I think you’re right, but I don’t think holding blackmail is relevant to their goals anymore, so there’s no point in releasing it right now.
Even if Trump could be blackmailed into doing more to help Russia, does it matter? The republicans control the house and senate.
All the U.S. has to do to benefit Russia is allow republicans to enact their domestic and foreign policies.
This is morbid but one of my favorite “butterfly” effect news stories in the last year was around the death of Angela Chao after she backed her car into a pond while intoxicated.
Okay, so - here’s the setup:
The Chao family is a very wealthy family. In the 1960’s the family patriarch got into the shipping business and has done very well, garnering money and power. Wealth and power beget wealth and power. Mitch McConnell is even married to one of the daughters - Elaine Chao.
Well, Bush appointed E. Chao to Labor Secretary during his presidency. Mind you, she’s not just Mitch’s wife - she has been in government since the late 80’s. One of the talking points in republican circles during the Bush years was that there was a massive decrease in worker safety complaints. They attributed this to businesses behaving themselves and say that this is evidence that self-regulation can work. What was learned later is that OSHA simply didn’t enforce many regulations or follow up on many complaints, instead choosing to focus on trying to find fraud within unions.
Cut to Trump. He appoints Elaine - still Mitch McConnell’s wife, and daughter of a transportation magnate - to be the Department of Transportation’s Secretary. The ethics concerns notwithstanding, the department hand waved many things through, such as the tesla doors mentioned in the article above, as well as the Tesla Model X’s confusing forward/reverse system, which is cited as being a reason for the death of Angela Chao, her sister.
was
is
She will live inside you forever. She won’t be gone. She will live on in memory.
You’re one of the founding members of the greater Seattle area polycule, aren’t you?
I would move both of your pothos. I’d slide the one over the oven closer to the corner and find a way to allow the vines (limbs?) of it to ‘climb’ along the wall above your sink. I would also consider a way to have the other ‘side’ of it branch out between the rafters. (Maybe not screws for the rafters, but perhaps something fun like vintage clamps?) Same for the other pothos, move it over so more of the green is exposed on the wall above that bigger window.
Pick up a small bit of stained glass art and stick it in the window, too.
Mess up the design aesthetic some - Get an earth-tone placemat and a craft-y looking bowl and fill it with fruit or if you’re not a fruit person, something pretty and useful enough that it won’t get dust covered. (Grab and go snacks in bright packages?)
I’d reconsider the lights above the cooktop. Maybe find ones that are a bit more decorative, or certainly ones that aren’t just black.
Put a cork board or a chalk board over the cabinet to the left of the oven, and keep colored post-its or chalk handy.
Maybe replace the handles on your cabinets with something brightly colored or with a bit more character/individual craftsmanship.
I guess the idea behind most of what I’m suggesting is to make it look lived in, and to give it some warm tones/break up the stark whiteness of it. The individual suggestions probably aren’t as important as the overall idea.
In retrospect I think my comment sounds like I’m just excusing being sort of crappy if you’re humble about it.
I wish I’d included the sentiment that we’re all trying the best we can — because being a good partner should be the goal for any relationship.
Even though I’m currently only with my wife, I’m right there with you. I don’t want to add anyone to the mix unless their addition is very carefully considered.
I speak better in metaphor sometimes: It’s kind of like physics, almost. Imagine that we’re touching everyone in our life. If we allow someone to connect to us, they are going to impart their own momentum and direction. That is going to ripple through every connection we have, even if we aren’t able to measure or observe it. So we better make sure they don’t hit us so hard that pieces break apart or get damaged in the process.
If you’re somewhere in the world that has a TJ Maxx/TK Maxx or similar, go buy their random products that are on sale. Not all are winners, but if you change up your products and just experiment, you’ll find something you like.
I have long wavy hair, and right now I’m on a Shea Moisture curl and shine kick, but before then it was the Verb Ghost line of products for a long time.
Don’t sleep on after shower crap, either. My hair has been really dry lately, so I’ve been using a leave in conditioner by Shea, too (now discontinued, sadly). In the rotation is also the Verb Ghost Oil, and some random peptide leave in. JVN (Johnathon Van Ness) also has some excellent products, but we haven’t found them on sale in awhile.
I don’t use all the after shower products at once, but each has their use. Once you get a feel for what you’re going for, it’s like having a shelf full of tools.
And if you got a beard, well… use something and tell me if you figure out what works, because I still can’t figure that out. My hair looks great and my beard looks like it got lost in the desert.
That sucks, man.
I’ve been some stripe or other of non-monogamous for most of my adult life, and those types of relationships are often the ones that people experience first when they dip their toes in.
It’s honestly kind of maddening, because beyond making it seem like everyone who is poly/nm/whatever are all horny sociopaths (because almost everyone has something like that as a first story), it’s harmful. It’s physically and emotionally unsafe for the person who gets shafted. It treats people like they’re disposable and frankly, it’s selfish, insecure, and sometimes malevolent bullshit dressed up as a hippy-dippy love-fest.
It’s really fucking hard to be ethically nonmonogamous, and I wish people would stop pretending they knew what they were doing. No one knows, and it’s the faked confidence that gets so many people in trouble. People just trust someone to take care of them, and then the other person fails because they’re human, and humans fail. And yet… I can’t imagine not being this way, for some dumb fucking reason.
Toxic polyamory situation. A partner I lived with and was once very in love with fell away when she got interested in someone new. It was messy and shitty. I wound up dating someone new, who I had a great relationship with, and it was very physical. But I still lived in a 2 bedroom apartment with my ex.
My ex was a bit weird. She sort of viewed relationships as whatever things with no boundaries. Folks just do whatever they want in the moment and there’s no fidelity according to her. (Things I learned after I fell in love with her. Woof.) She also had intoned a few times that my new partner was a slut, which was sort of funny, given that my new partner had a pretty strong moral code.
My ex got a little less interested in her new guy, and tried to seduce me one night. And I rejected her. We had officially ended things, and I did not want to revisit that.
My ex sneered at me. “Fine. I hope you’re happy with [New Partner], and I hope [NP] is happy with you and your… magical penis!”
She practically spat that out at me, and… yeah. It was as funny then as it is now.
And for the record, it’s not magical. I just like to put top hats and little capes on it sometimes.
A base plate that’s got a spring under it, except for a little nub that pokes the power button.
Terrible if you live in earthquake-prone areas.
Wait. Are we describing a bump stock for your computer?
If I had one of those in my living room, my house would collapse.
I used to play 1v1 Ticket to Ride matches against my wife using the app.
As background: I’m not a very competitive gamer, but I’m decent at problem solving. When I first learned TtR, I played with fairly … great players. One of my friends was (is?) nationally ranked. They routinely beat the ever-loving crap out of me. I think of the dozens of games we’ve played, I have won maybe 10-20% of the time?
My wife isn’t bad at TtR, but she doesn’t see things the same way in terms of strategy.
We had this one game where I drew a bunch of short routes all over the map, which blocked her early in the game, and a series of lucky route draws lead me to connect them, inadvertently blocking her at least twice, including on the last play, where I was just dumping cars to end the game.
She was always a little upset when I beat her, but this time the discrepancy was so bad and she was so upset. I just stopped playing Ticket to Ride - like, at all.
I’m sure once the paper gets ahold of the terrorists PR team for a quote, they’ll say they killed 5 infidels and had 2 martyrs.
But for now, it’s the government giving the quote, and they’re saying they killed 2 terrorists, and had 5 martyrs.
Editing to add: I don’t see martyr as a loaded term. It’s an honorific about someone’s death, when other words fail. It’s just a colloquial use of the word.
Wait. No. It is a demolition. We’re just looking at it from behind.
Not to be a know it all, but I believe that there is a chimney remolition. It’s where they implode one together.
The goal is not really to kill civilians or even to harm Hezbollah. The goal is to destroy vital services to further destabilize the country.
Shirley you’ve heard of absurdist humor?
That’s when my mom became old enough to vote, and she was a real idiot.
It’s not, you know, the best theory, but it’s the best theory I can come up with while also doing no research.
Yeah. I guess we’ll never figure out why oil washed up on beaches next to an offshore oil drilling zone. One of life’s mysteries, I guess!
Editing to add: The legal fate of the offshore oil wells is in question, and it’s not clear if work has begun on them or not. New South Wales has banned drilling within their territory, but the company said they’ll just go farther out to sea, where it’s governed by Australia’s federal laws, and I don’t know if they’ve actually started drilling yet.
Heck, those could also have come from a deteriorated WWII ship. Not that I seriously believe that theory, though.
I have ADHD you glorified staple.