There are rooms clearly marked with mask and droplet precautions on the outside of the door, and the staff will take a mask from a box next to the door, go inside to deal with that person, and then when they’re done they take their mask back off and go back to walking around treating patients with no mask. What do the people in those rooms have?

This is pretty standard, and maybe I can shed some light on it. You don the mask as you enter the room and take it off as you leave to avoid spreading the contaminate out of the room. The mask adds a barrier and reduces your risk of contracting whichever disease (and subsequently spreading it to other patients), and all the stuff it’s blocked stays in or at the room when you shed it. So the people seen doing that are actually playing their part in keeping whatever that person has limited to the room they’re staying in.

As for what people in those rooms have, it can be a lot of things, but it really is what it says on the tin. They have something that can spread by droplet, which ranges from the flu to stuff like whooping cough or, yes, COVID. The system to keep these things contained is pretty consistently updated and has worked well when implemented. We were all wearing masks everywhere for a time because COVID was spreading like wildfire, and concerns of people becoming contagious before showing symptoms with no way to reliably innoculate/vaccinate medical workers

West by God Virginia. I spent a lot of time there reminding people we fought for the north.

I don’t think it would prompt some kind of vindictive vote. That side of it is only going to energize those who were vehemently republican anyway. Republicans would hammer on any and all sympathy they can eke from having their candidate assassinated (regardless of the truth they will say it was the left, and at best people will think the guy was just crazy), and the average person only half paying attention will eat it up. Dems would be even more hamstrung in their rhetoric against the GOP considering the gravity of an event like that. Even with that aside, they’re now running Joe Biden against whichever face the GOP tells their voters to line up behind – who you can bet will be all in on the kind of stuff that will do even more lasting damage to our country. Biden is not a strong candidate, and without the uniquely unlikable personality and character of Trump I’m not sure there’s enough motivation amongst voters to carry him to another term.

But all of that was a lot to type, so I just said it would give them a massive boost

I tentatively agree. The man himself I have no sympathy for, but an assassination of presidential nominee would have made everything even worse. GOP would get a huge boost, and could replace Trump with someone that is actually competent enough to fully implement their 2025 treason-esque bullshit. Not to mention how much that would have inflamed an already looney tunes level of political discourse.

It’s also just not how we should do things in America. Call me a hopeless patriot, but we should try to live up to the ideals we espouse.

I mean, in context that verse is about being aware one’s belief in Jesus may cause strife with their family/community, and how Christians are meant to endure this strife without denying their faith. The choice of wording makes sense in the context of the time it was written, when affirming Christ is God would have absolutely caused some major animosity with those who don’t believe. It’s assuring the reader that the division and pain that will come from those disagreements is not lost on God, and also not something we can turn away from and ignore.

The Christians that everyone is up in arms about all the time are close to the worst representation of the faith as possible, and you can easily point out their lazy interpretations as well as scripture that, more often than not, outright rejects their twisting of the faith. Modern day Pharisees all the way. Unfortunately the church on a national level is inundated with them, and has done a poor job of separating from them.

Not sure if they had the same issue as me, but maybe. I loved the game, but the last act had the typical crpg feeling of all the possible storylines condensing into a few. Not a major failure, but it really stuck out to me because of how well the rest of the game handled it. They did a phenomenal job of making me feel free to tackle each previous act however I wanted. The world reacted pretty well, and there were a few points I was actually surprised to see characters react specifically to some weird solution I came up with. At the end it felt like my choices mattered much less, and I was on this track of betray/kill one Big Bad or the other with the only difference being who goes first and what flavor of help comes along.

I think this is an issue all crpgs will have (it’s just too much work to have many wildly different endings), but the amount of discussion around BG3 being the new standard for the genre makes the issue stand out. At least for me.

I think it’s just something people are sensitive about, and understandably so. Most obese people (by choice; i.e. self admittedly just have a bad diet and sedentary lifestyle) I know are never really offended by memes and consistently express a desire to do better. Fact is fixing the problem is genuinely difficult once you pass a certain point, as it requires a dramatic lifestyle change. Anyone who says that is easy is full of shit.

I avoid jokes like that mostly because it feels like punching down on people who are not happy with their health/weight and struggling to fix it. Especially when it’s the typical low hanging fruit, it’s just not fun when the joke makes me feel like kind of an ass.

“Man, my job pays horribly and the benefits barely cover anything, but they have a ping-pong table so it’s honestly a tough call.”

I struggle to understand how someone could seriously write something like that question without a lack of self-awareness so dire that a walk to the kitchen would come with a near-death experience. It just can’t be real.

Theres some truth to this, but a lot of people do use this as a shield against the general cultural acceptance that piracy is stealing or otherwise morally underhanded. I do it, but I don’t have any illusion I’m one of the activists. I just get indignant and refuse to pay someone for content or entertainment who I think is damaging to the medium or predatory in general. I feel like if I really wanted to make a statement, I just wouldn’t consume their work at all – but life is short and I want to have my cake and eat it too.