I had been feeling a bit guilty about overreacting to certain things but now I don't feel bad. Better safe than sorry.

Thanks for the comment. Glad that part resonated. Plenty of heaviness all around. Got to be true to ourselves!

I'm not sure I've ever heard the pursuit of happiness parsed to mean education before.   I always equate it to the right to own property. 

That's interesting. I never thought of it that way, but I think I understand it. For mine, it comes down to personal growth leading to happiness. That's it in a nutshell. The longer version could certainly consider growth leading to acquiring property that allows free time to pursue happiness.

There's some debate on the matter, but I tend to side with the camp that believes Jefferson was alluding to Locke's three pillars of a free society: Life, liberty, and property.  Whether the change in verbiage is purely artistic and semantic, or substantive is up for discussion, and there is certainly a lot of room for nuance.  There is definitely no right to happiness, and one can argue that even in the pursuit of happiness, there's a distinction between trivial pleasures and true, significant contentment with the endeavor of building a life.  Even preferring the simpler, more pragmatic interpretation as I do, the word property refers to something more significant than merely owning something.  As a landed peasant, the property interpretation is one of the reasons I strongly oppose property tax on real estate, especially real estate used as part of the means of production by individuals and partnerships.  I don't believe in corporate personhood, so the taxing of strictly commercial property owned by incorporated entities is something I'm not necessarily opposed to, but now I'm wandering off topic a bit.

I like that you wandered. I recall the Locke comparison, now that you mention it.

For myself, I'm an advocate of and believe in the longevity of the pursuit of happiness. I also sincerely wonder in the reasoning of those who think Jefferson was offering up the pursuit of simpler pleasures over, as you said it, "true, significant, contentment".

The most important thing to remember, at least for me, is that the promises of the declaration are not entitlements to anything except for freedom from interference with those things on the part of other men or governments.  Locke's similar text talks about how we should not harm another person's life, health, property, etc., and act to preserve mankind.  It isn't exactly socialist philosophy, but it's also not entirely incompatible with democratic socialism, either.  I fall very heavily in a libertarian to an-cap philosophy personally, but I temper that very heavily with pragmatism when I apply it to real-world politics.

My desk wishes it was this organized. I got ketchup packets here-- I don't even know if these are still good. 

So glad I give the impression my desk is organized.
x)_(x

Ooh, it's reflexion is cool~

Thanks! I backlit the bottle with a small light. I liked the reflection too.

FOR SCIENCE!

Indubitably!

I was disappointed by the final season of ash vs evil dead. The first two were super good but idk the third didn't do it for me 

For me, there was enough of a gap between watching season 2 and 3 I have a hard time comparing. My hot take is season 3 was still fun watching with a rowdy group. But my biggest complaint it was all over the place and a bit infuriating.

I've been a Battletech/Mechwarrior fan for most of my life,  what tuned you in to it? I've been playing the newer Battletech PC game on and off for a couple winters. 

I've been playing D&D and Pathfinder for years now. My favorite GM is getting tired of them and wants to launch into Mechwarrior. He's played it and enjoyed and wants to tell a story in that world.

What do you like about it? How did you discover it?

In middle and high school, my few friends and I developed a few simplified dice-based game engines for everything from a tabletop version of Quake to something that played like Civilization, and a few RPG's along the way. I haven't done much gaming aside from PC and board games since, mostly because I don't have a circle of friends big enough with enough interest and free time to make it worth trying.

My initial exposure to Battletech was through the Mechwarrior 1 and 3 PC games, I practically memorized the bits of lore in the manuals, back when PC games had substantial manuals, and fell in love with the universe.  The Inner Sphere houses, the clans, the technology, the interplay of commerce and politics and heritage and eugenics, and the age-old story of a schism of humanity, it's a fertile field for the imagination.  One of my favorite aspects of gameplay is the importance of managing salvage and customizing the mechs to suit anticipated challenges and make the most of your situation.  It leaves a lot of room to put yourself in the game, even if you don't go in for the heavy role-playing elements.

I've only played once, since last night's second session was cancelled. But from what I've heard, it can go a lot faster than other RPGs once everyone knows the rules, since people can roll their attacks in advance of their turn.

Hearing about your experience, and knowing that my GM's excited for the storytelling, I'm looking forward to customizing mechs and managing resources. (Big fan of Civilization.)

If you've got a decent PC, I highly recommend trying out the Battletech game through Steam, especially if it goes on sale, with or without the DLC's.  I've been playing a short, small Civ 5 game the last couple weeks, and have all but a couple city-states eating out of the palm of my hand, which is pretty typical of my approach to fighting the AI.