No, this is extremely atypical US imperialism. That’s why the world finds it so shocking. Typical US imperialism is quietly redirecting food aid to support a more US friendly leader taking power, and slipping some arms shipments in as well. Our typical imperialism included strong-arming other world leaders, but only in closed door meetings, followed by shaking hands and smiling with them for the cameras. It was subtly reminding allies that they rely on our militarily might for safety from their more aggressive neighbors, so they owe us support on a global issue. And yes, the more heinous stuff, like assassinations, bribery, supporting coups, and etc. All stuff that’s plausibly deniable, or given a veneer of legitimacy, or just kept unnoticed. By the time any of the awfulness shows through, it’s old news, everyone’s attention has moved on to elsewhere.

Trump is destroying or fucking up at all of that. He’s taken all the winning hands the US has carefully built up and banked over many years, and thrown them in the trash. Following that, his meeting with Zelensky caught global attention by being blatantly naked imperialism running down the street babbling incoherently. If you’re an enemy of the US, or just someone who’s sick of our shit, you may want to celebrate, because we are currently watching American hegemony disintegrate in real time.

“Hey, what’s for lunch?”

“A stick of butter.”

I can’t remember who it was, but I saw a comedy routine where the guy described a conversation he had with his financial advisor. The advisor asked him “What does financial stability mean to you?” The comedian, having just recently started earning real money from comedy for the first time, had never even considered such a question before and had to ponder on it for a moment. Finally he thought up an answer. “What financial stability means to me is when I’m ordering food and they ask if I want to add guacamole, I don’t have to think about it, I can just say yes.”

That line really stuck with me, and I have found it to be an accurate indicator of my own financial stability. Only works if you actually like guac though.

When I was in highschool we edited that file in the programming lab. Wrote an auto running batch file to replace it when the floppy disk was inserted and managed to sneak the disk into every machine without the teacher noticing. The computers where arranged around three walls of the room, and we knew that his standard procedure at the end of the day was to go to each one and issue the shutdown command, then circle back around to power them down. That afternoon when he turned around he must have been greeted with his own employee ID photo grinning back at him around the room in 16 color bitmap glory.

The next day he sternly waved us over the moment we walked in, then just laughed, said “put it back,” and waved us away. He never bothered to even ask how we got ahold of his employee photo from the school network.

I’m just assuming that the viewpoint switches sides at that point, but that’s a confusing choice to make. Perhaps the artist thought they were following the 180 rule by keeping each character to the same side of the frame, but in this case that would be a bad interpretation of the rule. Here the entire premise requires that they walk past each other, so the viewer expects them to switch sides of the frame and is disoriented when they didn’t. Or maybe the artist actually intended that they nonsensically switch directions after bumping each other? I suppose we can only guess.

A federal grand jury isn’t a replacement for a regular federal trial jury. They’re completely different things. A grand jury decides if there is a strong enough case to take the charges to trial, or if they should just be dismissed. When a grand jury isn’t used, the trial judge makes that determination themselves. I agree that the terrorism charge will affect how the trial is conducted, but I don’t know enough on that topic to comment further.

The question is are they really that incompetent, or are they really that malicious? Add in mislabeling the report as fraud instead of infringement, I lean towards them being malicious, but I guess that could also be gross incompetence. Either way, Brandshield looks terrible.

My brother ate an 8 years expired Twinky we found when we were in boy scouts. We were cleaning out the troop’s chuck wagon (food and cooking trailer). Something got lost at the back of a deeper storage compartment, and being the little skinny kid, I volunteered to climb in to find it. I noticed the Twinky slipped into a crack and read the date with amazement. The thing was over half as old as I was, and must have been sitting in that trailer, outdoors, for at least most of that time! After pardeing it around demanding everyone “behold the ancient Twinky” someone dared me to eat it. I never liked Twinkies, but as I’d already confirmed it was still sealed, and my brother was hungry, he didn’t hesitate to claim that dare. We all watched in suspense for his reaction, and were disappointed when he just shrugged and said that it tasted a little dry, but otherwise no different than normal.

have a sniff

I just always do that instead of looking at dates on food. If it looks off, smells off, or tastes off I trash it (always checking in that order, of course). Seems fine, I eat it. Never had a problem doing that.

Well, never a food bourn illness problem. I had a big argument with a housemate about expired food. Shortly after she moved in, she promptly trashed any food that was any amount past expiration, and proudly informed me that she had cleaned out the fridge, saving me from eating pickles that were a whole 3 months past safe to eat. To be fair to her, half the things she trashed actually were bad, but the pickle jar went right back in the fridge. If you don’t want me eating pickles that have been in the trash, Amanda, then don’t throw out my perfectly good pickles! Good call on the bottle of ranch dressing though, I forgot that was in there and it looks nasty.

“Nah, Babe, it’s just a hobby of mine. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“Did your last boyfriend have a print volume this big? Yeah, didn’t think so.”

I noticed missing dishing hammer for sheet metal shaping and caulking hammer for traditional wood ship building.

Dishing hammer is also important for armouring, and is missing from the picture.

Interesting. I would argue that these are good reasons it should be against the rules in relevant academic situations, but I see no good reasons to call it “plagiarism”. Needs to have a better word for it, which would cut down on a lot of arguments and confusion.

I indirectly knew a guy who got a bachelor’s in parks and recreation management by writing 4 or 5 papers, and then just updating them for every class. That was also the person I learned the phrase “Cs get degrees” from, so he was very much not a model student.

Yeah, I’m sure it’s some sort of expensive hobby he’s addicted to, and perpetual project motorcycle would be my first guess.

Right, see, those are relevant because they show the value of that inspiration. Inspiration that could have brought many more valuable changes to her life if she still had it, but sadly the park service stole that inspiration from her, along with many potential benefits it could have brought her if they’d just let her remain blissfully ignorant of the true identity of the inspiring bigfoot she thought she saw.

My personal opinion on fishing as a pastime is funny. The idea of sitting by the lake for a few hours with friends and beers sounds like good fun, but as soon as you add that I’ll also be waiting for a fish to strike, it suddenly sounds dreadfully boring to me. I just hate waiting on things.

Classic Italian mistake.

Yeah, the American West has a huge variety of very distinct biomes. For the purpose of telling a story though, one rocky desert or forested mountain vale or whatever is as good as another, leaving us, the audience, largely unaware and misled. We mostly only notice when they do that to areas we’re familiar with.

Reminds me of the movie The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson. There’s a scene where he is at his home in what is clearly the upcountry of South Carolina not too far from the Appalachians and he takes a walk down his garden path to visit his wife’s grave, which is located in the South Carolina lowcountry, by the coast, somehow skipping past over a hundred miles of pine forest that would have been between those areas. If you’re not familiar with those areas, they both just look like areas in the American Southeast, but if you are familiar, it’s very jarring.

They’re only allowed to use one hand, so the competitors always have their off hand tucked in or hooked onto their clothes so that arm can be relaxed and ignored.