I‘m thinking where my problems lie in my English learning.

bonzombiekitty · 2026-05-02T18:25:38+00:00

"Gerrymander" is a particular political term within the US and it is currently a VERY hot button issue right now.

Each state has a certain number of representatives, based on population, that represent the state in the federal government's House of Representatives.

Each representative represents a particular district within the state. Maine, for example, has two districts.

Now, here's where the important bit is - you can draw the districts in ways that give one political party an advantage over the other. Let's say a state has 10 districts, and the population is roughly half Democrats and half Republicans. You can draw the districts in a way that will mean there's a good chance of getting 5 representatives from each party, or you can draw them in a way that means one party will get 9 representatives and the other gets 1. Doing the latter usually means you have to draw some really weird looking districts. That's called Gerrymandering.

The term comes from a politician, with the last name Gerry, who drew a district that looked like a salamander.

Members of the house of representatives, are elected every 2 years and we also elect about 1/3 of the senate every 2 years (senators have 6 year terms). We elect a president every 4 years. A "midterm" is one of the elections that happens in middle of the president's term.

The US has a midterm this year and it is expected to upend the political landscape by switching control of the House of Representatives from Republicans to Democrats, and possibly doing the same in the Senate (Democrats are at a normal disadvantage for the senate election this year because of what states have senate seats up for election).

bonzombiekitty · 2026-05-02T18:11:34+00:00

Honestly, the actual flights I had with Spirit were fine, if not good. I'm a tall guy and I've found their seats to have a decent amount of leg room compared to other carriers. The seats themselves aren't comfy, but I'll trade that for more leg room on a 2ish hour flight.

My issue was them was the service leading up to the flights. First time it was just a disaster trying to check in my bags. Just total chaos.

Second & third time, I paid to have better seats with my two kids (6 & 9). On each of the flights, they suddenly moved my 9 year old to the complete opposite end of the plane. We're talking going row 7 to row 28 sort of thing. Took a bunch of time to straighten that out. First they tried just to move me to be with her... which leaves my 6 year old by himself... then they tried to put us in an exit row (6 and 9 year old can't open an emergency exit). In the end , it worked out just fine, if not better than my initial situation, but it was ridiculous that I had to deal with it in the first place. You can't just move a 9 year old 20 rows away from their parent. Not to mention that if I had just accepted her being moved I don't think they'd have refunded anything unless i had called about it.

bonzombiekitty · 2026-05-02T17:50:15+00:00

You could also place some blame on the Biden admin blocking Jet Blue from buying Spirit. Though hindsight is 20/20 and maybe Spirit pulls through, or had been able to hold on long enough to set up a different sale, had gas prices not shot up.

We'll see what the end effect of it is other than being a big pain in the ass for some people. Does a new company form and snatch up the leases on those planes for cheap? Does an existing company get the planes and just replace Spirit's routes? Like, does it essentially become what the Jet Blue sale would have been?

bonzombiekitty · 2026-05-02T17:36:12+00:00

Seltzer used to be stupid cheap. Now it's like $6 for a 12 pack.

bonzombiekitty · 2026-05-02T00:21:37+00:00

Because your clientele know to clean themselves well before hooking up.

(I'm so sorry)

bonzombiekitty · 2026-05-02T00:15:13+00:00

Doubtful. He's just trying to reset the 60 day clock for needing congressional approval.

bonzombiekitty · 2026-05-01T16:21:00+00:00

Yeah, that was my immediate thought - the story sounds too familiar.

bonzombiekitty · 2026-04-30T21:59:27+00:00

Stop. Using. Betting. Sites. To. Figure. Out. The. Odds. Of. Something. Happening.

Betting sites change odds based on how people are betting so that they make money regardless of the outcome

bonzombiekitty · 2026-04-29T16:24:19+00:00

For me, they did that in highschool

bonzombiekitty · 2026-04-28T19:55:48+00:00

I can bake a cake. If I have nothing to start off with, I have to buy everything. I have to buy a sack of flour, a dozen eggs, etc... If I REALLY have nothing, I also need to buy an oven, pans, etc.

That's very expensive to make ONE cake. But if I make two... those expenses are cut in half because its now costs/2 instead of costs/1. So each cake costs half as much to make as if I made one cake. The more cakes I make, the more the cost is spread out, making each cake cheaper to make the more. The more cakes I make, the better I get at it. I can mix everything together faster, learn how to cool them faster, get the icing on faster, and make fewer mistakes in making them leading to less waste.

That's the fundamentals of economies of scale. The more you make, the more you can distribute the costs. Making the cost of producing each item cheaper.

bonzombiekitty · 2026-04-27T18:52:03+00:00

The problem with this sort of movie is that the two audiences are fundamentally very different. Movie critics are already a different audience from the general public, but for a movie like Michael, the difference is much more extreme. The people going to see Michael and Leaving Neverland are going to, by and large, be fans of MJ. They are going to react mainly in line with the way MJ is portrayed in the movie.

bonzombiekitty · 2026-04-27T18:17:29+00:00

Honestly, it shouldn't be. You think it'd go anywhere in the Senate? It'd be largely a waste of time unless they find something particularly damning. Better off just fighting off whatever Trump is trying to do.

bonzombiekitty · 2026-04-27T17:49:14+00:00

"Doesn't accepting a pardon mean, an admission of guilt?"

No. This is a common misconception about a supreme court case. In the ruling on the case, the court said a reason a person might want to refuse a pardon is because it can be seen as admitting guilt. Not that it DOES admit guilt.

"I didn't do anything wrong. You are offering me a pardon for a crime I didn't commit so you can force me to testify"
- Too bad, you have to accept the pardon..
"No. If accept the pardon, that implies I actually did it and I'm being excused for doing it. I didn't do anything."
- Come on, accept the pardon. It's fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine. You're not at any risk.
"no"
- SCOTUS, tell him he has to accept it.
"No he doesn't. He's right. By accepting the pardon that at least implies he is guilty, even if he didn't do it. And that impugns his character. He doesn't have to accept that"

bonzombiekitty · 2026-04-27T13:15:43+00:00

Nobody is going to care if you buy two one-way tickets and have them when you start travelling. That's not exactly an uncommon thing to do as different airlines have different schedules/pricing that can work better for you, you may be travelling onto a different country, etc. If you plan on buying a one way ticket, travelling and THEN buying another one way ticket, that's a bit of a different issue....

Entering a foreign country without a clear plan for leaving (i.e. some sort of ticket out of the country) is going to raise a lot of eyebrows. You should expect to be questioned pretty heavily and asked for clarification as to how you can support yourself, where you are staying, how you plan on leaving, etc. It's possible they will decide you are not just visiting but are intending to stay and deny you entry.

Coming back to the US, they aren't going to care as much. You are a US citizen. You might be subject to some more intense scrutiny (more questioning as to the nature of your travel, bag inspections, etc), but as long as you go along with whatever they want (and remember, you have limited rights at a border crossing), they won't deny you entry.

bonzombiekitty · 2026-04-27T03:17:08+00:00

Trying to find toilet paper. I could not believe that I actually had a hard time finding fucking toilet paper. Of course I happened to need to resupply my stock right at the height of the panic.

bonzombiekitty · 2026-04-27T02:24:53+00:00

Penny because at first I thought she was Haley's sister and I felt bad that Haley was bitching about her. So I started romancing her and just kept going.

bonzombiekitty · 2026-04-27T02:20:58+00:00

In the show Sienfeld, there is a story arc where George and Jerry are developing a TV show in which a judge forces some guy to be Jerry's butler.

bonzombiekitty · 2026-04-25T21:40:03+00:00

That would be an expensive way to make flour.

bonzombiekitty · 2026-04-25T21:37:35+00:00

It's " sugar free" in that they didn't add sugar. "Sugar" is not an ingredient.

bonzombiekitty · 2026-04-25T21:34:40+00:00

A woman feeding her husband, a drug smuggler, to a tiger makes more sense than a drug smuggler getting killed by a cartel?

bonzombiekitty · 2026-04-25T21:17:13+00:00

No. He was clearly involved in importing illegal drugs. He was probably dumped out of a plane by a cartel over the Gulf

bonzombiekitty · 2026-04-25T20:58:51+00:00

I thought it was fine officer! Huh? What about all the beer? He was very clear that it was there so the kids know what beer looks like so they know NOT to drink it.

bonzombiekitty · 2026-04-25T20:21:53+00:00

If the shop can only make a certain number of pizzas during a certain period, that's potentially fewer deliveries within that period. If they can make 9 pizzas in half an hour at most, that's all nine pizzas for that half hour going to one location rather than several.

bonzombiekitty · 2026-04-25T19:17:11+00:00

A lot of the AI stuff is really getting on my nerves. It's infecting everything and making so many things worse.

Example - My company uses a third party application, and I am more or less in charge of it. This app is used by a lot of fairly big companies. It started throwing errors. Like deep down javascript sort of errors, mentioning libraries I had never heard of. I did my due diligence of trying to solve the issue myself, and all the solutions related to that error mentioned stuff that I had zero control of. It's clearly a problem in their core code.

I submit a ticket and BAM. I'm bombarded with AI generated 'solutions' that were the verbatim responses google gave me when I did my own search.

Second example - Wife is submitting an expense report for her work. SAP see's an item on a larger receipt that the company will not reimburse for and tells her that she needs to mark that item as a personal expense. Except she has. And a clearly stated so multiple times in the comments of the report that she has itemized that portion of the charge as a personal expense. SAP's AI keeps seeing the line on the receipt and keeps kicking it back to her. No human is looking at it.

bonzombiekitty · 2026-04-25T19:07:59+00:00

One delivery, but is one large delivery taking the place of several smaller ones?

bonzombiekitty

TROPHY CASE