it replaces the idea of Liberty as that which has to be shared in some kind of common good.”

The idea isn't really new and is actually deeply rooted in America's past through to it's creation. Freedom should be a group concept in which we maximize freedom for the populace. Instead it's seen as individual freedom only. When you combine this with the idea that freedom is the most important thing, it results in people coming to the conclusion that they are justified in anything in the process of attaining what they want. And they'll use whatever tools they have available to attain this in as straight a path as they can.

America has always been a champion of personal freedom, whatever they say. It's founding was about a bunch of business men who didn't want to pay taxes so they staged a rebellion. There's still a heavy bent against taxes with the main argument being people don't want the government to have any power, but really it's because individuals just want to keep their money while disregarding the ways in which that money would improve the good for all people. At it's core America is a Selfish nation built of selfishness and getting yours before someone else takes it.

It gets more a little complicated when talking about motives of those in power, but boils down to the same, and they retain that power primarily by banging the "personal freedoms" drum.

To quote famed Discworld philosopher Granny Weatherwax,

"There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That's what sin is." "It's a lot more complicated than that--" "No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts." "Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes--" "But they starts with thinking about people as things..."

Thank you for coming to my TED talk

Fun fact! Motorola started out as a company making record players specifically for cars. The big name in record players at the time was Victrola, and since they were making them for motorcars they called themselves MotoRola.