Honestly, my experience is entirely anecdotal, and I completely admit that. I have not read this article yet, so I don’t even know what the conclusion is (but I can make an assumption).

Disclaimer being what it is, literally all of the full-on racist people I know or have known are also MAGA conservatives. And conversely, all the MAGA people I know or have known are way more racist than average. I say that from the perspective that, at least in the USA, most people have racial biases to a certain extent.

I’ve been told things like “You don’t have the right skin color to take the bus into the city”, meaning because I’m Caucasian with “white” skin, I would somehow be an outlier among the rest of the folks taking the bus. Many, many times I’ve heard statements like “we can’t even say [the N-word] anymore even though that’s what they call themselves all the time” and let me tell you the people saying that don’t say “N-word” they say the real deal that rhymes with chigger. They’ll claim illegal “Mexicans” took their jobs, without a moment’s thought about who hired those “Mexicans” or what nationality those “Mexicans” are. There’s really no skin color other than white-white that doesn’t receive some hate.

Anyway, this is just old man ranting at this point, and it may even be too long to be readable, so let me summarize it with FUCK RACISTS & FUCK MAGA.

To get around back, go left. Because left is right and right is wrong so the only thing left that’s right is left.

Honey, you have to put some elbow grease into it.

Right hand to gay Jesus, I was literally coming into this thread to type out the exact same thing. Except my comment wouldn’t have had the italics or newline because according to my therapist I’m lazy and lack curiosity so I wouldn’t have spent the time or even had the inclination.

3N plants are sterile.

That’s not universally true, though. In many instances, 3N plants have reduced fertility, but can still produce viable seed. Even the seedless watermelons, the 3N types, can sometimes produce viable seeds.

Every so often I wonder how people could be so stupid

Most of the world’s large predators are extinct or on the verge of extinction. Interpret that how you want.

Can’t you just make your own shoes? All you have to do is build your own shoe factory and then hire a bunch of illegals and children to work under the table for cash. You don’t even need a website, just sell the shoes on Facebook Market Place. That’s literally all there is to it.

I’m not trying to be contrarian here, and I’m not saying you’re wrong. But knowing how seedless watermelons are developed and produced, it doesn’t actually have much to do with being seedless.

At least in the USA, there are lots of different seedless watermelon varieties. I’ve only grown a small number of them, but they’ve all been great tasting.

Other than under ripe watermelons and random “wild” cultivars, I’ve never had a tasteless watermelon, so I’m slightly skeptical of your comment, to be honest.

Allow me to geek out a bit here, for the sake of the curious. Feel free to correct me if you’re smarter or more pedantic than me.

Basically, the way seedless watermelons work is that you “breed” two genetically incompatible watermelon varieties together, so that the fruit they bare are seedless. If you took a “seedless” watermelon plant and bred it with a compatible variety, it would produce seeded fruits.

The slightly more detailed version of this: Unlike most animals, plants can have more than one set of chromosomes and be perfectly fine. In fact, having multiple sets of chromosomes can actually be beneficial for plants. Typically plants, like animals, have 2 sets of chromosomes, but sometimes by random chance or otherwise, they can have double the amount (or more). If you cross a plant with a normal amount of chromosomes (2N) with a plant that has double the amount of chromosomes (4N), you get something in between (3N). These 3N plants are often fertile and produce seeds when crossed with other 3N plants, but usually they are not fertile when crossed with 2N or 4N plants. They’ll still produce their signature fruit, basically a hormonal response to being pollinated, but there will be no seeds or only underdeveloped, sterile seeds because the parents aren’t compatible.

They don’t have ankles. They don’t have testicles. They are missing a bunch of ribs. They don’t fart. They don’t even have a Y chromosome. At a certain point, it’s probably easier to list the things they do have.

Removed by mod

Disagree if you want, but I’ve felt this way and have been saying some variation of this (but perhaps not as eloquently) pretty much since November of 2024.

Granted, in the immediate wake of the election, even I didn’t think things would be this way, at least not so soon. As soon as he took office, anybody with half a brain cell could see, first-hand sans conjecture, just how much of a disaster we were in for. I was like, at this stage, we’re going to have to root for the hamberders to do their thing and in the mean time we’re going to have to turn the other cheek and accept those Trump voters who come to regret their vote. If there are enough of them, and they genuinely see an apology as a path out of the cult, there’s a better chance of turning things around.

No? Is that common?

I need to bookmark this for when I have time to read it.

Not going to lie, there’s something persuasive, almost like the call of the void, with this for me. There are days when I wish I could just get lost in AI fueled fantasy worlds. I’m not even sure how that would work or what it would look like. I feel like it’s akin to going to church as a kid, when all the other children my age were supposedly talking to Jesus and feeling his presence, but no matter how hard I tried, I didn’t experience any of that. Made me feel like I’m either deficient or they’re delusional. And sometimes, I honestly fully believe it would be better if I could live in some kind of delusion like that where I feel special as though I have a direct line to the divine. If an AI were trying to convince me of some spiritual awakening, I honestly believe I’d just continue seeing through it, knowing that this is just a computer running algorithms and nothing deeper to it than that.

Faustinus: Corn for dinner last night, Octavius?

Octavious: No, what’s corn?

My closest biological family is mostly in the tolerant to supportive range of things. Nobody’s perfect, obviously. Extended family is a mixed bag.

I’m actually not even sure what supportive means or looks like in this context. There are definitely close family members who don’t make me or my sexuality feel like I’m any different and who I can unmask around. Most people are probably more in the “tolerant” range, where as long as I mask up, don’t talk about it, and there’s no controversy, they’re okay with it on the surface. Still better than my pre coming out days when I had to hide everything, mask around everyone, and completely avoid certain situations entirely.

All in all, things aren’t bad. The worst I typically have to endure is having my partner called my “mate” instead of the terms they use for unmarried heterosexual partners, being told that Christians are the most persecuted group in the USA because of course gay, trans, and racial minorities have it so much better than them, and frequently having to “agree to disagree” on just about every topic related to trans people for simply existing. Fortunately, no physical violence or threats come my way, I don’t really use the social media platforms they do so I don’t get to see the worst of their thoughts, and they’re free to talk about me behind my back just the same as I am free to forget they exist except for a couple hours every other year around the holidays.

That’s basically my Pandora experience. They’ll have ads where if you click to watch a video, you’ll get X amount of time, usually an hour, ad free. There’s about a 50% chance the ad will cause the app to crash, but only AFTER the ad finishes playing. And once I start the app up again, it doesn’t remember the offer or that I watched the ad. Same thing if I close the app, accidentally or otherwise. If I start it back up, that ad free hour is gone.

Capybara is short for Cabybaratheon, one of the houses from the Games of Thrones.

he’s got white hair in the armpit and crotchinal region

I was just about to say. Figured it was bait but glad to see it was a joke.