FriendOfDeSoto

Which is it?

I may be white, sensitive, and full of bullshit. But I’m not American!

Sensitive? WTF do you mean sensitive? I’m not sensitive. Thank you for rage baiting with us today.

Asked and answered.

Sole custody? Not a big chance unless the other parent becomes criminal, sick to the point where they can no longer take care of the child, or worse.

Japan is embarking on a journey of allowing split custody. That concept is new though because we love a law with tradition that goes back to the Heian era. My layman guess would be they will somehow exclude foreign passport holders without PR, just on principle.

Forgive me for being this blunt: your friend is effed. They didn’t get their kid a passport. They are at the mercy of the Japanese courts. And even if they had the passport and could ‘go on vacation’ to the US, there is a very good chance the US courts would eventually send the kid back. There is international law at play to prevent child abductions, chief among it the Hague convention, to which the US and finally also Japan are signatories. Your friend’s best chance is a stable life in Japan, a good lawyer, and hopefully no marks on the record that diminishes their chances. Naiveté isn’t a defense. If the friend didn’t know that if the marriage went south this could be the outcome that’s regrettable but also the toughest of luck.

Also, we only get half the story on hearsay. The other parent’s story might paint a very different picture.

Personally, I look to the user side for lack of intelligence.

And why is slop so sloppy slop slop? Consider this question asked and answered by yourself.

I’m sure many people can relate. I’m not sure how helpful this is. You sound like you’re not from an area currently in a state of war or suffering from famine. So you’re probably somewhere where you could try to talk a therapist.

It’s not from the machine because I clean that as well. And then all clothes should get the smell and they don’t. It’s a riddle inside an enigma wrapped in confused consumers.

The problem with the question is us, the consumers. When is the last time you sat down to read the instructions in great detail? A cursory look at the recommended temperature maybe and off we go. Meanwhile a labcoat has produced the greatest formula to clean everything at room temperature. If only we used this much water and these many spin cycles. But no one read the back of the container.

Where I am at, people tend to not do a hot cycle or if they need it they go to a launderette. The liquid works okay on clothes in a cold cycle. But bed sheets and towels start smelling if they don’t get at least a 40C/100F cycle every once in a while. And I do that one on powder because it was the only one that wasn’t designed to be for cold wash only. So to summarize this extremely boring anecdote: it depends where you are, what your machine is like, and probably on local water quality as well. Or: we’ll never find a good answer here that satisfies the demands of the scientific method.

Technically, “the Holy Spirit” isn’t a proper noun. That’s because it contains an adjective also. Personally, I wouldn’t capitalize any of those terms. The head of the Catholic church only really when talking about it as a title in front of the assumed name, Pope Leo. Somebody’s style guide may have them capitalize all nouns with religious notoriety. That’s a style choice then rather than grammatical necessity.

Also, grammar is the attempt at formulating rules about how people talk. Meaning the talking came first and then somebody tried to codify it. That means there is virtually no grammar rule that doesn’t come with at least one exception. Learning when to use an article or not, when it should be the indefinite or the definite one, is killing students who come from languages that don’t use articles at all. And in some cases also those who speak other article-infested languages. That’s because it doesn’t make any sense and you had to grow up being corrected by other speakers to get this mostly right. It is convention more than clean cut rules.

How would you feel about the fact that they made the Jim Carrey movie and put it where you could see it?

I don’t think the Morisetteian irony of watching a movie that’s equally fucked up in its premise as you found out your life is would move the needle much. The rug would’ve been pulled out from under you and this wouldn’t cause more than a wry bored smile a couple of weeks later when the shock has subsided a bit.

As far as I’m concerned, that and PIC S2 NEVER HAPPENED!

Ro’s decision is understandable if you consider her life experiences.

The Maquis are not created in universe to be good or bad. They are not black or white, they are gray all the way. Because that’s how all freedom fighters/terrorists are in their time. They get their marks from history. Some upstart colonists in the 1770s tend to get a more favorable score from history. For the communists in Cuba it depends who you ask.

Reality is a clusterfuck and politics is the art of what’s possible. No one designed the situation to place colonists on these planets, to have a war in the neighborhood, and then have to come up with a compromise to end the killing. It happened and now they have to deal with it. I’d like to see the SWOT analysis of each colonized planet, just to see if they considered risking setting off the stereotypical fascist race in the neighborhood by their presence. That is to say the colonists may not be entirely blameless either. But regardless, the federation made an agreement to end the killing in a big war. They drew a line on a map and that’s never not caused other problems in history. In the middle east, in Korea, in Europe, etc. It’s often the best solution to end or prevent the fighting but it’s still a shit solution that doesn’t solve all problems. Indeed, one might argue it may only be a temporary reprieve. So the Maquis are borne out of gray, they do things that are gray, often more on the darker spectrum, and then the authorities come in and also react in dark gray when they poison an entire planet’s atmosphere. The writers even threw in some native American tribes having to relocate or accept Cardassian rule to perfect the clusterfuck.

The way some of the Maquis stories are told in late TNG and then DS9 is not the best Trek has to offer. But if you zoom out, the overall situation they’ve created is realistic and believable. The Maquis are ambiguous, the role of the federation is ambiguous. It’s all just gray. And while I don’t think it’s super unrealistic that they just get wiped out by the Ketracel White addicts, I thought it’s a lazy writers’ end to a great scenario they had created.

It’s a stressful situation, a funeral. It seems insurmountable before it happens and once it gets going it becomes mostly manageable. I get why you don’t want the stress and all the family dynamics and the religious top layer.

That being said: yes, you are unreasonable. If you like going to funerals, there is something wrong with you. Nobody likes it. For much the same reasons as yours. That’s the baseline.

Think of it as a game and try to avoid talking to all the family members you don’t like. And since it will be your father’s funeral, you have the perfect excuse to have a thousand mile stare and be monosyllabic. And then you treat yourself when it’s over.

There is no need to make your father sad now. Tell him you’ll attend. Because it matters to him. Even if you have no intention to show up, which you should though. He’ll either come back to haunt you from the afterlife (slim chance) or the only people who will maintain a grudge are your living relatives. That’s the bed you’ll be making for yourself and you can avoid a whole lot of additional shit in the future by investing half a day and attend the goddamn funeral.

In a way this might be explained away with changing expectations by the audience or it’s a way to grab audience attention. I think it also depends which media you consume and how that’s funded. I think public broadcasters like the BBC are less likely to add music to their proper news segments than CBS because they don’t need to sell commercials for pharmaceuticals with an unending list of side effects. In my European view, American news at least since CNN became a thing has always had an emphasis on form over function with more pretty people reading the news, sound effects, animated graphics, breaking news alerts, etc. Unfortunately, a lot of that has filtered through elsewhere as well.

Music on news is nothing new though. I remember Enya infused VTs of collapsing World Trade Centers and videos of the tsunami and exploding nuclear reactors in line with some trip hop beat. And I remember people getting mad about that back then as well.

If you are something like 4chan or a descendant of that type of website, the answer is as easy as that. If you are Xwitter or Facebook it is not. You’re too big. You may have opened an office in the country, either because it was a legal requirement to continue operating in the country or because you collect money through it. So throwing your hands up and saying eff you we just don’t serve your country any more comes with a cost. Your ad money now needs to be paid abroad, which comes with the danger of increasing the cost for advertisers who now need to pay in dollars rather than pounds. And the representative in the local office, which you may want to close now, may find themselves in court for all the infractions that occurred before you threw your hands up (something that happened in Brazil IIRC). Also, you want the people who make the laws continue to use your platform to give it relevance. A Melon Usk Xwitter hissy fit may finally drive the rest of the politicians away. Loss of relevance will translate to loss of money.

The internet is multilaterally interdependent and scale matters.

If they’re going to Singapore, do tell them because bringing durian on public transport can get you in trouble. I think it’s just a fine and not a caning but still.

This looked totally legit until

secure communication channels below. TELEGRAM

Straight pride.