I understand that I come from a place of pretty significant privilege, but it is wild to me that when faced with these kinds of situations anyone is gambling on the kinds of medical care they might/might not be able to receive in these red states with restrictive abortion laws.

I know that if any of my friends, even if we’re not particularly close, came to me and said they needed me to drive them halfway across the country for an abortion because they may not be able to get life-saving medical care in our state if something goes wrong, we’re going, right then and there, no questions asked, I’m calling out sick from work, running up my credit cards on gas and hotel rooms and whatever else we may need and we’re hitting the road, and if needed I won’t ever breathe a word of it to anyone.

The fact that people are in a position where they feel like they can’t do that or don’t have people they think they can trust to do that for them is maddening.

Yeah, astonishingly if you don’t wander into the crowded center city areas that are packed with people and bars, things are a lot more subdued.

There’s something 1½ million people in the city, a lot of whom are watching the game, either at home, in a friends house, or at one of the 1300 or so bars in the city, all spread out over about 140 square miles. If you don’t go seeking out the craziness, it’s easy to not see it in person.

Not to mention all of the eagles fans in the surrounding suburbs.

And take a good look at your video, how much actual violence or destructiveness are you seeing there? I’m seeing mostly a big crowd of people milling around outside chanting and yelling at no one in particular. Creating a nuisance or impeding traffic? Sure, hardly a riot or anything of the sort though.

You have, being generous, maybe a couple thousand people (I’m pretty sure I’ve seen more people turn out to ride in the Philly naked bike ride) gathering around city hall, a major landmark located in the very heart of the city, and doing what? yelling? Maybe 2% of a city where “go birds” passes as a greeting, wandering around outside being a bit rowdy.

As a philly native, I will say that the vast majority of philly fans are more reasonable levels of passionate, I’ve never personally been around anyone getting violent over a game, at worst just a lot of yelling and cursing directed at no one in particular.

But yeah, our worst fans definitely have a way of going the extra mile into the heart of crazytown.

Philly has a tough image and we’re proud of it and embrace it, but a lot of assholes don’t understand that being tough doesn’t mean being needlessly violent, offensive, and destructive.

Personally, I like the lunatics here that climb light poles and think of the city greasing them up as a challenge, that’s the kind of crazy fan I want to represent my city.

I’m also bald, but even before I started shaving my head and had long hair I wore a lot of hats. Still helped keep the sun off me and I tend to run kind of hot so it helped keep sweaty hair out of my face.

I have a couple hats similar to those kicking around, they mostly get used when I’m camping, hiking, etc.

My main every day summer hats are a panama straw fedora, a linen flat cap, and very occasionally a trucker cap that I mostly use as my fishing hat.

I also have a straw cowboy hat that I only bust out occasionally, when I’m both feeling a little silly and I’m gonna be out in direct sun for a long time, like out in the middle of a lake on my kayak. It looks a little goofy, I’m certainly no cowboy, but it’s practically like walking around with a shade umbrella on my head.

I tend to run pretty hot and sweaty, so when the sun isn’t a concern, I often wear a bandana to keep sweat out of my face.

My wife has a very big, floppy hat she wears at the beach sometimes, looks like straw but is actually some sort of recycled plastic.

My mom would not be able to wear a hat during the summer obviously heat would stay in and she would get too hot.

I think you’re starting from a faulty assumption here.

In general, it’s often wise to wear a hat in the summer and can help you feel cooler providing a little bit of portable shade, and helps keep the sun out of your eyes and off your face/neck/ears/shoulders.

It’s just about finding the right hat, something lightweight, breathable, and preferably lighter in color (to reflect the sun’s rays instead of absorbing them) and maybe with a wider brim.

Straw hats are a fairly traditional option, something like a panama hat (actually made from palms, also made in Ecuador and not panama BTW) is a classic option, but this is 2024 so there’s lots of moisture wicking synthetic material options out there as well. For other natural materials, linen is also a good choice, certain types and weaves of cotton can be pretty light and breathable, and honestly even some lighter weight wool hats aren’t too bad.

Take a look at people who work or spend a lot of time outdoors in warmer climates, you’ll see a lot of people wearing hats or cultures where people traditionally wore a lot of hats even if they’ve fallen out of style. Baseball caps, visors, cowboy hats, fedoras, pith helmets, beater hats, various types of headscarves, big floppy sun hats, bucket hats, asian conical hats, sombreros, etc.

I wear hats pretty much year-round. The hats I like in the summer are different from my winter hats, but it’s pretty rare that I go out without some kind of hat, and when I forget to grab one on my way out the door, I feel less comfortable for it.

I take part in a lot of outdoorsy activities, there’s kind of a split. Lots of conservation-minded folks like myself, and lots of assholes who don’t seem to realize or care that they won’t be able to go hunting, fishing, etc. if they develop over all the woodlands, poison the waterways, etc. and just want an excuse to shoot something or justify their much-larger-than-needed, lifted, coal-rolling truck.

Also a fair amount of people who don’t feel particularly strongly either way.

Sales of hunting/fishing licenses and such do end up funding a lot of conservation efforts, though arguably in a lot of cases the money doesn’t necessarily go where it’s most needed.

The more conservation-minded folks tend to be quieter about their interests and don’t make it their whole personality, they’re usually not the ones posing with a deer or fish in their profile pic.

6% weight increase doesn’t necessarily mean a 6% efficiency loss, it’s not a simple linear relationship like that. Depending on the power of the motor and a few other factors that 6% weight increase could mean a huge hit to efficiency.

A roof only needs to be a thin piece of sheet metal, weighing somewhere in the neighborhood of 1-2lbs per square foot

Most solar panels are going to weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-4lbs per square foot. So is likely the panel would weigh 2-4 times as much as just a plain metal roof, plus possibly a metal roof under it and/or additional framing to attach the panels to, so power to weight does absolutely come into play.

This chucklefuck:

“babies born with any deformities or disabilities should be shot in the forehead.”

What trump was trying to scaremonger about and claimed democrats support in the debate:

He also says execution after birth, it’s execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born, is okay

Seems he’s once again confused

Houses also have thermostats

The house behind my parents has had a string of terrible tenants. Loud assholes, people who let their dogs run loose, people with unruly kids, etc.

Otherwise a pretty decent neighborhood.

There was a younger dude living there for a while, kept kind of weird hours, but my parents never thought much of that, figured he was going to school, working night shift somewhere, etc. Mostly kept to himself, never bothered my parents in any way, always dressed professionally, etc.

He was probably the best neighbor my parents ever had in that house.

Then one day cops raided the place, turns out he’d been dealing a lot of drugs out of there and had a punch bowl full of cocaine sitting out on the kitchen counter.

Some of the other neighbors apparently had noticed some pretty sketchy characters coming and going from the house, they must have entered from the front door though, because my parents never really noticed anyone.

My parents would still take the drug dealer over pretty much anyone else that’s lived there.

Politicians lie and use all kinds of weasely doublespeak bullshit all the damn time, it’s pretty much their signature move, everyone knows it, it’s been the punchline of countless jokes, no one likes it, but anyone with half a brain understands that it’s part of how the game is played and how you get the morons that make up a lot of this country excited to show up and vote for you.

So why are Kamala and so many other democrats so bad at just doing that when it counts?

How many undecided idiots does she think have fracking as their big tentpole issue, who are saying “gee, you know, I kind of agree with everything else she’s saying, but I don’t know if she agrees with me that fracking is the greatest thing since sliced bread, so I guess I’ll stay home on election day or maybe vote for the guy who’s skin looks like it was stained orange by fracking chemicals”

Compared to how many people in her base who are strongly against fracking, and feel that by supporting it she is just plain not listening to them and who may choose to stay home on election day because they feel so alienated and hopeless about the state of politics in our country.

How hard is it to just say nothing about these kinds of issues? Or if it’s something you absolutely have to comment on, why not just dance around it and say some vague bullshit about making fracking safe?

Play the fucking game, and play it to win.

I know she’s in the pockets of megacorporations that support fracking, her record speaks for itself for anyone with half a brain who cares to look into it, most people aren’t going to look into it though.

I don’t support fracking, but I also know if Trump wins then it’s game over, and oil and gas companies might just start a fracking operation from my bedroom and dump their waste in my dog’s water bowl just because they can, and since we’ll be living in a fascist dictatorship hell scape, there’d be no clear path forward to do anything about it.

If Harris wins, fracking stays more or less as it is now, and there’s a path forward, even if it’s a narrow one, to get a better candidate next time around.

But like I said, a lot of people are idiots who refuse to see that bigger picture, they’ll see Harris doing shit like this and just lose interest and not show up on election day or throw their vote away to some third party because they think they’re making a stand.

Shave it all off

I’m bald

I do go to get my beard trimmed occasionally though, I just describe what I’m looking for- I like the length, just kind of square it up a bit and make it look neat, and fade in my sideburns.

It helps that I do a decent enough job of keeping it trimmed on my own, I just go in a handful of times a year before weddings and other fancy events when I need to look particularly nice

In Outer Worlds there’s a couple establishments aboard the groundbreaker that could potentially count as fast food by some definition.

The stand on the citadel in mass effect is maybe fast food-ish

I vaguely remember seeing some stands in the background of Babylon 5 that could potentially have been something like fast food, but I never got into Babylon 5 too much so I can’t say much about that, I just have some vague memories of some parts I’ve seen that looked like fast food wouldn’t be out of place.

Pretty much any time there’s a big space station with a city-like interior I assume there’s probably something like fast food somewhere on board, maybe even visible in the background somewhere, though I can’t really think of any particular examples or any time it was specifically highlighted

I bought a case of hugs for a bbq I had over the summer for my friends who are now all into their 30s. Figured it would be a fun little hit of nostalgia.

They were more popular than I expected, and actually better than I remember them being.

Going sci-fi, but I think I remember there being a thing in the altered carbon books that kind of relates to this.

In that series most people have a device implanted that can store their consciousness, it can be backed up, etc. if you die your consciousness can be uploaded to a new body, maybe a clone of your own, maybe another spare body no one was using. They get around long space flights by just sending the stored consciousness into a new body at the destination, prisoners can be uploaded to storage and their bodies used elsewhere, etc. and the only way to reliably kill someone is to destroy that device, and if they’re rich enough they may have a remote backup so even that isn’t a guarantee.

So murder victims are routinely uploaded into new bodies to testify at their own murder trials.

Catholics oppose this though, they believe that your soul is separate from your consciousness and can’t be stored in that device, backed up, etc. and so to respect their religious rights they can’t be popped into a new body to testify.

I imagine that necromancy would have the same and probably stronger opposition from a lot of religious people and we’d run into the same kind of legal issues.

My wife’s family used to have a vacation home on Ocracoke. One year her mom bought some romance novel for a beach read that was set on Ocracoke, it seemed appropriate.

It was pretty clear that the writer had never been to Ocracoke or even bothered looking at Google maps because they talked about the cliffs by the sea.

It’s a glorified sandbar, just about the biggest elevation changes you’ll find are some dunes and the curb stepping off a sidewalk onto the road, nothing even remotely resembling a cliff.

Yeah, listening is totally allowed, just don’t transmit without a license. Depending on the radio there’s often a way to lock out the PTT button so you don’t accidentally key up.

Programming the radio can sometimes be a bit of a pain in the ass, CHIRP is a free program that’s often recommended for baofengs, you’ll also need to figure out what repeaters are in your area so you know what frequencies to listen to

Laws and regulations will vary a bit depending on what country you live in, but assuming you’re in the US the process is pretty simple but involves some studying

Pass the test, buy a radio, start talking.

There’s 3 classes of license- technician, general, and extra that give you permission to use different bands and modes, extra of course gives you the most options, technician the fewest. If you pass your technician exam you can usually go ahead and take your general exam right then and there, and if you pass that you can go ahead and get extra all in the same sitting.

Finding somewhere to take the test is the tricky part, but if you look up amateur radio clubs in your area they probably have it published somewhere and I think the ARRL website has a list of places/clubs that do it and when. I think some of them have started offering an online test since covid but I don’t really know how that works.

There’s a license/test fee, don’t remember what that is off the top of my head, I want to say around $40 but don’t quote me.

As far as studying, there’s a lot of resources out there, apps, reference books, the FCC publishes the question pool they use for the test, etc.

As far as radios, you can get a baofeng handheld for like $20 on Amazon, a lot of hams give them shit but they probably also have one or two kicking around because they’re so cheap. They don’t have a lot of bells and whistles but they’re probably the cheapest way to just start talking to other hams.

Radios get expensive quick, that’s one of the reasons I haven’t gotten too into it, I have better things to drop hundreds or thousands of dollars on, but you can find some good deals on used equipment, ebay, flea markets, etc.

Start with a baofeng, talk to other hams, maybe go to club meetings or events, figure out what else you want to do and go from there.

Also ham is not an acronym, no need to capitalize, I believe the consensus is that it originated because amateur radio operators were more ham-fisted in their radio usage than professional radio operators so they started calling them hams.

I don’t know the specifics of commercial broadcast radio, but I know with ham radio hams are required to identify every 10 minutes while they’re transmitting including automated repeaters that will usually do it in Morse code

If you listen to some ham radio communications (sometimes it’s interesting, but usually it’s just old guys talking about antennas) every 10 minutes the repeater will beep out a bunch of Morse code and everyone rattles off their call signs

For commercial radio I think it’s every hour so at least that often they’ll have to cut to “you’re listening to WXYZ 99.9 FM blah blah blah” which also provides a good segue to a commercial break.

I’m sure most of them probably just schedule that at the top of the hour to make it easy for themselves