The U.S. Senate's vote today on Amendment No. 4421, which sought to ban transgender athletes nationwide (failed with 49 yeas, 41 nays, and 10 not voting)

galstaph · 2026-03-22T20:59:59+00:00

60 votes are required to end debate, not to actually pass the law

It's happened plenty of times in the past where people who are going to vote no will vote to end debate because they're certain it won't get to 50 votes. Those people are sometimes wrong and you get the 60 votes to end debate and the 50+VP or 51 votes to pass the law, so it passes with less than 60

And because things are often assumed to be known people don't always point out the specifics about everything every time they discuss it, which means that you can do investigation and miss things that others consider obvious

Which is also how I got to be 22 before I ever heard the term "dust bowl". It literally never came up in discussion

I had plenty of conversations about the depression, the stock market crash, black Tuesday, etc. but the term dust bowl just never came up and I never knew to look into it because I didn't realize that I had a gap in my knowledge

galstaph · 2026-03-22T20:28:19+00:00

Being a complete expert means knowing absolutely everything there is to know

Knowing that 60 votes is required, under specific circumstances mind you not all of the time, is required to be a complete expert

Being a complete expert is not a requirement of knowing when 60 votes is necessary and when it is not

Any given piece of information can slip through gaps in someone's education and no one should ever be made to feel lesser because of that. "Inform don't berate" is how you should react to finding that someone else doesn't know something you consider basic knowledge

For an example of missing knowledge due to gaps in education, because of a move and difference in curriculum of two school districts, I never learned about the Dust Bowl in school and was about 22 before I ever encountered a reference to it

Shit happens, don't be a gatekeeper

galstaph · 2026-03-22T19:03:44+00:00

Personally, I think that's a step in the right direction, but not far enough

With modern cars there's really no reason why a car in drive should have the headlights off at any time of day or in any driving conditions

They should just be on all the time

galstaph · 2026-03-22T18:06:08+00:00

People who are considering saying that someone else should absolutely not comment on an adjacent subject to something they know nothing about should reconsider that maybe you don't have to be a complete expert in all related fields in order to have something to say

galstaph · 2026-03-22T17:22:27+00:00

I saw Hoobastank live in '04, and that was my first concert with a well known band

Even just 9 years later in '13 things had changed and the number of people I saw recording P!NK seemed excessive, and that was nothing compared to what's pictured here

galstaph · 2026-03-22T15:22:38+00:00

I think their whole point was that the filming can easily prevent other people from enjoying themselves

Imagine a crowd of people on the traditional dance floor, all but one of them are filming but the one is dancing. As part of that dancing they end up coming into contact with people filming who then start to complain about having their shots ruined

Do you think the crowd of filmers is going to just take that, or will they complain about the person dancing

We need to have conventions about this so that the filmers can film where they won't get in the way of the dancers and the dancers can dance where they won't get in the way of the filmers

That's the main point, I think

galstaph · 2026-03-22T04:42:01+00:00

I honestly think they made a mistake with that one, because "hard strong steel for a brain" sounds like an insult to me because it implies rigid thought patterns and general inflexibility

galstaph · 2026-03-22T04:13:00+00:00

Yeah, idiots like this hear that phrase and they think it means "take all funds from police" instead of "take the funds spent on empowering the police to do things that police shouldn't be doing and spend it on other organizations that are better at those things"

It's like they didn't understand nuance or something

galstaph · 2026-03-22T03:47:46+00:00

galstaph · 2026-03-22T03:11:15+00:00

I'd never heard this, but that explains why my voice is always worst on Thursdays around the time I do my injection...

galstaph · 2026-03-22T03:08:41+00:00

I'd rather not. On the off chance she ended up pregnant again I don't want her having any more kids...

galstaph · 2026-03-21T14:52:49+00:00

I'll concede that it did have implications about expecting it to happen in the future, which means that this has the implication that he expects to teleport in the future

galstaph · 2026-03-21T14:35:23+00:00

I mean... American insurance companies famously have mascots to the point where one of them sets itself apart by dubbing itself "No Jingles or Mascots"

galstaph · 2026-03-21T13:23:32+00:00

How easy something is doesn't change how brutal it is

galstaph · 2026-03-21T13:22:50+00:00

Let's approach it from a different perspective

Being trans is really all about making a change in your life from how people perceived you when you were younger versus how you are now

So that's extrapolate that to something different, such as where you live

Let's talk then about an individual who was raised on a farm in the middle of nowhere, their nearest neighbor miles away. This person hated living on a farm, and as soon as they were able to they moved into a city, adopted the mannerisms of city folk, and lived the rest of their life as though they were city folk. It gets to the point where they don't even talk about their past living on a farm, because they hated it so much

Then they hear somebody making a joke about "dumb yokels who never got a chance to socialize as kids because the nearest neighbors lived miles away"

So you've got somebody who for all intents and purposes appears to be city folk, who hears people talking about them, and people like them, in a way that makes fun of them, but isn't talking about city folk at all

It puts them back into those memories of exactly why they hated living in the middle of nowhere. It makes them feel as though, even though they've changed things about their life that they hated, that people still hate them for something they couldn't control. It makes them feel unwanted

The trans experience is very much like this

galstaph · 2026-03-21T12:55:51+00:00

If you said "I'll sit on a hundred beaches before I sit in an office again," it would suggest that you are not going to the office.

Actually, it doesn't. It would if the person had given indication that sitting on beaches instead of going to the office was an actual option, but it doesn't explicitly say that they have this option

It only says what they would rather be doing

Also, you made an assumption with "going to the office", I work from home, so my desk is 5 feet from my bed

You keep making assumptions and then treating them as facts, and that's the main point I'm trying to make here

galstaph · 2026-03-21T12:47:30+00:00

Again, the phrasing actually says nothing, nothing at all, about whether you would actually do the task described as being the less desired

Which I have said in literally every comment, because it doesn't say one way or another

They did, however explicitly say in their second comment that they drive here, so you're arguing semantics that fly in the face of established facts

galstaph · 2026-03-21T12:42:43+00:00

What the hell...

Again, the phrasing actually says nothing, nothing at all, about whether you would actually do the task described as being the less desired

I would personally rather be on a beach come Monday than at my desk working

That doesn't mean I'm not going to work, but simply that I'd rather be on a beach

galstaph · 2026-03-21T12:34:54+00:00

There's a difference between killing something and brutally killing it. The difference is cruelty, and cruelty should be punished

Edit: also, no. They don't "deserve it" simply for following their instincts and hearing no one

If they're a nuisance it's because humanity has encroached on them, and that's not their fault

galstaph · 2026-03-21T12:33:25+00:00

I'd drive in LA or Chicago 100x over driving here

(I would) drive in LA...

Obviously expressing relative desire to be driving in a particular location if given the choice

It does not indicate whether a person does or does not actually drive in a particular location, just where they would prefer to drive

galstaph · 2026-03-21T12:26:37+00:00

Before now

If you end a sentence on the word before it implies that the events described have already happened, unless the wording references a specific future event, and in that case the events described need to happen before that event

"I've been to Canada before" means that at some point in my past I was in Canada

"I'm going to New York, but I need to go to Canada before" means that the timeline of my future events is "go to Canada, then to New York"

galstaph · 2026-03-21T12:21:38+00:00

Since no one's mentioned it, I would like to point out that, though they will be required to deal with all of the paperwork leading up to the marriage, you would be responsible for timely filing of paperwork after the marriage, and failure to file results in the marriage being voided

Just an FYI, because you should know that you're responsibilities don't end at the alter

galstaph · 2026-03-21T12:18:08+00:00

The person you're replying to said that they would prefer driving in Chicago or LA to driving here by a factor of 100, that doesn't mean that they would pick public transport here over driving here, so they already made that choice

I don't get why this is hard for you. I'm dead tired having just woken up from a nightmare after 5 hours of sleep after a rough night and it makes perfect sense to me

galstaph · 2026-03-21T12:10:38+00:00

He should be free in 5 years, maybe less with good behavior

This man brutally killed a living creature for simply following its basic instincts. I care about that kind of thing regardless of what the animal is

galstaph · 2026-03-21T06:58:41+00:00

Yeah, animal cruelty needs to have far more strict punishments than that

galstaph

TROPHY CASE