I wouldn’t necessarily blame your niche interests or anything else like that. There’s lots of people this applies to who just forgot how to socialize. I would put myself in that category. I like sports and many other popular things, and I used to be reasonably easy to talk to but ever since covid I’m considerably more awkward in social situations.

Someone I haven’t seen in two years will ask what I’ve been up to and my mind just goes blank. It’s not that I’ve been sitting at home doing nothing the whole time but for some reason none of the things I could talk about come to me in the moment. It’s a strange thing to feel yourself being socially inept in a way that you didn’t used to be. I’ve gotten better but it’s still weird a lot of the time.

What’s the better and safer alternative to nuclear power plants?

That’s fair. We seem to have largely given up on police reform in general. I guess they wore us down and we’ve accepted it.

I give a shit and I believe a lot of others do as well but what practical difference are you expecting that to make? There’s not exactly a feelings poll taken before a cop shoots a person, much less a dog.

One might argue that is the biggest problem we face

So did I but unfortunately we lost. That’s democracy in action. The country we live in (the collective we) asked for this.

I don’t have any good advice for you. My company held an all-hands call today during which the CEO said “Now that the election is behind us we can look forward to political stability”, among other equally insane things. You could say I’m feeling pretty down about the whole situation as well.

I know what you mean but he does, quite literally, speak for us now. This is what we asked for.

People: America is too racist to elect a black man.

Black man runs as a progressive and wins two consecutive elections handily.

People: America is too misogynistic to elect a woman.

Two women run as neo-liberals and lose, one gets crushed.

People: See? Women are too controversial.

Hello fellow Montanan. I wish you well in your journey. There are more of us than you might guess but it does feel like a losing battle a lot of the time

Hockey really is better than all other sports for fans. I say that as someone who did not grow up playing or watching hockey and only started watching about 4 years ago.

The games are exciting and not too long, regular breaks are built in but when play is happening there’s not much down time, it hasn’t yet gotten absurdly over-commercialized compared to many other sports (in both senses of that word), and attending a game is more fun than any other sporting event I’ve experienced.

Seriously, I’ve been to hundreds of football games from middle school all the way up to professional, along with quite a few baseball / basketball / wrestling / track events and I would say all but one of my all-time favorite sporting events were one of the relatively limited number of hockey games I’ve been to. They are a ton of fun even for new fans who have basically no idea what’s going on.

They already have started doing that

I cringe every time someone describes Trump as charismatic. I know what you mean and I don’t disagree with the sentiment, but the fact that there are people in this world who find his demeanor appealing will never be anything but horrific to me.

Saying that the whole state will definitely be underwater is a significantly stronger statement than “the risk of flooding is increasing”. Still, people move somewhere else every day for reasons a lot more trivial than either.

I believe she would have been marginally better than Biden but, as you continuously refuse to acknowledge because it completely defeats the point you are trying to make, that is not what we’re discussing here. Trump is indisputably going to be worse than either of them and that’s what you have chosen to support through inaction. You can talk in circles around that fact as much as you like but it won’t change reality.

This guy should have been our next president. That’s exactly the kind of outside the box thinking this country needs.

If you fully expect to lose everything you have at some point then why would you wait until that happens to act? You won’t have a choice at that point so do something now and save what you can.

Even if you disagree with that characterization you can’t dispute the fact that you’ve at least helped shut the door on the potential for improvement.

I thought they only applied to sales.

What do you suppose these companies might want to do with their products once they transport them to this other branch location?