When I was a baby punk I was an insecure try-hard and got dogged on for it by the older punks. I was bequeathed a nickname that while not a total insult, was not the best and sort of an inside joke about my desperation to be “punk”. A lot of those older punks left the scene in their early 20s, but I kept on and discovered that people I didn’t know knew me by that name even if they didn’t know it was originally an insult. It’s still with me 30 years later, simultaneously cringe because it’s so, so “nehhh, PUNK ROCK!” sounding, but at the same time, punk as fuck and kinda badass. Overall it’s been a positive experience, but knowing its origin helps keep my ego in check when I lean too hard into “punker than thou”.

Middle aged American from the mountain west. The people often suck but the scenery is beautiful. I live sorta alone, no other humans but two dogs, two cats, one fish, and four chickens. I work with dogs for a living, training/daycare/boarding/rescue, and I love my career. I live within my means and try and pay the support I’ve had from others forward. Travelled a lot in my youth (the rest of the US, Canada, Mexico, Europe) and enjoyed it even if I’m a bit more of a homebody these days. I have a lot of grievances with the current regime, the people who empowered them, and the capitalist assholes who fund them, but I do admit it’s been a boon for the punk scene. I haven’t seen this many shows a month since the early 00s.

Found the skunk.

Vasectomies and tubal ligation are the ultimate power move in the goth community.

She’s a guinea worm. A creature with no notable purpose in the world except to complete its lifecycle at the pain and expense of others. Literally the only parasite even hardcore animal rights and environmental groups don’t fight to save. Nobody likes the fucking guinea worm.

At the end of the day everything about how we engage with, understand, and define the universe is based off human systems because that’s just how we do. We’re intelligent enough to recognize beyond ourselves and deduce the nature of why things happen and then use our words to describe it. A granitic continent doesn’t know its granite and a basaltic oceanic plate doesn’t know it’s basalt, it operates as it’s properties demand, like they have for billions of years before humans and will for millions of years after we’re gone.

The products of these natural cycles do lend to how humanity has organized itself for thousands of years. River valleys helped establish agriculture and the birth of “civilization”, and mountain ranges, deserts, great rivers, and oceans made for natural boundaries once populations grew to the size they started defining “them and us”.

So I do agree that continents (and natural features in general) shape how we think of the people who live there, and some places have thousands of years of history where those features were the boundaries of their nation. But the physical structure we call a continent exists with or without humans calling it a continent, nations do not. Continents influence human affairs and cultural/national identity at home and abroad, but again, that’s heaping our humanness on what is otherwise a slab of granite that is doing its thing.

I’d point out too, Earth’s plates are constantly shifting, but for the entire existence of humans they’ve only moved a few to a few dozen kilometers. Their importance to our social organizing is partly due to their seemingly static nature. But in 200-300 million years we’ll possibly be all jammed back together Pangea-style. Though I highly doubt humans will be around to see that.

Freed from the responsibility of hiding Anakin’s son from the galaxy, Owen and Beru are able to pursue their dream of leaving Tatooine and move to Alderaan to open a bed and breakfast. Sadly, it doesn’t end well.

My two big ones that get money and my time are a couple of local dog rescues and prison re-entry group that helps the recently paroled. I also give to the local non-religious food bank, our independent radio station, an LGBTQ and AIDs awareness group, a wolf protection group, and a keep our river/trails clean org. I donate my secondhand items to a thrift shop that raises money for low cost spay/neuter services.

Continents are a geological construct, with continents tending to be granitic, and oceanic plates typically being basalt. Dividing continents with geopolitical boundaries is a social construct.

Yeah. I think one of the hardest things I’ve discovered, at least where I live, is that a lot of folks who would also work in fields where they can’t not show up. My mom’s a hospice nurse, I work in animal care. She can’t not attend to her patients and I’m not going to neglect the dogs in my care for a day. We could take the day off symbolically, show solidarity, but the work won’t stop, it’d just be one of our “don’t care” coworkers doing it. Our other struggle has been that, in a relatively union free state, most of the union folks are caught in that “benefits for me, fuck you, go Trump” mentality. Not a blanket accusation of union workers, just a lot of our locals are ladder-pullers.

When the villains make their version they summon Captain Meth.

I never invited hecklers back when I was doing it, but I did figure out which clubs and which nights tended to draw certain crowds that were more likely to heckle and was kind of mentally prepared to deal with it.

The Troubles, American edition.

And unless it comes from the Gascony region of France it isn’t even gasoline, just sparkling petrol.

More of a studded codpiece guy myself. Though I do worry about any exposed skin when the ozone layer is burned off. Guess I should add sunscreen to the hoard.

I’ve always enjoyed biting the head off one and the body off another and then forming unholy hybrids.

The opening scene of xXx ends with a corpse getting crowd surfed at Rammstein.

“Holy shit Rufus, did you just stab a dead man in the ass?!?”

“It was the only good spot left!”

This and when cd collectors don’t organize their collection alphabetically by artist, then order of album release.