This is the first time we have seen moderators actually fact check Trump live. I’ll take that in spite of the interruptions.

I have been disappointed by that as well but this has been astoundingly good as far as debates have gone. The immediate fact checking is long overdue. And frankly I look forward to pointing at Trump’s extra speaking time as a bulwark against the “iT wAs BiAsEd By ThE lIbErAL mOdErAtOrS” complaints.

I like Sportsurge as it usually points to high quality sources. StreamEast is usually my pick. Just make sure you have ublock and a VPN and you’re golden.

The problem is not with criticism of Zionism or the majority of the Democratic party being openly pro-Zionism. The problem is with equating the Democratic party with the Republican party and acting like it is somehow “brave” or “righteous” to demonize the only political party in the United States with any shred of decency remaining.

I have a strange relationship with masking these days. I had no idea I had autistic tendencies until I married my wife who has been diagnosed with autism. Since then it has been very rewarding having conversations about how our two flavors of autism differ. One of the things we differ tremendously on is our abilities to mask effectively. My wife has struggled with it, especially as a kid, but it always came naturally to me such that it is now my “default mode” when I am in public. Instead of missing social queues like many people, I find I have the opposite problem where I over-analyze social situations to the extent that I read too much into them and it drives me crazy. So masking has actually been very useful for me in that regard because I feel like when I am masking in public I am less “aware” of how I am acting because I feel like I am mostly coming off “normal” relative to the social expectation.

My wife is also very socially aware but she struggles to turn off her over thinking meaning she frequently comes out of social encounters panicked that she said or did something wrong. Whereas I’ll be so blended into the situation I won’t even remember her saying or doing what she is worried about. We work together well in that regard because I remind her that if I am married to her and I don’t notice her say or do something “atypical,” then someone who doesn’t know either of us well almost certainly either didn’t notice either or won’t remember it five minutes after the conversation ends.

So it is a mixed bag. It has been rewarding being able to unmask at home around someone I can trust and who I know loves me, but I still find today that I rarely completely unmask unless I am literally home alone in our house. That usually manifests in me walking around the house doing chores and things talking to myself about a thousand different made up scenarios, which even as a kid I always regarded would probably come off as weird to everyone else.

I think the most important thing is striking a balance between masking and being genuine. I know many people struggle feeling like they are not being their true selves while masked and others even view masking as manipulative. But I think everyone has a different relationship with the practice.

The map is full of puns. They haven’t managed to burn any buildings down yet but it’s still early XD

We’re playing 5E currently because I have quite a few newer players and it’s all they know. We’re playing in one of my homebrew settings that is a fantasy version of our city!

I don’t get to play TTRPGs in person very often these days, but we have a session this evening so I spent the weekend making lots of handouts and visual puzzles for my tavern notice board! Also got a chance to make some 3D terrain and paint some 28 mm scale miniatures which was challenging but very fun.

Yes there seem to be a lot of people of the position that having retirement investments = hoarding wealth…but the majority of us don’t get pensions and not having retirement accounts of any kind under those circumstances is horrible financial strategy if you want to do anything other than subsist after retiring.

Totally fair point! I think that’s why accompanying the reports with the ability to listen in while I actually play through a session would improve the “spectator” experience. But this is definitely a passion project and not something I anticipate building a large audience for. Thanks for stopping by! :)

Zip is my home instance so that’s why I created it there, but that’s a great point…I’m still getting the hang of the Fediverse.

Other notable additions from Wikipedia:

“Walz received a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood in 2012, from the American Civil Liberties Union in 2011, from the American Immigration Lawyers Association in 2009–2010, from the AFL-CIO in 2010, from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in 2009–2010, and from the National Organization for Women in 2007.”

And:

“Walz was ranked the 7th-most bipartisan House member during the 114th Congress (and the most bipartisan member from Minnesota) in the Bipartisan Index created by The Lugar Center and the McCourt School of Public Policy, which ranks members of Congress by measuring how often their bills attract co-sponsors from the opposite party and how often they co-sponsor bills by members of the opposite party.”

In other words, Walz seems to be a champion of progressive ideals while also being more than willing to work with those across the aisle. This is a great thing for swaying independent voters.

We can be nice about helping people who ask honest questions too :)

Many people are unfamiliar with the concept of different communities having different rulesets. Even people who come from reddit land.

Rule 2 of the community guidelines does state that all political pictures (defined as a picture of a politician of any country of any planet) are prohibited and will be removed. So they are not wrong, in spite of the down votes. I do wonder if the community were to have a similar poll today on whether these types of images should be banned how it would turn out, assuming the community has grown significantly since the months that have passed since the prior vote. The second choice was very close in the original poll which would have provided an exception of one political picture allowed per current event.

Edit: here’s the link to the community poll for context if it helps anyone else!

Understood and completely agreed with your sentiment. Obviously any time of sweetened drink is going to be less healthy than water. It is also undeniable that our corporate funded research papers have frequently resulted in and continue to result in biased and often completely non-credible conclusions.

I still assert that “safe” is a relative term, and one issue I have is the lack of nuance associated with certain headlines. For example, the IARC Group B classification that the WHO cites is the same risk for cancer as “engine exhaust or occupational exposure as a hairdresser.” So yes, excessive aspartame consumption is definitely objectively bad for you compared to drinking water, but the cancer risk is not extensive compared to many other things we are exposed to on a regular basis.

“JECFA concluded that the data evaluated indicated no sufficient reason to change the previously established acceptable daily intake (ADI) of 0–40 mg/kg body weight for aspartame. The committee therefore reaffirmed that it is safe for a person to consume within this limit per day. For example, with a can of diet soft drink containing 200 or 300 mg of aspartame, an adult weighing 70kg would need to consume more than 9–14 cans per day to exceed the acceptable daily intake, assuming no other intake from other food sources.”

Also I very much appreciate the great discussion on this!

Don’t know that I agree with your spin that this news is negative in any regard. Also, aspartame is one of the most studied food additives of all time and has been repeatedly proven safe.

Your claim that it “can have an event worse effect on blood sugar than sugar can” has also been proven false. See “Metabolic effects of aspartame in adulthood: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials” by Santos et al from 2017.

Among other conclusions, the study found that “aspartame consumption was not associated with alterations on blood glucose levels compared to control or to sucrose and on insulin levels compared to control or to sucrose.”

If you’re referring to “Rule of Law,” then yes, it is amazing and worth praising. Unfortunately the US is in an accelerating downhill backslide away from Rule of Law back to Rule of Men. And we will all be worse off for it. There is no copium involved in appreciating adherence to Rule of Law because the alternative is tyranny.

At this point I am having to hold out hope telling myself that we are probably in for a couple decades of horror until the old guard dies off and the pendulum swings back to liberalism and progressivism. I love the idea of America but I don’t love America right now, which is painful to acknowledge.

I sincerely hope this is a poor attempt at a joke because that kind of statement has contributed directly to the current situation. It is not antisemitic to criticize the Israeli government, Zionism, or the IDF and its actions. It is antisemitic to say the reason you are criticizing those things is because they are all Jews.

Conflating those two not only makes it impossible to speak out against the atrocities being committed, it makes violence worse against Jews.

That’s actually the alt code for an en dash. Em dash is Alt+0151!