Yes, we’ve got an Epson Ecotank too, its been great, and super economical on ink. Bought in the first covid lockdown when our HP shat the bed, still going strong. And its not made in China so another plus

How did this ballroom get hired at such short notice?

Well I upvoted because this is an excellent question that has applications and relevance far beyond just the current Hamas atrocities.

Facing up to and dealing with the fact that a small percentage of any population is psychopathic (which is a rough clinical descriptor/ analogue for what the man in the street would call evil -lacking in conscience, empathy or morality) is something we do not do well, at least in the Western world, and it is something which we do need to grapple with. And when evil men gain power and set the social and cultural norms - as in 1930’s Germany - the larger population can be persuaded or at least coerced into doing evil. We’ve seen this before, from the Armenian genocide, the Nazi regime, Rwanda and now this

That is a fantastic idea. America has such a terrible health system

Its a fair question. I think the best approach actually is not to make it illegal for deeply unsuitable individuals to reproduce, but to incentivise them not to. Make contraception freely and easily available, and actually pay them not to have kids. Using a carrot rather than a stick approach like this will be far easier to get across the line and will present less enforcement challenges

Damn… you lucky. I need heavy sedation just to get my anxiety under control, or at least tamped down

I would have thought that in the instance of rape the burden of punishment would fall entirely upon the perpetrator, i.e. the rapist. Fair point about divorce though

Currently in most of the Western world we have very stringent standards that have to be met in order to adopt a child (and quite rightly too in my view). But in order to conceive a child naturally? Nothing, nada, zilch. Full blown neo-nazi? Meth addict? Huge track record of violence? Rapist? Paedophile? All of the above? Find a partner of the opposite sex and you’re good to go! This is a massive inconsistency that I can see we will have to face up to sooner or later, maybe not to the extent you propose, but some sort of minimum standard needs to be put in place for being able to reproduce, for the sake of those children that will otherwise be brought up in horrific, abusive nightmare environments if nothing else.

Partner has Netflix which we all use (in same house), I have Deezer. We get good usage from both, not cancelling either one

Lack of resources, poverty, disease, stress, aggression, pollution. There isnt really a problem out there that overpopulation doesnt make worse

This is what puts me off going, the poverty. Pity because I’d love to go for all the great vegetarian food, but I can get a lot of that here

Having not been there I dont really know enough to form an opinion of such a huge country that contains such a diversity of cultures, but it does seem to be struggling with severe overpopulation which is at the root of many of its isssues

Hell yeah, even in suppository form, which isnt super convenient but worth it for the benefit There is so much I want to do!

Appropriate song

Once every few weeks or so, usually when something comes up online or on TV set in Rome or round the time period involved. Rarely pops up in my mind unprompted.

It is when you do it at the supermarket, airport or shopping mall!

Yes, once as part of an BDSM session. A guy I really fancied was into BDSM, so I thought give it a try, see if I like it. Turns out I didnt and dont. At . All. As it happens, I intensely dislike being bound or restrained in any way. I also cant stand pain, and in addition I am incapable of inflicting pain on others. Oh, and I’m allergic to leather.

After our attempted BDSM session had inevitably turned to farce, he commented to me over a cup of tea afterwards that I was the most uniquely unsuited person to BDSM practices that he’d ever encountered… never a truer word spoke.

I pirate the odd bit of music and the ocassional film if I cant find it on streaming services, or if I need music in MP3 format for swimming with, vast bulk of what I pirate is music though. And probably less than 10% of all the media I have is pirated. Make something easily available in the format I need at a reasonable price and I’ll happily pay for it

No personal experiences per se, but my partner has good friends whose son got briefly entangled with the HA, they ripped him off and fucked up his life a treat, not good people. But they are far from the worst gang here

Yes, my partner has good friends whose son got briefly entangled with the HA, they ripped him off and fucked up his life a treat, not good people. But they are far from the worst gang here

Cant think of anything off hand that niche that isnt car related. This site is much more general but has some great writing on it