I test drove a couple of Teslas way back in the day. You know what the big selling point was? The “Easter egg” that shows the surface of Mars on the GPS. Oh, and the James Bond Lotus one. It was at that point that I realized this was not a serious company, and it was run by a dork ass 4Chan edgelord.

America is a huge fucking country. If you want to have interesting travel, there are PLENTY of places you can go within america alone.

I would love for this to be the answer for why most Americans don’t travel internationally. The US is massive, and it’s one of the most geographically diverse countries on earth. Just look at this list of ecoregions of the US. Also, damn near every nationality you can think of has made a home here, and they brought their culture with them. There are Congolese enclaves in North Carolina, Somalian enclaves in Minnesota, Cambodian enclaves in California, Indian enclaves in New York, Finnish enclaves in Oregon, French enclaves in Alabama… The list goes on and on. It’s actually insane how much beautiful variation there is here, both geographically and culturally.

Unfortunately, the real reason most Americans don’t travel abroad is far more depressing. The numbers that Dogiedog64 was citing come from a survey conducted by OnePoll, which wound up in this Forbes article.

In fact, survey results showed 76 percent of the respondents wanted to travel more than they do currently. The reasons they gave for why they don’t are what you would expect: mainly due to a lack of finances or just feeling unprepared and ill-equipped to venture forth into unknown territory. More specifically, 63 percent of Americans who have never left the country said an international trip would be out of their price range.

When you consider that nearly 40% of Americans can’t cover an unexpected $400 expense, it starts to make sense that so many Americans don’t travel abroad. It’s heartbreaking that we basically invented “grind culture”, and yet most of us can’t afford the same kind of vacation that a minimum wage worker in Denmark gets.

Most people wouldn’t, which is why this argument is a non-starter for me. When people say Dems should’ve played dirty to stop the Republicans, I just roll my eyes. It would never work, because the majority of people who vote Dem would never support that kind of politicking under normal circumstances. But now we’re at the precipice, and we are slowly finding out that even the most milquetoast Dem voters are willing to support the dirtiest tricks just to get out from under the grip of this techno-fascist bullshit.

I just hope we can find our way back to some kind of sanity once the dust settles.

I don’t know, but it just doesn’t roll off the tongue the way “cold turkey” does.

I can tell you right now, there won’t be a legal route to a new constitution without a civil war. There is no way that enough people in power would support rewriting that document.

I agree with everything you’ve written, but the meme is garbage. I don’t want people in power who will “blow through all the barriers”, regardless of what their intentions are. I want better barriers that allow for meaningful change while preventing idiots from being elected and selling our country out to foreign billionaires and corporations.

Unfortunately, the genie is out of the bottle now, and the only way to fight back is to blow through barriers, and hope that whoever ends up in charge creates better ones. Because if this is going to be the new norm, where we just disregard the rules forever, then we are done for.

“Quitting cold turkey” - I never actually thought about this one, but apparently it’s directly related to addiction (which seems kind of obvious now that I do think about it). When you quit an addiction abruptly, you sometimes get that cold goosebump skin like a cold turkey.

The Wikipedia entry on that one is a fun read. I’ve heard most of these possible origins before, but nobody is actually sure of the true origin of the phrase. It’s kind of frustrating, but also pretty neat that we still use a phrase long after we forgot where it came from.

“Bless your heart” is such a sneaky Southern saying.

Interesting. I always thought it was because the rain was so heavy it drove all the strays to seek shelter, so people noticed a lot more cats and dogs in front of their homes. I think a grade school teacher told me that when I was a kid. I like the dead animal version better.

I lived there for a year and am moving there permanently in a couple of months. Albania is such an underrated country in so many ways. It has its problems, but man, it is a bajillion times better than living in the US.

Albania.

A man should have goals.

It wasn’t that 6 year old kids decision.

That’s a 20% mortality rate. If vaccines had anywhere near that level of mortality risk, all the streets of every city in the world would be absolutely fucking littered with bodies. You have to be one dumb motherfucker to think this is some kind of vindication for your antivax position.

The MAGA hat trick.

Moving abroad (I’m American). It was something I’d been planning for a few years anyway, and I’m super glad I got the ball rolling when I did. I’ve lived abroad before and loved it, and plan to make it permanent this time, which is a little intimidating, but also exciting.

Man, that headline really undersells what a piece of shit this guy is.

Ricci Wynne, 39, known as Raw Ricci to his more than 100,000 Instagram followers, was first arrested in November and charged with pimping and pandering by procuring, HuffPost previously reported. He was taken into custody alongside a woman shortly after arriving at San Francisco International Airport.

The influencer was already being investigated by San Francisco police at the time of his November arrest and was named a suspect in the sexual assault of a 15-year-old, according to The San Francisco Standard. Authorities say they found evidence on Wynne’s cellphones and at his luxury apartment that indicated he was facilitating a sex work operation that spanned multiple cities.

He’s a full fledged sex trafficker and a child sex abuser. Logic tells me there’s probably some overlap between those two things as well.

“Do the gesture on video, exactly like Musk did, and let me show it to your boss.”

Also, if it looks enough like a Nazi salute for half the country and most of the world to think that’s what it was, then why didn’t Musk come out and address it by denouncing Nazis and apologizing for the unintended similarity? Why did he double down on it with a tone deaf Nazi joke? No serious person in such a powerful position would do that. So at best, he’s an unserious idiot who shouldn’t have his fingers in our government, and at worst, he’s a Nazi.

Ultimately though, if you’re talking to someone who is still making excuses for Musk doing a Nazi salute, there’s very little chance they are ever going to admit that it definitely was a Nazi salute, short of Musk himself coming out and saying “it was a Nazi salute because I’m a Nazi.”

What a whining fucking maggot. Elon and that whole cohort of cowardly cunts are destroying education, Social Security, international relations, food safety, financial security, and any kind of safety net for the tens of millions of people who will fall through the cracks and die because of their greed. Yeah, no fucking shit people want you dead. It’s not out of spite, or jealousy, or political differences. It’s self preservation.