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I was thinking of the Home Alone movie as well, they made that fake movie just for the movie.

It’s not accurate to say Afghanistan had nothing to do with it. The Taliban government were directly helping to hide Bin Laden after the fact, and obviously it was not going to do anything to stop violent extremism, rather it was going to reward and encourage it.

I didn’t support it when it started, and I certainly didn’t support all twenty of the years we spent there, but I believe now that the decision to overthrow the Taliban at least initially was the right one. Maybe some people in Washington pushed and went along with it as a handout to the oil and defense industries, but I think most of the legislators went with it because they truly believed, as I do, that overthrowing the Taliban and helping the people build a new state, with real institutions, was a path towards securing lasting human rights to millions of people. No religious dictatorship can grant human rights, it’s not theirs to give.

I’m sure there is much more evidence that this is not the case. You were probably raised in an environment with lots of shame and blame, I suspect, and so it’s hard to give yourself credit for the many, many things you have been successful.

Also, reframe your negative evidence. You’re not the same person anymore, for sure. Everyone makes mistakes and that’s how we learn, and it’s supposed to be uncomfortable. It also helps to remember that you are likely the only person thinking about this past evidence, and it’s okay for you to let it go, release it from your body and mind, and move on from it too.

When you feel yourself thinking negatively, go stand in front of a mirror, up on your toes, arms up high over head, bear your teeth, and growl at the mirror. You are a large and powerful predator, and seeing yourself as such will make it true.

Another good tip, when you’re feeling discomfort with memories, pause, and look around the room making sure to look over your shoulders, behind you on both sides. This is a trick to calm your brain down, take you out of fight or flight. You’re not in danger and the feelings of danger may have been helpful as a child, but you don’t need them anymore. You are a large and powerful predator now.

Master your inner dialogue and emotions.

Practice speaking positively and rationally to yourself. Use affirmations, mantras, or visualisations for confidence, for forgiveness of yourself and others, relaxation, motivation.

If you ever feel like crying, it is important to cry hard and deep, and then it’s important to recover after with some kind of happy celebration, whether it’s playing or a treat, just something nice to help your body learn to get happy after being sad, angry, or scared.

Stop reaching for distractions when powerful emotions come on. Face the emotion. Study it with curiosity. Feel it fully. And comfort yourself positively until it passes.

Start down this road now. You don’t want to end up 40, done with school, done with your parents, done with your first couple of real jobs, and have no idea how to control yourself throughout the day.

Men and men aren’t physically equal. Maybe basketball should have a rule that everyone in the team has to be the same height. Can’t have anyone with a physical advantage over anyone else.

I wonder if there’s a travel itinerary for a year long journey to as many independence days as possible. How many are there? How many could a person attend within a year?

Edit: Found a list on wiki and could sort by calendar day. By my count you could attend a maximum of 119 independence days; that is to say somewhere in the world there is an independence day on 119 different days. Many days of course have two or more countries celebrating so you’d have to pick one. Maybe I’ll print the list and think about the geography a bit and see how many a person could reasonably attend; 119 is the maximum if you own a private plane and could land and takeout from the correct countries in order.

Conceivably, one person couldn’t possibly line up the entry visas to get anywhere close to 119. They’d need a small team of immigration lawyers working for months ahead of and during each leg; some chronological legs might be impossible due to entry restrictions on country of entry or country of origin. Visa requirements would get more complicated as time went on and less likely to be granted, although to the extent border controls are discretionary, with the right letters and proof, the durations of stay will be so short, how many border guard supervisors are going to turn you down for a one or two day entry visa when you have photos of you partying it up on Independence days around the world, celebrating the prideful achievements of the cultures of the world, and asking “won’t you let a kind traveler share your day of national pride with you, so that I may share it with others?”

And this is all flying privately with your own jet and unlimited money to keep it going on demand. Many legs would be interrupted by flight delays and travel bullshit. Flying commercially, even with unlimited plane fair money and very good luck in finding/planning accomodations (not living out of your private jet). This assumes the flight durations and time zones line up that you could make it in time from one to the next.

I would find it an amazing achievement if a regular person managed to get to like 25 of the these things in a year, and a lifetime achievement award to do anyone that hit 50. Maybe a very seriously dedicated individual could hit ~75. That last stretch from 100 to 119 I think would be insurmountable. With all the resources in the world I bet a few would still fall through for one reason or another.

If anyone finds some travel nerd somewhere that has really thought this out please share.

I am the higher authority.

This is a question of noun phrase agreement and diction. If you use the wrong word you create a disagreement error. Period. Maybe whatever poser dictionary you use has a new form of less or fewer but mine doesn’t.

Yeah no doubt, I will wait till they update the definition of the words in the dictionary though. Until then, less and fewer are not interchangeable as they mean different things.

When they update the dictionary, they don’t look to how English is spoken by momos on the internet. They look to distinguished authors and writers.

Like I’m a little confused. The correctness of it is dictated by the definition.

Well no one way is correct and one way is not, regardless of what this particularly shitty Wikipedia article says.

The comparative less is used with both countable and uncountable nouns in some informal discourse environments and in most dialects of English.[citation needed] In other informal discourse however, the use of fewer could be considered natural.

“in some informal discourse environments?” Does that mean environments in which writing goes unedited and mistakes don’t matter?

Just because some people somewhere do a thing doesn’t mean it’s right. To people with formal writing experience, or people that are just well read, the agreement errors are obvious and revealing.

This is a question of diction not style. Check the dictionary. Less and fewer have different meanings. One of them affirmatively describes something uncountable.

Talking “refried beans” as a noun phrase, not beans.

Refried beans does not have a plural noun form. You have to give it a unit. “twenty plates of refried beans,” “pounds of refried beans,” etc.

It like oil. You don’t say “top up my car with oils.” If you add more than you’re supposed to, you put in too much, not too many.

Beans are countable. We’re talking about refried beans though. It’s a paste. You cant count paste.

It’s like saying “oil.”

You have to give a unit.

But you can count how many pairs of jeans someone has.

You would use too much, since refried beans is an uncountable noun. You have to add a unit to it to make it countable.

You would say “there’s too much refried beans on my plate, and too many cans of refried beans in the pantry.”

By adding “cans” to the noun phrase, you’ve made the refried beans countable, you may now use “too many.”

Nah, hot day? It’ll show up same day.

Just practice reading and writing more and it will take less effort. I can spot the agreement error immediately when someone uses the wrong form. Check the dictionary. They have different meanings and are not interchangeable.

Could be all sorts of things. Loggers. Taco Bell employees. Law firm.

It was super cool for like three weeks. Now it’s the gambler’s fallacy they’re hanging on to.

Every month I’m amazed he made it to the end.

That’s how life looks, man. I noticed this same thing many years ago after the Reagan assassination attempt. There’s that photo in black and white of secret service agent Robert Wanko holding an Uzi, bodies on the floor. It’s so chaotic and normal, the president is just a regular person, same as everyone around him, just trying to keep it together.

Reminds me of the true meaning of that line from the Constitution, “we the people.”

People misread it. It’s about the people coming together to form a government, as commonly understood, but it also states affirmatively that no diety or higher power is going to come and govern for us, it’s just us; fragile, emotional, stupid, us.