Terrarium

Some people have bad moms.

They made the managers too likeable. You've gotta make at least one of them an actual sociopath that smiles with joy because they caused one of their employees to cry.

Through academification, Jazz is treated like a 2000-year old rigid mathematical framework that you need to practice correctly for 15 years before you're allowed to speak on it. The priests training to do this need $5000-$20,000 for their instrument(s), a private tutor for a decade, band camp every summer for 4-6 years, experience in 3-5 ensembles, and then a bachelor's degree in music at minimum, so about $30k or so just for the music classes part. Then and only then can you truly appreciate the theory of "Charlie Parker improvised using registers" and, "Jazz is about knowing when to play the wrong note, honky".

It's all coming together.

I'd add that the honor system thing is expensive kabuki. It has some real impacts because regular people can sometimes sue and win or slow down corporate interests, but it never really stops or punishes the big players for harming public interest. But this civic religion is valuable PR for maintaining the status quo, as its believers wrongly think the legal system is their safety net and protector and therefore are prevented from pursuing alternatives.

This "doesn't give a shit" guy isn't a normal player in the political class, he doesn't follow or perpetuate that religion because it is not in his interests nor has he internalized it. He sees little value in playing that game and it turns out that there is a big group of hogs and hog groomers that just like that he says and does things that vibe with them - usually racist things. The hogs still believe in that civil religion they just think it shouldn't apply to their targets of hate and the groomers are post-neoliberal fascist climbers that, generally speaking, are just absolute losers who craft an ideology around furthering marginalization (but who mostly care about the grift). The popularity of this group represents a departure from the liberal consensus, the propaganda of that civic religion that has dominated since the 40s (earlier, probably), and the lack of real pushback indicates that the ruling class, overall, no longer sees value in it. So we get Schumer out here pining for a return of the "good Republicans" for over a decade so they can resume the facade on which he constructed his entire career and identity.

Yeah exactly! I always have those around when exercising or in the car for emergencies. Water + sugar + electrolytes fixes dehydration and hypoglycemia, both easy to get when exercising or forgetful about or too busy for food.

Flavored drinks are way overpriced, no doubt. You're just paying for someone to ship water to you, water you can get from a tap for 40X cheaper. Like, "no sir I don't want normal local water, I need someone to drive it a thousand miles to me". Sometimes I get the fancy electrolyte packs that are $1 each but even that is 4-5X cheaper than a gatorade.

My latest favorite are the sugar free ones. Just for a tasty drink with a meal since sugar is actually useful for hydration or low blood sugar from exercise.

Smartest liberal strategy: just lie a bunch.

Nice I do something similar with electrolyte drink powder

It's a close competition between which is worse. Thr grass lawn is usually accompanied by a ton of inputs that drain off and mess with the water aupply and native plants. The plastic disintegrates and also ends up in water and animals.

I've heard that there are a variety of grass alternatives that are appropriate for different climatic regions. If it were me and I wanted an open space to mesd around in I'd look into that.

Your strategy is even better because the water is fresher

Guatemala has a very large indigenous (mostly Mayan) population. It supported the land reforms that the US couped it over. The US created genocidal death squads that terrorized the indigenous population, driving them to live in the countryside and mountains for safety. They survived and have a more solid foundation now but there is still a city vs. countryside dynamic on top of the settler vs. indigenous dynamic.

Well that's good! There are actual low-value items (cheap plastic toys, for example) that aren't worth shipping back to the seller but it's not a bad outcome if they got resold on the cheap to a poorer country.