Moreover, Alexander H. Stephens and West Hughes Humphreys were never found guilty of a crime, there was no court case or conviction against them.

They participated in an insurrection, rebellion, and gave aid or comfort to enemies. (Stephens was the vice president of the CSA and Humphreys was a judge). Folks in congress didn’t want to be sitting next to a guy who just a few months ago was trying to kill them, so they started writing Section 3. It did not require a crime to be tried or a court ruling to be made, they participated in a rebellion and that’s enough.

Okay the constitution isn’t written for people to wriggle out on technicality.

You know, it’s kind of like Bigfoot.

In the 60s I’d say you could almost slightly believe that just maybe there’s a big gorilla somewhere that’s so remote that nobody ever discovered it.

These days just about every frickin dirt road in the woods has a trail camera on it, lots of houses have surveillance cameras, drones, satellite images, all that stuff. And not these old Polaroids either, not film developed in a darkroom with a shoddy enlarger, HD digital is pretty much standard for all devices.

There’s just no damn way this thing could be walking around without something catching it on 1080p video.

Well I imagine it’s gotta be the same for the sky. Military’s got a lot of eyes on the sky for a lot of reasons.

Thought I saw a UFO one time too, took video and posted it on a message board and everything.

They explained it was probably one of those paper lanterns that people let up at parties, which upon description completely made sense. Looked strange though, red light in the sky that was definitely way up there, not like an airplane but maybe where a low-flying one would be, too small to be an airplane though, irregular flickering, irregular movement.

Yeah, fully explained it.

Sometimes it seems as though only good people die young.

We might actually not know why magnets work.

The formula used to prove the functionality of magnets can also be used to prove the existence of a theoretical state called a monopolar magnet - positive or negative on both sides. So either monopolar magnets can exist, even if in some esoteric circumstance, or we don’t know why magnets work.

That’s how I try to keep things in perspective, by saying - was I any different?

Yes I think it’s all stupid and annoying, literally everything about tiktok which the kids are soooo involved with, minecraft, fortnite, however they’re dressing these days. Stupid and annoying, all of it.

But hey there was a time when my dig-pet was the most important thing I owned, my beanie babies were “an investment”, could easily play Halo for 12 hours straight, I wore giant jnco jeans with chains on them, and listened to Limp Bizkit.

So, was I any different? Nah, it’s the same.

I am literally a Linux system admin, I bang on a command line interface for a living.

But I don’t use Linux at home, it’s just so much work. Every single thing is complicated. Last time I really tried in earnest to switch to a full Linux setup I was somewhere in the middle of a quick and easy 24-step process to get my webcam working, compiling the drivers from a modified source - and it was just a moment that broke me. Like, I’ve been working on this for an hour and I know I can do it but this is stuff I don’t even think about with windows.

So I broke down and bought Windows 10. It’s what I was trying to avoid, being a tight ass and didn’t want to buy an new OS.

I just don’t have the patience to troubleshoot every tiny thing like a big endeavor. I can, I just don’t want to. Everything I install, every peripheral I connect, it’s always a big deal getting it to work. Heck with that, not worth the trouble.

I had a similar experience with one of the more recent NBA games.

Like, shooting the ball was a whole process. First you initiate a gathering action or decide what kind of plant or pick you’re going to make, there’s a button for whether you jump or not, what kind of jump (fade away, in place, diving towards) and then timing for shot accuracy. God help you if you’re going for a dunk.

Damn it all, what ever happened to one button for pass and the other for shoot!

I’m out here doing advanced Street Fighter combos just to throw a damn ball. It’s easy as doing a tatsumaki super canceled into a neutral aerial shakunetsu hadoken. And that’s just one thing, every damn mechanic in the game felt like this.

Absolutely - a whistleblower goes to the authorities, not a political party.

Religion gets a special seat at every table.

In basically every facet of every thing, religion (by which I mean protestant christianity) has an automatic consideration and justification. They are always presumed to be correct, and their justification for this correctness is found within their religion, so it can’t be questioned.

This is poison, and it keeps us stuck in the bronze age in terms of reasoning and thinking.

And after Nixon, it became criminal to use the IRS in this way.

Anything else would do nothing but make chaos, it’s a really bad look if your own party doesn’t back you anymore. Same with the VP, a president dropping their VP would also be a really bad look.

Cry all you want about “old white guy” but for this election he’s the shoo-in. Yeah he’s too old, I think so too, yeah I want a real progressive. But damn it all, he’s done pretty great stuff and damn the democrats for not shouting about it more.

For a party to primary their own president, that would signal nothing but weakness.

Sometimes I like to make up horrific magic items if they’re in the dungeon of an evil wizard or lich or something. Nothing that has impact on the players, just spooky flavor.

• An orb that intercepts the Sending or Message spell when it’s used to call for help, and redirects them to a recorded message that mocks the sender.

• An amulet that nullifies the effects of all wishes except for ones made by the Wish spell. This includes wishes upon shooting stars, wishing wells, wishing bugs, wishbones, birthday candles, white horses, dandelions, and the hopes of children. This effect extends for 100 miles and there is no save against it.

• Collar of unlimited command - wearer of the collar is subject to the Command spell, but without the restriction of instructions that can’t be followed. So something like “fit through that keyhole” will be followed even though it’s impossible. It will be made possible, horribly.

This is something I’ve noticed in recent years too - take something ordinary and normal, whip up a big frenzy over it, and then bask in the chaos.

Not just this but a lot of things. Usually it’s some court procedure, some clerical process, something actually quite boring. I remember during the election they were getting mad over ballots being picked up by some guy in a van - well, that’s the guy who picks em up

It’s like getting mad at the mailman for delivering the mail. But you can dramatize anything - every single day a man who you probably don’t even know drives around your neighborhood and stops at every single house. He has things which are your property and sometimes he even takes things out of your mailbox and puts them in a bag where you can’t see them anymore, probably never again. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

Amazing the time when arcades were soooo much better than home consoles.

Like, there was a time when a home console was pretty good at simulating the arcades, but that was about it.

Only if it’s really bad though, and on purpose.

If it was something the employee couldn’t control or just a generally bad experience that was nobody’s fault, still 20%. Place is swamped and the waiter never gave me a drink refill because they’re the only one on the floor, still 20%.

I have a set of screwdrivers that I’m pretty sure came from the dollar store, and they’re the favorite tool I have.

Used to work in IT and those screwdrivers disassembled many hundreds of computers, maybe over a thousand. They’re magnetized just right too, so I can put a screw on the tip and place it with the tool instead of by hand. They’re small, fit in your pocket, very convenient.

I’ve tried several times to replace them with something nicer but I never prefer the more expensive tool.

I used an apple phone for the first time at work, they gave us apple phones.

I was blown away when I realized you can’t just dump any old file on it, because I’m used to plugging in my android phone and throwing on some files like it’s any other removable storage. Not so with apple phones, incredibly limited.

See, I used to flash firmware for copy machines from my phone. Like if I went out to a site and didn’t prepare firmware before going I could just download it on my phone and flash from that.

The apple phone couldn’t do a bunch of stuff that I always thought was standard smartphone things. Also couldn’t display cell and wifi reception in decibels, and I used to do informal site surveys with my phone. Nope, apple can’t do that either, “bars” aren’t a good metric to wrote down.

That thing was about damn useless except to be used as a phone and an mp3 player.

I’m still using Windows 10 on my personal computer. Oh I’ll probably have to upgrade someday, some game or other program will come out with exclusivity of some kind and I’ll eventually install Windows 11. But for the most part, I don’t want to fuck with it, everything works and I really just don’t want the hassle.

Running Linux Mint on an old laptop, mostly because it’s too old to decently run Windows 10. Don’t use it for much, mostly troubleshooting things.

At work the laptops are Windows 10 and I don’t think there’s a push to update. Of course all the servers are Redhat Enterprise Linux, and that’s where the majority of my work takes place.