You’ve been experiencing a cult of an idea. The Republican party has transformed into a cult of personality with no clear successor.

There are cults of personality that have successfully transformed into a cult of ideas. Mormons and Scientology are examples. However, in each case, the person at the center fostered a clear successor, and that successor was able to make it last in the long run by centering around ideas. Scientology still has that successor around (David Miscavige), but there isn’t really a specific person in charge of the LDS. Not in the same way. Their leadership is now interchangeable, but replacing their ideas is a harder sell.

Trump has no successor, and isn’t interested in fostering one. It’s not JD Vance; nobody respects him, including Trump. It’s not Musk; he made the mistake of trying to be more popular than the boss, and he’s not a natural-born citizen, anyway. It’s not Peter Thiel; he prefers to be the power behind the throne. It’s not any of Trump’s adult children; they’re nothing but spoiled rich kids. It’s not any of the people in his cabinet; they’re all plebes using booze and cocaine to get through the day. It’s not Tucker or Matt Walsh or any of the other right-wing commentators; they’d just eat each other trying to get on top.

Oh, no, they’ll devolve into infighting. There won’t be enough shared ideals and actions to sustain Republicans as a political force. There will be fringe groups that linger on for a while. After almost three centuries, there are still two people left claiming the Shaker tradition; that’s a group that forbids sexual relations even for procreation, so you can see how they’d have trouble gaining new members. But they’re not a religious group that anyone really cares about, either. That’s how MAGA will go eventually.

See also, Knitting Cat Lady, who is a former member of the Children of God cult, then the US Army, and then got a masters in organizational psychology around cults.

Fracture to irreverence where the component pieces eat each other. There is no future for the party after Trump except as various fringe groups claiming to be the “true” party.

Channels aren’t doing that because they want to. YouTube has a lot of rules, some of which are written down. They do it because YouTube has flagged them in the past for demonetization on the issue, and they can’t afford to do that too many times. It can also impact your ability to do livestreams.

It’s on top of a pile of issues that’s making YouTube content creation non-viable for everyone.

That would probably happen as part of a narcissistic collapse. In the most extreme cases, it may trigger suicidal reactions.

That would have some significant medical ethics issues. She nearly died. Do no harm, and that’s regardless of the patient’s political ideology.

Besides all the points everyone else has mentioned:

“Even if just one rapist changes his mind about raping a child, I will take that.”

Always be skeptical anytime anyone uses an argument of this form. There are tradeoffs for everything, but this phrasing only serves to stop people from weighing them fairly.

Oh, and the above quote comes from the co-sponser of the bill, who is a Democrat. Just in case you thought this was a Republican problem.

US water softeners are usually only on the hot pipe. They tend to add sodium to the water, and it’s not recommended to make it your primary drinking water source.

Southern US is the best place for developing new methods to kill yourself in delightful ways.

You get 3-phase in the US if you live in a large apartment complex. Especially if it has an elevator. Since this combines to get 208V, the math works out to making your 240V stove only 75% of what it should be.

For residential use, split phase is fine. We just run the two legs to get 240V on the specific things that need it. That’s generally electric stoves, water heaters, AC unit, electric dryer, and more recently, EV chargers. 3-phase is great when you’re driving something that spins with a high draw, and of those, only the AC unit does that (electric dryers spend most of their electricity heating, not spinning).

As a combo tea/coffee drink, it tastes horrible. Nobody wants tea flavored coffee or coffee flavored tea. Although you usually don’t get tea flavored coffee in those hotel drip makers, but only because the grounds they use are shit tier quality and taste too burnt to even get tea flavors.

Have to drop the US number by 20% for continuous loads like a kettle would be.

That said, US homes built in the last 40 years or so tend to have a lot of separate circuits in the kitchen. My house has one for the fridge, one for the disposal, one for the dishwasher, one for the lights that’s shared with lights in adjacent areas, stove has its own 240V outlet, and then one for all the other plugs. If I ran the microwave and a kettle and a mixer all at once, I’d probably still trip it, but that’s a lot of multitasking going on.

Zojirushi. They last. Since it’s BIFL, I don’t see the extra cost as a big problem. That’s what you deal with when you BIFL.

Microwave magnetron efficiency is around 65%. Since a kettle turns electricity directly into heat, it’s basically 100% efficient.

A caveat is that microwaves will heat water directly and won’t lose as much to its surroundings. This is similar to why induction stoves are more efficient; they’re less efficient on paper than direct electric heating or burning gas, but they heat the thing you want in a more direct way.

Even so, a microwave isn’t great for this task. If you’re short on space and don’t want even a small travel kettle, I can see why you’d take this option. Otherwise, no.

Most residential outlets in the US are going to be a 15A limit. You also have to reduce that by 20% for a continuous draw.

UK might be able to get away with the full usage because their plugs are designed to have a fuse built in. Not entirely sure on that, though.

That said, kettles are still a better option most of the time. Technology Connections has real world tests of this.

We have a Zojirushi. 120V does limit it somewhat, but it’s fine.

The water in our area of country is also hard as shit. We have undersink RO now, but before then, mineral buildup in the kettle was bad. Crusted like concrete if we didn’t stay on top of it.

If I had a suppressor on my AR-15, I’d still be using hearing protection. I really should be doubling up on ear plugs and muffs together, but I tend to have a lot of earwax buildup, and properly inserted ear plugs tend to compact that problem.

Subsonic 5.56NATO is a joke.

Well, a plucked bird does look pretty different. Then again, fossilized feathers for dinosaurs have been found, so it’s not like we’re completely blind to that, either.

Hey all, this guy thinks gun people don’t know about ear plugs.

Hitting a face-sized target at any appreciable distance takes some practice when calmly shooting at a range in ideal conditions. It’s not anything you want to count on in a stressful situation.