He needs commitment lol.

Dude used to go around in character fucking with people. Great guy, just a wee bit bonkers

I’m simple.

Mac n cheese for savory.

Dark chocolate for sweet.

Ahhhh, I’m old, so don’t hold me to the exact year or anything, but fifteen years? Ish?

We knew each other before we were friends, so the exact year is kinda nebulous in my head

SOOKIE!

Tbh, I’m not interested in the show.

However, IDGAF.

Hire a good actor, period. Nobody can top Rickman at all, so anyone taking the role on needs to be able to reinterpret it entirely, change the way Snape’s menace and arrogance are shown.

While there are physical descriptions in the books for all the major characters, the original movies didn’t stick to them perfectly in all cases. And I don’t think they did with Snape fully.

So why the fuck does it matter if the actor isn’t lily white (heh)? Can he act is the important part if anyone is going to watch it at all. If you’re going to turn a book into a show after it’s already been turned into a wildly popular movie series, you could cast everyone looking exactly like the books, and there’s still going to be complaints from the movie fans.

So fuck it. Make Dumbledore a trans man, or a trans woman. Make Mcgonagle Cherokee. Make Harry Xhosa, or a Southerner from the U.S. Give Ron blue hair, a septum piercing and dress him in leather. There’s always going to be pissed off existing fans of something that’s as huge as Harry Potter. It isn’t like some niche comic book where a character looking different is going to piss everyone off. The fan base will be split, period.

Shit, if I was going to watch it at all, an unexpected casting choice would make me more eager, because at least then I’m not going to be watching the movies dragged out over months.

Beans! Beans! For every meal!

Holy shit!

Forgive me for going off topic, but I gotta ping my buddy, @[email protected]

He’s a fellow transmetropolitan fan.

My Spider has the tattoo on his head for real. Used to sometimes do a cosplay of the character.

I wish I could say that I didn’t have to learn it. Even with the women in my family being very empowered, and leading us boys to being more aware than most, I did have to unlearn some things, and pick up others.

We all gotta help each other be better when we can.

My dude. That kind of thinking is exactly why women need their own spaces.

You may not realize it, or have ever examined yourself, but you just expressed misogyny in a mild form here, where you have had every chance to pick and choose how you say things to support your opinion that the reason given for the bans was unjustified.

It’s okay for a given group to have their own spaces without intrusion. A gay men’s space should absolutely be able to exclude women and straight men. A straight men’s space should be able to exclude gay men and women.

The only time having dedicated spaces is a problem is when every space is dominated by a single group. And that’s just not the case with a women only space. To the contrary, women struggle to have their voices heard in open spaces where everyone is allowed specifically because men dominate those spaces.

If you, as a man, went and ignored a clearly visible community rule, you absolutely deserve a ban from that community. As well, the fact that you’d blatantly ignore a clearly visible rule in community is a damn good indicator that you think you’re above rules, which means that a mod preemptively banning you from other communities ceases to be an over reaction.

So, I’m going to be harsh as hell in this. You stated that you knew the rule and ignored it. That means you’re either an arrogant asshole, or a petulant child. Neither of which is a good look when trying to claim a mod behaved badly.

Hmmm, maybe not a rug, but new towels and such? Yeah, I’m that old :)

Clip ons, I don’t always remember they’re on if it’s bright out, but I usually take them off

Not because it’s douchey, but because it’s harder to see.

Most people don’t have the brain power to actually know what’s in their best interest.

At most, they can handle very simple situations.

To really make choices in own best interest, your have to think long term, at a broad scale. Unfortunately, we can’t see with certainty beyond maybe a few steps from our present time and place. So we would also have to think out layers of possibility with each decision.

If you can’t do that quickly, you’re fucked because you’ll always be reacting instead of planning. Since even the smartest people on the planet can still only handle as much planning as a chess game takes, we’re all fucked.

And yes, I’m including myself as not having the brain power to properly act in my own best interest long term. Being able to see the problem doesn’t mean you’re immune to it.

You’re not asking this in good faith.

However, nobody has actually tried to simplify an answer yet.

Taxes are a form of social contract between all taxpaying members of a country.

While it is not truly voluntary, it it also only applied when a person takes part in specific aspects of the social structure. So it can be avoided, just not without eschewing the benefits that come with being part of that country.

By partaking in the aspects of life in a country that incur taxes, you are, indirectly, agreeing to pay them that may or may not be fair. It may or may not give you any feasible alternatives to life in that country, and it decidedly does not leave any pleasant options. But you can avoid taxes, without legal consequences for not paying them, by not engaging in taxable activities.

It would suck for sure.

Now, does that mean taxes aren’t theft? Define theft.

If I come to up to you and say “hey jimbob, if you come over here and mow my grass, I’ll give you a gallon of milk. But, you gotta give a half pint of that to Gary over there because he gets a cut of all the milk that I give to people since he makes sure the cows stay healthy”, is Gary stealing?

Gary is also providing a service. Me and Gary have a mutually beneficial agreement. You do not have to mow my grass. But once the offer is extended, and accepted, trying to say that Gary stole anything from you is not going to be a believable statement.

That’s what taxation is. It’s an agreement between everyone involved that “Gary”, the government, gets a cut of money out of various exchanges of funds. In return, ideally, Gary keeps providing services to everyone.

Again, that’s in an ideal world. In reality, not every government actually provides services to the taxed. Often enough, governments make every effort possible to not provide services as expected. But that’s not the same thing as taxation itself being theft, it’s a given government stealing while using taxes as the method.

So, what choices do you have to avoid taxes?

Well, you’ll have to live life without monetary income, since you likely live in a country that taxes that. Difficult, but not impossible. You’ll have to avoid owning taxable property. Here in the US, that’s usually vehicles, homes/land, and similar real property. That’s not actually difficult if you live in the right places, but if you’re also not making monetary income, your choices for where to live become very unpleasant if you don’t have very good friends and family to rely on.

You’ll also likely have to avoid buying most things, since sales taxes exist. That’s the really hard one to avoid because most people take part in the social agreement and will not give you goods or services without monetary exchange. Not impossible, but it’s going to be a brutal life.

So, the choices absolutely are not fair. Since you also can’t go anywhere livable without dealing with taxable transactions, you can’t just opt out entirely and go live in the woods away from governments. Everywhere livable is owned by a government somewhere.

But that still doesn’t make taxation itself theft, only specific implementations of taxation, and that is a different thing.

It has definitely been a goal. How far they’ll get with legislators against them, I dunno. But it’s what Pinchai and the people in control wanted because they think it’s part of what made Apple powerful

You gotta learn how to surf it as best you can.

I’m not being flip. Anxiety, depression and all the related issues, they have a certain tidal nature. There’s highs and lows. The key to living with it is to ride the worst waves until things settle back down a little.

If you ignore it, you get swamped.

Doesn’t really matter what methods you use to do it. Breathing, meds, exposure therapy, CBT, yoga, whatever. You practice them when things are good, so you can stand on them when things are bad and make it back to shore.

I gotta warn you though, anxiety that’s induced or worsened by chemicals is a shit ton harder to negotiate. You can’t rely on your normal inner perception of your self. Normally, once you’re used to anxiety, you can learn to recognize when it’s going to spike, and that alone gives you some empowerment. But when it’s external chemicals causing things to worsen, you can’t feel when it’s getting better or worse in the same way unless you also get used to that chemical and how it influences your anxiety. Which, seems like a pretty bad idea to keep using something that’s making anxiety worse.

WHOA!

I hope to fuck not.

Bob. We call him Bob

I dunno. I used to be flexible as hell, but was also too damn broad across the shoulders to get everywhere. That was even before I started lifting seriously; lifting just made the area I couldn’t reach bigger.

Somewhere around 16 I hit a spurt and suddenly couldn’t reach a zone between my shoulder blades. It was maybe hand sized. In my twenties, it was about an inch or two bigger, but I could still do all the stretches fully before lifting, and that included shoulder stretches where I could end up almost flat with my arms behind me.

Nowadays, I’m just old and stiff, and can’t scrub anything right on my back.

Big ol’ brush.

I also have long scrubby things. Don’t know what they’re made of, but I think nylon. Basically really long washcloths with a rough texture and strings to hold onto while scrubbing. But the brush does a better job, so I usually only use the cloth ones when I’m away from home because they pack easier.

That’s assuming I can’t con my wife into getting soaked just to stand there scrubbing me down for a half hour while I continually say “yah, right there, a little harder. Now to the left, oh yeah, that’s great, a little more. Now up some, fucking perfect, you’re awesome. Now down a little again” and so on until she throws the scrubber at me.