Sure, but if you eat a balanced diet of fresh food, you'll get all the sodium you need. Nobody needs the sodium in an instant meal.

That's what we are led to believe as children, and it's the principles we talk about when we want to foster civic pride.

But do we practice those values? Do we base all of our actions as a government, as a nation, as a community, on those principles? No, we don't, but most of us Americans are just finding that out.

I don't think people are seeing the true American heart. I think Americans are seeing the truth in their neighbors' hearts, though. We've been in denial about who we are and our responsibility to the world, because we trusted that our core values (freedom, equality, justice) would endure through scandals and fraudsters and would-be tyrants. Americans were lulled to sleep by casual prosperity and nominal world-leadership. We believed that the critics of America "hate freedom" or were jealous of our well-deserved success. Trump is the inexorable conclusion of that laziness, the funhouse mirror reflection of our own indifference to the world.

I believe most people, anywhere, are good people and want to be good people. The differences arise from defining what is "good" but largely we all want freedom, justice, and equality for ourselves. Extending that to others is a question of empathy, and empathy is created by exposure. America's heart is our diversity, our multiculturalism, and we let that heart become overrun with bigots and tyrants.

That's what the world is seeing, and has seen for 100 years. Bigots and tyrants, claiming moral superiority. It is the Americans who are just now seeing it for the first time.

Two things, canned beans and instant rice cost more than dry bulk rice and beans. And your recipe for "salt and parsley instant rice and canned beans" sounds like it's going to taste like sadness.

That shit is full of sodium and really bad for you. Once they target sugar, what do you suppose is next?

It's just one of the myriad of recommendations people make because they don't understand the problem. People think that the simple trick that worked for them would solve similar problems for everyone. Worse, they get angry when their advice is met with resistance. It's like Napoleon feeding the alpacas.

It's because 3d chess is a sci-fi trope. There are a few versions, but it probably became most famous from the Star Trek version. 3d chess is ostensibly more complex, although the precise rules are usually not described in fiction, and the people who are very good at 3d chess are demonstrated to be extremely smart and tactical. Having a sci-fi character win at 3d chess is itself a trope to demonstrate that the character is a genius. In those examples, often the opponent will be overconfident and derisive of the character's strategy, only to be humbled by the loss moments later. It's a way to showing the character is cool headed, gracious in victory, and leagues ahead of his opponents.

The 4d chess meme was an escalation of a sarcastic exaggerations of the trope, like a way of saying a moron is just doing something obviously stupid is really enacting a super-strategy that you just don't understand.

God forbid poor people enjoy a treat. They should suffer on gruel until they apologize for being so poor.

Fucking hell, have you ever tried to live on rice and beans? You need half a dozen spices and salt just to make it taste like not sadness, plus prep time, prep space, prep bowls and pots, and then you need to wash everything. Compared with a frozen meal that cooks in the microwave and a disposable tray for serving, there's really no contest. A "rice and beans" lifestyle requires a stay-at-home partner who soaks beans and washes dishes.

It's a great frugal tip to stretch your grocery dollars, but if you're poor, it's not a moral failing to go with a cheap frozen meal.

Probably, but then the downvotes would seem like people disagree.

Right, that was the point I was implying. One murder doesn't justify another. When there are thousands, it's not really murder anymore. It's self defense. I recognize that I wasn't clear, though.

Just putting this out there, I will never pay for a subscription service in my car. I didn't do it for the radio, I didn't do it for onstar, and I won't do it for anything else. I know I'm not the only one. If a car has a "feature" I have to keep paying for after I bought the car, no it doesn't.

One murder doesn't justify another.

But there are thousands of these cases.

Poverty wage is not anywhere near a liveable wage. It's the federal definition for "too poor to survive without assistance." A living wage is enough to support yourself, a family, and leaves enough to find personal fulfillment. That's at least two to three times the poverty wage, depending on where you live and how many dependents you have.

FDR intended for the minimum wage to be a living wage, not a poverty wage. The oligarchs that run America prefer a minimum wage be below a poverty wage, because poor people are easier to exploit.

For an individual supporting themselves. For anyone with a family, it's been a poverty wage for a very long time. Spoiler, more than a third of minimum wage earners have children to support.

Guarantee that at some point he (or some Republican idiot) suggests we engage in more trade with Russia and India.

It's not hard work. They just blame Biden. When you're lying, and everyone knows you're lying, then there's no reason to put effort into the lie. If that doesn't catch on, they'll blame someone else. Zelensky or Xi, or they can always Blame Canada.

Because it's White's move.

That seems low to me.

It's elective because there's no medical reason to do it. Babies don't get to choose anything for themselves. An adult can elect to have a circumcision, and parents can elect to have their babies circumcised. It would be a better world if the latter weren't true, but that ain't the kind of world we got.