I have a feeling that an actual martial law declaration would be enough to motivate a general strike.

This actually happened when early nationalists tried to overthrow the Weimar Republic in interwar Germany. Some old generals and their men took over the capital and declared themselves in charge of the country. A general strike was declared, and the whole country shut down. The generals were then left “in charge” of a totally shut down society. Needless to say, the coup lasted a short enough time that it’s usually not even mentioned in world history lessons. This whole event pre-dated Hitler’s first beer hall putsch by like a decade or something, if memory serves.

This. Video games too. And porn for that matter. We’re overall a little weak on the trifecta of primary internet subject matter.

At least we’re solid on owls though, my enduring admiration to our dedicated owl posters.

Personally I think it’s okay so long as you give proper credit somewhere to the original artist, and are willing to stop if they ask you to.

Yes, there probably are. Is that important?

Don’t feel bad about it. He’s basically saying he thinks you’re too cool to actually be real, so you must be fake. Seems like a compliment to me.

No, it’s been around for awhile. In US law, any book over 95 years old is considered public property, and can be shared for free. So, there’s volunteers that take old books and scan them, then put the digital versions online for everybody.

If you’d like to make digital copies of things from your native language/culture and add them to the collection, I imagine that’d probably be fine. I’m not part of the project though, so I don’t know the details of how these are submitted/who you need to talk to/etc.

How do they treat those that are “beneath” them? Customer service workers, pets, kids, etc. Anyone that they should have some sort of authority over.

25 years is pretty extreme, it’s not like we need to wait decades for whole fields of research to occur before we have our own opinions–we’re not academics with a responsibility to not spout random bullshit. Being randos on the internet, spouting bullshit is actually one of our primary activities.

4 years is probably sufficient to keep the volume reasonably balanced.

Pretty simple. Resist the urge to see people based on their membership in this or that group, and instead focus on each individual. People are not responsible for the actions of other people that may seem outwardly similar to them, they are only responsible for their own. Life is harder when you remember this, but it’s the honest truth.

Agreed.

I would also be curious if she has any areas of interest where she is actually very quick and knowledgeable. If not, that might be cause for concern, but for all we know she just hates the humanities and is actually a wizard at higher mathematics. Especially since she’s young, there’s no real way to gauge whether it’s a lack of general intelligence or just a symptom of complete and total disinterest in a particular subject.

Also let’s not forget that pretty people can often get away with more than average looking people can, so they don’t have quite the same degree of pressure to perform in areas where they’re uninterested. If a quick, dazzling smile can unlock the ability to copy someone else’s homework or get the teacher to grant extra time on an assignment, well, school might be a little easier.

I think you can reach out via txt, just format your message to subtly acknowledge that a response is unnecessary. So, instead of wording your message normally as something that would begin a back-and-forth, word it more like an old fashioned letter, or something else where a response isn’t expected. Can talk about whatever, updates on you, your thoughts about this or that, hopes she/her family are doing better, etc etc. Then just end with an old sounding “hope this finds you well” type of thing. Just avoid non-rhetorical questions or anything that pressures her to return contact. When she’s ready, she can write you back.