paddirn

Bananas, pickles, onions, mustard. Now it’s like, “Whatever, just shove it down my throat.”

About an hour in 2020 I think. I'm in a semi-rural Republican-leaning district that won't ever vote Democrat, but I still show up to vote anyways. Usually, I'm in and out pretty quickly every election, maybe 5-10 minutes at most. For some reason, guessing because of its importance, 2020 the line just took quite a bit longer. Every other election, presidential or otherwise, there's never a wait.

Palestinian supporters are free to keep bringing the issue up and I think they should keep building momentum around it. It’s certainly relevant as the genocide is ongoing, nobody said they should “just shut up about it”, BUT given the current situation in American politics right now, it’s fighting for attention with everything else going on. At best, it’s noise that people can easily tune out because Americans are FLOODED with political messaging right now. At worst, some on the Left may even be somewhat dismissive because it’s assumed to be a disingenuous argument being made by bad-faith actors to divide the Left’s vote.

I realize how heartless this all sounds when people are literally dying by American weapons, but that’s where we’re at. After the election, the dynamic changes and you have less infighting within the Left around protesting about Israel and trying to split the vote and a much better chance of organizing around the issue. Don’t shut up about it, keep the pressure up, but the better time to turn up the heat is after the election.

You vote for the conditions of your protests. If Harris is elected, you have somebody much more likely to cave to sustained public pressure to withdraw support from Israel and who is less likely to violently crackdown on protests. If Harris gets elected, that’s when you ramp up pressure on the issue with sustained protests. It’s idiotic that Biden/Harris are still maintaining that support for Israel in the first place, but I suspect there’s some realpolitik bullshit and Biden’s traditional outlook on American foreign policy behind that support and maybe there’s a substantive shift after the election.

If Trump is elected, you’re creating easily a dozen or more other issues for yourself to deal with, on top of Israel and you risk fracturing any potential protests you try to do for the Palestinians. You’ll have an establishment that’s more aligned with Israel, who won’t cave to public pressure, and who will likely use increasingly heavy-handed tactics against protesters.

It’s little consolation for Palestinians, but it can always get much worse.

I just rewatched both Bladerunner movies with my son and, the first movie, while aesthetically it still looks beautiful and has some great individual scenes, the action and the dialogue get kind of non-sensical at times, it’s become the weaker of the two movies for me. 2049 feels just a lot more coherent and looks brilliant, it’s just an overall better movie that surpasses the original.

That sounds innocent enough that it could go either way. It could easily have been just an innocent thing to have another adult along to hang out with the kids, women tend to not think anything of inviting somebody out to do something like that and don't necessarily have an ulterior motive. It could mean more though, but it doesn't seem like a big enough data point to go off of.

I think there's a leap here that you're not explaining or that I'm missing from the text. She sounds attractive and friendly, she's apparently "available", but what is prompting you to wonder about a course of action? What's the trigger? Has she already behaved a certain way towards you that's making you question if there might be something "there", like she seems to be extra "nice" to you or whatever? Or are you just wondering in general, "Hey, there's a person I'm attracted to and I want to see if she's interested?" There just seems to be a disconnect in what you wrote and I'm not sure what prompted it to begin with.

To answer the question though, you can certainly try any of the things you talked about, or try to setup a meetup between your kids, but somehow include yourself and her in on the plans (go out to a movie together or some event) and see if she'd want to join you all. Personally, I wouldn't try to force things too far and make it awkward, but if you're trying to gauge interest, you should try to figure out ways to spend time around her or start finding reasons to text to ask about stuff. You also have the issue that should things progress between you two, do things get awkward between your kids anyways, even if you and her hit it off? It could potentially cause friction for them no matter what happens. Relationships are hard no matter what.

I went out with my kids and we went to a few houses actually that had lights on outside and inside, told my kids to go to the door and knock, waited a minute or so, and nothing. This was maybe half-a-dozen houses, so it’s not always a given that just knocking on the door will get results. The new “normal” is that people are either waiting outside to hand out candy or they’re leaving bowls out for kids to help themselves. Knocking on the door for trick or treating is a crapshoot and it’d be understandable why most kids will skip that. Compared to other houses, it’s more effort for potentially no reward, or, even if there is a reward, it’s the same as every other house.

If I ever get a robot with titties, I’m just going to be playing with those all day long, don’t even care about how good the AI is.

We’ll have a big environmental 9/11 moment where a major American city becomes permanently uninhabitable and then there will alot of handwringing about “What could we have done!?” Then we’ll start getting lukewarm serious about it for maybe a few years, but by that point it’s way too late.

I really want to like AI, I’d love to have an intelligent AI assistant or something, but I just struggle to find any uses for it outside of some really niche cases or for basic brainstorming tasks. Otherwise, it just feels like alot of work for very little benefit or results that I can’t even trust or use.

I’ve made my peace with either result. If Harris wins, I’ll assume it’ll be relative status quo and a continuation of the last four years, a slow-motion decline. If Trump wins, our deaths are assured and everything falls to shit that much sooner. There may be some personal benefits and opportunities I can try to take advantage of before we all die, but none of it will really matter in the end. My personal romantic life is in such a shitty spot right now that I honestly don’t really care anymore.