Basically, people do what the law enforcement - like police and judges - say because they go to jail for a long time if they don't. There are plenty of other punishments that aren't jail, but those are really only enforced with the threat of jail time if you don't comply, so it all comes back to jail in the end. Nobody's going to come after Trump to put him in jail because he's the president, and even before then, he had enough money to make sure nobody came after him anyway.

Nobody but the wealthy know exactly how they get away with their crimes, but I'd imagine some high-ranking members of the police force and probably several other people from other government agencies are willing to look the other way for a bit of cash, which allows the people who have that cash to essentially treat every crime like nothing more than a fine.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: they don't support Trump because they agree with him, they agree with him because he's Trump. It doesn't matter if he flip flops on topics every couple of weeks, it doesn't matter if he directly screws over his own followers, it doesn't matter if he spits in the face of all things America has ever claimed to stand for; if Trump says or does something, his followers will support it. Every time.

Love the "Arms: 2"

So you agree that the vast majority of countries don't put capital gain over human life? That legislature is possible in such a scenario, but not ours, with capital being the most important thing, lives be damned? Because that's what I've been saying. Public healthcare exists when a country's government doesn't lie in bed with private healthcare CEOs. America's does, and it was designed to do so. You want public healthcare? Then prepare to join the inevitable revolution, because that's how you'll get it.

Revolution will either come, killing most of us, or the train of rampant capitalistic destruction will continue on, killing all of us. We're not close enough to immediate death for most of us to view revolution as an acceptable answer yet, but I have no doubt that in a few decades, when the young adults of that time look back on the current times and think "they had it so easy," the risk associated with an uprising will seem much less daunting when compared to the risk of simply living within whatever jumbled-together scraps of a system we'll have left by then.

Revolution isn't a solution that any sane person gets excited for; it all but guarantees a short life full of suffering for the vast majority of people, but it's a solution that is chosen when the alternative is guaranteed suffering for everyone outside of the upper class. It's the last resort used when the best hope you have for the future is to fight for the chance that a few people make it to peaceful times, because you don't see any other way for anyone to get there by working within the system.

Voting is important, yes; we get the best chance to make it to a revolution by voting blue, slowing down capitalism's destruction of the world, but so long as each election is populated by 2 candidates proudly bought out by corporations who don't give a shit about the world, there will be no viable option within the system to actually stop its destruction. That requires actually changing the system through uprising.

I didn't really see people mentioning that "would" can still be used past-tense outside of "would have," though it's not in the same way - you use it when talking about something that happened multiple times in the past. For example, "When I was a kid my friends and I would go to the pool every Saturday," which means that, as children, my friends and I did visit the pool every Saturday.

I'm not discouraging at home novelty tests like ancestry and 23andme, I'm discouraging their use in the situation you've described, because that's not what they're intended for. I'm very sorry for your situation, and I hope that you find the information that you're looking for, but you're more likely to find it with actual paternity tests than trying to glean information from a test that's not meant for that.

As for the medical comments, ancestry isn't meant to provide that. It's not actually sequencing the DNA, it's just checking for specific sections of DNA that are known to vary between different ethnicities. Some health information can be assessed in that way, but its inclusion in at-home tests was made illegal because those sorts of results need to be handled with a genetics professional so that they can explain the complex results and their impact on the individual and their family. Some at-home tests have added medical information back in, but that's legally dubious, and considered to be dangerous by genetics professionals.

If there are any medical concerns, a different DNA test should be used, and should be ordered by a genetic counselor or geneticist. Situations like these are one of the reasons why genetic counselors exist - please don't believe that adding a medical professional to the mix is a bad thing - genetics is a very complex topic, and having someone trained to understand and explain it is invaluable. Please let them help you in your endeavor.

They've never needed pictures before, and they don't need pictures now. Hell, even the iconic meme picture is taken from a video of a woman speaking normally - they just used an unflattering frame to discredit her. This isn't a ploy to get a photo op of the left being mad, it's another small push of the republican boundaries. Enough "joke" bills about overbearing punishments for minor offenses made by people their party doesn't like, and they'll be primed enough to fully support the real thing. We're already there for a large portion of the republican base.

We got rid of lead products because governments put out new regulations that prevented companies from making products with lead, not because the population collectively decided not to buy products with lead in them. If companies had been allowed to continue making lead products, they'd have done so, and people would have continued buying them despite the science pointing to them being bad for you.

Companies will do whatever is profitable unless prevented from doing so by regulations, and people will buy what companies sell because most people don't know, and don't have the time to figure out what products they buy are harmful to themselves and others. Even when they do, they often don't have the wealth to make a change to buying safer, more expensive products.

"How society works" is that people have to buy products to survive, and often have little choice among what products they can afford. If we want companies to start lowering their emissions, we need to force them to do so with regulations, just like we had to do with lead.

If you're driving in the dark with someone whose entire taillight system is out to the point where you can't immediately tell if his blinker is on the left or the right, you need to hit the brakes and put as much distance between you and them as you can... Then get better headlights, because even in that situation you should still be able to see them pretty well just with your own lights.

I'd listen to that song on repeat as a kid just for the piano section at the end.

Yeah, I figured they're aware I'm not using the laptop - I'm not on the VPN most of the time as a result. I'm still able to do all my work in my own copy of excel, though, so I'm hoping I can continue pretending I'm unaware that I'm not following the correct avenues to get my work done, at least until they force me to use the laptop.