I do wish people would stop with the "Britian stood alone." stuff. Even before Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, there were Allies fighting all over the world, resistance movements in every single continental European country, famously France, but also the Nederlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Norway, Denmark, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The entire British Empire was at war, either based in Britain, as saboteurs on the continent, on fronts from east Asia to the Sahara -- Canada, Newfoundland, Nepal, Australia, New Zealand -- India alone lost 2 million fighters (look it up!), Burma, Malta, South Africa, Egypt, and southern Rhodesia. China did not just surrender blindly: before 1941, both Mao and Sun Yat-sen had armies fighting the Japanese which kept them from attacking the Soviet Union after Hitler turned. Mongolia and Korea never stopped fighting, either. Britain endured the Blitz, it is true, and Churchill certainly made some great speeches about 'standing alone' while he was sacrificing literally millions of 'colonials' to preserve his European troops. But it was, and is, propaganda.

True or not, one can avoid the whole issue by using your phone as a phone, maybe to send texts, with location, mike, and camera switched off permanently, and all the other apps deleted or disabled. Sure, Google will still know you called your SO daily and your Mom once a week (NOT ENOUGH!), and that you were supposed to pick up the dry cleaning last night (did you?). Meh. If that's what floats the Surveillance Society's boat, I am not too worried.

Thanks for clarifying that.

The person promoting adoption is presuming a right to impose his/her morality on others, being emotionally manipulative, and assuming human children have an inherent superiority over, say, an litter of kittens or puppies starving at the side of the road. Nah.

Morality is an individual choice. If you perform an act because someone else demands it, or because 'it's what's done', or because you want to be judged worthy, as Yeshua ben Yusuf said, you get your reward in the approval. If you do it because you believe it is the right thing to do, regardless of praise or opprobrium, that is a moral act. My morality says a life is a life and all lives are of equal value, because each gets only one, and it is the most precious thing in the universe to the one who lives it, whether tardigrade, garden slug, disabled pigeon or human child. Based on that and other principles I have evolved over a life, I have not had biological children, nor have I adopted a human child, quite deliberately. Perhaps, in his/her eyes, I am evil. Tant pis: I don't answer to any conscience but my own.

I'm not American, so I don't know: can one state actually bar an American citizen from being in it?

There were and are many more people involved in the arts who are not gay than who are, and gay people have family and friends outside their professional world. But, yeah, just go ahead and jump to the nearest convenient stereotype, mmm?

That said, average gay participation was definitely higher at that time, which, I (totally straight, btw) always thought made it more likely we as a group would have a better idea, given all the personal connections to the homophobic, the seriously closetted et alia of the underlying reality. I stand by that assessment.

Do you mean you have no memory of a tune, scent, a former home? No techniques to accomplish a goal or solve a problem, no idea how to win a game? You never have a fantasy or a plan? All these are ideas. So are equations, opinions, beliefs , mental pictures and those conversations you create when you are thinking about what you should have said to the boss when she humiliated you in front of the client. So are the shared concepts behind the words beauty, honesty, freedom, calm, ego, self, even, yes, idea. In fact, it would have been impossible to ask this question if you really lacked the ability to deliberately think of an idea, because the question is an idea, made by applying grammar, also an idea, to at least four ideas I can count.

People unable to create an idea may exist -- but we can't communicate with them to know what, if anything, is going on in their heads. If they do, they could only survive in a society that had the resources to keep their bodies alive. They might be among those considered in a vegetative state, but then advances in science have found that many thought vegetative were, in fact, conscious, but unable to respond to their environment.

Gwan wit'ee. Everyone has their own abilities. Stop worrying about what you are not so good at and work on developing your talents.

My, my! It's good to see so many younger Americans ripping on an 83 year old man who has lived his socialist beliefs since high school, regardless of cost. Bernie has been outvoted, dragged, beaten, arrested, and then gone right back out to the front lines and done it all again: what, pray, are you doing , now, when it is needed, to compare? Aside, I mean, from waving your keyboard at the big, bad socialist who is at least still out there trying to push the stone up the hill once more, because it's what he can still do?

I thought the fascists were the problem.

Talk is not action. Not even close. Lots of nice people, who are hoping that, somehow, Canada will save them by distracting His Maga-sty or taking them in if the US collapses, or both. A very few trying to take an actual action or two. I'm not holding my breath: one of the main effects of social media seems to be to convince people that merely expressing an opinion constitutes action.

Only if you name is Navalny or Mandela, Pankhurst or Wałęsa.

It used to be thought birds were stupid because their brains were so small relative to mammal brains, and neuronal organisation quite different. Now, it's understood birds are as intelligent as most mammals, because their brains, though small, are densely packed with neurons and glia, which gives them the power to rapidly analyse and react to sensory input, and reason their way through problems on a par with even young humans. Who's to say what a million neurons, also pretty densely packed due to the very small space they have to work with, are capable of? The brain evolves what each species needs to master their physical and social environment -- perhaps bees have already mastered quantum physics!

Being old, I recall in the 1990s the number of Americans identifying as homosexual or bisexual was published as either 7% or 8% of the population. I was involved in the arts, where our group estimate was, with a lot of people were still closetted, the real percentage would be closer to 12% to 15%. Reading this and considering the way the US has gone since then, I think we were probably right, and I'd even go so far as to say perhaps a little low.

Because life is its own joy, and being alive the greatest gift. The loneliness will pass and return, the work grind you down as a song heard in passing will lift you up, the endless obligations are part of being an inherently social species. But, whether human or crocodilian, garden slug or spider, there is pleasure in the warm sun and a full belly, in waking from a good sleep and stretching whatever muscles your ancestors bequeathed. It's only those who demand that, somehow, the universe give them some cosmic purpose -- we, who are less than a virus floating around a sparkling grain of sand on an endless beach -- who cannot find enough in life to be happy.

I wonder if he thinks he can also ignore basic contract law on the international scale? Or is he maybe planning to send US troops to assist the Russians when the Ukrainians refuse to recognise his genius.

Are we allowed to use fully spelled out bad language on Lemmy? Because I have a suggestion for Mr. Trump which involves an athletic approach to a rolling doughnut.

The answer is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election_in_Alaska#Results , and, while I can't isolate Haines, I note that overall, the GOP vote was up, and the Democrats down. I guess they didn't think it would come back to bite them then.

? Self immolation? I'm a Canadian, so we've been a bit distracted by other issues, but what two self immolations? Could you educate, please?

Or, like me, still on Windows 7, they could just no longer use Steam. Lots of games I can still play on this OS or in my browser. Maybe someday I'll go back to Linux, or maybe even React, just for the hell of it.

Really depends on whether or not you think adolescence is a mental illness or just a really nasty period (pun semi-intended) to live through. Sounds like Ashlyn has additional emotional issues that could be rooted in being a black girl in a white world, or having a demanding parent, or whatever. She needs help from a knowledgeable adult. Taking it out on Lena is not going to help either of them. Maybe ask Lena what she feels about it, if she knows what the root problem is, and if she wants to continue the friendship. It might make a difference to Lena to know you are there for her.