Deal breakers are things that are limits. Limits are–in general–a good thing. It’s not that you’re saying that women–or people in general–are fungible, but you’re saying that people that fit any of these criteria won’t work.

IIRC, Dan Savage has said that there’s no settling down without settling. You can–should–have limits, but if it’s more than five things, you need to look at yourself very, very closely. You aren’t going to like every single thing about your partner, but you have to be able to accept them.

I could say, for instance, that I prefer people that are heavily tattooed, pierced, scarred, branded, and implanted. (…Which limits me to about .0001% of the US population.) But that’s not a deal breaker; I’m not going to reject someone because they don’t fit that particular preference, even though my body modification is important to me. On the other hand, I absolutely will not date anyone that doesn’t have a worldview that’s grounded in reality, e.g., is religious/“spiritual”, or believes in any conspiratorial nonsense, because I couldn’t have respect for a person like that. THAT’S a deal breaker. I won’t date someone that wants children; I’m unfit to be a parent, and I had myself sterilized a number of years ago. Again: that’s a deal breaker, because as with religious garbage, it’s a question of basic values.

Right. The John Sturges that was born in 1910 was directing films in 1890, twenty years before his birth, and also pioneered color and sound films several decades prior to their patents. Cool.

You’re not a very effective or amusing troll.

The Magnificent Seven was released on October 12, 1960.

The Seven Samurai was released in 1954, six years prior.

A number of Kurosawa films have been remade for American audiences. Take The Hidden Fortress; it was remade as Star Wars. Meanwhile, Kurosawa did take inspiration from western playwrights, such as Shakespeare’s MacBeth (Throne of Blood) and King Lear (Ran).

And, BTW, I happen to absolutely love chanbara, especially and including the schlock garbage like Sleepy Eyes of Death, Zatoichi, Lady Snowblood, Lone Wolf and Cub, and especially Hanzo the Razor. Samurai film share a lot of similarities with western films, and many of the low-budget sword-fighting films were modeled after the western genre films (only with a funk and jazz soundtrack).

Kurosawa Akira’s The Seven Samurai was released in 1954. John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven was released in 1960.

So, uh, first, The Magnificent Seven was the remake, not the other way around, and second, it comes only 6 years after the inspiration, rather than close to a century. If The Magnificent Seven had been made 80 years prior to The Seven Samurai, it would have been made in 1874. …Which would have been before some of the firearms used in the film were even invented, and only 10 years after the US Civil War.

One of my favorites that I don’t often see mentioned is Upgrade. It’s very nearly perfect as a near-future cyberpunk dystopia.

…80 or 90 years? You sure 'bout that?

Uh. I know a whole bunch of people that have bounced at multiple clubs in Chicago. I know one guy that was loss prevention at a store in Chicago that used to love chasing people down, because he enjoys that shit.

Tell yourself that if you want to, but the truth is that bouncers are going to have to know how to fight to at least some degree, because they’re going to end up in fights.

Four hours after I had a laminectomy, discectomy, and foraminotomy on the L4-S1 vertebrae and discs, the nurse was telling me that I had to get out of bed and walk up and down the hall. That was pain that morphine didn’t seem to touch, and was easily my worst experience moving.

A bouncer isn’t usually going to be fighting to survive; they’re throwing some dude the fuck out of a venue, or subduing them until cops show up.

As far as my comment about Shiv Works - I stand by that 100%. Look them up. They train with bare hands, knives, and guns (firing non-lethal training munitions), and in awkward spaces (such as you might experience in a car jacking).

Any discipline that forces you to act while under pressure is going to improve your odds if you end up in a situation where fighting is your only real option. If you get sucked-punched on a subway, experience in e.g. boxing is going to be far, far better than nothing at all, despite the fact that boxing has rules. IDPA/USPSA will not, contrary to claims, get you kilt in da streets, because practice moving and shooting is better than not.

The idea that there’s a real distinction between self-defense and martial arts in general is nonsense. If you’re good in MMA, this is going to translate almost 1:1 to self defense. Here’s the blunt truth: most of the people that are going to attack a person have a LOT of experience fighting. If you want to defend yourself, you’re going to need to give yourself a lot of the same experiences, even if it’s in a more controlled setting, and “self-defense” classes aren’t going to do that.

And, BTW, I know a guy that teaches wu shu (Eagle Claw, I think?) that also works as a bouncer. He is very, very effective, and uses the things he teaches as a bouncer. He’s small–like, 5’5", 150#–and he punches well above his weight.

It depends on whether you believe that people should be allowed to use narcotics or not. I tend to believe that people should be able to make that choice for themselves–as it’s their own body–and ordering narcotics online decreases violence in the drug trade since there’s no longer obvious fights over territories, etc.

The same interagency cooperation that makes it easier to track down one groups of people and punish them also makes it easier to track down other groups of people that you might agree with.

Depending on what you’re doing, that probably wouldn’t be a significant hinderance to law enforcement. Child sexual abuse, drug trafficking, etc., all tends to get lots of interagency cooperation, regardless of political issues.

This is a difficult question.

If you’re a bouncer, then yeah, mixed martial arts is definitely useful (e…g., something like both muay thai and Brazilian juijitsu). For a typical person that’s unlikely to ever need to defend their life, probably not.

As far as which martial art you should take, if you’re going to take one… It depends on what you want. If you want a physical activity that doesn’t have to be practical, then take up something like kyudo, kenjutsu, or aikido. If you want something that’s practical, then look into juijitsu and things based more in grappling. If you seriously worry about getting into a confrontation with someone that’s armed, then look up Shiv Works, and see what they have in your area.

A concealed carry permit can be useful, yes, but it’s very, very situational, and requires practice. Moreover, ever single bullet you fire outside of a range has to be accounted for.

I’ve tried to use it, but have not managed to get it to work. Which is a bummer.

I should probably try again now that I have a new computer. My old computer was so old that a lot of stuff wasn’t working correctly.

ISPs definitely keep records. At least some VPNs claim that they don’t, and that their networks are set up in such a way that they can’t. Some organizations claim to validate the claims of the VPNs, but it’s unclear if they’re trustworthy.

So your choice is to use something that definitely keeps logs, or to use a company that at least says that they don’t/can’t.

Most people think it is just in the realm of dietary preferences and cuisine and don’t know why.

And yet, if you said something about black people and watermelon or fried chicken, or Chinese people and cats, you would immediately be treated like a racist, because you would be.

Even worse, the famine was entirely caused by landlords and especially the English. It wasn’t a natural disaster, but a product of monoculture that was forced on the people through no fault of their own.

Functionally? No. Legally? Yes.

When I’m applying for jobs, I do check the box that says disabled, because according to the US gov’t, developmental disorders like autism spectrum disorder are considered disabilities. (Probably ADHD also, but that evaluation isn’t complete yet.) OTOH, it’s unlikely to help if i am subjected to some kind of workplace discipline that’s the direct result of being on the autism spectrum, or if I fuck something up because i have severe ADHD. The kind of accommodations that they would need to make are… Pretty limited, TBH.

…That does not, in fact, make it any better.

That makes it even more terrorism.

People that are registered Republicans, consistently vote Republican, or hold Republican views make up a little under half of the overall population, current population in the US is around 340M (last time I checked, it’s been a minute), so 140M is a fairly conservative (ha!) guess at how many people would more-or-less be Republican, or lean Republican.

Oh, and the flip side of that is that there are a larger number of people that are registered as Democratic voters, consistently vote Democratic, or tend to lean Democratic in their views, even if they don’t vote/don’t vote consistently.

…It’s not even close to the majority of people in the GOP. It’s not even a particularly large minority

Jesus fucking christ.

Even if it was 100 people every single day that were being, caught, arrested, or convicted for CSAM or sexual misconduct of some kind with a minor, and every single one of them was in the GOP, that’s still 365,000 out of about 140,000,000, which is .2%, on an annual basis. Two tenths of one percent is about fifty percent away from being a majority.