The coffee certainly makes me need to poop!

Yes, it’s 100% immature, which is exactly why you should do it.

Eating a banana while drinking coffee. Perfectly complimentary flavors.

My bad. Thanks.

Again, you got that kind of money? I live outside DC, so not close to an international border. In fact, most Americans don’t live somewhere they can travel across the border easily. And with the way the government is denying entry to people with the wrong level of melatonin, I don’t think it’s particularly safe advice to tell people to start crossing the border regularly.

And most people in the US do not fly for vacations. It’s very expensive to fly, and most of us have cars we can take. I’m planning a family vacation later this year to visit my grandparents ~700 miles away. We priced it out and discovered it’s actually cheaper for us to rent an RV and drive than to fly. Flying, especially internationally for a shopping trip, is an extreme luxury for most of us.

Because that’s realistic advice. You have money for be to buy a plane ticket every time I need groceries? Who’s going to fund everyone moving to another country? You got that kind of money? Because I don’t.

Since it’s clear we’re talking about the US here, the 1st Amendment clearly states (emphasis added):

Congress shall make no law respecting … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It says nothing about citizens, tourists, foreign nationals, etc. In fact, the amendment only limits what Congress can do (and the Supremacy clause extends this to the states). It doesn’t say “Citizens have the right to free speech.” It says “Congress shall pass no laws abridging the freedom of speech.”

It’s pretty clear that anyone and everyone has the right to free speech and assembly. The right wingers you’re talking about are trying to rewrite the first amendment to justify their fascism.

Honestly, as an individual there really isn’t much you can do with your purchasing power about it.

Next national day of protest in April 19. Find the largest one you are able to attend and join in.

They can secede, with the consent of the other states (meaning an act of the Federal government).

The general theory is that once a state enters into the Union it gains certain privileges and benefits which it would not previously had access to. Things like military protection, federal government investment, the increased power/influence in global politics/economics, etc, etc. Each state is getting things from other states and the federal government at the same time as they’re giving things in return. Since it’s a two-way relationship, it should take both parties to sever that relationship.

It just seems wrong to me, kind of like not allowing divorces.

I’d argue it’s more like requiring alimony after a divorce. When two people are married often one will put their career on hold or de-emphasize it in order to focus on other things to support the marriage (eg stay-at-home parent). When the couple then divorces, the courts recognize that the individual who put their career on hold is now at a sever disadvantage in that they have forgone however many years of experience, advancement, salary, etc. They can’t just jump back into the workforce and expect to get a job as good as if they had been working the whole time. And the other member of the relationship (the one who did not sacrifice their career) got the benefits of having someone to manage the home while they could focus on their career.

So the court acknowledges this disparity in the relationship and will require the higher-paid member of the marriage to pay alimony payments to the other as a way to make up for that economic imbalance between them. The higher earning member of the marriage can’t just divorce and go about their way without having to compensate the other for the years they spent focusing on the family rather than their career.

This is what the secession of a US state would look like in theory. We tried the whole “one side gets unilaterally decides to break up without mediation or compensation to the other” thing. It was the impetus for the bloodiest war in American history. In order to secede “the right way” (ie without bloodshed), a state would have to go to the Federal Government and ask to secede. The government (which is a collection of representatives of the states and people in the states) then debates and decides on terms.

Of course, this has never been done or even tried. I suspect that pretty much every single state (except maybe California) would find that the benefits of staying in the Union far outweigh the benefits of leaving.

My Samsung Galaxy Buds+ work with gloves. I work construction, so I have work gloves on quite often. The tap to pause/double tap to skip forward/triple tap to skip back works perfectly with work gloves on. Can’t say I’ve ever tried it with winter gloves, though.

I got banned for calling a guy a “fascist sanewasher” and refusing to post an apology when a mod messaged me to tell me to apologize.

I don’t have an active account anymore (mine got banned because I called someone a fascist sanewasher and any new account I try to make gets immediately banned), but I still browse Reddit specifically because there are several subreddits for my local area (my county, my suburb, and the big city nearby) which are pretty active. I get a lot of local information from there which really isn’t available in such a concise way anywhere else.