“Wanting to define the terms of the conflict” is not the same thing as “pinning hopes.”
I have no illusions that getting a Democratic majority in Congress will solve all of our problems. I know for a fact that a Republican majority will continue to make things worse at an ever-increasing pace until the situation becomes completely untenable. At least with Democrats, there’s a conversation to be had.
Yes, let us all unite to [checks notes] ensure that Republicans retain control of the Senate and therefore continue to rubber-stamp everything Trump does and further insulate him from consequences.
Break the Republican majority first. Feel free to turn on each other like starving dogs after.
It’s not a continuity error as such, but I’m a big fan of all the technologies that by rights should have completely upended galactic civilization but then just get forgotten.
The Genesis device should be an appalling superweapon that would change the face of war.
And then those missiles from Generations that can kill an entire solar system should, too.
And the time on TNG that they stumbled on a weird transporter trick that could make it so no one would ever need to die of old age ever again.
And the Tribble blood that cures death.
And so forth.
That’s… just the default for most of cultural history. Odysseus gets back from war, slaughters like thirty dudes in the dining room, and his wife is just thrilled that hubby is back. The other way is the subversion of classical treatments of violence in fiction.
“I’m cutting back on all the online spaces that we used to share.”
“Okay, that’s your right, but it is going to be a hell of a lot harder for us to stay in touch, so if you’re okay with putting up barriers to contact, then go right ahead.”
“WhY iS iT sO hArD tO sTaY iN tOuCh WiTh OlD fRiEnDs As aN aDuLt?!?”
Pollster: Have you ever thought about shooting someone?
Me: Well even if I never had before, now that you’ve asked the question and put the idea in my head, I have, so thanks for that!
Pollster: Follow-up question: Have you ever thought of a pink elephant?
I was at my first gun show with an older friend who knew guns better than I did who I was following around to keep me from making any stupid decisions.
There’s a table with a sign for “Constitutional Carry,” where they don’t think you should need a special license to concealed carry a handgun.
My friend walks up to these two guys at the table, and says “Hey, just so you know, I hope you guys fail.”
The younger of the two kind of bristles, but the older one, a dude with a long white beard, says “Oh, why?”
My friend says “Because I worked in a gun shop for fifteen years, and I helped fill out more concealed carry applications than I can count and…” at this point she gestures around at the huge room behind us, “I wouldn’t trust 95% of the people in this room with any gun at all.”
And the old dude behind the table smiles and nods his head and says “Yeah, that’s a fair point.”
So anyway, that’s the day I bought a Ruger GP-100 in 357 Magnum.
I fully agree with everything you just said. My point was that if you bring so little to the table that you feel you’re in danger of being successfully replaced by a toy, then you need to do some self-improvement.
If you can’t bring more to a relationship than an appliance can, then you’ve got to work on yourself.
From Bag Balm:
Originally, it was used for only cows’ udders, but farmers’ wives noticed the softness of their husbands’ hands, and started using the product themselves.
The Creator would appear as endowed with a passion for stars, on the one hand, and for beetles on the other, for the simple reason that there are nearly 300,000 species of beetle known, and perhaps more, as compared with somewhat less than 9,000 species of birds and a little over 10,000 species of mammals.
-J.B.S. Haldane
I was working on a Shakespeare play one time and I started keeping notes on lines that sounded like episode titles. These are all from the same play:
The Feverous Earth
The Parallel Fellow
The Volume of Time
The Borrower of the Night
A Fruitless Crown
That Which We Destroy
The Tender Eye
The Timely Inn
The Season of All Natures
The Power of Man
His Earth-Bound Root
To Appease an Angry God
In the Tyrant’s Grasp
Blunt Not the Heart
The Seeds of Time
The Golden Round
Honor Unaccompanied
The Serpent and the Flower
Full disclosure: I was thinking of these as Doctor Who titles, but I think the principle is sound.
That was the name of my half-orc barbarian!
Actually his name was Gary Crunch, but everyone called him Grunch except for his parents.
“Things that are normal when you’re poor but ‘impressive’ when you’re rich.”
Walking everywhere
Eating simple grains
Hunting / fishing for food
Spending time with your family
Similar experience, though I think my mom was just white-knuckling her way through being a single mom with two kids, so she didn’t have a lot left over to pursue her passions and share that with us. That, and her father was a monster, so my grandmother was doing her own white-knuckle process a generation prior. I’m trying to make myself more emotionally available to my kid, because I’d like to reduce the generational trauma, but it’s going to make for an interesting conversation someday.
You’re comparing a guy who isn’t even in the Senate yet to the single most annoying Democratic senator, when you should be comparing him against his actual opponent, Susan Collins, who thought Trump had learned his lesson.