Which is why so many people are so bitterly opposed to “Obamacare”. Once your health becomes everyone’s business (via. their taxes), then it becomes the government’s business whether you drink big gulp sodas or not.
oh, here are a couple I’ve actually had someone get pissed at me over:
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I didn’t like the film Clerks. It wasn’t funny, and the only emotion I got out of it was wanting to reach through the screen and choke the shit out of the whiny main character(s.)
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I also didn’t like the film Donnie Darko. It was a boring, pointless mess.
I think the defense industry is pretty much a government jobs program, not much different than paying people to dig holes and fill them in.
- I hate pancakes
-Golden Girls is over-hyped. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good show and has a great premise. But I find their fans annoying. - I Like Anne Hathaway.
- The Poison Wood Bible was contrived and boring.
No it’s not.
“Breakfast” (simply by etymology) means the first thing you eat each day. The only way to not have breakfast on a given day is to not eat that day. If you wish to make a habit of “skipping breakfast,” you will find yourself severely malnourished by the end of a week.
Pass to the left, my brotha. Pass to the left.
Anne Hathaway is a much-in-demand actress, and she just won an Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role.
How does liking her get to be characterized as an unpopular opinion?
Well, for starters I know a lot of people who by hearing her name say “ughhh, Anne Hathaway”.
While she is a successful actress, she seems to get a lot of hate from the internet s , talk show hosts, and gossip mags.
I like her a lot, too.
And yet somehow, in the real world, the phrase “skipping breakfast” actually means to not eat a meal early in the day.
I agree with you in lots of ways except I would phrase the characterization differently. The defense industry employees a tremendous amount of people in high paying jobs. Look at average defense contractor salaries in Maryland and Northern Virginia for one eye-opening metric. The actual military is a jobs program as well and only a tiny percentage of those will ever see true combat. My little brother is a Coast Guard officer and the benefits are - generous - to say the least and the pay is competitive with the private sector as well assuming the people that do that job could even get an equivalent one.
The defense isn’t exactly like digging holes and filling them in again however. It does produce useful technology that eventually permeates the rest of society. The fact you are reading this on the internet shows that but there are many other examples. I would slash the military budget while trying to salvage the useful parts if I were in charge however. It is a wasteful system just like almost all large government programs are.
In this line of thought, I have another controversial belief. Most government employees including teachers are now overpaid when you take into account benefits compared to the private sector. The value of the complete packages is excessive especially when it comes to retirement benefits, time off, and health care. I don’t begrudge them that except that we still hear complaints that the opposite is true from people that are really bad at math and reasoning and have no idea what it is like to work in private industry where such benefits barely exist at all let alone things like pensions.
My mother is a retired teacher with a second career and recently complained to my stepfather (a business professor) about how paltry her 40K a year for life retirement package from teaching is even though she makes several times that from her second career. He pointed out that she would need several million dollars in cash to kick off that type of income safely today and he is correct. Teachers in this area now make about 60K a year for 9 months of work and teachers in my hometown in Louisiana make about 70 - 80K plus extreme benefits after 10 years in a low cost of living area. That isn’t destitute by any stretch of the imagination and the ones in those jobs tend not to be superstars yet they make more money than most people. A corollary is that you can’t improve education for anyone simply by paying the existing teachers you have more money.
I really don’t see what’s so ugly or annoying about him. He’s sort of short, but if he weren’t rich and famous, I’d hit him so hard. Not saying I have something against rich and famous guys, but I’m more likely to have sex with men who aren’t. :o
To add my own, this gets me in trouble in real life. I don’t know why people want to have biological babies so bad. I mean, I get having sex and wanting to have sex. I get wanting a kid. There are so many cute and healthy babies who will never have homes. It really gets my goat that people spend so much time and money to have biological kids they may never have when they could adopt one.
Yep: one of the drawbacks of “arguing from the dictionary” is that we use words in lots of different ways.
And I’ve been “skipping breakfast” for twenty years now, and have never perceived any lack on energy, at any time in the day. I’ve even been (somewhat) scientific about it, and tried eating a regular breakfast for a month, and couldn’t see a damn iota of difference.
(Still love pancakes! Just eat 'em for dinner, is all!)
Aside from a few years in the early 2000s (when it was so deep), I believe this is the consensus opinion now.
I can piss people off worse than you even though my ideas are roughly the opposite. The whole point of marriage, and even life, is to produce successful biological offspring. Adopting kids is just a surrogate for that and certainly a worthwhile endeavour for the kids who need it but it is a biological and evolutionary failure. I have family members that have adopted children and I like the kids just fine in general but they are not true family and never will be no matter how hard their parents try to push inclusiveness on the rest of us. Families are born and not made in my worldview. There is a special category for exceptional friends which is the best those children can hope for from me but that has to be earned.
In related news, Many 1st world people are stupid for putting having kids on the back burner for too long over other concerns. The ideal age for having kids has never shifted from the 18 - 30 year old range for women and slightly older for men. It is as true today as it was in biblical times but lots of people play denial and end up with expensive fertility treatments, donated eggs, or adoption. There is nothing wrong with those as a last resort but a little better planning earlier in life could have avoided all the drama and sub-optimal outcome.
See, this one gets me. As a couple trying to have thier first child (actively trying, though I’ve been off birth control sice 2001) for about six years now, we get this a lot. First of all, private adoption is very expensive ($15 to $20K) and so far from a guarantee that a couple may well spend upwards of TEN years waiting to be chosen. Add to that the heartbreak of finding out you’re in the top three or so (yeah, they tell you when your file is looked at) and then not being selected over and over again, facing heartbreak and loss each time, and some people decide they just can’t go through that.
The public system is a bit harsher, and it takes a special couple or person to adopt a child that is guaranteed to have neglect and often physical or sexual abuse issues. They often have learing disorders or physical disabilities. And you almost never get a child under two, which isn’t a huge deal in itself, but there are bonding issues sometimes.
So yeah, adoption is an option, but it’s not an easy choice. And you certainly can’t judge a couple for trying on thier own considering the challenges you can face with adoption.
To add mine, I suppose it’s that I think that people should be required seek alternative treatments for most minor psychological disorders (like panic attacks, mild depression, ADHD, etc) before they are given medication. North Americans are WAY too overmedicated. If people got off thier asses and got some exercise, and ate a reasonable diet, they’d be world’s better.
In my ideal world, each person would have exactly one child credit to procreate and they better do it early in life. That would give a married couple two kids but no more. It could be fractionally split in cases of divorce. Any additional children could be had but it would require a yearly tax payment equal to 25% of their remaining income for each additional child. That would bring the world population down to sustainable levels within two generations. China is the only country that has gotten this semi-correct so far.
Just curious about one thing. You said families are made. What if your family is unpleasant or outright abusive? I guess my question for you is do you believe you have to deal with biological family members?
Can I sell my child credits? I have no use for them.
I’ve always hated Betty White. Probably irrationally so, but still. Just gave off spiteful/mean old lady vibes to me. Same for Bea Arthur, but at least he’s dead. Why does everyone love her?