Hurlshort

Sorry to hear that, LC. My wife has pancreatitis. She takes an enzyme called creon with food to help her process. Did they take it out? She says the pain was worse than child birth. She has had a few flare ups over the years.

Life is a gamble.

One can always hope...

Hah, no. He'll do whatever the wealthy people that control the purse strings want him to do. Just like every politician.

Here is an example of defunding the police: https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/07/01/lausd-board-votes-to-slash-school-police-budget-by-25m/ Now people are mostly in 2 camps on this. You have the one side that is like "F the police". Then you have the other side that is like "School shootings are going to happen!" Meanwhile I'm like, why the heck does the school district pay 25 million dollars to the police department? WTF?

Education is being defunded and no one seems too worried about that at the White House.

The journey of Matt Williams: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29451017/from-dc-oakland-south-korea-matt-williams-career-reinvention I'd love to see him revive a career in SF. Maybe if Kapler doesn't pan out.

The anti-vaxxer crowd is definitely digging the anti-mask movement.

I think he is talking about the woman in the Starbucks scenario. She claims it is sexism that the young man ended up with a bunch of money, or something. I've no clue otherwise.

Well that was predictable.

Here is another lady for Skarpie to defend: Yikes, she's got a note from her chiropractor.

Always good to know we can rely on our resident contrarian to defend people who are triggered by the offer of a free mask. Never change Sharpie. Growth is a sign of weakness.

These dudes are excellent. Hopefully the link works. It's from Facebook.

There is an entire entertainment industry built on defaming the US government, so clearly that isn't illegal in the US. 😝

I'll give you Tibet, but that was still 60 years ago. I had to look up the Vietnam one to even remember the details, and the India stuff tends to be more border clashes. You can throw Hong Kong in there for good measure, but it still pales in comparison to all the pots the US has its fingers in. Not that I'm saying they couldn't become a warmongering nation. I'm just saying they have shown little interest in sustained warfare throughout their history. Meanwhile the US has been mired in Iraq and Afghanistan for ages and has a global military presence. I'm not even making a judgement call on that, I'm just saying these are major philosophical differences in the way they operate.

China doesn't have a reputation for invading other countries though. The US certainly cannot say the same.

I washed my cars today. It had been way too long (March?) Since we've barely been driving them, it's easy to not think about cleaning them up, but now they look good and sparkly.

Thanks for the response, Darkpriest, that did help me understand your viewpoint better. I will say this about the protests in the US; thousands are happening peacefully across the country. They don't get the same coverage that the violent ones do.

Wealth privilege linked to English Cultural Descendants doesn't quite roll off the tongue like White Privilege. There are a lot of contradictions here. Prejudice has existed for a long time, but now it is simply too much too ignore? Different groups were prejudiced against in the previous century based on their race, but white privilege doesn't exist? Which one is it? What's going on now is nothing new. Not the privilege part, the prejudice, nor the reaction. We've had numerous civil rights movement throughout history, and this one is nothing different. But things do tend to change as a result. As you mentioned, Irish, Italians, and Polish immigrants were all pretty well prejudiced against in US History, and over time, that changed.

Yeah, there was very little prejudice in the US back in the 60's and 70's. Everything was bright and nice. So the Balkans are a worst case scenario, but Russia is now the dominant player on the world stage? So does that mean in like 30 years the US will re-emerge on the world stage minus a few bits and pieces? Personally I'm rooting for the Republic of California. We've got some good stuff going for us if we don't fall into the Pacific Ocean. Generalizing a country made up of 50 separate and unique states as ignorant is not necessarily how I would make my first foray into the politics thread, but welcome aboard!

I don't understand why people who put loads of sugar in their coffee even drink the stuff. Coffee isn't good for you, so if you need to mask the flavor of the stuff, just stop.

My daughter has always really been into creating somewhat morbid scenes. It started with turning her barbies and their house into of a psych ward with handmade straight jackets and scary makeup. Then she started really getting into the Halloween makeup. Like she would make me a list of all the different products she needs and I would gawk a bit, but she did make some pretty great stuff and she used it all well beyond October 31st. Now as a teenager, she has really gotten into makeup. Which is great, because she does competition dance and the fact she can do all her own makeup is awesome, but it has also been hugely expensive. She likes to experiment with it all before bed, so when I go to say goodnight to her, sometimes she will look like a scary clown, or an elderly person, or a zombie. So now she wants to start doing masks and learning how to work with clay, and I'm trying to figure out how to best support her in this. I've started creating a workshop in the garage. Unfortunately the materials for this type of thing are not cheap. Thankfully there are quite a few special effects on a budget video, including one be the guy who did Army of Darkness. So yeah, my summer project is now figuring out how to best direct her creative endeavors.

Life of the Party - This was a surprisingly hilarious Melissa McCarthy comedy. The boyfriend twist was a great moment.

Missed opportunity there. Teenagers are going to be naive and think they know everything. That is the way the youth works, and it can be great. The idealism of youth can be wonderful. It needs to be tempered with realism, but that is where being an adult parent comes in. Instead of getting angry, it should have been used as a teachable moment.

I enjoyed The Old Guard as well. Charloze Theron is always good swinging weapons around. Seems set up for anothee film, for sure. Kind of funny that big pharma is the new villain in today's world. 😝 Music was off, for sure.