There are limits in many places, sometimes in response to that time the artist Prince changed his name to a symbol, in some cases all special characters are banned too, so good luck to anyone with a non-English name. But outside of that? In most states you could probably name your kid Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, much worse names have happened.

I think there’s been a couple of times where states have tried to stop individuals who have tried to name their kid Adolph Hitler or just some racist slogan, but I don’t remember how those went, it was a genuine legal question if those names could be blocked.

Name changes, however, are a different thing - often requiring a judge to approve them, they can be rejected simply due to the misfortune of being a trans person in Texas, for example. Unless it’s a name change due to marriage, those are significantly easier for some reason.

I grew up in Florida and knew people who knew people that had pet raccoons. And this was consistently what I heard third hand about pet raccoons.

Sometimes taxis wouldn’t pick up certain people because of how they look

Unfortunately, at least in the US, Uber is just as bad. I’ve got a friend who’s blind and has a service dog - Uber drivers legally can’t decline a ride because he’s got a service dog, but very frequently they’d pull up, see the dog, and cancel the ride. Taxis are more likely to know and follow the law.

Stuff is built differently in places where hurricanes are common. Building standards are more strict, especially after Andrew, and adverse weather is a consideration when things are built (for instance, chain link fences are incredibly common rather than wood fences). Same with the landscaping - branches break, trees completely falling is rare because generally sturdier trees with deeper roots are chosen, and are planted well away from the house. A lot of power lines are buried - it’s more resilient to bad weather (even the afternoon thunderstorms in Florida can occasionally be just as nasty as the thunderstorms that caused so much damage at your place) and long term it’s cheaper than replacing the power lines every summer. And you kinda get used to being without power for a few hours (or even a few days to a week) after really bad hurricanes or thunderstorms. I’ve done homework by kerosene lamp more than once as a kid, and I’m in my 30s. My family played a lot of board games during the long power outages. Eventually my family, and a lot of others, invested in a generator, they’re fairly common now. My dad had a chainsaw and mostly dealt with the fallen trees himself.

But I’ve never learned how to tow a car out out the ditch, but many of my friends here in Minnesota do know how - different places require different skill sets. Learning how to deal with a furnace and radiator has been interesting.

Also, in hindsight, a direct eyewall hit or worse of a category 3+ hurricane is so pants shittingly terrifying that nobody sane continues living there after experiencing one.

Gubbins is a fun word game, it’s a one time purchase and apparently part of the profits go to charity due to Hank Green investing in it in a creative way.

I’ve never had the opportunity to go to Playalinda, but I do really miss Paradise Beach before the tourists found out about it.

I wasn’t able to find one. Which, if anyone saw my shitpost, is the real reason I installed it on my crapbook. I found out that the installer is pretty great, it just worked out of the box (at least on that computer, my gaming machine has an Nvidia graphics card…), and that GMOME isn’t really for me.

A vape shop I get my weed from (I’m in a legal state and it’s locally sourced, so somewhat less sketchy than your average vape shop weed) got something similar to chocolate shroom bars and I’ve certainly considered it, but, again, vape shop. Don’t buy weird shit from a vape shop.

Jesse “the Body” Ventura. Let’s go full Senior Citizens Wrestling League with this.

LOL I just had a discussion with someone in another thread about how Walz would be great, but the person I was talking to said he didn’t think Walz had the name recognition.

Is that really a bad thing, though? Generic Democrat polls really well against Trump. The people who know of Walz really like him, even the more reasonable rural Republicans here grudgingly admit that while they don’t agree with him politically he clearly cares about Minnesotans. Newsom doesn’t have that. The past couple of years have seen some semi-viral quotes from him poking at politicians in red states, mostly along the lines of “we fed children, what have you done?”, and I’ve seen them posted here. The people who know him like him. For the people who don’t, he’s Generic Democrat. He’s well spoken enough to handle the discussions around the George Floyd protests (which already came up in the first debate but Biden didn’t address directly). He’s well spoken, smart, kind, and down to earth - everything Trump isn’t.

Also, I hadn’t heard of Obama before he ran for president. For a sufficiently likable candidate, it’s not a deal breaker.

COSMIC looks awesome in screenshots though.

Tim Walz. Minnesota has been kicking ass with progressive legislation these past few years, and here in Minnesota we’ve been wondering if he’s been quietly trying to get his name out there to run for President. (And the general consensus is that we don’t want to lose him as governor, but I guess we’ll give him up to save US democracy, lol.) On paper he’s fairly moderate too.

Walz. Added benefit is that Walz used to be a school teacher, he definitely knows how to deal with a child throwing a tantrum.

Even the brain worms guy?

I’m on my second beer of the night, does a six pack of Modelo have enough alcohol to kill me? I’m small if that helps.

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FUCK YOU.

• Minneapolis resident

I’ve heard that the brand new Nvidia 555 drivers actually work with Wayland. I was ready to switch my gaming laptop to Linux but I may wait a few weeks for the driver to release out of beta. (Arch users shut up, lol.)

With a tiny bit of work this could probably be turned into a Chuck Tingle title.