We have a dogsitter when we are on trips. According to her, our heeler would politely take blueberries that were offered and then wander off, returning not long after. It was only later that she found a stash of uneaten blueberries on the couch. My little man was a desperately skinny and frightened stray in a kill shelter before he came to us, and on the theory that whatever makes him feel safe and content is better than the alternative, he's, uhhh, put on weight. If he liked the blueberries, they would not be left on the couch.
Textualism and originalism
A group of linguistics scholars describe developments in the field of corpus linguistics, which did not exist when District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago were decided, that have allowed for a new understanding of the language used in the Second Amendment. Researchers in American and English history have digitally compiled thousands of Founding-era texts, making it possible, for the first time, to search and examine specific terms and usage from the period. The resulting evidence demonstrates that “keep and bear arms” had a “collective, militaristic meaning” in the late 18th century. The scholars write that, consistent with that meaning, Founding-era voters would have understood the right to be subject to regulation.
LOL. While overall I'm a big fan of "More Star Wars, Please," I do sort of roll my eyes at the fixation on stories that are prequel to something and then end up bending over backwards to juuuust barely maintain continuity but require the audience to recontextualize conversations in ways that send our characters off on bizarre psychological and logistical tangents.
Leia sort of gets the worst of this:
This meme.
Ep3 turning the "real mother" conversation on Endor into a Simone Biles level of mental gymnastics: "Well, the memories must have been imprinted on me by the Force as an infant before Padme immediately peaced out, and I know you're a 99% trained Jedi and were in the room with me, but I'm the only one who remembers (because girls?), or maybe there was just some other bitch on Alderaan that they told me was my real mom... so anyway, she was very kind."
Rogue One turning the cheeky "We all know I'm a sympathizer but I'm also a Senator and leveraging that last bit of leverage before the Emperor dissolves the Senate in a later scene" and dialing the delusion up to eleven, with Vader thinking something like, "You motherfuckers, I JUST saw this ship leave a massive space battle two hours ago. I was literally striking a pose as you left."
It was a legitimate protest of a stupid law that uses a legacy of inconsistent thought and limited perception to do an end run around the first amendment, but the text of the law requires a poster per building, so if they have enough in English, there would be no "need" to accept or post them. Now, if a principal or administrator had some balls, I certainly don't see why they couldn't use one of these or to flank the posters they do post with lots of context or more diverse ideas.
It was tacked on in the 50s (note how it kinda messes with the cadence) because of godless commies. There have been other little tweaks as well, some making it worse (e.g. "under god") and some better (abandoning the, herrrm, "Roman" salute). While always a bit weirdly nationalistic, the core of the modern pledge was written by a Christian Socialist and replaced one that was worse and more explicitly religious.
I guess it's not so weird that it exists and I assume many countries have some sort of boilerplate loyalty oath they can bust out as needed, but it's pretty messed up that it's mandatory for kids on a daily basis and fetishizes the flag as an object. I am quite fond of my country, and I think there are a lot of worse places to live, but our history is pretty messed up and our views on what exactly constitutes freedom and democracy are not unquestionable just because some clever provincial elites came up with a halfway workable system in the late 1700s. I suppose it's marginally better to build a national cult out of institutions and symbols than individuals, but it's still a terrible idea to treat patriotism like religious dogma.
I grew up in Florida and Tennessee in the 80s and 90s. It was definitely a daily thing, but very lax enforcement and I don't know that anybody would have made a huge stink about it even then. The duck and cover "tornado" drills were very real and very serious though.
IIUC reddit said something along the lines of "we shouldn't be unprofitable while third party apps are profitable."
They did, ignoring the fact that the scales are completely different and the fact that the 3PAs helped mods and engaged, contributing members provide content and services that Reddit didn't have to pay for, thereby mitigating or maybe even completely counterbalancing the costs of supporting them.
At the most barebones level, I think kbin was meant to be "Lemmy and mastodon with a cohesive UI on one account." So far it has ended up being, "Lemmy but for people who were eeshy about tankies when they were trying to figure all this out to get away from Reddit."