Easily. Combination of pet insurance and normal medical bills plus a canned diet with occasional toys, treats, litter, specialty furniture, and cleaning supplies. You can do with less and gamble with health problems, unexpected emergencies, and boredom-linked destructiveness.

(I had a diabetic cat. Between him, a girl that can’t eat dry food or cheap canned without getting bladder stones, and a third cat that eats whatever but isn’t worth the effort of separating at meal times I was spending $400+/month just on food. It’s less now without the diabetes to manage but still not cheap.)

Very glad to see a take that isn’t more depressed doomerism, the world needs more of that.

Yep, find one you trust and stick to them. We followed our vet when they left a Big Clinic and started their own practice and it’s been completely worth it.

A long-lasting ideology recognizes enemies and how to defend against them, and sometimes the best defense is a good offense.

There’s obviously a difference between people benefitting from social services and people enriching themsleves by hoarding capital.

There’s the additional cost that my whole family and all my friends live in the “Greater Seattle area” where housing is outrageous and climbing. If I were to move somewhere more affordable it would mean losing my entire social support system.

Yes, but that perceived value has existed for thousands of years across many forms of civilization. Gold is a pretty safe bet. Humans like shiny.

It’s complicated. (Ignoring for the moment that we deposed the sovereign government of the Kingdom of Hawai’i for a strategic outpost and tropical farmland.) Japan wasn’t trying to invade the United States at all, they didn’t want us to interfere with their attacks on the rest of the South Pacific and thought crippling our fleet would buy them the time to do that. And we were already putting pressure on Japan with a naval blockade so it’s not like Pearl Harbor was unprovoked. (And we had been supplying their enemies.) It’s not really a “defensive war” for the US like it was in Europe.

I know enough of those words to agree!

Easier to argue that even WWII wasn’t a defensive war (not that I think we should have stayed out of it, just that everything since then has been for sure us causing problems).

Tell that to the Communist Control Act of 1954.

Buckle up, it’s time for Red Scare 3! This time with even more government surveillance!

Whatis that, like 6%? Seems about right to me. Might even be a little low. There’s a LOT of terrible drivers who can’t stop scrolling Instagram long enough to get to the grocery store.

Urban planning should account for routing large commercial vehicles while maintaining safe streets. This runs into a particular beef I have: driveways should never open onto arterial roads.

It combines the normalization of magical thinking with the belief in an absolute moral authority. So you get people that aren’t concerned with provable reality and are sure they’re doing the right thing.

Well, they’re from Israel and of Jewish heritage and presumably practice the religion so there’s nothing else to call them. Can’t “true Scotsman” the government of Israel out of their identity.

It didn’t look terrible on Michael Jordan with the matching soul patch. It didn’t look good but it wasn’t terrible.

That’s not “strange” that’s just contrarian anti-establishmentarianism. No positive stances, only negarive ones.

There’s “pick up a rat” and there’s “crush a rat in your hand.” Most of the time people are actively trying not to injure animals when we handle them, even if they’re being aggressive. Instinctively we don’t try to grab because hand injuries are likely and possibly debilitating, but if you can ignore that you should have no problem dealing with anything smaller than a dog. (And should then swiftly seek medical care)

If you rely on your lane assist, adaptive cruise control, and proximity sensors, you aren’t prepared to react when they fail.

Yes! They’re making people lazy and inattentive behind the wheel.