Let’s not forget the years of literal psychological experiments that Meta conducted on its users to find out exactly what factors led to higher engagement.

This isn’t a simple message board. This is a highly-engineered, personalized content delivery system with the goal of serving as many ads as possible.

Aerodynamics was obviously not a concern in the process of designing a vehicle that has (checks notes) literal corners.

Only 60,000 Cybertrucks have been sold. Not “half a million.”

While the total number of deaths from fire may seem insignificant to you, it is a far greater death rate than major auto manufacturers usually tolerate.

In the 1970s, Ford had to recall the Pinto over 27 deaths out of 1.5 million units sold. That’s 18 deaths per million units.

Cybertrucks are sitting at five known fire deaths per 60,000 units sold. That would be a ratio of 83 deaths per million units.

I’d just like to take a moment to say how glad I am that most US presidents didn’t have social media to tell us their thoughts 24/7.

It’s very possible that some of them were just as dumb as their 21st-century counterparts, but at least we don’t have the tweets to prove it.

I think at some point it will come out that the corporate subscription is no different and the LLM companies have been scraping everything for training data.

I don’t think the LLM made your response better in a meaningful way. Sure, it cleaned up the grammar a little bit, but the rephrasing in a few places is not necessary.

Trust yourself to communicate without help from external software.

That’s the thing with lawyers. They know how to stay just inside the legal boundary while still doing the most shady things.

It’s not technically a lie, but he’s also not technically a good person.

The definition that they gave when asking the question was, “A person engages in ‘sexual relations’ when the person knowingly engages in or causes contact with the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person with an intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person.”

So, strictly according to the definition provided, his answer was no. Again, because he was interpreting it as any part of him coming into direct contact with those parts of her body.

I agree. People get married for all kinds of reasons. They may have married for political power, and they may well have an open marriage. Nobody really knows what happens in anyone else’s relationship.

That depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is.

Seriously, though, he stated later that he was interpreting the definition of “sexual relations” to mean that he had touched her in sexual ways. Apparently he was only ever on the receiving end, and therefore his claim was that she had “sexual relations” with him, but not vice versa. In his view, his response followed the letter of the law, if not the spirit of the law. He wasn’t found guilty of perjury, so apparently he wasn’t entirely wrong, legally speaking.

Now … Is he a POS who cheated on his wife? Maybe. The Republican rumor mill (AKA Rush Limbaugh) claimed for years that they had an open marriage and were both sleeping with other people. That’s the sort of thing that a lot of people are okay with now, but it was not talked about in polite society in the '90s. I’ve always thought that if Hillary was willing to stand by him after everything that came out, then we probably shouldn’t judge him on her behalf.

They are obviously hoping to run all trans people out of the state or back into the closet.

This is what they mean by “making America great again” … they just want to eliminate everything that challenges their extraordinarily fragile worldview.

Assuming you really want to know …

In the US (where Bill Gates lives), we don’t generally consider women to be women until they are of age. “Underage women” is an oxymoron. They are appropriately referred to children, girls, or teens.

I live in Latin America and I don’t even have a heater. My climate control options are “window open” and “window closed.”

There are a lot of people online who think that 100% abstinence from The Bad is the only way to be good.

But if you can shift 10% of your former Amazon spending, do it. And keep looking for a way to get to 15%, then 20%, and so on.

Like, I’m probably never going to be a strict vegetarian. I love a good burger, or a nicely-cooked steak, or a big bowl of chicken and dumplings. But I eat vegetarian for more than 75% of my meals. And that’s good enough for me.

The right-wingers who say that homosexuality is a choice are probably† outing themselves as bisexual. Who else sees their sexuality as a choice? Bi people are the ones who have options.

† Or just flat-out denying their true sexuality by hoping that if they make the “right” choices, it will work itself out. “Pray away the gay” and such.

It’s an excellent show.

But don’t be mad at Netflix. It aired on ABC, and they cancelled it (presumably because it had lower ratings than the network’s other comedies). Netflix just picked up streaming rights after the fact.

It was a piece-by-piece deconstruction that took nearly a decade. I started with, “Maybe it’s the divinity of Jesus that’s my problem,” and it snowballed from there. I did a lot of research and visited a lot of different religious groups during that decade.

Managers and tech billionaires

Hegseth said:

“[Christ’s] mission was to divide truth from lies, the things of the world from the things of God, light from darkness, good from evil."

That tells me that either he hasn’t actually read the Bible or he needs to work on his reading comprehension.

Jesus described his mission in this way:

"For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)

…he said to them, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose.” (Luke 4:43)

“I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:32)

“For the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10)

"All that the Father gives me will come to me; and him who comes to me I will not cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me; and this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up at the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:37-40)

I’m an atheist, but I was raised by evangelicals who emphasized following Christ’s example as portrayed in the Gospels. I can’t believe that the rabbi who commanded his followers to “turn the other cheek” and “bless those who curse you” could inspire the nationalist bullshit that is quoted from Hegseth in this article.

I’m concerned for the future of Christianity in a country that believes Hegseth and other Republican figureheads instead of their own Bible. And I’m worried about what that will mean for non-Christians in the American military and, eventually, in the rest of the country.

I have a disappointingly large number of LGBTQ+ friends and family members who eat there regularly.