One thing you need to understand is that the US is a Federal system.

Take education. Every state has its own standards, and each individual county has its own Board of Education. Two towns in the same state can have vast differences in curriculum and standards. Same with police forces. One jurisdiction might have all college graduates and another might accept GEDs.

Connect with peers.

Plenty of people grew up in similar circumstances. There are all sorts of self help groups. A good therapist would be able to help you find them.

I love to read and I love tellign people about obscure/underrated authors.

I’ve been heralding Tanith Lee for decades. Writers like Neil Gaiman and Poppy Z. Brite are pale imitations of the original.

Ross Thomas. Washington reporter turned crime novelist. “The Porkchoppers” is about a Nixon Era Union election. Dozens of characters, ranging from DC power brokers to street level fixers, are all trying to cash in.

Dan Fesperman. Best new spy novels.

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I’m still trying to figure out why people think that yelling about Socialism is a great idea.

The Right figured it out years ago; go along to get along. Reagan was smart enough to put the first woman on the Supreme Court and made African-American Colin Powell his Number One guy.

It’s like they’d rather lose and be able to talk about how noble the cause is.

edit =getting down voted, but no one bothers to actually explain why they feel the need to use the unpopular term.

It’s a truism in writing; villains act and heroes react. If someone looks at the internet and sees a way to exploit it they will. They don’t care that it’s working fine for everyone else; they want the money.

I once read a novel from the 1970s. There were a couple of thugs who were arguing over who’d had more STIs. It was a simpler, happier time.

Think about this. Public sex clubs like ‘Plato’s Retreat’ and gay bath houses were mainstream in the 1970s. Bette Midler got her start performing at a gay bath house. There were porn theaters catering to couples all over the place. AIDS came along and threw everything back fifty years.

Sometimes I wonder about how many songs the average person would know throughout history. An ancient Roman would be exposed to songs from the entire Empire, while a 1000 AD English farmer might only hear a few dozen in their whole life time.

Since this is a comedy thread, I’ll paraphrase John Cleese.

The great thing about anger is that it really works. It makes you physically stronger and less likely to feel pain. If you’re angry all the time you aren’t worrying about things because you’ve got a target to go after.

I’ll throw in another comedy classic.

The musical “The Music Man” is about a conman who gets the whole town in an uproar over a pool table.

Check the history of comedy.

Mel Brooks ‘The Producers’ movie had two gay men. Bugs Bunny was in drag in the 1940’s. “Some Like It Hot” came out in the 1950s. Heck, pretty much any Hollywood movie made before the Hays Code would have had gay gags.

Milton Berle was the King of Comedy and he did drag for years.

The Pythons didn’t invent anything

Almost as if you need a military wing and a smart political wing.

[off topic]

Back in the day, I heard a lecture on the tactics of terrorist groups.

The IRA was particularly effective in assassinations. People thought they had an vast army of trained killers on hand.

Actually, the number of shooters was small, maybe fifty in all.

What made them so dangerous was that they had a powerful ‘rear echelon.’

When the shooter arrived in town, he’d have three or four drivers waiting for him, a choice of safe houses, and more than one doctor to go to if he were to be injured.

True, but I think it’s in the spirit of the question.

Someone once told me that in certain circles it’s considered rude to give a book as a gift, because it implies that the person is ignorant. May have been a joke.

“According to their neighbors, Monkey Puppet’s house was burglarized on 12/22/2024. No police reports were filed by Monkey Puppet. This gave the police probable cause to search their house, where they found the contraband.”

One trick I heard is to get them a gift card towards a Las Vegas vacation. If they go to Vegas they are way more likely to lose money than win at the tables.

Go in and demand to be fired.

If you’re fired you get unemployment benefits.

Also, say something like “I know you need to cut back. I can get another job in a couple of days, but [insert enemy’s name] could never get another job.”

Think of it this way. You are in a courtroom and the lawyer asks 'why didn’t you call the police?"

If your home was burglarized and you don’t call the cops, the police will assume you’ve been doing something illegal. Most people will call the cops just to have a police report on file for the insurance or to claim a tax loss.

All of the Northeast.