Let’s celebrate Canada’s mountain West too! I guess I’m not saying this is unique to the US just that it is something that is genuinely worth celebrating. That’s actually the question you were asking, what is genuinely good.

There’s a lot of bad to focus on. The Rocky Mountains are both gorgeous and worth protecting and the ancestral home of native people that our ancestors murdered in order to claim.

And yet, I think it’s cool to actively look for good things, not as a distraction but to try to understand what we want to have more of and what makes something special. Especially with the US feeling unsafe and unstable.

Legitimately, the Mountain West. I am super biased because I grew up in Colorado but I think the Mountain West is something in America that should be truly celebrated. The small mountain towns are incredible. You get roughly 6,000-10,000 people together living in a valley and they decide they want bike paths and rec centers and decent bus service. The towns are small and walkable and there is a lot less sprawl. Property lines might be defined but people are more lax about things and walking past someone’s house to get to a trail isn’t a terrifying adventure in will they shoot me or not? And then the outdoor space. Everywhere I lived outside of Denver I could walk down the street and be in a National Forest in less than 10 minutes. Some places I could walk off the property and be in a national forest.

It’s crazy to live in a big city now and I feel less safe riding my bike to the store despite it being 10x closer. Getting outside and walking is so much easier because there is space that isn’t “owned” by anyone. It’s freeing for the mind and soul.

There are problems but when I moved away a few years ago even the people on the trump train we’re still community members looking to support everyone including gay people, trans people, and women. All the opinions I heard were summed up by, “Well, it’s their choice, it don’t affect me.”

Also don’t let go of your “standard drink” stuff on the side of piss. I loved that while I was there. Sure I can guess how much alcohol I’ve had in the last couple hours by reckoning my 3 or 4 beers had 5%, 6.5%x2, and 8% and this means I’m tipsy. But it’s so much easier to understand how drunk I am when it’s 1+1.5+1.5+2=6 standard drinks.

It’s just a good system despite the many flaws.

My partner just told me a more interesting question and probably your intent was to ask: is Turkey in the European Union? And no, it is not however Turkey has many ties to Europe especially in defense. Much of the EU is part of NATO and many Europe adjacent countries are also party to the treaty. This includes Turkey.

Turkey is also split between Europe and Asia. Most of the country is in Asia. But the country is split in Istanbul by the Bosporus Strait. The European part of Turkey is on the North side of the strait. This gives Turkey a land border with Greece and Bulgaria.

Also, in the past, the Ottoman empire was pretty damn expensive pushing much further North and containing much of what we call Eastern Europe. Modern Czechia, Austria, Croatia, Poland, and Ukraine form the border for the lands claimed by the Ottomans.

Yes, the European part of the country is part of Europe and the rest of the country is in Asia. Source: I listened in middle school.

These fucking morons don’t understand a thing about soft power. They’re so ridiculously eager to remove the US from a place of global leadership. The next decade is going to be wild beyond anything any of us millennials have ever lived through.

I would not be surprised, but it would be disappointing. I want to believe people are smarter than voting against their own interests. But I’ve been proven wrong in that so many times I don’t have any faith.

The other person is definitely callous but like this is the obvious result of a Trump presidency.

Cruelty is the goal for Trump and his administration.

If we care about everything bad that will or might happen we’re going shut down and give up. We only have so much bandwidth for terrible stuff.

I feel the need to copy my comment from another post with a similar message:

An insurance CEO was shot to death this morning, it’s a start.

To be less callous, he looked like a cute man, and his family is obviously devastated. Police say they have no suspect and no motive yet… But it was an assassination not random violence, I think we know the motivation. It’s pretty sad overall, but surely it’s also sad that someone was driven to this point by the company he was an exec of.

I broke my shoulder and couldn’t do shit for about 4 weeks. I spent that entire time playing Civ 6, freshly released at the time, with the steam controller. It was the best thing in the world for civ. I played that game with one hand 90% of the time since my shoulder would fight me after 5 minutes with 2 hands. And the steam controller made it possible in a way my Xbox controller never has and never will.

I lost it in my move 2 years ago and hope I find it again some day because I still run into games about once a month where I think this needs a steam controller. Like playing point and click adventures on the TV with my partner.

Something something build bridges not walls

Having one woman as a friend is still more than none.

In response to your second paragraph, someone posted above that it’s racism. The Teamsters, at least this… Uh governing body?.. Fired a number of people in leadership, 3/4 of them racial minorities. When they rehired for these newly opened positions only 1/4 of those hired were racial minorities.

Sick nasty

Thanks for your post, it’s well written.

I’ll add Geocaching to this list. Walk around, find hidden caches and solve puzzles.

It’s not focused on the walking places but instead on the finding of caches. I personally need to get out and do some that involve going on hikes!

I’m an American but the $1 burgers from Maccas were a life saver down there. I used to get 2 a day while I hitchhiked. But y’all also have canned tuna with some great flavors!

I was told going down there that it was outrageously expensive. And I found that true when talking about non-essentials, headphones and quality clothes. But groceries were shockingly cheap the entire time I was down there. I could spend $30 on a burger and fries, or I could get a weeks worth of food from woolies or coles.

Even better, the corner store, the gas station really, was owned by coles and I could get milk and eggs (things I want fresh, in small batches) and a small selection of anything else I wanted for the exact same price as the larger stores! This freed me up to get veggies and fruit at the market and always have enough food unlike at home.

While in Australia, I had higher quality food for less money with more convenience. All while getting told by people back home how expensive it was when they visited. Maybe I had a different experience since I went for a year but I live in Seattle now and I miss having a corner store within a 5 minute walk that sold all my essentials.

Also Woolies has their mini stores in the big cities and those things are fire.

But I’d rather look at what modern people are doing and saying.

We would too but unfortunately fascists pretend that they’re not fascist by claiming their political party freed the slaves.

This obviously ignores their bigotry and hate for people of color and distaste for women… And well, I digress. Suffice to say that these assholes try to claim they’re not racist despite all the racist bullshit and hate they spread, and they use this claim as proof.

We would love to ignore it but we can’t. Best we can do is inform ourselves.

Holy shit TV Guide! I forgot about those! They’d just show up in the mail every week, I have no idea who was sending them or why but inevitably they’d be in the mailbox!

The first time I went to a friend’s house and they had a guide on the TV my mind was blown!

Oh and Tivo too! I learned about Tivo from a friend and had never even heard of DVR before that! The idea that you could just record TV at will was mind-blowing! I was like, “yeah but where do you put the cassette?”

A lot of people are saying they did this job as a teenager, I did it mid 20’s and yes, I liked the job. I never had to deal with customers, I just pushed carts. But people leaving carts in the middle of nowhere were a babe on my existence.

I don’t know how many carts there were in or store but on a normal day and especially a busy day they would be constantly used. Our corrals would all overflow simultaneously if not emptied. And then you have some dipshit who decides they can’t be asked to walk a little further. I had to have a route in order to collect carts and keep our corrals under control. If I had to walk an extra 10 minutes out of my way to get a cart it would set me back 20+ minutes of work, without fail. And if I didn’t collect it then carts would start piling up, without fail. Then you’d get the mixed cart bullshit and you can only push so many mixed carts.

Putting your cart makes the job actually reasonable. You can plan and coordinate and organize yourself to know where to go when to pick up carts. It allows you to predict where carts will end up and efficiently walk so you’re not destroying your body. When people screw with that rhythm the whole thing goes to pot.

Tankies

Edit: Honestly now that I look at the site linked… I just have no idea what this site is or who I’d be donating to. I’ve never seen that website before.

Pshh I bet you use acoustic time.