My wife doesnt like how much noise it makes and says its messy and violent and dangerous to open anything with a gun. We are eating a lot more soup now though.

I don’t know what to do.

Its the overwhelming success of divide and conquer politics.

Back in the 00s British newspapers (overwhelmingly right wing and owned by very wealthy people) were constantly running stories about people on low income benefits supposedly living better lives than hard working normal people.

They were so successful that it was practically common knowledge that the country was full of families who chose to remain unemployed but lived in a cosy house paid for by the state, and spent all their time watching cable TV, paid for by the state, drinking beer and smoking fags, paid for by the state, and maybe also doing a bit of crime.

This supposedly huge group of “scroungers” were the hate target for regular, honest, hard working people, whose taxes were being wasted supporting them.

So high was the public interest in stories about benefits cheats or scroungers that TV shows were made about them like Benefits Street or Shameless. It was seen as one of the great failings of the labour government, an example of irresponsible government spending which exacerbated the effects of the 2008 financial crash.

So when the Conservative government arrived, they made a big deal of reducing benefits and benefit claimants and introducing a kind of bureaucracy designed to make it as difficult to claim as possible. This system resulted in cases like a blind man in a wheelchair having his disability payments stopped and being told by letter that he was ruled fit for work following a phone assessment by someone with no medical training. It has resulted in millions of children now living below the poverty line and often going hungry.

But these stringent measures were broadly popular because most people had been reading and talking about all the terrible problems of benefits scroungers for over a decade.

And the same thing happened with immigration and with the EU. Every week another story misrepresenting some EU regulation like bendy bananas, or a crime committed by an immigrant where his nationality is bold and underlined in the article which makes some comment about uncontrolled immigration. Articles covering crimes committed by white British people don’t mention nationality and get less space further back in the paper.

There was never much prominence given in most newspapers to issues like tax avoidance, or wealth inequality, so most people didn’t talk about it. Their hate was well focused elsewhere. Meanwhile the rich keep getting richer, everyone else keeps getting poorer, and most people spend their energy complaining about something else.

Everything. Map, factions, units, weapons, companions, knighthood orders, horde armies. Its just the biggest and highest quality conversion mod I’ve played.

Isn’t the reason it pops because of steam building up pressure inside the kernel? Then you would only need to heat them somewhere above 100C, and evoo doesnt smoke until 200C+

Not true, I use EVOO and it doesnt smoke. Oil goes in with a couple of kernels on the heat, when they pop remove and add the rest of the kernels. Remove when popping stops.

Maybe its a case of lower heat, more time?

Yeah the typical American stuff is like 10% sugar, packed with additives like emulsifiers and preservatives, and anything that makes the production processes cheaper and faster, made from bleached flour and has most of the fibre stripped out.

If your bread is made from flour, water, salt and yeast its processed food not UPF.

Hitler got into power after hyperinflation though, he wasn’t the one who caused it. It was the failure of the centrist government on the economy which led to the rise of the far right and far left in Germany.

UK and FR have ~500 nukes, more than enough to ruin Russia.

Prophecy of Pendor is legendary. I might get bannerlord if they release a Pendor mod for it.

Losses include casualties, where a combatant is just injured. That might be losing a limb, but in many cases its much less severe and they recover and return to fighting. 3 years is plenty of recovery time, enough for the same person to have been multiple casualties.

When is Trump going to pay back the $500bn the rest of NATO spent supporting the US in Afghanistan and Iraq?

You can be held for up to 28 days without charge if you’re suspected of terrorism offences.

I’m not aware of anti terror laws being used against protestors, but the last govt introduced extremely strict anti protest laws under which non violent protestors have been given up to 2 year prison sentences.

It also feels like it was all planned. From his time on TV Trump knows a lot about creating drama. First we have “he’s a dictator”, everyone expects Trump to be against Ukraine. Then in episode 2 there’s a twist - France and Britain show up and Trump is very amenable to give people hope again, and finally it all blows up in a dramatic clash. Trump even tells us “that’s why I let it go on so long… its going to make great television”.

The whole thing was about telling the story that Trump is the strong peace seeking negotiator and it all fell through because zelensky won’t be reasonable and is trying to take advantage of the US who he doesn’t respect.

Sorry but what the fuck are you talking about. You’re inventing connections between conflicts that aren’t there. Russia and the US don’t particularly care about Palestine. Believing that there’s some kind of exchange where the US is ‘taking’ Palestine because of the conflict in Ukraine is some of the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard. It’s like you think all of geopolitics is the US and Russia sitting around a map of the world and both of them are ten year olds.

It does though because it floods the medium with content from people just looking to make money. And it happens everywhere. When ebay started it was an online garage sale, now it’s mostly businesses. Etsy used to be a place where creative types sold their crafts, now its flooded with dropshipped tat from Ali Baba. YouTube used to be random people uploading stuff for fun and expression, now it’s mostly about sponsorship money. Twitter used to be a novel way for people to briefly express their thoughts, now its a fascist propaganda machine.

If only there were a middle ground somewhere between “just entered the workforce” and “should have retired 10+ years ago”. Oh well.

That still only counts as one.

By the way, which disto do you use?

A lot of dodgey wiring.