Hi. I was born in Utah.

The statistics presented here likely primarily include Mormons. Mormons, granted, tend to experience higher rates of senses of well-being due to thorough, lifelong conditioning into a religion that (to put it very very lightly) trains and encourages wishful thinking and group conformity to levels that would make a tankie blush.

Those who leave this religion (cult that has the all-time gold medal championship title in doublethink and mental gymnastics in archeology) tend to experience significantly higher rates of suicide, mortality, and depression. The youth suicide rate alone shot up 192% from 2009 to 2014. https://www.rationalfaiths.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/LGBTQStats-2.pdf

Speaking from personal experience, Utah is a theocracy, straight up. The church controls everything from the state congress to the real estate. They have loopholes in the department of education that allow ecclesiastical education at public schools. I’d know, I graduated from one.

Fuck Utah.

Instructions unclear, dyslexia made me blow the job interviewer.

10 years old. When I saw The Rocketeer, when Jenny found Neville Sinclair’s secret radio room to talk to his Nazi handlers.

I loved it when my dad held my hand.

I’m nearly 30 now, and our political and religious views are (as an understatement) wildly different in most respects. But I still love my dad, and I would do damn near anything for him. Because he did damn near anything for me.

Trying to get PulseAudio to behave, and trying to figure out how to roll back Bluez and Blueman.

Piratebay.

I mean, you’re not alone. I got so fed up with ads because it was always junk I needed but couldn’t afford, or shit I already knew existed and had otherwise already acquired with satisfactory results. Not to mention ads following me around. I hated being haunted by a pair of sneakers across four websites.

It’s not paranoia if you’re right, dammit.

Eh. In my experience, DeWalt tends to have more power and punch, and the batteries last longer. Makita’s impact drivers (at least the ones my company got) really just never had the torque to tighten bolts down to the right NM or ft/lb. I needed. They’ll do, I’d rather use an impact driver than nothing. But if I get to pick, I’ll pick a DeWalt.

Hey, you know, maybe he got the good ending. It was pretty strongly implied he was adopted by the firefighter reincarnation of King Agamemnon/Sean Connery.

I don’t.

Money can’t buy morals or ethics. If I hate the company, guarantee you I won’t be there in six months, let alone five years.

Maybe other people can. I can’t. Inevitably, I get into some kind of spat with a boss or a manager over morals, ethics, or how we’re being treated. Or how I’m being treated. And they make up a reason to fire me, or I get so mad that I quit.

Insert funny porn joke.

But in all seriousness? A fully immersive, 100% realistic Dungeons and Dragons game with my friends. Exactly the same as we would run it at our table. We’d hop down to the replicators and holo-disguise generators and make ourselves up like our characters, and I’d just follow them around in a spooky mysterious robe and narrate the story.

That’s it. I would run the best D&D game ever, the game of a lifetime, for my best friends.

A one-state solution with a robust diplomatic and internal affairs structure to support claims of hostility and bigotry, run by a nonpartisan and multiethnic Arab-Israeli human rights coalition. Dismantle the Gaza wall and blockade, and integrate Hamas as a political party (if the Likud are fine, then the Knesset has no god damn excuse.) Maintain a UN-managed board of human rights as counsel and a referee in matters concerning integration. Review the arrest of every political prisoner in Israel, and release nonviolent offenders. Extend a formal apology to conscientious objectors. Revoke the mandatory IDF draft policy and switch to volunteer primacy. Take every step and every measure to ensure that Palestinians ARE, IN EVERY WAY, equal in a state that is no longer an ethnocracy. REBUILD GAZA, with Gazans in charge, starting with homes and hospitals.

Furthermore, extend right of return to Palestinians, irrevocably and in perpetuity.

Because they fucking stole it from me! I’ll be damned if I let a machine–intelligent or not–force me into changing the way I, an individual, choose to express myself in my own language!

“Trump! You incompetent (belch) boob! I told you to get the satellite linkup system signed and sealed, and what did you do? You let those lousy, disgusting Teenage Antifa Ninja Humans foil your plans again!”

Harkness Rules.

And if she’s choosing to appear as a kid to lure pedos in so she can kill them with fire and eat their ashes, more power to her. Like Chris Hansen but with a hell of a lot more time on her hands.

Depends on the place and the people around.

Pride? 0, easy.

Anti-Trump protest? On my side of the line, easy 2-3.

Need help at the grocery store? Eh. 4. If it ain’t that important, it ain’t that important.

Texas? Inside Austin, 7.

Outside of Austin? 10.

Big sea of red hats like it was a sea of red armbands in Berlin? Fuck that.

This is true. While I appreciate Al Jazeera’s coverage of Gaza, at the end of the day, they’re a mouthpiece for an autocracy. And their primary media contrast is, well, other mouthpieces for other autocracies.

I hate watching the news. It’s terrorist empires and wannabe empires having pissing contests with each other.

It’s 50+ countries in a trenchcoat. Pan-Americanism, in the US context, is laughable at best and absolutely a shambling nightmare at worst. There’s several reasons why our government sucks. But the sheer size of this fucking empire is the top of the list.

Before the end of the century, it’s going to Balkanize hard.

Having to explain how you ended up in a death camp in El Salvador when you came to visit legally as a tourist.

Oh, take my damn upvote you punny bastard. 😂