113 American Girl dolls would be expensive as shit though - I think with all the accessories and accoutrements you’re looking at the price of a decent used car. The newer models are also shittier (less history focused, because Mattel lol)

The books though - they went hard. There was an entire series about about an enslaved girl who escaped to the north with her mom (I wanna say Addie?). Felicity, the American Revolution girl, stole a horse and got told what the consequences could have been (like, iirc it’s like “yeah you could have totally been hanged for that stunt.”)

I was too broke for the dolls, but if you have a kid - the books are A-tier children’s historical fiction.

Ah - but I thought discrimination against Dalit didn’t exist because some can afford cell phones and Jordan’s?

That’s what someone was telling me on here the other week.

Peanut butter + sriracha + a bit of lime juice for “pad thai” works well.

There’s a reason English is the only high school subject I’m not certified to teach… (grammar is boring)

It can also be extremely difficult to tell whether it’s an actual gang tattoo/clothing/symbol. Stuff like a Chicago Bulls jersey can be read as a gang symbol, or just that you really like the Bulls.

I taught kids who were in gangs - some of my students have died in the interim. The kids who were the most “visual” were the posers.

I would love to be delusional enough to believe I lived in a world where shit like an ICE raid with 20 armed men traumatizing American citizens couldn’t happen.

Here’s a shiny new Wikipedia article, with lots of links to parse through.

In March 2025, the United States deported 137 Venezuelans to El Salvador, to be immediately and indefinitely imprisoned without trial[1] and without prison sentences nor release dates. They were detained at the notorious[2][3] maximum security Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a prison with human rights concerns, as part of an agreement to jail U.S. deportees there in exchange for money. They were not given due process such as fair trials, and thus have no orders or sentencing for either the deportations themselves or the imprisonment immediately on arrival. Many deportees have no criminal charges, records, nor convictions in either country. The second Trump administration alleges that the deportees are gang members, but often without any solid evidence, and consequently, innocent individuals have been deported and imprisoned without any fixed term, including instances in which the deportation itself was admitted to be a mistake. The administration is doubling down on its actions and refuses to acknowledge or rectify any issues. Although the deportations themselves were well-publicized afterward, the U.S. did not publish the Venezuelans’ names, nor did it acknowledge the fate and whereabouts of individuals to the public, their families, or their legal representation. Their names were later leaked by CBS News.

What the Trump administration is doing is not legal.

These seem to issues of subordinates blindly following orders or miscarrying out their directives.

No - this is intentional. This is what Bukele wants, because Bukele is an authoritarian dictator who does not care about human rights.

“In the state of exception that was put into place last year, there’s been a series of new norms that have been generated,” Bullock told Vox. “Effectively, the state of exception has transformed the criminal justice system entirely,” essentially negating the possibility of fair trials.

For one thing, there simply aren’t enough public defenders assigned to the thousands of people in pretrial detention, Bullock said. But the bigger problem, according to Bertha María Deleón, an attorney from El Salvador, is the justice system itself.

“Bukele also controls the Attorney General’s Office, the institution in charge of public criminal defense,” she told Vox. “What’s more, the attorney general says that there are no cases of arbitrary detentions. The human rights attorney does not do her job either.”

According to Deleón, prisoners must wait in detention, “in overcrowded and subhuman conditions” as their criminal trial plays out, for as long as three years. “Many have died,” she told Vox, “and they do not allow an autopsy.”

“Oops, we accidentally crowded more people than can safely live in this space, denied them medical care and contact with the outside world! Just a few bad apples!”

Manipulative liars/vampires who don’t think of poor people are deserving of any kindness or luxury.

You can maybe wait three + years for a Section 8 voucher!

If applying for that is anything like applying for unemployment, good luck lol.

Journalism is dead because Sinclair has been gobbling up local news.

Check to see who your local news outlet is - several of mine are owned by like Missouri’s retirement fund or something.

sending MS13 gang members to a prison in El Salvador.

Sending people they have claimed without evidence are MS13 gang members to a “prison” (torture murder facility - you look at the Google earth images of what looks like a puddle of blood by the facility and the fact that they’ve confirmed something like 100 people died there last year, that there is no release, and that they’re cramming people into such small living spaces the EU would consider it unethical for transporting livestock and tell me what you think)

They also just deported several children, who were American citizens. One of them was a toddler with cancer.

Here’s a website with those FSI courses I referenced earlier, as well as Peace Corps training materials. This is going to be the boring route. Drill drill drill, but you get good at it.

As a general strategy - on the Omniglot forums a billion years ago there was a method called Listen-Read which I think does wonders for me. You pick a longer book, preferably one you have enjoyed and read already in English. You get a copy of that book in English and your target language, as well as audiobook (let’s go with say, French), then you listen to the audio book in French while reading the book in English, then switch to listening to an English audiobook while reading the French book, then the audiobook in French while reading the French.

Librivox and Project Gutenberg are godsends. I did Candide this way, and part of Les Miserables. This is obviously less immediate fun/dopamine satisfying than Duolingo is, but will teach you to read better than Duolingo will. It’s not great at expressive language - while I can read Proust, my « je voudrais un Diet Coke » was not well received in Paris.

If you have a language in mind I can probably point you in some other directions.

Duolingo is a tragedy. They really quickly realized that you don’t make money teaching things - you make it on retention and gamification.

Mango languages is great if your library has a subscription. I believe the US’s foreign service materials are also really good, if you want effective but boring.

The import fee is then passed onto you as the “importer” directly.

Amazon has basically been a massive drop shipping scheme for the past five years or so. Basically everything is stuff that’s on AliExpress, just doubled in price and relisted on Amazon.

It’s not even a good place for books anymore.

There was an attempt at a lawsuit, it was pretty public.

There’s doubts/some connection to weird TV stunts, but it just seems congruous with the stories about him going into the girls rooms at Miss Teen America. What would it mean if what she was saying were true though?

I know (2nd hand) of someone who became dependent using it only once!!

???

You know someone who is addicted to shrooms/LSD?

I’ve only done shrooms, but it’s not really a thing where you can just “go on with your day.” I have done all of my trips solo as well - not something I would recommend to others, but it’s possible to prepare a safe environment with the kinds of things needed to distract from “bad trips.”

It’s very hard to imagine what being addicted to LSD/shrooms would look like - unless you’re microdosing, it’s a “trip” which takes a lot out of you. Iirc even medically the effects are lessened if you don’t wait long enough between doses. You don’t get euphoria, you get something a lot more complicated. It’s not really the kind of experience one gets “addicted” to in the same way - not chemically and I don’t think psychologically.

Everyone should check out Erowid and unlearn the DARE hysteria.

Yeah, as Americans we’re very fixated on our particular fascist - but there’s still Erdoğan, Lukashenko, Orban, Bukele, Putin…

The owners probably voted for Trump.

If undocumented workers start to talk about unions or working conditions, then you can call in ICE. Once the troublemakers are gone, hire another round of workers, rinse and repeat.