wjrii
@wjrii@lemmy.world
- Comment on Why democrats under Biden administration didn't release Epstein files? 4 days ago:
One of the recurring themes I keep coming back to in all this is that the US has a uniquely bad situation with regard to its Constitution. We worship it as an infallible and complete guide to running a democratic republic, but really it’s extremely old, extremely vague, and depends on goodwill and sensible interpretation to function. We have neither the explicit understanding that everything is old AF and cobbled together and dependent upon custom and moderating tyrannical sensibilities like the British, nor the unwieldy but straightforward comprehensiveness of EU treaties and certain other lengthy modern written constitutions.
To me, him just telling Pamela Bondi what to do in such a delicate matter feels just wrong, as in lacking the due seriousness on the matter, utterly sloppy and populist in a bad manner.
This feeling you have is exactly how presidents of either party would have felt for the last 80-100 years. The idea of a largely independent Department of Justice was considered eminently sensible and moral and even to the realpolitik set it provided outer bounds of what was politically possible and so they would nudge and tug at the edges, but never blow right past it, lest they suffer Nixon’s fate. I think we make a mistake to say that Trump is stupid in a binary yes/no sense, but he is deeply uncurious about things that donm’t interest him, so when people tell him “The Constitution doesn’t actually say that,” his eyes gleam and he just does whatever he might get away with. And because we have a Supreme Court dominated by the idea that the US Constitution is more akin to a piece of computer code than a framework for sensible governance, they simply throw up their hands and say, “whelp, it didn’t SAY that the administration of justice should be handled with integrity, so guess we makin’ a fascism now.” Better vote them out, except oh wait the Constitution also doesn’t say you can’t fuck with the elections either.
One of my anxious worries lately is that at the end of this term, Trump will look at our term limits amendment and parse the verbiage with a simple literalism and Clarence Thomas et al will back him up. It says you can’t be elected president more than twice, so why not simply run for VP and then have your patsy resign five minutes after swearing in? After all, we’re mindless textualists now. We didn’t want an FDR type getting overly entrenched in the machinery of power, but we clearly meant to allow loopholes that are significantly less democratic!
- Comment on Hot take: 3D printing toys kinda sucks 5 days ago:
My kiddo is 11 now, but I beleive the old bag of Brio in the toy box has at least one Duplo Adapter I printed on my old Monoprice Mini.
- Comment on I designed and printed 81 custom keycaps for the GameCube Keyboard Controller, then hacked it to work with Animal Crossing 5 days ago:
Very cool. Gotta post this one to the mechanical keyboard communities too. Yes, yes, it looks like it’s a membrane under there, but this is one of the nicer sets of 3D printed keycaps that I’ve seen.
- Comment on I was laughing too hard to think of a title. 5 days ago:
She just needed a massage!
- Comment on Spectrum Holobyte’s 1988 DOS Tetris: the first official release—the start of a global obsession 6 days ago:
IMHO no version of Tetris will ever top the OG green-n-gray Game Boy version, which was also over the top Russian kitschy. The music still loves rent free in my head, and the patterns in lieu of colors define the blocks for me.
- Comment on If you turn the Chicago Bulls logo upside down, it looks like a robot is doing a crab. 6 days ago:
The robot looks… determined.
- Comment on Symbian: The forgotten FOSS phone OS 1 week ago:
My N810 was my single favorite piece of industrial design in a mobile device. Not perfect, and use cases moved on (to say nothing of the internals), but it was so unique and thoughtful and intricate without feeling overly fragile.
- Comment on Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share In USA 1 week ago:
I preferred Mepis. 😊
- Comment on Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share In USA 1 week ago:
Great, but that graph is not showing any prticular spike, just a nice and gentle upward trend in share. The article also overlooks that there is a certain element of Windows and MacOS computers being replaced by tablets and phones, while Linux is already an enthusiast choice on the desktop, meaning it will be insulated somewhat.
On the plus side, Steam and Proton and maturing DEs/distros and enshittification of Windows certainly make Linux a much more viable “normie” option than it’s ever been. We’re a far cry from the CD-ROM of Red Hat that came with my “Intro to Linux” book in 1999 but couldn’t use my Winmodem or printer and really preferred to run XWindows in grayscale.
- Comment on YSK Doctors of Osteopathy in the US seldom practice Osteopathy 1 week ago:
In the US, the AMA has always artificially limited the supply of MDs. Over the last century osteopathic medical schools basically adopted all the same philosophies of evidence based medicine as “regular” medical schools, maybe with a vestigial course or two on spinal alignment. Both have the same licensing requirements.
At this point, DOs in the US are basically just regular doctors with lower MCAT scores and undergraduate GPAs, and indeed, they basically fill the role of providing doctors to less lucrative specialties and regions.
- Comment on Star Wars is an ode to the stupidest use of battle lasers 1 week ago:
You’re right, though the melodrama and swashbuckling of Space Opera definitely lend themselves more towards the soft sci-fi/sci-fantasy end of the spectrum. Sort of, “if the characters and plots don’t need to bear much relation to the real world, why should the setting?”
- Comment on Filter feeder behavior 2 weeks ago:
In case you wanted to know, he’s a former executive for the NFL’s Tennessee Titans.
- Comment on He's gonna save MURICAS rich folks who will absolutely save us working folks in turn! 2 weeks ago:
Soos would never…
- Comment on If you don't own one you will never understand it 2 weeks ago:
We lost our older guy a couple of weeks ago, and he hated them, as did our three other dogs over the last twenty years. The younger one and the new puppy didn’t seem to care that much, only getting a little jittery when we were outside and a particularly loud one went off.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
3, but the pajamas erasure here is unfortunate.
- Comment on I'm all for ingenuity. 3 weeks ago:
Sorry, I’ve just seen this one often enough and seen the comments that I may have assumed too much. I’ll take my downvotes.
- Comment on I'm all for ingenuity. 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, yeah, stupid fat maga, whatever. Looks like they’ve both got a pretty big batch of laundry, and looking at the totality of the picture these are not likely to be wealthy people, and it being rural/suburban America, lord knows how far the laundromat is. This strikes me as unironically clever, and they’re both keeping that mower deck out of the landfill and travelling using electric power.
- Comment on The new new testament 3 weeks ago:
Looks like Teenjus to me.
- Comment on Feels like something this community would like to know 3 weeks ago:
Barelypoops Cacalags
- Comment on How do animals in the Peppa Pig universe work? 3 weeks ago:
Oh, Peppa is a total asshat, but she’d generally have to eat shit in a way certain other kids’ animation asshats didn’t (coughcalilloucough). There was enough of old-school cartoon and comic strip tropes from Warner Brothers shorts and Peanuts that it wasn’t the worst show to endure.
- Comment on How do animals in the Peppa Pig universe work? 3 weeks ago:
Daddy Pig was pretty badass when the wolf family moved to town.
- Comment on How do animals in the Peppa Pig universe work? 3 weeks ago:
I’m a few years out from that age range, but Caillou, Ryan’s Toy Reviews, and motherfuckin’ Blippi made Peppa look like Shakespeare.
- Comment on How do animals in the Peppa Pig universe work? 3 weeks ago:
Some of the jokes in this show seem targeted to adults, which makes no sense, as absolutely nothing in this show is watchable to anyone above the age of 4.
Clearly you never saw the one where Peppa is a stone-cold bitch when she realizes everybody but her can whistle or learn within seconds.
- Comment on Be honest whose actually working today and who is goofing off 3 weeks ago:
Lawyer, engineer, or consultant? LOL, are you McKinsey advising Warner/Discovery?!?!?
- Comment on But I am mighty!! 3 weeks ago:
…and Florida, and Jamaica, and Mexico, and (I presume) Spain. There is no corner of the earth in which the English will not challenge the mighty Helios until they are as red as the cross of St. George.
- Comment on Palpable Nonsense! 3 weeks ago:
What are we going to do tonight, Brain?!
- Comment on What are some great retro games that I can play with my 5yo? 4 weeks ago:
Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Little one can be Tails and play coop.
- Comment on Is there a service to check for reposts? 4 weeks ago:
This comic has always resonated with me. THIS is how we incorrigible know-it-alls of the world can use our powers for good, or at least for not actively evil, LOL.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
If it’s within your means, could y’all take a long trip out that way?
This is a very good idea, again, if you have means, though it’s probably not absurd if he’s looking to buy. AirBnB’s in Wyoming aren’t super common, but there are options, and frankly most of them are probably “easy mode” in the sense that they’re close to SOMETHING. Get a feel for what it would be like to be stuck there doing your shopping, finding something to eat, finding something to do. Drive to the nearest hospital, then imagine doing it frequently or while in a lot of pain.
Maybe it will be fine, even for ten or fifteen years, but you’re absolutely right to take this one slow and be wary. I know Massachusetts is pretty built up, but it’s not fully paved. Have you floated the idea of moving another 20-30 minutes farther out and finding a little patch of ground? Or doing something SUPER crazy like moving to New Hampshire? 🤣
As another alternative, if he’s determined to have mountains, something just outside Denver or even, sigh, Salt Lake City would blunt some of the biggest issues. Wyoming has almost literally nothing. Cheyenne metro has around 100k people, smaller than Lowell, MA.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
As everyone else has said, this is a pretty normal hangup, and if it’s really where you plan to live for the foreseeable future, only time will wear down the edges of that anxiety. It sounds like your parents raised you to be very open and you have an honest relationship with them and open invitation to live with them until you find a path that takes you elsewhere. Frankly, that’s great. My own daughter is a pre-teen but honestly I think we’re on a fairly similar path, but that’s more because it’s what feels like the right thing to do and the right way to treat someone, compared to the arbitrarily rigid households my wife and I grew up in. It doesn’t make make it magically not-alien.
It’s only been a month and he likely grew up in a different style of household. Honestly, in the US at least, the communities that most commonly do multi-generational living are very much not the ones okay with unmarried partners staying over. That’s a pretty significant cultural disconnect, and it’s going to be a while before he gets over it and truly believes that your parents are as okay with it as you claim. It’s probably going to require them to be almost comically over the top about it being okay (which has its own social hazards, LOL), or else it’s going to require baby steps. A trip together could help, as someone else mentioned. Or, a movie night that runs long and he stays in a spare bedroom. Eventually, with exposure and with a relationship between the two of you that proves to be solid over time, he may come to feel that it’s less awkward or disrespectful. He might also be a bit (overly?) self-conscious about the slight age difference in front of people whose primary job over the last 20 years has been keeping you safe.
So yeah, he’s sort of bringing his hangups into the relationship in a way you likely find frustrating, but I wouldn’t worry about it, certainly not until it’s been a good bit longer. It’s a common thing, coming from an honest place (and as mentioned, anxiety+expectations could create a lot of issues around the very intimacy you want to promote). In the meantime, it’s fairly easy to work around, especially since you do have the kind of relationship with your parents that makes staying at his place unremarkable. Eventually, yes, he should grow to trust you and your parents enough to believe you all when you say it’s fine, and if that’s still not enough then to have the kind of open conversation with you as his partner to understand why it’s not going to happen. For now, just keep doing things to make him comfortable at your place, but for the most part I’d let this one go.