I used to have a fairly large collection of skulls that I’d found while walking around in the woods.

Not sure what ever happened to them… Probably lost them in one of my many moves.

I dunno, bourbon is nice too. And it has the benefit of usually being a lot less expensive than a Caol Ila, Bunnahabhain, Ardbeg, or Lagavulin. Rye whiskey is another one.

But Jack Daniels can fuck right off.

Oh, yeah, that’s Yeezy. He designed it and posted it, IIRC, on the gatalog. Cool dude. He keeps getting tossed off IG for posting leftist shit. You can find some of his videos here.

Those ones are great. The shape is fantastic, comfortable for all-day wear, if that’s your thing. Also, their large one is larger than any other metal plug I’ve seen. They’re remarkably hard to find though; searching for NJoy mostly brings up cups, straws, and plastic lids.

But isn’t that irrelevant to whether the country has a right to exist as a country? Does a country only have a right to exist when they do nothing wrong? Are all people in a country responsible for the actions of leadership?

Trump is crashing the entire world’s economy, because he’s a fucking short-bus slack-jawed special-ed moron. Does the harm that Trump and his oligarchs are causing mean that the US as a whole has no right to exist? Does Putin’s invasion of Ukraine mean that Ukraine has no right to exist?

And let’s flip that; Hamas attacks and kills civilians as a political stand-in for the Israeli government. That’s the very definition of terrorism. Hamas is the government in Gaza. Does that mean that Palestinians have no right to a country of their own due to the actions of their gov’t?

Let’s face it, a lot of these people would absolutely hate to be part of real socialist organizing

Oh yeah. I’ve worked with an anarcho-socialist group, and shit was rough. And I was just volunteering because I believed–and still believe–in their cause. But eventually I had to give it up, because it was so chaotic that I never knew what my schedule was going to be, and I was wasting tons of time waiting for them to decide whether or not I would be useful that week.

I was a member of another group that was ostensibly anarchistic in theory that ended up being authoritarian in practice, and I quickly dipped.

Shit’s messy and complicated. Getting groups of people to point in the same direction can be hard without some degree of arbitrary authority. But when it all comes together, it’s amazing.

As for the suicide attempt, that’s something incredibly heavy for anyone.

The irony is that some of the people I had mistakenly believed were friends were (are, I believe) in an anti-suicide advocacy group. I guess it was easier for them to say the right things than to do the right things. 🤷 Lessons learned, etc.

I wonder where the cool emotionally available people all are?

I met some when I was a member of The Satanic Temple. And then Lucien Greaves/Doug Mesner went full-on authoritarian, I bailed because I’d already escaped from one cult, and the people I knew stayed. Now I’m the out-group, rather than a friend, because group/social identity is harder to let go of than individual friendships. I met some when I was in art school; hopefully the world hasn’t beaten that tendency out of them yet.

I suck at making friends

I hear you. It’s hard to make plans with anyone now; no one seems to follow through. And without spending time with people, you can’t build those bonds of friendship.

My divorce was nine years ago. I got remarried a whopping five days after my divorce (…because that was the statutory minimum time; my ex-spouse had dragged their feet so long with a divorce they initiated that I’d had three serious relationships, met someone, gotten proposed to, and was ready to get married before the divorce was complete). I can say without reservation that my current partner is leaps and bounds better than my ex-partner. I’ve long ago accepted that many people that said they were friends were not friends, even if it still sticks in my throat. In the time since my divorce, I’ve lost an average of 1.1 cats per year, and it never gets easy to hold someone that’s been a friend and companion for over a decade as they take their last breath.

Am I okay? I’m as okay as I ever get. I’ve been through therapy multiple times, and I’d probably still go to therapy if insurance was affordable.

Do I have friends? Not really. If I make plans with people too far in advance, they forget and make other commitments. If I try to make plans too late, they’re already booked. It’s possible that I’m simply unlikeable; I tend to lean that way.

My only point was that, anecdotally, this is the experience that a lot of men have when they try to be emotionally vulnerable and honest with their male friends. Perhaps Gen Z isn’t getting this kind of shit; maybe they’re able to be more emotional. I kind of doubt it though, because young Gen Z men are trending far more conservative than Millennials, and conservatism isn’t friendly towards emotional intimacy among men. I hope that they do better than my generation did.

It wasn’t necessary for it to be in the equation in the way that you think it wasn’t. They could see the past; it was easy to trace the evolution of arms and armor. They could easily see that, in the 1400s, a single knight in armor was more than equal to multiple men at arms, and that the handgonne had entirely changed that equation. Seeing the past, they could easily foresee that the tools of violence would change in the future.

But hey, lets drill down here. The point of the 2nd amendment is twofold; first, the people were intended to be a check against the government, and second, they recognized the common-law right to self-defense that they had taken from English law. Remember that they’d just been through a revolution, and they were well aware that a gov’t could become a tyranny (which is exactly where we are very, very rapidly heading); the idea of the people being armed with military weapons meant that it would be more difficult for a hostile gov’t to subjugate the people. To that end, militarily useful weapons should have more protections against banning than sporting arms. As to self-defense, well, assault rifles happen to be the most effective tool for that job–as far as defense at home goes–along with ‘high capacity’ magazines in handguns for carry guns. So even taking your claims at face value, if the founders somehow didn’t foresee changes in the tools of violence, they hold no water.

My account has under 400 until I can find a new job that doesn’t have so much down time between contracts…

Yikes. That’s scary as shit. I’m sorry to hear that. I hope that you can find something soon. I’ve been there–it’s been a while, thankfully–and there’s just nothing good about it.

It also opens buds to help you if they’re up for it.

My experience has been that being emotionally open tends to make people withdraw. Should it be that way? Of course not. Should I get better friends? Yeah, that would be cool, and I wish that was as easy to do as it is to say. I’ve found that many relationships and friendships end up being somewhat transactional; people are there for the good times, but aren’t interested in the emotional labor when shit gets real. I try to be there for people when they’re going through shit, but that doesn’t seem to be reciprocated.

If I sound bitter, well, I am. And cynical.

A lot of people I had thought were friends ghosted me when I failed to complete suicide and had a 72 hour hold. My ex-spouse held me in utter contempt because I was struggling emotionally. A lot of people I had known for a decade or more ghosted me when my ex-spouse and I were getting divorced; in fact, I only got to keep one friend in that divorce.

I suspect that this is part of the experience of being on the autism spectrum.

They kicked me out. They were already unhappy that I had started getting piercings–conservative Christians that they are–and then they found out that I had a LOT more piercings than they were able to see. Like, about 2x as many. And I had a lot of visible piercings. That led to a long period that was very, very difficult, including being kind of homeless for a while.

Bad times.

Just ask him what he’s doing when she makes those noises, because you want to try it out on your girlfriend (or have your boyfriend do it to you, either/or, I ain’t gonna judge).

But isn’t that also true with snakes? All of the times that I’ve stumbled across copperheads or rattlesnakes, they’ve just wanted to do their thing, and go on their way. They didn’t want to bite me. And 99.999% of the time, as long as you back off, the snake isn’t going to do anything.

…Except there’s that .001% of the time when a snake is going to chase someone, and attack them. And that makes everyone terrified of all snakes, because they never know which one is going to be that .001%.

It’s understandable, but it’s not fair, and yeah, it sucks to have people think you’re a threat when you’re trying hard not to be.

What am I supposed to do? “Oh, hey, yeah, so, I just held my cat in my arms as he died. I had to euthanize him because he was had congestive heart failure, and was slowly drowning from pulmonary edema. I miss him so much, and I want to believe that he’s in a better place, but he’s just dead and gone, and I’m never gonna see him again. All I’ve got are memories, and they’re going to fade with time until one day I realize that I haven’t thought about him in years. But yo, how are you doin’? Any big plans for the weekend?”

You get up, and keep doing the shit you have to do, because it needs to get done. Telling people you’re really depressed tends to make them feel really awkward, they don’t know what to say, and then they gradually start ghosting you. Shit sucks, but you put a happy face on because no one wants to know that you aren’t happy.

They’re usually not too bad, if you get a working one off eBay. Buying a new loom from the manufacturer? Yeah, that’s a few grand.

It says quite plainly that states should be able to field well regulated militias,

You clearly forget that they extended that right to artillery as well. You were just as legally entitled to own a field cannon loaded with grapeshot as you were a musket. In point of fact, wealthy people that owned ships could and did outfit their ships with cannon either to be privateers under a letter of marque, or to fight off pirates and the privateers of other countries.

But even at that, at the time when the constitution was written, muzzle-loaded firearms were the pinnacle of war-time weaponry. Bayonet charges were common, and swords still saw extensive use in pitched battles. Not only that, but people were legally obligated to own militarily-suitable arms, and they were expected to train on their own. The concept of having a brace of pistols comes from this era; while they didn’t have repeating rifles, they did have pepperbox pistols that could fire multiple times before being reloaded. So this idea that it was not the intent that the people should have access to militarily-suitable weapons simply isn’t borne out by an understanding of history.

I know a trucker that’s gay, and very, very anti-Trump. He’s still fairly conservative–a lot more conservative than I am–but he’s def. smart enough to know that Republicans aren’t going to do him any favors.

Around my parts of Ohio,

Huh. I grew up in central Ohio. I remember Meijer carrying firearms at one point, but I thought that they’d removed them.

but this is the first I’m hearing of inrangeTV

Karl is a good guy; he does a lot of videos about the intersection between history, guns, and community protection, along with more typical gun reviews and discussions. He just reposted one that he did about the executive order that created the Japanese internment camps during WWII. Russell is also a good guy; he’s more of a classical libertarian, in that he believes in small government, and free exercise of rights regardless of gender/gender expression, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, etc. He posts a lot of things on his own channel dealing with shooting matches (usually two gun). Together they also run a series of shooting matches that require a combination of strong fitness and shooting ability to place well (which is where the community encouraging people to suck less springs from); the matches are genuinely inclusive, and homo-/transphobes are not welcome.

I really need to get first aid certified

I honestly don’t know what certification orgs there are for trauma first aid. There’s American Red Cross, but that doesn’t usually cover things in the way that classes covering MARCH (Massive hemorrhage, Airway, Respiration, Circulation, Hypothermia) do. Last I knew, ARC was still using ABC (Airway, Breathing, Circulation), and doesn’t adequately–IMO–cover things like what to do when someone gets shot, or severs an artery in an accident. Wilderness First Responder courses might be a lot too heavy, esp. since they start at $600, and are 70+ hours. Tactical Combat Casualty Care - Combat Life Saver (TCCC-CLS) is probably equally heavy in time and cost. But the Stop the Bleed classes offered by affiliates of the Dept. of Homeland Security tend to cover things like tourniquets and wound packing very, very lightly; it’s a 2-3 hour course, at best, and that’s not really very adequate, IMO.