MightBeAlpharius

It's more of a public speaker thing than just a politician thing, but... Well, politicians are all public speakers, so it makes sense that that's the context you've seen it in.

It's literally a practiced gesture - public speaking makes use of some gestures that telegraph well to crowds, but seem unusual otherwise. IIRC, that fishing rod grip is an alternative to gesturing with a fist - it looks less aggressive, but gets the point across.

Holy shit, I learned something from Lemmy Shitpost!

Honestly though, one of these has been draped over a fence in my neighborhood for like a week, and I've been wondering what it was.

I had a military history professor, and he felt the same way. He opened his entry level classes with a speech that amounted to "nobody should be here because they want to work in military history. ROTC kids and military buffs only; all you can do with what this class covers is teach this class, and this lecture hall has as many students in it as there are jobs in this field."

all those chilly willies

Yeah, I heard the weather was pretty bad this year. Ngl, though, I feel feel like my fragile sense of masculinity would be much more threatened by a bunch of massive flopping songs on a hot day, than it would be by a bunch of tiny chilly willies on a cold day.

...Hold up. Poor/middle class guys with small schlongs drive huge trucks and loud cars. Does this mean that rich guys with tiny tallywhackers go into politics?

Yeahhhh... I took a class on the history of the Bible, but that was about a decade ago, so I'm spotty on some of the details. Thanks for fleshing it out, though - I knew my take was probably missing something!

It's because the Old Testament is actually just the Torah, rearranged and edited to fit the beliefs of what was once a sect of Judaism. That sect branched off when they decided that Jesus Christ was their Messiah, then progressively became more open and split away from the rest of Judaism and became their own religion.

That might be a bit oversimplified, but that's really the gist of it. Jesus made a new covenant with god, which was meant to replace the old one, chronicled in the New Testament; but the old covenant was kept in as background, becoming the Old Testament.

Idk about that...

When you practice something, you're actively changing your technique to elicit better results. You're not making huge changes, but rather a series of miniscule ones that add up.

For instance, I could sit down with a flute and a piece of music, and play it decently. It wouldn't be great, but it wouldn't be terrible. If I play it the same way every time, it's always going to sound decent - but it's always going to have the same wrong notes, the same rushed passages, the same intonation issues... If I practice it, I can make changes over time that fix those things. I can fix my fingerings, even out the rushed bits, adjust my intonation... But then I wouldn't be doing the same thing anymore, I'd be doing something slightly different.

Some (but not very much) of the bullshit they ramble on about is in there, but it's not in the important part.

All of the fire and brimstone, Sodom & Gomorrah, "I am a vengeful god" shit is in the Old Testament. Sure, the Old Testament is important (it's like half of the book, after all), but it's important as backstory. It's literally just the Torah in a different order, included because Christianity started as a breakaway sect of Judaism.

The part that actually pertains directly to Christianity starts with a list of "begats," some very confused shepherds, and a barn baby getting presents. The New Testament is mostly about helping others and being tolerant; and the star of the show, Jesus, literally goes around telling people that they can get into heaven just by being nice and helping the needy. He gets angry exactly once, and goes on a table-flipping rampage because someone else was taking advantage of poor pilgrims. It's the kind of thing that a lot of the Christian Right would call "hippie bullshit," but it's also the entire point of their religion.

Well, yeah - before you're born, they want you have a life; after, they tell you to get a life and quit whining. Sounds pretty "pro-life" to me!

(/s, because tone doesn't carry well in text)

Training isn't a bad option, though, especially since some jobs will pay you for it. Some trades do paid apprenticeships - the pay isn't great, but it's better than paying for training.

Alternately, manufacturing jobs can be pretty good. I had a friend who got a job working in a factory right out of high school - he started at $20/hour, with a sizeable raise after the first year.

You mentioned that the house is a century old - I'm assuming it was built as a single dwelling, and subdivided later.

If that's the case, my best guess is that the basement had a problem with flooding during bad weather, so they busted holes in existing drainage pipes to allow water to drain from the basement. The leaky walls were most likely sealed when it was converted to an apartment, but... Well, drains drains are great until they back up - I would be concerned about water coming up through them in particularly bad weather.

So, uh... We have the same thermostat at my job. It's not great. You can't just tell it what temperature you want the room to be, you actually have to tell it if you want it to heat or cool to that temperature.

Yours is set set to 65, but if you look to the left of the current temp, it says "heat." Someone likely forgot to change that when the weather warmed up. IIRC, one of the three unlabeled middle buttons will fix that.