Laurentide

Yes, everywhere else is fine. The issue only happens here, and has been going on at least since you started this thread.

I'm getting 10-15 second load times in Local, and up to 30 seconds in All. For every page. Even this page took 10 seconds to load.

Edit: Putting Firefox in Troubleshooting Mode made no difference, so it's not because of anything I did to my browser.

If I'm a plural system do we get to pick 3 for each of us? :)

If it's one set for everyone, I'm going with Shapeshifting, Healing, and the third kind of depends on how this stuff works.

Shapeshifting I'd take even if I was only allowed one power. I'd finally have a body that fits. Several of them, in fact. Some might even be human. We could swap between us physically, and turning into stuff for a while just sounds fun.

Healing because if I don't pick it I'm eventually going to regret it. Shapeshifting might already let me fix any damage that isn't incapacitating or instantly lethal, but that only applies to my own body. I'd want to be able to help others, too.

For the third power... Magic could mean a lot of things, including many on this list. Maybe it's a "jack of all trades, master of none" kind of deal, which I'd be fine with. A bunch of spells that cover a wide range of situations but aren't as strong as specializing in a single power.

Teleport is really appealing. Lots I can do with it if I can take people or things with me, or set up something long-range that doesn't require line of sight. If it also allows me to create permanent portals then we're really going to have fun.

Or I could take Invulnerability to remove that "incapacitating or instantly lethal" weakness and really lean into being some kind of unstoppable healer. Divine Powers? Depending on what that does, it could replace Healing while also giving a bunch of other benefits. Hell, if it lets me resurrect people too, and I also take Invulnerability, then I'm basically an emergency respawn point for the entire community.

Is this a trick question? You're you. No amount of bodily alteration will change that. Shapeshifting will, however, allow you to have the most you-like body imaginable.

Section 3 of the 14th amendment to the US Constitution:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

The argument is that Trump, having incited the Jan 6 insurrection, is automatically ineligible to hold office.

From the article:

“Should we be supporting Independent candidates who are prepared to take on both parties?”

[Sanders’s question] was also influenced by the campaign of former union leader Dan Osborn, who ran this fall as a working-class independent in the deep-red state of Nebraska.

Against an entrenched Republican incumbent, and without big money backing or party support, Osborn shocked pundits by winning 47 percent of the vote.

Bernie Sanders: I think that what Dan Osborn did should be looked at as a model for the future. He took on both political parties. He took on the corporate world. He ran as a strong trade unionist. Without party support, getting heavily outspent, he got through to working-class people all over Nebraska.

It sounds like you can still get pretty far by just addressing the actual concerns of the working class and offering real solutions to problems. Still an uphill battle, definitely, but maybe not an insurmountable climb.

This was already explained to you earlier in the thread. "Male" and "female" are, biologically speaking, not distinct and mutually exclusive categories in humans. This is the case naturally, and the terms become even less useful once you account for those who modify parts of their biology, whether by surgery or by artificially triggering natural biological processes, to bring those parts into congruence with other parts of their biology.

"Biological male" is a slur. It has no basis in science. It's a term coined by bigots to misgender trans people with sciencey-sounding words so their abuse looks reasonable at a glance, in much the same way that proponents of Scientific Racism use pseudoscience in an attempt to legitimize white supremacy.

Also the term is referring to their original status pre-hormonal or other gender affirming care so no.

We already have a far less problematic set of terms for that: Assigned Male at Birth (AMAB) and Assigned Female at Birth (AFAB). "Biological male" is a scientifically misleading phrase that bigots invented to slander trans people and it should not be used by anyone.

Just as some AMAB (Assigned Male At Birth) men want to look more masculine and will work out at the gym or take testosterone supplements, some AMAB men are femboys and may temporarily take feminizing HRT to look less masculine.

Both are trying to change their bodies to better fit their gender identity, and femboy is clearly a different identity from gym bro, but they are both male gender identities.

The same reason anyone would be: because their current body doesn't match their gender identity and they want to change that. This person just happened to start inside the same arbitrary social category as their destination.

I'm aware that Purgatory isn't scriptural, and the community I was raised in believed a lot of stuff that wasn't found in the Bible. (It's one of the reasons I left.)

The point I was trying to make there is not "What is Heaven according to scripture?" I was speculating what heaven would need to be for me to consider it a paradise. And the answer I came to is that no place can be a paradise as long as I'm in it. Not because I think I'm a bad person, but because I have so much trauma and other mental baggage that I would be bringing with me. I would be too suspicious of a place with nothing bad in it to be able to enjoy it. I would unintentionally hurt those around me because of the pain I'm in. And those people would hurt me, and each other, because how many people actually manage to reach a state of complete emotional health before they die? No one is ready for paradise.

There would need to be a place and a time for healing the traumas of life before we could enter any kind of heaven. For this I borrowed the name Purgatory, because it seems to me a similar concept. And maybe the person who emerged from such a place would be so different that you couldn't really say they were me anymore, but I think I'm okay with that. I don't want to stay the person I am now; I want to become something better.

I guess that doesn't have much to do with your original point about people not understanding eternity, other than being in agreement that it wouldn't be a fun thing for humanity as we know it.