Honest question: have you considered getting him desensitized to the sound? It’s totally doable; hunters teach their dogs to not be afraid of the bang from their guns after all.

To paraphrase Mark Stanley, corporations only have three rules: get the money, get the money, and get the money.

Don’t think they do things like supporting Pride because they care; it’s only a sign that they want to appeal to the broadest audience possible. But, in that same vein, when they’re supporting a topic is a good sign of is the majority of society’s feelings on the subject.

Polls can be gerrymandered to hell and back, talking heads on the news can make all kinds of claims. But since corporations chase money above all, they spend a lot of money getting very accurate ideas of what our society likes/dislikes.

Think about it. 50, hell even 30 years ago, no corporation worth their salt would have claimed to be in favor of Pride, because it would have been suicidal for the business. Society’s majority take on LGBTQ+ back then ranged from hate and disgust to ‘eww, fine, but not in public!’

Now, corporations fly the Pride flag all over the place. It definitely shows that society is much more supportive of LGBTQ+ and minorities.

My uncle is a pastor. So when his kid came out as trans, he and his wife did the ‘good moral Christian’ thing and shamed her and harassed her until she committed suicide.

Then deadnamed her at the funeral, and wrote and published a book about how ‘his betrayal’ and ‘his unfortunate death’ were just tests from God to test their faith.

This is not a rare or unique story; many people all over the world have stories like this. Is it any wonder those who pay attention find religion distasteful? It may be a part of humanity, but many unpleasant things are, and there is nothing ‘edgy’ about rejecting them.

Yes, there are ‘good’ churches in my town that feed and clothe the poor; a far cry from my uncle’s church. But they are part of the same religion, and the fact that religion accepts both, morals be damned, means I have no interest in it.

With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion. -Steven Weinberg

Basically, yes.

In the books it was just that they would only answer to Isldur’s Heir. They also scared the Corsairs of Umbar away from their ships, but it was an army of Dunadain (along with a few elves, like Elrond’s sons) that actually ran them off permanently, so they could use the ships to bring some of the Gondorians in the south back north to join the main battle.

I mean, it’s supposed to be.

Probably still won’t stop future humans from opening the vault, sadly.

We used to have a thriving rail and trolley system in the US; in most major cities especially. The automakers destroyed it. When they were caught, they got a slap-on-the-wrist fine and the nation went with the automaker’s suggestion of building the highway system up.

So yes, there is a fundamental reason we can’t. It’s the auto makers and the politicians they own.

Yeah, a couple family members converted a few decades ago and the Mormons sent us all a request to list all our ancestors so they could retroactively ‘save’ them. Most of my family being Lutheran, that didn’t go over well lol.

My grandpa, my uncle, and a few other family pranksters got together and gave them the most outrageous list they could come up with. I had a Mormon kid as a friend when I was young, and some days I wonder if they looked me up, and actually believed I was related to the King of Sweden.

It’s not only about what I have, it’s about what you people don’t have!

On a guess? Skin color.

TBF the New Deal was a stolen idea too, so…

Stolen from a union organizer, too, if I remember correctly.

Hahahahahaha

Go to any place Christian nutters have ‘missionaried’ in over in Africa and you can see them with the masks off.

The only reason that sort of shit doesn’t openly happen in most of Europe anymore is it isn’t a popular idea with secular people, and religious leaders don’t have enough power to force it down people’s throats - yet.

‘Why does my daughter never call or visit anymore!?’

Citation needed

Because I’m pretty sure puberty blockers do literally none of that.

Oh, don’t worry; they definitely want to ban them for cis kids too (or at least girls). The one thing Conservatives the world over have in common is they like their women young.

The same people who are in this thread saying that everything’s great because 60% of the people who responded to the survey say their conditions have improved.

I wonder if there’s a bit of not wanting to believe what people can accomplish if a massive number of us all teamed up to do something.

Because then they’d feel guilty for not getting up out of their armchair and going to support whatever cause they claim they’re supporting from the comfort of home.

Only because it isn’t forced on them. Push these racist idiots hard enough and they may get the idea for ‘color conversion therapy’. Or more people of color will go for it again to try and avoid racism.

I keep thinking back to the Mark Twain quote, ‘As happy as a black mother whose baby has come out white’, and how incredibly sad of a statement that is. And how little things have changed since Mark Twain’s time.

You’d think by now it wouldn’t matter if a child was born light or dark, but it still does, because of a small group of horrible people, and a wider group who don’t care as long as they get privileges, and so just keep telling everyone ‘not to rock the boat’.

Some black people bleach their skin due to social pressures.

‘Most ignorance is willful’