Any reliable reporting coming out on all these boats and crews that are being blown up?

(The ‘Drug War’ has been blatantly evil for decades. We know there’s a good chance the official narrative is bullshit, and there certainly is no nuance.)

Are they fishing, smuggling, or both?

This is great info! I use the plain jane P100 instead of dust masks all the time.

General respirator info for all my peeps:

3M 6000 half face and 7000 full face series reapirators are where it’s at. They’re worth the money even if you only ever use it for home repair.

I use one of them with the P100 disks all the time for dust, mold, grinding, drilling into possible asbestos, etc. Also effective against droplet born disease such as coronavirus. The organic vapor cartridge above also does particulate as a P100 (the organic vapor portion has a limited lifespan once opened, IIRC, but the filtration is indefinite). P100 particulate filtering lasts a long time, however, before they clog. Years with normal homeowner use.

Read up on sizing. Most average cis male sized heads will be a large. Average cis female sized head is medium.

If using a half face in an infectious or chemical environment, swim googles will protect your eyes.

The racism doesn’t explain it for me.

It’s certainly a contributing factor, and I think it’s closer to whatever venality trump has tapped into in these people.

However, just the way the man presents himself should have been an immediate turnoff for most of these people.

He’s a fop, a dandy, he’s got a swish in his mannerisms that borders queer stereotypes for many southerners. He’s city soft. Which these people hate just as much as they hate black folks.

Personal experience, I don’t understand deacons, colonels, PhDs, and skilled blue collar worshipping the freak. It’s not about policy, it’s that they’re just as bigoted against how he presents himself as they are about race.

I get how the mechanics of it work. That’s not hard to see and understand.

The part I don’t understand is the cult of personality. The personality is repulsive. He violates all kinds of norms the fundies literally hold as sacred. Trump is openly a cartoon of what fundies rail against, teach their children not to be, and consider evil.

I was born and raised southern fundie. A new york city, orange makeup wearing, reality tv, biblically ignorant, multiply divorced, fucktard conman is about the last thing I could see them falling for. That’s the part I don’t understand. Mike Johnson, Bush, Cheney - I understand. Hell, they didn’t like Romney because he was Mormon.

If you’ve ever seen the movie The Outlaw Josey Wales, there is a yankee carpet bagger selling snake oil. He’s comic relief and is an archetype of slimy dandy Yankee sales weasel. There are cultural tropes against exactly the sort of person Trump is including his appearance.

And yet, they fell for it. I don’t get it.

Sitting on the inside here. I’m perpetually astounded as well. Very little of this suprises me anymore but plenty of things shock me.

He’s a stereotypical conman; so shallow, so obvious. And yet, my family and former friends continue to slurp up his bullshit. It’s so fucking stupid. He’s so stupid. On paper, many of these people are smarter than the orange used car salesman.

It’s difficult to describe how astounded I really am. Black magic or aliens would make more sense. I would find a novel or show with this unrealistic.

I wonder if I’ll ever understand?

Might think about taking a break for a while. I have to, sometimes. Do some camping and mostly unplug. Anything real big goes down and you’ll hear about it.

Marathon, not a sprint. Fuck em, we’re harder. Country boy can survive.

I really like your analysis.

I really fucking hope you’re right.

He sounds like a pretty awesome dude. Thanks for sharing. Also sounds like he has you pretty well trained, he gets to ride and sniff.

We don’t have a small dog right now, our elderly Chihuahua reached the end a couple years ago and my wife is still raw.

I never really figured out you had to drive as fast as possible and that the fuel level was actually a countdown timer. I was crazy about the cartoon and remember being so disappointed with the game.

That’s really funny to me. What was his name and what was he like?

The English Offical Table of Drops for hanging. Helps prevent the head from popping off or doing the air run.

Correct, specific to his fiction. I don’t know if I’ve read a non-fiction book of his. However, I’ve never read a bad article or essay by him. He has great insight.

His ideas are fantastic. Execution and characterization are spotty. Been a while since I read anything of his, but IIRC, he has a tendency to dip into surrealism or absurdity that feels cringey instead of his artistic target.

In some ways, it’s similar to a lot of Golden Era SF. You read it for the ideas, not the story.

I do have a favorable opinion of him and his work. I’d really enjoy Doctorow being paired with a traditional fiction author and both being rode herd by a hardass SF editor.

Reminds me of an emachine.

Here’s a ET1161-07 from 2009:

That’s pretty much what I figured. Wish trans folks had something like the old school hanky code.

As far as my preferences go, I was in a triad for a while with an NB. If I were stuck on a desert island and had to pick between a vanilla woman or a sub boy, I’m picking the boy. However, like I said, I have a strong preference for female genitalia. The whole tomboy/NB thing is the sweetspot for me in this spectrum.

I also have smell preferences. MtF, many NB, and cis women smell much more attractive to me. I imagine it’s related to test levels. I don’t find heavily transitioned FtM very attractive. There’s an androgynous smell that’s kind of like fallen leaves that I really like.

Not trying to fetishize here, but thought the perspective might be interesting. I’m very masculine and fall somewhere between a wolf or bear.

As far as I know, pup/petplay is an outgrowth of queer male leather with leather pups being the prototype. Ponyplay has similar roots, probably a little more tradionally het. A fair amount of it, especially in porn, is just female submissive cishet roleplay. There is also overlap with furries.

It is relatively common in the straight-ish kink and leather communties in the US. There are leather pups all over gay leather. I can’t speak to the lesbian communties.

If you’re in the US, get involved with your local bdsm/kink community. Saw a girl come out as a hu-cow for the first time at a recent event.

When considering dating trans/NB folks, what is the best way to ask about their genital configuration, gender identity, and future planned trajectory?

In other words, I have a strong preference for female genitalia. I also strongly prefer limited or no body hair (shaved is fine). There is a set of tomboy/androgyny/boi that is my type. Is there a polite way to ask about this?

This is sweet! Didn’t realize it existed. Been dreading the 11 BS and clawing all the enshittification out. I wish I could do linux on my main machine, but CAM is still not pro grade.

big sloppy kiss

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about informed consent. (Active in the BDSM community.) I’ve negotiated a lot of sex. However, some things, like a first kiss, I prefer to communicate without talking. Most functional adults should be able to negotiate a kiss without saying a word. Especially if you’re on a real date. You just have to ease into it.

Hell yeah. I still love the trade. Did management and consulting but have found I’m not happy if I’m not working with my hands. Working with my hands includes modelling and programming.

Lemmy sometimes. It’s like a basic human thing. Someone gives you the look, you get closer, they get closer, you gently touch lips and then go from there. Some of this functions at the level of biology. You can actually see the other’s pupils dilate. We’re not talking random heavy tounge kissing and groping or negotiating kinky sex.