“Seriously guys, I’m a doctor! I have a PhD!”

“Sure buddy, what was your dissertation about again?”

“Uh… the beneficial effects of marine mammal urine on–”

“Whale piss! Enjoy your pee-hD, weirdo.”

It’s like the wholesome counterpart to “boob.” Both kinda sound like what they describe, but “bosom” feels classy.

The general meaning is the appearance of truth or validity.

But I usually use it to describe something that is “believable” even if the underlying premise is not. So a fantasy story that pays close attention to detail and is highly consistent might be described as having versimilitude. On the other hand, a story where the characters make out-of-character choices might be lacking versimilitude, even if there are no overtly “fictional” elements to the story.

That’s usually how I’ve heard it used, not sure if it’s the “main” usage though.

Some rights can be similar, but you’ll always have to declare the other person as your legal whatever. Marriage says to the state that this person is my default for pretty much everything–power of attorney, medical stuff, property ownership, etc. So if I get in an accident and fall unconscious, my wife doesn’t have to fight the hospital staff to see me.

Depending on your country, there are other bonds that have the same legal binding as marriage.

In addition, if we’re honest, there are some “soft” benefits as well. My wife changed her name when we got married, and having the same last name (and our kids having the same last name) avoids a lot of complexity with things like traveling (especially because our daughter is a different skin color than the rest of us). Marriage didn’t explicitly grant us that privilege, but there are a lot of societal norms that come with it that have proven beneficial.

I’m not trying to claim that any of this is how it should be necessarily, but if you’re asking about practical reasons why, those are some of them. If you want the practical benefits without the cost, it’s (relatively) cheap to go to the courthouse or Vegas. Hell, you can get a friend to perform the ceremony for free, all you pay is for the marriage license. But if you’re otherwise not interested in marriage and those benefits don’t appeal (or whatever other reason), just stay dating.

Ever since reading it in my kids’ Bluey book: bumblenuts (context is, “g’day, bumblenuts!” following an introduction)

Doubtful. Without Linux running the majority of the internet, I doubt the desktop scene would look the same as it does today.

I’m not an expert, but any time I’ve needed to do this, I set up my own router as a client to the parent router, and I set my router (client) as the DMZ in the parent router. Effectively you end up with two routers that are both (more or less) connected directly to the internet, without the two networks messing with each other. It’s also minimally invasive to the parent router (even old stock firmware has always had a DMZ option).

The tricky part then is using the wireless connection as your “WAN port,” rather than a physical one. In which case, as long as you can install OpenWRT on it, you should be fine.

Arrest him, y’all bumblenuts!

Functional decor is my personal favorite. I usually have my guitars hung up (just moved, not up in the new house yet). I tried to convince my wife to let me buy two giant googly eyes and set up our central vacuum tube as a mustache, but she didn’t go for it (I don’t blame her, just a tad sad).

Haha nope

step down

How about we call for his arrest and trial?

I’m really sorry to hear that. Sometimes life puts us in a place where we need our family, even if they’re awful.

That all sucks. To answer your question: decide whether you really have to deal with them forever. In this case, unless I’m missing something significant, it sounds like you could cut your brother and his family out of your life. It sounds like their contributions are exclusively negative, and after going behind you and your mother’s backs with the land thing, you’d be perfectly justified to cut them out.

In short: don’t deal with them.

I live a few miles from the border and cross at least weekly. You could generally get away with this for a handful of things, especially if you’re smart about it (dispose of all packaging and tags, have an otherwise legit reason for a short visit, etc).

But if they question you, and they determine you’re intentionally lying about it, you can expect to pay additional fines and lose several hours of your life.

Still a showerthought

Yeah, but right now it’s about SCOTUS. Sometimes it’s other stuff.

Remember the old ThinkPad idiom: “If the cracks are just plastic, it’s still fantastic!”

🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

Knoppix FTW!

No.