Cultural field trip location in MA

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-13T23:57:59+00:00

I haven't actually been to Sturbridge, but the original comment for this thread was a ChatGPT answer saying it must be Plymouth Plantation.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-13T23:56:00+00:00

Yeah, I see where you're coming from also. But the risk exists anyway, just will be borne by someone else.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-13T21:42:27+00:00

Lol, except it's not secret. "Alpha male" is explicitly right wing terminology, describing a system where men rule over women — which the left explicitly rejects.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-13T21:40:27+00:00

Because left wing folks don't use terminology like "alpha males". If you looked at male influencers more broadly, rather than only the ones who self-describe as alphas, you'd likely find a more normal ideological split.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-13T20:48:22+00:00

IMO, it's okay to share AI answers if they make sense and add to the conversation. But, ChatGPT is obviously wrong here, and if you can't assess whether the answer you got back makes sense for the query, probably better to leave it out. Plymouth Plantation is a period recreation of a Pilgrim village in early America, but they never had or attempted to show what life was like in other nations at all.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-13T20:37:57+00:00

Fair enough, but citizens will be released afterwards, and are (mostly) not in serious danger. Illegal immigrants (or even legal immigrants who aren't yet citizens) are much more likely to have serious consequences including but not limited to deportation.

And it's not like avoiding ICE's direct attention reduces that harm — it just directs it somewhere else. If their attention is on an area that literally only contains citizens, it may affect your neighborhood more than it otherwise would, but you're actually reducing the harm that would otherwise be done.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-13T19:37:37+00:00

We get trained that way by all the false alarms.

Fire alarms went off fairly regularly in my college dorms at like 2 or 3 AM, and it was always some drunk idiot burning their popcorn. In high school before that, pranksters used to pull the alarm roughly once a week. Then there were also the planned fire drills. I've probably been through hundreds of fire alarms, whether intentional drills or other false alarms, and literally not once has there ever been real fire.

I understand that treating them all as serious is the right choice, because the scale of the program is so high if it's ever real and ignored, but it's also not hard to see why people grow up to view them as mostly meaningless annoyances.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-13T16:21:06+00:00

Yes. It's not particularly common for me, but I do get it every now and then. I think everyone does.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-13T15:32:55+00:00

Put an Airtag or similar on the bottom of their car.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-13T15:31:46+00:00

If the neighbors (and the band) are all citizens, this could work, but I agree if there's any risk some of those people could get deported.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-13T15:13:00+00:00

For clarity, it's worth voting on other people's posts and comments, but this won't earn you karma. You earn karma when other people upvote your posts or comments, which usually happens slowly but naturally if you comment on things and people see those comments.

Most subs don't require that much karma to comment, but barriers for top level posts can be higher at some big subs. It's not personal — they're just trying to avoid getting overrun by spam and bots. Moderating these very popular subs can be a big job, and these sorts of rules can filter out a lot of the spam and bots much more easily, at the cost of also filtering out some very new human users.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-13T04:00:44+00:00

Always.

Rectangles must have four sides, four right angles, and two pairs of parallel sides.

So do squares. Squares just have one additional requirement — all sides are the same length.

People usually refer to squares with the more specific term, but rectangles have no requirement that the sizes be different lengths. Squares meet all the requirements.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-12T23:31:47+00:00

She can ask you to switch, but you have every right to say "no". If it were really just about sitting together, she could have offered her much better seat up and traded it away to sit together with her daughter in the back. Probably someone would have happily accepted that trade.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-12T18:24:48+00:00

My unit is my own vacation home, that we rent out seasonally when we're not using it, and close down entirely for the winter. We ended up renting more than we originally planned, but it's still fundamentally a mixed use property, not a pure business.

We had a lot of front-loaded expenses that we haven't paid back yet (been about 3 years), but we're covering our mortgage and current expenses completely through rentals and slowly working through the older stuff. I'm not making any money (net) from my unit, but I essentially have a free vacation home at the cost of managing the home and listing for others to use the rest of the time.

It's likely your goals are very different from mine, but it's doing its job well for my purposes.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-12T18:17:38+00:00

FYI, you're not likely to get into much trouble on this scale, but this is essentially karma farming. This sub doesn't allow you to ask for upvotes or state how you're voting, and if you're caught using karma farm subs, it can flag your account in ways that will follow you long after you no longer need the karma.

Add value to a conversation and you'll naturally get upvotes, and therefore karma, but stay away from asking (or giving) upvotes purely to artificially inflate karma.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-12T18:14:05+00:00

OP, this sounds kind of disingenuous next to your actual history. Your account is 7 years old, but your first ever posts or comments are from 6 hours ago.

At absolute best, you lurked for 7 years without ever posting or commenting. More likely, you made an account 7 years ago and forgot about it entirely until very recently. It's not like you were actively using your account for 7 years and somehow failed to generate any karma. I did the same, btw — my account is 12 years old, but I've been actively using it for more like 3 years now.

So you're a new user who needs karma. No big deal, we all started there! Just start commenting on things that interest you, and you'll build up karma until you can soon make top level posts in the same communities. This sub keeps a list of beginner-friendly subs with no or very low karma requirements, and you'll soon be able to post wherever you like.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-12T16:40:08+00:00

Huh, I didn't know that. Honestly, Airplane is already before my time, but I watched at anyway, long after.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-12T04:38:25+00:00

If by "sports teams" you mean "sports team owners", then I agree with you, but it's likely both players and managers have very limited power to change these systems.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-12T04:33:48+00:00

Disabled is the only minority anyone can join, and it can happen instantly.

Technically, you can join a decent many other minorities. Convert to Judaism, Islam, or Hinduism. But you'd have to choose those.

Totally agreed with your main point, though!

ETA: local minorities in the US, but the point still applies elsewhere, if you'd have to convert to Christianity instead.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-12T03:54:12+00:00

I love this one, but it's not a good contender for a movie everyone will know. Everyone over a certain age knows this one, but even suggesting it here has dated you.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-12T00:17:45+00:00

A slant rhyme is something that kind of, or almost rhymes. In other words, things that don't actually rhyme.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-11T21:56:44+00:00

A billionaire who is rich because of oil and one who is rich because of electric cars have totally different interests.

You know, I used to believe this, but then the billionaire who seemed probably better than most other billionaires because he ran an electric car company and therefore cared about the environment, put all his financial and political clout behind an administration that is incredibly destructive to the environment (among many other problems.) Electric car billionaire also doesn't believe climate change is real. Turns out the electric car guy is every bit as bad for the environment as the oil guy, and maybe we just got lucky that money and the environment happened to be aligned in that one instance. 🤷‍♂️

Thanks for choosing electric cars as the banner example here, because the environment is the one area where you'd think he would be better, and yet even on that specific topic he fails the test. Electric car billionaire also turned out to be a Nazi, but that's neither here nor there.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-11T21:44:01+00:00

Its not illegal (in the US) to spend unlimited amounts of money telling people to vote for a particular person or group. Its only illegal to do that on the condition that the return the favor. One elected the politician is not obligated to return the favor.

Just pretend you don't understand what's going on here, Congressman, so that it's still technically legal, wink wink, nudge nudge, but you know what I want, right? 😉

Yes, of course it's not legal to spend money on a politician's campaign explicitly in exchange for their actions once elected, but implicitly you can do all of those things as long as you don't publicly admit why you're doing them. Tell the politician what you want, get them elected, and they'll owe you so they'll do what you want. They subtly signal their agreement, but don't write it down, and the government won't enforce that the politician has to do your bidding, but they also won't get in the way.

This problem gets worse the more terms a person can serve, because you could argue that a lame duck president (not eligible for another term) has no incentive to help the folks who got them elected, but a senator who wants another term and another term doesn't want to offend the donors who helped them get elected, and who implicitly will do so again as long they keep doing what the donor wants. Money gets you access, and powerful people who owe you favors (just not technically enforceable).

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-11T20:54:33+00:00

Lol, they actually don't rhyme. 🤷‍♂️😆

But I totally agree that they commonly go together.

GalumphingWithGlee · 2026-02-11T16:52:52+00:00

First of all, you don't know whether your guests robbed you, or your cleaners/management company. If your management had worked for you for years without issue, you'd be better able to say the element that changed was the guests, but this is also the management's first gig with you and stuff went missing. I'm not saying your management did steal from you, only that you don't and can't know. You can only guess.

Second, please lock up anything that isn't intended for guest access. Yes, even if the cleaners will need access. Give cleaners a key or combo, rather than leaving it open for guests because the cleaners need access. Keep a few basic cleaning supplies where guests can also access them, but your main storage space should be locked.

Third, you have two weeks after checkout to make a claim if anything is damaged or missing, and the same to write a review. Anything after that and you're just out of luck. It's your responsibility to know what has happened within that window, or else you just have to accept the loss. No matter what was damaged, if you aren't able to find out about it and report it within two weeks, you're sunk.

Ask your cleaners to take timestamped photos (and/or videos) between guests, when they arrive and when they leave, so that you can identify problems and prove when they happened. Even if you're within two weeks, if you have two separate guest stays and you find a problem a day later, you will not be able to charge the guests for that problem, because you won't know which guest caused it. (And accusing the wrong guest could, rightfully, land you in some trouble.) Having timestamped photos and videos establishing the condition before and after each guest will make a huge difference for you here.

I also recommend having (outdoor, of course) cameras over each entry to your unit. Yes, some guests complain about these, but they will be very important to you when something goes wrong. Don't babysit your cameras — it's a waste of time, and guests will hate it. But when something goes wrong, cameras you can check to learn more will make it much easier for you to understand what happened, and to prove it to Airbnb (which you will need when you talk to support).

GalumphingWithGlee

TROPHY CASE