In no way does that link prove that the state has a monopoly on violence. Are we just pasting random Wikipedia articles and pretending that’s an argument now?

Ever heard of the castle doctrine?

That’s just one example. Maybe next time you attend libertarian idiot 101 you should do it with a bit of skepticism instead of immediately accepting everything they say without evidence.

WTF are you even talking about?

It does not

That’s actually libertarian idiot 101, different class, held in the garage of a disheveled rancher flying a gadsden flag.

The “American experiment” as far as I am aware is one of “self-governance”.

It arguably has never been tried in earnest since the founding of this country, at very least failed entirely in 2016 with Russia’s influence and the zero consequences that arose from that, and was likely dealt a critical blow by the citizens united decision which all but guaranteed that rich people would decide our elections for us in the future.

We voted ourselves into what I’m now pretty convinced is an unshakable oligarchy. You’ll get what the rich, international oligarchs want you to have and nothing else. They’ve built bunkers in New Zealand and the Ozarks for when the consequences come knocking at their doors.

No

It’s already popular enough to be a meme scroll substitute for Reddit so I’m good.

Spray them down with microplastics, unnatural dyes, and hazardous chemicals.

It’s all in the game. Cops spend time doing stupid bullshit, criminals commit more crime, and the net result is a cop budget increase because we need to deal with our crime problem.

Tell the double whopper to stand down!!!

Is it ok to slut shame a website for having too many partners?

Sure, “no man sets foot in the same river twice”, but that does nothing to argue against the preservation of cultural items.

Take music, for instance. I never feel the same way the second time listening to a song as I did the first time, but that doesn’t make the music less special or change anything about it at all, and it certainly does nothing to advance a hypothetical argument that music shouldn’t be recorded or that the recordings of it shouldn’t be preserved for future enjoyment or different audiences.

Yep, many also think they’re exceptional, and so they’ve convinced themselves they’ll be the exception.

Yes, and they do.

I remember the summer of 2016, when I was playing Pokemon Go in the parks and people I had never talked to and that lived nearby were playing it next to me. We were all celebrating when we caught a pokemon when we were after, and comparing which ones we’d caught with each other.

At the time I thought…who would buy Trump’s conman routine? Who actually thinks that the country is in a terrible enough place that we need to elect this person who seems to actively hate the country and seemed to want to set the entire thing on fire?

I left my Californian home and went back to my original state to visit my family. We went to several different areas of the state in fall of 2016 because my wife was from a rural area and I originally grew up in a slightly more suburban area. I saw the signs in the yards, I saw the discontent, and I saw how people did not seem to be reacting the same way to his craziness. I saw how casually they would put on his rants in the background while talking about other issues. I saw how some of them were amused by his antics. It had been a couple of years since I had last been back and it once again struck me how much worse the area appeared to be from the last time I was there. I was in a rural area when the “Access Hollywood” tape dropped. People seemed to visibly shrink at even the mention of the news. I thought he was done for, and that this was a bridge too far for his supporters to cross. That people would vote third party, or not vote at all. I did not get the sense that my thoughts were shared by those around me.

When I came back to California, people were talking about the debates. It was sunny and nice out, and people would talk about the projects they had going on in their houses, or they’d talk about work related affairs. People were sometimes amused by Trump’s antics, but everyone uniformly thought it was impossible for him to win the election. Having seen what I had seen in the weeks prior, I was no longer one of these people. “They’ll never let him win”, one of my co-workers said. I was stunned…who are “they”? Does the rest of the country actually believe this?

It turns out quite a few of them did. Many people thought there was just simply no way that Trump would win, because either the system was already rigged against him and would not allow him to win, or because the country was just not in dire enough straits to elect such a madman (as I once thought).

Hindsight is 20/20 but when I thought it was bizarre that he was even a viable candidate at one point in 2016, and I saw the decaying state where I grew up, I thought “if he wins the election, then we are in a much worse state as a country than I thought”. And we undoubtedly are.

Of course he won, but the reason that I have this somewhat rambling response to this question is that the answer to “why is he still in the race?” ultimately comes down to the overall state of this country.

He is in this race because this is where we are as a country: barely able to imagine a possible future that is brighter than the present, because we are still caught up in degenerative non-sense that keeps us thinking that our broken down towns, and our poor social bonds are caused by some horde of “others” instead of their true causes: our ever-widening wealth inequality, our ever-decaying moral responsibilities to each other, and our national instinct to absolve ourselves of our responsibilities by claiming that not only is it correct to be forever self-serving, but that even the idea of altruism is a lie.

You’re welcome

I bought this: Duxtop Portable Induction Cooktop Burner, Induction Hot Plate with LCD Sensor Touch 1800 Watts, Silver 9600LS/BT-200DZ https://a.co/d/6il1y8f

(My apologies for the Amazon link)

I’m not trying to flambe in my kitchen. I don’t need what gas provides.

I have a gas stove right now. It sucks. It likely helped give my wife asthma, and the temperature control is for shit. I bought an induction plate to play around with and it lets you set the temperature in the pan in terms of degrees in 10 degree increments. It detects when the pan has been removed from the cook top for a while and automatically shuts off. It’s cool to the touch a minute or so after it shuts off.

Induction is like cooking in the future, gas is like cooking in the Fred Flintstone past (using dinosaur farts).

I have a gas grill, and it’s good for its use as well (yabba dabba do), but if I want control over the heating element it’s induction all the way.

Disagree…induction is far better to cook on. It has much better temperature control, heats up faster, and when you’re done it’s easier to clean.

And it doesn’t do as much to heat up the kitchen because the heat stays concentrated in the pan.

I wish they’d installed an electric stove in my current place…now I have to get an electrician to come upgrade the circuit. 🙄