I used to get a hankering for cigarettes once in a blue moon after college. I kept a pack of Marlboros for such occasions. Two drags into one of those loathsome little death sticks and I remembered why I never smoke the damn things. Haven’t smoked a cigarette in 6 years and I can count the number of cigarettes I’ve smoked in my life on one hand.

No. For the same reason that I wouldn’t avoid a relationship with a woman for having an appendectomy.

My mother and father were separated by the time I started asking questions about sex. My mother was super open and cool about it. I got boxes of condoms from “Santa” every year between 12 and 18. My father found out I was ready for “the talk” when an unused condom fell from my pocket during the laundry. I had already been active for six months. Thankfully, I grew up in a very progressive school district, so our sex ed course was comprehensive.

Drugs were a very Regean-era “just say no” from both of them. Interestingly, my best education about drugs came from listening to Blood, Sugar Sex, Magic with my father. He used to wax romantic about the tortured artists that languished under the weight of their addiction; robbing the world of more music while inspiring such remarkable lamentations.

Open denigration of them, Trans folks, women, Haitians, and all non-white Americans.

He is a severely silly person who should not be taken seriously about anything by anyone. Unfortunately, he is taken VERY seriously by a dangerous group of folks.

No, I wouldn’t watch that interview. I, and I’d wager everyone else using the fediverse, am highly skeptical of large media institutions specifically because they engage in questionable journalistic practices like this.

My point is: there is no scandal here. It seems to me that this story is getting signal boosted specifically to discredit the president. The realities of interviews like this are left out of these headlines and it’s very frustrating.

Yes. I don’t personally understand what the story is here. I’ve never heard of any high-profile politician going into an scheduled interview without a team providing a list of approved questions.

It’s debian-based, but such an outlier from the rest of the linux ecosystem that it might as well be its own beast.

It’s a lot.

He is on record lauding Romania for its corruption, citing it as a major reason for having moved there. Dunno what to tell to tell him. He is presently bitching about reaping the exact crop he sowed.