Hell, I’ve been waiting for 99942 Apophis to swing by us since Stargate was still on the air. Still got five years left on that one, but 2004 when that was first called out as a concern was the first time I really started contemplating the idea of the actual end of the world, in a bang not a whimper.

Sure, Y2K was supposed to cause some chaos, and 2012 was fun from a “what if magic is real” sort of angle, but everything else has been a gradual dawning realization that the world as we know it is probably going to be gone in my children’s lifetimes – not over yet, but profoundly changed, more difficult, the slow closing of the book on a golden age for humanity we didn’t fully appreciate while we were in it.

St. Patrick’s Day in America has always been more of a celebration of Irish-American immigrant culture than it is of Ireland itself.

That’s a good one. Love the art style of all their videos.

When the discourse goes in circles and gets nowhere, it becomes a perceived waste to continue it. The people who profit from gun sales – including the politicians who reap campaign contributions from exploiting misconceptions about it – like it this way.

He didn’t exactly need accuracy when there was a sea of targets in front of him, especially if his objective was to hit as many of them as possible before they could disperse.

But it also does raise the question: why did the shooter think he needed a lot of guns?

Be as detailed as possible in your report, and focus especially on any specific threats against individuals or groups that he has mentioned.

People have been studying the psychology of mass killers since the 70s. Without an actual living subject at hand in this case, it’s hard to do anything more than speculate. I tend to agree that it would be useful to know more about what pushed him to such an act, but how do you suggest going about this? Should we round up and interrogate everyone he knew in his life? Would that even be productive?

Motive isn’t as mysterious as we like to pretend it is. All it really required was a loss of fundamental empathy for his fellow humans. We see that everywhere these days. He’s not unique in that respect. What’s unique is the lengths he went to to commit this act. He seemed to want the spectacle of it. Like many serial killers, perhaps the idea of murder gave him a rush of feeling he couldn’t find anywhere else in his life, and so he figured why not get as much of that as he could?

Again, it’s all speculation. And it’s also not hard to trace it back to a sickness eating at the roots of our society. What do you do with that knowledge? What can any of us do but try a little harder in our own lives to be kind to others and generous to those who might be quietly slipping down into the lake of poison seething under the world?

I mean you can discuss it to death, but without facts – which don’t exist, because he didn’t tell anyone the intimate workings of his fucked up mind – the best you can do is speculate. By all means, go ahead.

But but but why did he spray bullets at a crowd with intent to murder hundreds? Why, man, why? We need his manifesto, his tax records, the political affiliations of his associates and family! How else am I supposed to fit him into my narrative if I can’t prove why he thought to do the unthinkable?

/s

Even if they could, I don’t know why you would jump to that idea when the guy fucking shot 400 people. He clearly wasn’t right in the head. He also had a history of heavy gambling and drinking. I don’t smell conspiracy on this one. This was just a mentally unwell guy who made a decision to murder; it is, unfortunately, a quintessentially American story that keeps repeating.

Those gun bans weren’t passed until 2023, which really puts the lie to the assertion that we stopped talking about it.

Maybe it’s more accurate to say we ran out of new things to say about it, and that’s why it’s not front and center in the news at this current moment. It’s also a hugely divisive issue and nobody seems to have a solution to the problem that doesn’t just piss off a bunch of other people, so in an election year it’s the last thing policy makers want to bring up.

This certainly has the ring of truthiness to it.

Now kith.

I don’t!

My wife does it for me, lol.

I have a group text with my immediate family so we can coordinate semi-regular get-togethers, and I do the same with my own kids, but that’s it.

(There’s no way I’d be able to get my parents to learn how use anything more complicated anyhow, and just getting everyone in my own household to use a shared calendar was a whole thing. Simpler is better.)

My wife, however, likes staying informed, if not always in touch, and so dutifully does all the obligatory proud parent posting on facebook. She lets me know if anything important comes up from one of the relatives on there.

Distant family stays distant, which is how I like it, because most of them are pretty right wing anyway and the less I have to engage with their gibberish the better. Otherwise I only visit facebook occasionally to browse a shitposting page for a podcast I listen to. It’s better this way.

Depending on what you’re using it for, your best bet might be a compact set like this or this.

There are various types of universal “female” style wrenches, but nothing I’ve ever seen for the “male” type that requires different bits. A set with integrated bit storage is probably as small as you’re going to get.

Sometimes you just have to work within the system that exists and promote change from within.

The fact that it’s usually women doing the dumb thing is problematic, but these jokes are easily mapped onto whoever you want to denigrate. As a Montana, these were often jokes about North Dakota, and as the scion of a large Norwegian clan, I also often heard these as Sven and Ole jokes.

To me the latter is actually a funnier way to approach them, because it’s two characters who everyone knows are dumb (and who are stand-ins for those people in your life who act this way) and you’re not just blanket insulting a whole group of people.

“What’s next?”

I’d modify the question to specify that each life is presented as a unique and compelling motion picture, each between an hour and four hours in length, of the sort that would be likely to win either critical acclaim or box office success (or both) at some point in the late 20th to early 21st century - and that I get to watch them in an unending variety of well-staffed and enthusiastically-attended movie theaters, with interesting companions who I can discuss the movie with for as long as I want to afterwards, with endless credit to spend at the concessions, and with no bodily needs like discomfort or fatigue.