I just have a fear I might mess up somehow and start a fire or something

It takes some effort to start a fire. Most oils flash points are >600 F, which you might get a pan to to sear a steak, but to heat a pan of oil for deepfrying or something to >600 F, which would be a dangerous situation, requires you to continue heating it after it started billowing smoke between ~350F and ~525.

In any case, if you manage to have an oil fire, say by spilling some on the burner, just let it burn out if it’s a small amount or turn off the heat and throw a towel over it if it’s like a cup’s worth.

Minor burns aren’t uncommon when you’re learning, but that’s just a very quick way to learn “wrap the handle of the cast iron you just took out of the oven with a towel so you don’t grab it like a moron” or “use tongs to place things on hot oil so it doesn’t splatter on your hand”

IQ only measures how good you are at taking IQ tests. They recalibrate score every year to maintain the same distribution of scores within a year. (they change what each question is worth so every year 50% of tests get above 100, 40% of tests are between 85 and 100, 40% of tests are between 100 and 115, etc.)

The impact is that they have to make the tests harder every year. If you applied modern standards to 1920, the average score would be ~70.

What makes more sense to you, that 8/10 people today would be considered near-geniuses 100 years ago, or we got much better at taking IQ tests?

Where do you see frequent trash cans and people regularly throwing trash out in the street?

Typically trash in the street means you don’t have enough trash cans, or a bunch of youth or homeless people whom society is failing.

From the things I saw about the US election, the Dems were the side with plans for the economy - minimum wage adjustments, unions, taxing the rich, etc

The dems are in power now, they didn’t do those things, so nobody believed they’d actually do it if they were elected again.

Additionally, parading around endorsements from Dick and Liz Cheney, and promising to build a border wall, tax breaks for small businesses, and other republican policies from 2016 didn’t help the perception that the dems weren’t going to help people.

Ukraine

You’re not understanding, the arms and money we send Ukraine enables them to continue the war. Last year, Russia offered a peace deal, giving up a portion of the territory they occupied at the time. Ukraine declined and says they won’t settle for less than all their territory, including Crimea. Without the weapons, they’d be forced to agree to a deal. Given that Russia probably knows they can’t deal with the insurgency outside of Russian-speaking Ukraine, they’ll probably agree to borders similar to what exists now.

China would have wanted Taiwan regardless

I mean the Republic of China is a part of China, it’s eventual reunification is inevitable, but they obviously see that reunification by invasion would be very expensive, both in cost of the invasion, cost of the insurgency, and resulting sanctions from their third-biggest trading partner. The only case where they’d waste billions of dollars and hundreds of thousand of lives is if the US made that option better than the alternative.

The same calculation happened with Russia; after the maidan coup, the civil war on their border caused them to strategic infrastructure and terrorist attacks. They erroneously calculated the cost of having a hostile, NATO-backed state on the border would be greater than a quick invasion and replacing the US puppet with another Russian one.

You need to look closer to understand what pressures cause countries to do things, these places aren’t cartoons who just decide to self-destruct their economies and send an entire generation into a meat grinder because aUTHoriTariaNism.

We’ve already sent troops to help Israel in Palestine, remember that aid pier that Israel used to do warcrimes, and now there’s troops operating aircraft and a missile defense system to prevent anyone from interfering with Israel’s genocide.

help out Russia in Ukraine

Just not sending weapons and money should be enough to get Ukraine back to the peace table and stop the bloodshed.

help out China in Taiwan

Ironically if we didn’t try to use Taiwan for geopolitical goals, China would have no reason to invade, since a peaceful reintegration over time is far more advantageous than the destruction and insurgency that comes with a military option.

the USA is now going to join WW3 on the side of the bad guys

What do you mean “join”?

The evil empire that militarily supports dictators across the global south to prevent economic development and keep cheap labor and resources flowing out are the bad guys, this hasn’t and will not change short of a revolution or the empire’s control collapsing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Hamas_charter

Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity. Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds.

Note that Hamas is not the only Palestinian faction, but as the one everyone sees fighting Israel, the other factions, and the people of Gaza support them. When the people of Palestine are no longer fighting for their existence, I have no doubt they will support more secular factions as they did before.

But killing and kidnapping hundreds of innocent civilians is. You have to be clear about that

I am being clear.

Would you condemn the Polish resistance because they killed some of the German settlers who came to settle Poland during the 1940s? The South African anti-apartheid movement because they burned some Boers and their collaborators alive? Or would you say the oppressor doesn’t get to judge the morality of the tactics the oppressed use?

Requiring every antizionist to constantly stop to condemn Hamas creates a false equivalency between the people who are inside a concentration camp and the people keeping them there.

That is my dream. Just people living together peacefully, no matter their religion.

This is what existed before Israel, and god willing, it’s what we’ll have after Israel.

Great-grandchildren are being punished because their relatives (might) have fought against Israel

Fighting against settler colonists who came and established an apartheid regime is not a crime.

I am only criticizing the Israeli government, […] Israel in general

Israel is a settler colonial project, an Israel that provided equal rights to all Muslims, Christians, and Jews living in its territory would be less related to the current state of Israel than modern South Africa is to Apartheid South Africa.

not Jews

Yes, we agree that it’s antisemitic as fuck to associate Jewishness with Zionism. When Israel is murdering children in public view, implying that Israel represents Jews is just blood libel with extra steps.

In 1948, during the Nakba, Israel ethnically cleansed much of Palestine. From that (and a good portion of the ethnic cleansing Israel has done since), many of the people were driven into Gaza.

In 2006, when Israel got kicked out of Gaza due to an uprising, they built a wall around it and restricted the amount of food, fuel, and other items, and banned the gazans from constructing wells, water containers, and other things that would allow the people in Gaza to stay alive longer if Israel cut off food/water supplies.

It does actually, former soviet bloc having good subways is kinda like Canadians being good at bobsled; it’s way less impressive than say, a Jamaican who is good at bobsled. Just being clean and having ornamentation puts it ahead of 98% of American subways, and most western european subway stations.

As much as I love former soviet-bloc subway stations, I don’t like this at all.

Any Marxist-Leninist calling any socialist project utopian is doing so pejoratively.

There’s 13 other werewolves chained up in the basement.

Yes, there’s a monochrome display in the middle. It’s kinda like a TI-86 calculator aimed at children.

It’s not the democratic politicians who were robbed. It’s the democratic politicians who were complicit in us getting robbed of our rights.

Yup, the only reason we got Harris to replace Biden was that it was made clear that Biden didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.

Sadly, it was not made clear enough that it was a policy issue, so now we have Harris adopting every unpopular republican policy she can manage.

She must give the best hugs, 8 legs holding you tight, those mandibles wrapping around your head as she nuzzles you

Insects which undergo metamorphosis are kinda born full sized.