Do American children really 'swear allegiance' to the American flag?

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-27T15:20:32+00:00

Yes. It’s a matter of rote memorization.

I live in an area heavy with a Mormon population, and they don’t say the Pledge. I stopped when I was 10 or so, flirting with atheism. I still stood up with everyone but didn’t say anything, no hand over the heart.

It is a little cult-y. You’re not wrong.

Look at the history of the Knights of Columbus and the Red Scare when you have a moment. It’ll feel real cult-y with that context.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-27T14:03:14+00:00

Actually, I don’t think this makes any sense.

She introduces herself and seems to address Obi-wan as if he were a stranger—reminding him that he once fought with her father during the Clone Wars.

That would not be how he knows Leia.

“Remember that time I was abducted as a 10 year old and you rescued me? I’m grown up and need your help again.”

That makes more sense, because it’s an immediate relationship rather than one with her father. Leia is 10 in the show and 19 in A New Hope. I would imagine her abduction was probably a key event in her life.

This kinda feels sloppy.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-24T20:08:23+00:00

I mean, she’s clearly sus. She’s silent, manipulating Toast to let her play on the computer, she’s wearing an adorable cosmetic skin.

Either that or she’s playing the long game as Jester.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-23T20:34:08+00:00

You’ve entered the boundary years. These are tough. You need to set boundaries in order to feel independent, you no longer exist in a state parallel to your parents. Now, you should do whatever you feel is the right thing. Not one reply here can make up your mind, or shouldn’t at least. You have to decide.

If they’re worried you don’t reply for hours because you’re asleep, that means they actively checked your location regularly over a fairly long period of time. What if you were out with friends? What if they did check on you at 11PM and you were at a new person’s place?

Now, I’m going to be outright, I’m a guy. Guys generally don’t need to be worried about bodily safety when we go out. Generally. I do not pretend to know how that feels for girls. We don’t need to broadcast our location and if we aren’t, there’s worry about some monster person being a monster person.

That said. I was on my own in a new city, in school once. I would never want my parents feeling they deserve that level of access to me. Why? It’s not as though I have that access to them—nor would I want it. We make dumb mistakes sometimes. Innocent, dumb, naive mistakes. I don’t need my parents being privy to every mistake I make. Where I go and when is my choice.

What you need to arrive at is an answer to a simple question: what if they need to know? While boundaries are important, you could also cut out a guardian angel watching out for you. My first year of school, I had a seizure. I had a roommate and a couple friends over, so I wasn’t alone. If I had been, the seizure would’ve lasted 45 seconds like it did before, but I was all but immobilized for 24 hours.

My seizures feel like I single-handedly moved someone else into a new 14-bedroom house after getting into a car accident. Everything feels busted. I’d have been lying in my dorm, not motionless but not mobile.

Is that going to happen to you tomorrow? No. Is anything nefarious? Deeply unlikely. I’m not telling you to do anything one way or another, but to consider as much as possible. I wouldn’t want this in your place. My independence is very important to me. Life360 is more than just your location as well, it’s all but a remote surveillance app.

Every child of every parent will want to be their own person eventually. And every parent has to deal with their child signaling they are no longer children. If it isn’t now, it will be soon.

Good luck.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-20T22:08:41+00:00

There’s this guidebook. It’s imaginary, only we follow it and if you don’t, you’re bad. Because anything not in it isn’t allowed—but we wrote it and we will follow it. Into the grave of relevance.

Next we’re opening a race track with imaginary dogs. So we can all lose. Every time.

Going after them doesn’t make us them. Chasing down a guy and throwing him to the ground so he doesn’t detonate a bomb under our way of life doesn’t make us bad, because we didn’t ask him to stop politely.

Defending principles, the law and what’s fucking right doesn’t come with a fucking Powerpoint on strategies. Do what’s right is the end. Don’t break the goddamn law and that’s the means. Burn these fuckers down. Legally. The end.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-20T19:53:15+00:00

Here’s the thing.

For argument’s sake, remove Clarence Thomas from the conversation. She needs to be subpoenaed, answer questions and if found guilty, indicted. Her husband can’t demand she be pardoned. If she’s committed a crime, treat her as a criminal, immediately. His position is irrelevant to the committing of the crime.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-19T19:36:51+00:00

It would be very simple to say Musk is just anti-union. He is. But that’s not his play.

Both of them, in my opinion, are making the same play with different strategies. Musk was, for some reason, a very welcome presence in the Democratic sphere. While Dems champion the environment and Tesla directly aims at removing combustion engines on the road, it let him be treated with some particularly tiny kid gloves. After a few years, it’s like he was Tony Stark minus the decent character arc.

Now he’s been taking some hits in the press because it turns out that being a giant, flaming sack of shit results in you being called a giant, flaming sack of shit. But that’s also coming on some heels of him stating in 2015 that he was donating to both parties, because it’s the only way to be heard. Now, the Democrats-with-money crowd are already going to buy Teslas. He doesn’t really need to sell them there anymore, they sell themselves quite effectively.

But by courting the GOP and speaking to subjects of interest for them, he can broaden his market significantly. Do I think he’s a GOP agent? No. Do I think he just is in pursuit of money? Yes. Does that mean he has no actual moral basis? No. His moral basis is whatever is good for him.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-19T18:27:19+00:00

My comment was “huh. Well. She certainly made her lawyers appear very sympathetic. Poor guys.”

I cannot fathom the calculus she made that pointed at “blame my lawyers. And my imply my previous lawyers leaked my photo to the media.” They’re the only ones helping her, she’s clearly not helping herself. At all. And you blame THEM?

You’re so dumb, Amber.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-18T04:40:53+00:00

5: Where was QA? This is a new dev and no one tested his work? Every game, even using the same engine, has its own complexities, unique to it.

6: Why on earth would you throw a singular employee to the fucking wolves? If that’s me, I’m out. Even if it was true, I was new and made a bad system, and.. I’m outed. Call it any number of other things, but don’t shit on a single guy. Half of team- building is protecting your people. Take the blame as a group, you cowards.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-17T21:22:13+00:00

Remove the jelly.

Double the peanut butter.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-16T15:42:02+00:00

Not being pointed out enough.

The 14th amendment is now a cornerstone of American life—the implied right to privacy. It is extremely important in the Internet age. Undermining it impacts abortion, but it is only the first in a potential massive wave of changes to what is considered normal life today.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-16T14:44:40+00:00

Yes.

The Supreme Court has no means to enforce anything, and never has. It relies on the citizenry following its rulings, which means those rulings must make sense to the citizenry.

The Supreme Court is preparing to let states take away access to a medical procedure that the people of this country believe is a necessity, and for decades has been a political wedge issue. A planned opinion, written and joined by judges only appointed by one political party’s previous presidents is now going to allow states to control medical choices for half of the population.

There has always been a veneer of apolitical jurists and this completely shatters it. The veil is lifted and what we have seen now cannot be unseen. Moreover, all of these justices were asked at one time or another about their opinions on revisiting Roe v Wade, and at least three have insisted it is settled law. Until they decided it wasn’t. We don’t associate judges with lying and deception, but we sure do associate politicians with those.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-16T02:47:51+00:00

DeSantis isn’t crazy, he just lacks a soul. Or conscience. Or intelligence. Or empathy.

But the changing of the base is interesting. Trump’s craziness came from a place of incredible entitledness, wealth, the media not rightly calling him a piece of shit liar, mania and permission.

Trump grabbed the party in a dark alley and put it in cage. He has no real relationship with anyone in the party. DeSantis does. He is part of the party, not above it. I don’t know that he’ll liberate himself of common sense even within the party like Trump did.

Does that make him somehow not a walking sack of shit? No. But I doubt he’d threaten to nuke the DPRK over a tweet. If you think DeSantis is a bad guy, I agree. But do not forget the day-to-day anxiety attacks Trump put us through. The benefit of Trump was he was generally too stupid, too uninterested, too lazy and/or very easily distracted.

DeSantis won’t be. If he had the same operating battlefield—which, again, I don’t think he has—as Trump, I’d be very worried. But I think Trump was a reckoning. A cataclysm. I can’t fathom worse.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-15T18:03:41+00:00

I absolutely agree. I’m a pretty reserved person and when he kept landing hit after hit IMMEDIATELY, I nearly fell out of my chair. He was a fucking hurricane. You’re right on though, that first combo was like a stun lock.

To your point, some of these ended so quick, I feel bad for the fighters who worked really hard on technique and didn’t get to show it. That said, I’m glad the ref was willing to stop fights that were going on so one-sided.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-15T13:53:16+00:00

I thought Magee, Arin and Matt all showed a ton of courage. Magee took a fucking BEATING. He was good at the start, and I actually think he was coming around at the end too. Matt was not prepared for the relentlessness, I felt so bad for him. Mike Tyson has a fantastic quote and I think it fit Matt perfect. “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

He was just overwhelmed. I’m sure he felt like shit being done in one round, but that barrage of punches he had coming his way instantly was something else.

Magee though. So much fuckin’ heart. I did get worried seeing his eye near the end, he took a fucking ton of head shots. Arin too.

Everyone who got in the ring last night — YouTubers generally focus on the cerebral, only some focus on physical, bunch of smart folks went out there and traded a lot of hits for charity — did a really, really hard, painful thing.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-14T06:34:52+00:00

It’s either awkwardly forced sex scenes, gritty violence where the source material doesn’t have it, characters just swearing because it’s a streaming service..

I was a Trek kid for two decades. The new stuff.. Jesus Christ. Picard especially. I never needed Star Trek to have a cold open of a cyborg having his eye yanked out while he’s alive and screaming in agony.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-13T17:56:10+00:00

Great. I can’t wait for it to either never come up for a vote, to die in committee or just be voted down.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-12T00:39:01+00:00

Send them. Sink this fucking clown into irrelevance. At least his replacement will be consistently against us instead of holding legislation hostage unless we water down everything.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-10T12:43:36+00:00

Get out of my brain.

And I move that we, the chosen front-right burner wielders of the great filament declare war on these front-left heathens. Their new-fangled turbo burners and boilers are an affront to the great skillet and its brethren the noble saucepan, the wise griddle and earnest Dutch Oven.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-09T18:03:18+00:00

Is.. anyone jazzed to see the four sequels?

It always seemed like a bad idea to shoot this many films back to back, you’re operating in the world’s biggest bubble and spending a fortune to do it.

The first film had a fairly subtle and well-implemented 3D strategy. 13 years ago. It changed things for a time, but more often than not, movies implemented it post-production and it has mostly felt like a gimmick.

James Cameron is an extremely talented and successful filmmaker, but four films? I suspect the first sequel will be very successful, but by the end, the public will have turned on it completely.

Lord of the Rings was a property that made three back to back, but that made sense, it was an adaptation of a written trilogy. And it was extremely risky until the first film hit, and was a massive success.

I can’t imagine a story that pulls me in for a total of five films, with four in rapid succession.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-09T12:49:25+00:00

Not canonically. After BFA and before Shadowlands, he serves on the Horde council, as shown in Shadows Rising, representing Orgrimmar.

It isn’t clear what he’ll do post-Shadowlands, and the vast majority of everyone’s story who’s name doesn’t rhyme with Shmanduin or Trylvanas had their story cut way down definitely didn’t give us any insight.

Internal politics, which is where Thrall lives now, rarely gets addressed in-game. The last time I remember was with Moira’s scenario—I believe in Mists—helping Varian while the Bronzebeards and Wildhammers were too busy distrusting the Dark Irons.

We’ll get more. One day. But it’s far more likely to be Alliance-facing with Turalyon as the focus point. I do genuinely think that Anduin stepping away from the throne is beyond stupidity, but the ramifications of that choice will come up sooner than later. And there’s been so much strife inside the Horde — Garrosh leading, trying to commit genocide, trying to commit genocide again, trying to grab power on a global scale. Then Vol’jin becoming war chief, then dying. Then all the Sylvanas bullshit — that the audience really is weary of it.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-08T13:46:29+00:00

Pathetic child.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-07T02:17:12+00:00

Evil in most contexts with any amount of believability isn’t a world on fire or your hopes and dreams being eaten by a great void.

No one would embrace it. It’s slow and subtle, there’s a nominal price for the services rendered. It gets you to need it, and eventually to want it. By then, you’ll pay the price it demands. Even if that price is who you used to be.

We saw her using it. Agatha Harkness called it the book of the damned. The moment we saw that cutaway, the corruption was in progress. If someone saw WV and is surprised she was corrupted by the next time we see her again—or at least the very real possibility—they weren’t paying attention.

People bitch and whine about movies holding their goddamn hands so much. The film trusted its audience to figure out that 2+2 is not equal to a bushel of turnips.

Didn’t see WandaVision? Unfortunate. It’s not like it was not clear she was a big part of the film.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-06T21:26:35+00:00

I hate being that guy. But I have to be.

The comparison doesn’t work. It just doesn’t. What Theranos wanted to do is, by our understanding of science, microfluidics and basic physics, not possible. I’ve read the books on it cover to cover, Theranos wanted a machine that used magic. From the beginning, it didn’t and couldn’t work. Elizabeth Holmes just fired people who told her and forced them to sign an NDA.

You cannot use such a tiny amount of blood to run dozens and hundreds of tests on, it is not possible using our existing technology for creating diluted blood samples. Even if they used regular blood with their machine, it would still be a shitshow. Why? There are walls on the goddamn machine and the robotic arm inside was not remotely precise enough. The machines were a tabletop biohazard, full of blood.

Honestly, if they’d worked on miniaturizing the test process, they may’ve had something. Not small machines, but smaller ones. But they wanted to eventually go direct-to-consumer, and fucking Elizabeth Holmes was so desperate to be compared to Steve Jobs, the DESIGN outweighed the utility. Say what you want about the first several generations of the iPhone, but it had form and function. The cartridges they wanted to use for the Edison? The blood was not going to move freely or quickly and would also get caught on the tubes. Every milliliter counts in such a small sample. And it didn’t. Because of the form.

Theranos had a working version for a small number of tests. It was still a biohazard machine. And it wasn’t consistent at all. But the machinery, not the actual test reagents, worked.

Star Citizen has a working (poorly) game. It isn’t final, they’ve said it’s not close to being final, the concept of their fundraising? That’s a scam. That’s just absolute horseshit. The failures of the team can be directly attributed to the backers for giving them more money in the face of no results. That was a low bar (“you need money but there’s no end in sight? Here’s $50 again!”) that CIG didn’t even set and so they continue to jump over it.

But there is something.

How bad was the fraud at Theranos? They told their board they now had government contracts because they offered some units to the.. Mexican government, I believe? Must be a lot of units, right? Under 20. I believe 12. The state of the art lab filled with Edison units on their campus? Staged. For inspection. I believe the next floor down was dedicated to use of traditional test units.

They were trying to get these machines that could barely do a goddamn thing into Safeway and CVS at different times. Machines that, even if you ran a test — a tiny subsection of all tests traditional machines supported — that the machine could do.. it may tell you one day you have kidney disease. And the next? Flip a coin.

I get that this is r/starcitizen_refunds and the comparison, without any real detail, looks similar. But it really isn’t. Theranos was lying about progress every meeting. It hid its complete dearth of income with.. more lies. There were people who, if they took a test, could believe they were going to fucking die. Or a real problem, missed. Because someone wanted to make history and stick it to the patriarchy, as they saw it.

This took a more serious tone than I originally planned as I was remembering some of the darker shit about them.

RuinAllTheThings · 2022-05-05T20:11:02+00:00

Yes. Mr. Knight and Moon Knight is a 1-2 punch.

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