Choo choo! All aboard the Complain Train!

Dalisclock

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99% of cooking YouTubers put their recipes on websites hosted by companies who sponsor them, and 100% of the time these websites are fucking TERRIBLE. Looking at you, Babish.
On a related note, If I'm looking for a recipe online, I REALLY DON'T FUCKING CARE ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD/LIFE/ETC. Please don't make me scroll through pages of your autobiography to find the actual "How to make food/What do I need to make the food" part AKA the actual recipe. I'm fine with "Here's important information to help the food turn out good" but not your damn life story.

Okay, I'm finished.
 

Bob_McMillan

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On a related note, If I'm looking for a recipe online, I REALLY DON'T FUCKING CARE ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD/LIFE/ETC. Please don't make me scroll through pages of your autobiography to find the actual "How to make food/What do I need to make the food" part AKA the actual recipe. I'm fine with "Here's important information to help the food turn out good" but not your damn life story.

Okay, I'm finished.
Lmao that may as well have been my post. I really do hate that shit, especially since the wifi in our kitchen is really weak. I get that they need to make us scroll through their ads, but some websites just are complete garbage on mobile. I've given up on many a recipe because of their wall of text intros..
 
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XsjadoBlayde

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Ooh boy, the militant sovereign citizens are up to something in Maine and Massachusettsm. 🤨🧐🤔


A bizarre incident unfolded Saturday morning in Wakefield, Massachusetts. According to local police: "during a motor vehicle stop, several heavily armed men claiming to be from a group that does not recognize our laws exited their vehicles and fled into the woodline" near Interstate Highway 95.

The incident unfolded around 1:30 a.m. when a state trooper came across a group of 8 to 10 people refueling on the side of the I-95 highway in Wakefield, a suburb of Boston. The group was dressed in military-style uniforms, carried tactical gear like body cameras and helmets and had long guns slung over their shoulders.

They told officials they were on their way to Maine from Rhode Island for "training," Col. Christopher Mason said.

Officials said they made two initial arrests and the rest of the group, which calls itself "Moorish American Arms," fled into a wooded area that is now surrounded by police. As a result, a stretch of I-95 was closed and shelter-in-place orders were set for people who live nearby.

Police negotiators talked to those hiding in the woods throughout the early morning.

"We're trying to successfully and peacefully resolve this," Mason said.

As of 10:30 a.m. Saturday the "remaining suspects on highway" were taken into custody by MSP Special Tactical Operations Team, Massachusetts State Police said in an update.

Officials had conducted searches of the two vehicles the suspects were in and the surrounding woods.

"Two additional suspects were located in their vehicles, bringing the total number of those arrested to 11 (two initially on North Avenue and nine outside and inside the vehicles)," the MSP tweeted.

"7 additional suspects being transported for booking ... Total of 9 in custody counting the initial 2 arrests," MSP had tweeted earlier.

The Wakefield Police Department said in an early morning statement: "Approximately 8 males fled into the woods carrying rifles and handguns and appear to be contained in the wooded area adjacent to the highway. No threats were made, but these men should be considered armed and dangerous."

Massachusetts State Police, who are also on the scene, tweeted early Saturday: "We have several armed persons accounted for at this scene on Rt 95. They are refusing to comply with orders to provide their information and put down their weapons. We are asking residents of Wakefield and Reading to shelter in place at this time."

At around 6:40 a.m. ET, state police announced that two suspects were arrested by members of The Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council in Wakefield. Police took them into custody and transported them to one of their barracks.

"The situation is ongoing w/remaining members of the group. We continue to work to resolve the situation peacefully," they tweeted.

Police said a "heavy police presence" will remain in the area, and they are asking residents to lock their doors and stay home.

No injuries or shots fired have been reported.
 
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Gergar12

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Just tried to go to a bookstore that's not a corporation aka small business. They are either too far away or require appointments/calls ahead of time.

And they wonder why people go to Amazon.
 

Bob_McMillan

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Just tried to go to a bookstore that's not a corporation aka small business. They are either too far away or require appointments/calls ahead of time.

And they wonder why people go to Amazon.
As much as I love bookstores, I think pretty much the only reason to go to them is for the experience. Or maybe you just happen to pass by. Secondhand bookstores though are great, when I was a kid I built a huge collection of Star Wars books for almost nothing. Good times.

OT: Since I'm on a cooking YouTuber roll, fuck episodes with guests. Always adds unnecessary fluff to the video and it's rare that there will be any chemistry between the two. Then to make it worse, most of the time guests are just there to promote their cookbook or some shit.
 

XsjadoBlayde

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Qanon updates count as complaints now. 😔"1st amendment Praetorians!"😔


After 15 hours on his feet protecting the attendees at a QAnon conference in Dallas, Robert Patrick Lewis was tired.
But then the former Army sergeant, who did two tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, heard disgraced former national security advisor Michael Flynn speak. Flynn, who himself took the QAnon pledge and has become part celebrity and part spiritual leader to the QAnon faithful, called for a military coup in the U.S., and suddenly he felt invigorated.

So he fired up a YouTube livestream and spoke straight to camera: “We need to talk about a revolution.”
Lewis is a full-fledged QAnon believer and founder of the 1st Amendment Praetorians, named after the elite Roman soldiers who protected the emperor. The group consists of former military, law enforcement, and intelligence personnel whose stated mission is to provide pro bono security for “patriotic and religious events across the country.”

The group was founded last September and has since acted as security for more than a dozen events, as well as providing security for Flynn himself. The QAnon conference—called “For God & Country: Patriot Roundup”—was a perfect fit.

The Praetorians are a new paramilitary organization that Lewis says has grown to “hundreds” of members in just nine months, in almost complete secrecy. It is part of a growing network of right-wing extremists groups who are pushing baseless conspiracies about election fraud, and has direct links to violent militias, notably the Oath Keepers. Now Lewis, a QAnon believer, is helping establish a nationwide network of survivalist training camps to prepare patriots for the coming revolution.
In Dallas on Memorial Day weekend, Lewis’ crew of a few dozen Praetorians didn’t have any threats to deal with other than a couple of journalists—including one from VICE News—who were ejected from the event. But the conference helped boost the Praetorians’ profile, and it helped Lewis make some new friends.

During the event, he posted a picture of himself with Flynn and then-Texas GOP chair Allen West, holding a Pine Tree flag, a Revolutionary War-era emblem that has been appropriated by the far right.

While Flynn called for a military coup, what Lewis says he wants is not bloodshed but a grassroots revolution.
“I feel that we are going through a revolutionary country right now. It doesn't always have to be a kinetic revolution, it doesn't always mean bloodshed in the streets. Revolution can mean a completely different emerging viewpoint for a way of doing or a way of acting, I think that's what we're at,” Lewis told VICE News from his home near Los Angeles this week.

But Lewis’ so-called peaceful revolution is at odds with his rhetoric on social media posts, in online articles, and in interviews on right-wing news stations. His vision of a new American revolution is also infused with conspiratorial thinking and linked to known violent extremists.

In addition to his QAnon activism, Lewis is a COVID-denier who believes that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. He also believes that critical race theory is bogus, and that the mainstream media is in league with the deep state. He believes that Antifa is the greatest threat to U.S. democracy and firmly believes they were behind the Capitol riot on January 6. Lewis says he was in D.C. on the day of the Capitol riot, but there’s no evidence he was part of the group that attacked the Capitol.

Most worrying of all is that Lewis and the Praetorians are coordinating resources and information with more violent groups, far-right militias, and extremists. Lewis says he’s been in contact with Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, a far-right, anti-government militia who provide personal security to Roger Stone and whose members have been charged with conspiring to storm the Capitol.

His contact with Rhodes has stopped since Jan. 6, which is when Lewis claims “the FBI started to frame the Oath Keepers and they went to ground.” While Rhodes has yet to be charged in relation to the Capitol insurrection, he has been named in documents filed by prosecutors, who have charged several other Oath Keepers with conspiring to attack the Capitol.
Lewis says he is in contact with several groups similar to the Oath Keepers, not to coordinate actions but to "share information amongst each other: ‘What are you seeing? Are you seeing what we're seeing ramping up? What are you guys doing?’ It's not coordinating together; it's more like sharing information.”

The Praetorians also work with a veritable who’s-who of conspiracy theorists, including renowned anti-vaxxer Sheri Tenpenny, who made headlines last week when she claimed COVID-19 vaccines made people magnetic.
And now Lewis is using that network to launch survivalist training for “patriots” across the country, to prepare them for when the revolution finally arrives.

"The people that came to this continent, and were able to form what became the United States of America had to be extremely resilient,” Lewis said. “They came here with what they had, and then everything else to survive had to be created. I feel like we've lost that in our country. My big worry is that if things ever do get really bad, it will be compounded by the fact that people don't know how to take care of themselves.”

Lewis said that as well as working with sheriffs across the country on this project, he is coordinating with Scott Kesterson, a prominent QAnon promoter and podcaster who stole $12,000 from a cancer charity campaign for his dying friend.
Tenpenny and Lee Merritt, an osteopath who is a member of the conspiracy-driven group America’s Frontline Doctors, are also part of this network, which Lewis said would teach people skills like basic medical training and farming.
Lewis’ conspiracy-infused “revolution” is being echoed by conservative groups across the country, including QAnon and the Republican Party, who are using the lie that last November’s election was fraudulent to rally people to action.

As QAnon conspiracies become subsumed as mainstream talking points by the GOP, right-wing figures have begun to amplify calls for followers to leave their computer screens and get involved by infiltrating school boards, joining local Republican parties, and even running for Congress.

“It seems like we are going through a great awakening in this country.” Lewis said, echoing one of QAnon best-known phrases.
After Lewis finished his military service in 2009, he tried his hand at writing, publishing a trilogy of titles called “The Pact,” a fictional account of a joint Chinese-Russian-Hezbollah attack on the U.S.

Over the next decade, he also held a number of corporate roles, including working for UCLA Healthcare, and several marketing roles, including with several veteran-owned companies, according to Lewis’ LinkedIn profile.
During this time he was not in the public eye, but in 2019 he said he felt compelled to do something after seeing Vietnam veterans attacked for holding Trump signs.
Lewis couldn’t provide specifics for the incident, but in June 2020, an 82-year-old veteran was pushed to the ground at a Trump supporters’ rally in Fall River, Massachusetts. He was kicked in the ribs and legs by a man who had ripped the sign from his hands, according to the Herald News, a local newspaper.

Lewis initially planned to attend Trump rallies and provide additional support to the private security inside the events by focusing on protecting the people outside the rallies who camped out for days ahead of Trump’s arrival.
Lewis claimed people were being attacked going to and from their vehicles at these events or while they were waiting in line outside, but there are very few reports of incidents like this, and Lewis didn’t provide specifics.

But as the pandemic hit, and the rallies were cancelled, Lewis pivoted and launched the Praetorians.
In September, he published his first video talking about the Praetorians, describing them as “a group of military, law enforcement and intelligence veterans who refuse to stand on the sidelines and watch as your countrymen and women are intimidated from expressing their First Amendment rights.”

In the nine months since that video was published, the group has recruited “hundreds” of volunteers to provide security at events, though Lewis would not say what the exact figure is. He also refuses to name any of the individuals who’ve signed up, citing privacy reasons.
While he’s recruited a number of civilians, Lewis says he wants to focus almost exclusively on people from military, law enforcement, and intelligence backgrounds.
“Each of these people have kind of an inculcated foundation of professionalism, and we can depend on them to do the right thing if the pressure ratchets up,” Lewis said. The vetting process is rigorous, according to Lewis, and conducted by a group of private investigators—or “digital ninjas,” as Lewis calls them—who he says thoroughly review people’s backgrounds, including their military records, looking for histories of violence and brushes with law enforcement.

“We don't want people in our group that could possibly cause trouble or be prone to violence or anything like that,” Lewis said.
Lewis says the group is entirely crowdfunded and covers the cost of flights, food, and accommodation for all the volunteers, as well as the purchasing of equipment such as radios, surveillance cameras, and the uniform: black shirts with the white Praetorian logo on them.

The group’s first event, in October 2020, was organized by the Walkaway Campaign, an activist group led by Brandon Straka, a MAGA activist who was once a curtain-raiser at Trump rallies and was arrested for allegedly breaching the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Including that initial event in Washington, Lewis says they provided support for 15 more events before the end of the year, while the Dallas conference was the group’s first of this year.
And at pretty much every event, Lewis had one enemy in mind: antifa, whom he sees as the biggest threat to the U.S.—together with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Lewis has a wild origin story for the anti-facist group. He believes it operated first in Germany before many its way to the U.S. in the last decade, where it has been funded by money from the U.S. government as well as directly from countries like Cuba and China.
Lewis believes there’s a “cadre” of powerful people directing the movement, such as prominent 1970s feminist activist Susan Rosenberg, while the front lines of antifa are often populated with “useful idiots,” such as students or the children of wealthy families.

Like many conspiracy theorists—and many within the Republican Party—Lewis is fully convinced that the attack on the Capitol was conducted not by pro-Trump groups but by antifa.
“We saw at the Capitol on January 6 where they were trying to push people to do violence,” before citing a video he claims shows antifa activists “being led by Capitol Police magically to a door where the magnetic locks were unlocked at the right time.”
Lewis’ entire worldview appears suffused with conspiratorial thinking and he has long expressed support for the QAnon movement, dating back to at least 2018 when he wrote an article called “What is QAnon, Q, and the Great Awakening are Real?” for the Heroes Media Group.
And despite none of Q’s predictions coming true, Lewis’ outlook has not changed. “I think there's more to it, so people are willing to consider,” he said, calling QAnon “profound” and ”enormous.”

Piling conspiracy on top of conspiracy, Lewis also believes that FBI agents are infiltrating the QAnon movement to spread extreme conspiracies that were not based on Q drops, as part of a plan to discredit the movement—and this, of course, is all being aided by the mainstream media.

Lewis believes QAnon could be a U.S. government-funded operation, but he leaves open the possibility that it’s a disinformation campaign being run by a foreign state—though that, too, has a silver lining.
“If it was a disinformation campaign, it was an abject failure, because you have up to 20% of the population [who have] learned to research on their own and they learned not to believe anything they hear from the media at face value, which is proven very valuable given the large-scale lies we’ve seen from the media.”
 
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Dalisclock

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I put this in the GPU thread but since it's really not on topic there: Why does half of the new Computer parts have Neon lights(RGB) embedded? I may be an old fuddy duddy(GET OFF MY LAWN!) but I barely ever look inside my computer(except when cleaning, T/S or upgrading) and I don't really feel the need to have Rave mode going on all the time. I only really noticed this because I've been shopping for new PC parts lately and it's just weird how a bunch of the RAM chips/Cases/whatnot have RGB built in because.....reasons, I guess.

 
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Bob_McMillan

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I put this in the GPU thread but since it's really not on topic there: Why does half of the new Computer parts have Neon lights(RGB) embedded? I may be an old fuddy duddy(GET OFF MY LAWN!) but I barely ever look inside my computer(except when cleaning, T/S or upgrading) and I don't really feel the need to have Rave mode going on all the time. I only really noticed this because I've been shopping for new PC parts lately and it's just weird how a bunch of the RAM chips/Cases/whatnot have RGB built in because.....reasons, I guess.
It's the in thing now I guess. Even PCs with barely entry level specs are loaded up with RGB. I don't get the whole aesthetic, my peers are even taping LED strips to their walls and ceilings to match their PCs. I'm pretty sure the ergonomics of this setup is gonna bite them in the ass one day.

I suppose this is the natural evolution of making gaming products scream I'M A SERIOUS GAMER with sharp black and red accents.

As someone who is saving up for a PC, I can't help but wonder how much more these, in my opinion, terrible looking parts cost.
 

Meximagician

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Why does half of the new Computer parts have Neon lights(RGB) embedded?
I wanna know who was the chucklefuck that decided every component needed to be black. Here I am, trying to stuff an black SSD, a black RAM chip, and a black GPU into a black motherboard, all while dodging black power cables, in a black case.

Or, to quote Red Dwarf:

 

Meximagician

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Qanon updates count as complaints now. 😔"1st amendment Praetorians!"😔

...he has long expressed support for the QAnon movement, dating back to at least 2018 when he wrote an article called “What is QAnon, Q, and the Great Awakening are Real?” for the Heroes Media Group.
Vice.com editor 1: Do we need to add [sic] after that article's title?
Vice.com editor 2: It's an article supporting QAnon, we'd more likely need [sic] if it was error-free.
 
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Xprimentyl

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Just got back from my girlfriend’s family’s annual river trip. Every July for the past 6 years, We’ve driven up from Texas to Oklahoma to camp for 3-4 days; that weekend’s Saturday, we kayak/raft 6 miles of the Illinois River. The first 4 times were great, 5th time was ruined by rain, but this year was, by far, the worst.

My gf’s Uncle Kenny (trip organizer) invited a friend of his, a younger guy (mid-late 20s,) and he in turn invited a bunch of his friends, all mid-late 20 prototypical “due-bros,” just obnoxious, inconsiderate, loud human garbage They’d rolled 77 blunts for the river (for the uninitiated, a “blunt” is to a joint what a cigar is to a cigarette,) and they smoked the WHOLE time. Our entire camp smelled like a burning marijuana dispensary for 3 days straight. Floating the river, we like to stop off at one of the river's myriad banks, eat some snacks, drink a beer, get in the water, just relax; these jackasses stopped to smoke, so even our pit stops smelled like weed. Back at camp, we had another torrential downpour; I again spent about 20 minutes holding down our tent. When that subsided, everyone opted just to go to bed, and right as I was about to fall asleep around midnight, I hear the dude-bros yelling at one of their own to “let it out” (mind you it’s pitch black and there are dozens of people throughout the entire campsite asleep/trying to sleep.) What ensued was the most disgusted round of vomiting I’ve ever heard. This guy must have puked 5-6 times, and the whole time, his dude-brethren were cheering him on and RECORDING the audio to relive it later, in fact, it was all they could talk about the following morning starting at 6am, at full dude-bro volume, while people were trying to prepare/eat breakfast. I’ve never hated another group of people’s mere existence so much in my life; I want to lock them all in the frat house they came from and burn that shit to the ground.
 

laggyteabag

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UK laws are stupid.

In the UK, from a legal perspective, Electric Scooters are classified the same as cars, because the laws have yet to catch up. This means that you aren't allowed to ride them on pathways, and because they lack things like mirrors, turning signals and license plates, and because they also aren't taxed or have MOTs, you also aren't allowed to ride them in the road. Legally, you can only ride them on private land.

Here is the plot twist, though. In multiple areas of the UK (including my own) there are services where you can rent these bicycles that you can unlock/pay for using an app on your phone. The government are also allowing these services to do the same thing with electric scooters. You know, these supposedly illegal electric scooters.

So, if you ride your own electric scooter in the UK, you can be fined, and the scooter can be seized. But at the same time, you are legally allowed to rent an electric scooter, and use that.

It just seems a bit silly, to me.
 
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Xprimentyl

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UK laws are stupid.

In the UK, from a legal perspective, Electric Scooters are classified the same as cars, because the laws have yet to catch up. This means that you aren't allowed to ride them on pathways, and because they lack things like mirrors, turning signals and license plates, and because they also aren't taxed or have MOTs, you also aren't allowed to ride them in the road. Legally, you can only ride them on private land.

Here is the plot twist, though. In multiple areas of the UK (including my own) there are services where you can rent these bicycles that you can unlock/pay for using an app on your phone. The government are also allowing these services to do the same thing with electric scooters. You know, these supposedly illegal electric scooters.

So, if you ride your own electric scooter in the UK, you can be fined, and the scooter can be seized. But at the same time, you are legally allowed to rent an electric scooter, and use that.

It just seems a bit silly, to me.
So are these rented scooters license-plated with mirrors? Because yeah, that is pretty bass-ackwards and hypocritical if not...
 

happyninja42

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UK laws are stupid.

In the UK, from a legal perspective, Electric Scooters are classified the same as cars, because the laws have yet to catch up. This means that you aren't allowed to ride them on pathways, and because they lack things like mirrors, turning signals and license plates, and because they also aren't taxed or have MOTs, you also aren't allowed to ride them in the road. Legally, you can only ride them on private land.

Here is the plot twist, though. In multiple areas of the UK (including my own) there are services where you can rent these bicycles that you can unlock/pay for using an app on your phone. The government are also allowing these services to do the same thing with electric scooters. You know, these supposedly illegal electric scooters.

So, if you ride your own electric scooter in the UK, you can be fined, and the scooter can be seized. But at the same time, you are legally allowed to rent an electric scooter, and use that.

It just seems a bit silly, to me.
Just a BIT silly? :LOL: That honestly sounds like the kind of thing you would see in a Monty Python skit, about the idiocies of government bureaucracy, and one side not knowing what the other side is doing. Surely someone has brought this up to one of your legal groups that represent the public interest?
 

lostinreality

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So this is going to be a pretty long rant because it has been an amalgamation of a few days worth of troubles.

I had a speech I needed to record yesterday for school, and of course, out of all the days, that was the day our neighbor chose to fix something in their house and hammer their way through the thin wall between us 3/4 towards the end of my speech. Fml. 🥰

I've been setting up an aquarium within the last 2 weeks and I've been cycling it to prepare for the axolotl I've bought off a breeder, I also planned to do beginner-level aquascaping on it so I went ahead and bought a few aqua plants and left them in one of our buckets to have them fully submerged. My 3 yo and 4 yo nephews found it and played with the plants. Needless to say, I nearly shat myself once I got home after a quick grocery run. My poor plants, they're all either shredded now or detached from the roots. 🤪

My sister and I have been getting into an argument about money and investments recently. We're usually hands-off with each other's finances and etc because we earn our own money independently. I came across this guide in one of the Fastlane forums (an online forum about online entrepreneurship and etc) which I'm in. The blog post was basically about Shopify and drop shipping and I shared it with my sister because I thought it looked like a cool new way to create another income stream. She basically went full nagging mode on me saying that drop shipping is a scam and etc lol. I never shat on her when she was out thrifting clothes and selling them off, but I guess being the middleman is much more ludicrous in her perspective. We'll probably patch things up when we meet next week 🙃.

Lastly, can it just NOT rain in England for a single day? I mean, even with the restrictions lifted, you can't even go anywhere without getting bloody soaked. I've enjoyed our visits to the pub with the recent football games especially with the lifted restrictions, but the weather in England is absolutely atrocious and I just can't wait to leave and go off to a more rural area like Bristol after I graduate.

/Rant over
 

Chimpzy

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With the weather we've had these last days, I'm feeling very fortunate we live on top of a hill.
 

XsjadoBlayde

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Goddamn sovereign citizens again! They're like George Clooney in the scene from The Men Who Stare at Goats where he tries to run full speed through a wall, believing physical reality will not apply to his very special spiritual body.