Is anybody interested in listening to points of view different from one's own?

[AlexBailey]

Slightly the other way. I take zero medical advice from politicians (take this shot and never get the virus, said the politician) and slightly more than zero from doctors. The trustworthiness of doctors and politicians rapidly converges in the more expensive fields of medicine. So I raise one finger. You can probably guess which finger.

I won’t argue with that.

(Except that I recently finally found a great private practice doctor who takes my insurance and has more than 15 minutes to spend with me at visits.)

 

[HisArpy]

Slightly the other way. I take zero medical advice from politicians (take this shot and never get the virus, said the politician) and slightly more than zero from doctors. The trustworthiness of doctors and politicians rapidly converges in the more expensive fields of medicine. So I raise one finger. You can probably guess which finger.

He is probably very familiar with that finger. He sees it constantly all day and frequently shoves it up his nose searching for a "snack."

 

[Yarglenurp]

The Roman Empire lasted over 1,400 years in one form or another.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire

This triggers a memory of high school report I did once. The main point being that the Roman Empire did not in fact survive that long, but rather it was a series of different groups that happened to inherit the reputation of being most “Roman”-ish.

 

[AlexBailey]

He is probably very familiar with that finger. He sees it constantly all day and frequently shoves it up his nose searching for a "snack."

Are you in depends yet? Sitting on a bench at the marina swearing at the seagulls as they shit on your bald empty head?

 

[Kitty_so_frisky]

Anyone (CuriousDick) who voted for / supports DonOld Drumpf DESERVES to be “called racist, sexist, white supremacist, and generally attacked” by people who know PLENTY about anyone (CuriousDick) who voted for / supports the racist, sexist, white supremacist (I’ll add: rapey, corrupt, fascist, traitorous, authoritarian) DonOld Drumpf.



CuriousDick

One can only wonder what he did to be “called racist, sexist, white supremacist, and generally attacked” for EIGHT YEARS, and why he didn’t correct his behavior to remove the possibility for such assumptions…?

 

[drusus]

jaF0 said:
The Roman Empire lasted over 1,400 years in one form or another.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire

And it fell for the same reasons we're seeing in the US today.

No it didn't. If you want to find some sort of parallel, it's closer to the fall of the Republic.

 

[HisArpy]

One can only wonder what he did to be “called racist, sexist, white supremacist, and generally attacked” for EIGHT YEARS, and why he didn’t correct his behavior to remove the possibility for such assumptions…?

Unless it was a convenient lie told by his political opposition and believed by those too dumb to look for themselves.

 

[HisArpy]

No it didn't. If you want to find some sort of parallel, it's closer to the fall of the Republic.

Rome fell for a lot of reasons. A major one of which was that the ruling class voted themselves special privileges at the expense of the citizenry and which PISSED OFF the citizens.

Tell me how that's different than what we're seeing today.

 

[AlexBailey]

Rome fell for a lot of reasons. A major one of which was that the ruling class voted themselves special privileges at the expense of the citizenry and which PISSED OFF the citizens.

Tell me how that's different than what we're seeing today.

The Roman Empire was also affected by a variety of climate disasters. So yea, maybe we’re on our way out too.

https://www.science.smith.edu/climatelit/rise-and-fall-of-the-western-roman-empire/

 

[drusus]

Rome fell for a lot of reasons. A major one of which was that the ruling class voted themselves special privileges at the expense of the citizenry and which PISSED OFF the citizens.

Tell me how that's different than what we're seeing today.

The Western Empire did fall for lots of reasons, but the center of power had moved to Constantinople years before, and it got to the point where no one was left in Rome who could take the role of Emperor. Constantinople fell hundreds of years later when the Ottomans finally breached the Theodosian walls.

Pissed off citizenry was much earlier, but that was only one factor in the fall of the Republic.

 

[Kitty_so_frisky]

Oh, and to address the original question: a wise person listens to those who are smarter, and increases their own knowledge. Even listening to those of equal or near-equal intellect can offer a different perspective, especially if their perspectives include both intelligence and empathy…but…I have little to gain from listening to some of the fucking morons who never shut up about their own narrow opinions.

 

[jaF0]

, but rather it was a series of different groups that happened to inherit the reputation of being most “Roman”-ish.

Note 'in one form or another'.

 

[AlexBailey]

Any manner of bad things have existed for a long time. As Thomas Paine pointed out, when things are bad for a long time, many persons get the mistaken idea that bad is normal and inevitable.

Many fools yell that Democracy is the best! This is like a fruit vendor bragging that his apples are "the best" because they only contain ONE worm, while the apples other sell have two worms. Fuck that. We can and should have apples with zero worms.

I am convinced that there is a much better way for persons to deal with each other than extortion and coercion, yes. That is a better idea.

So you aren’t into capitalism?

 

[Yarglenurp]

Note 'in one form or another'.

It’s a ship of Theseus problem, empire style. Within a short time, the Byzantines were so far apart from the Augustus-era Romans that they might as well have been Mongolians. They were different in ethnic makeup, language, territory, religion, strengths… being “Roman” was basically a marketing gimmick at that point.

 

[beckiefalwell]

Black Voters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsslgZDQF9Q&t=3223s

And check out Dr. Reverend William Barber III. Really good guy who can always turn out voters.

 

[Yarglenurp]

Oh, and to address the original question: a wise person listens to those who are smarter, and increases their own knowledge. Even listening to those of equal or near-equal intellect can offer a different perspective, especially if their perspectives include both intelligence and empathy…but…I have little to gain from listening to some of the fucking morons who never shut up about their own narrow opinions.

Yes, this is the key problem with anonymous communication. No one here is known, so it’s impossible to tell who is speaking with knowledge and who is speaking with nonsense. IRL, I tend to know who I’m talking to. On here, I could be talking to sane person or a total psychopath, and I wouldn’t know the difference in any given interaction.

 

[beckiefalwell]

Yes, this is the key problem with anonymous communication. No one here is known, so it’s impossible to tell who is speaking with knowledge and who is speaking with nonsense. IRL, I tend to know who I’m talking to. On here, I could be talking to sane person or a total psychopath, and I wouldn’t know the difference in any given interaction.

You can't tell who's a psychopath? Yikes!

 

[beckiefalwell]

And check out another good guy, Jonathan Nez.

https://www.facebook.com/NezForAZ/

 

[Kitty_so_frisky]

Yes, this is the key problem with anonymous communication. No one here is known, so it’s impossible to tell who is speaking with knowledge and who is speaking with nonsense. IRL, I tend to know who I’m talking to. On here, I could be talking to sane person or a total psychopath, and I wouldn’t know the difference in any given interaction.

Generally, yes, but there are often clues.

 

[beckiefalwell]

Generally, yes, but there are often clues.

Like if people are clueless. That's usually a good clue. If the can't spell cannon or they don't know how to capitalize is another. Also, if they think a guy who runs his businesses into the ground is good for the economy can be a clue.

 

[TastySuckToy]

Also, if they think a guy who runs his businesses into the ground is good for the economy can be a clue.

Assuming you are referring to Trump, which businesses did he run into the ground, and how does that compare to his total number of businesses he has? Or more simply:

Total Trump businesses: ?
Successful Trump businesses: ?
Failed Trump businesses: ?

Fill in those figures to get a more quantifiable assessment of Trump's score for business success.

Last time I checked, the Trump Organization has around 500 businesses under its belt.

 

[Lazaran]

Assuming you are referring to Trump, which businesses did he run into the ground, and how does that compare to his total number of businesses he has? Or more simply:

Total Trump businesses: ?
Successful Trump businesses: ?
Failed Trump businesses: ?

Fill in those figures to get a more quantifiable assessment of Trump's score for business success.

Last time I checked, the Trump Organization has around 500 businesses under its belt.

NastyFuckBoi FAILED to include the words “successful” and “legitimate” and “honest” when making spurious claims about Trump’s businesses.



I challenge NastyFuckBoi - and ANY "open-minded” MAGAt that wants to be treated civilly and taken seriously - to do their own online investigations into Trump’s complicity in / connections to money laundering, etc.

IF NastyFuckBoi can complete that simple assignment and give an honest report on their findings, THEN there is a chance for some serious dialogue.

We’ll wait.



NastyFuckBoi

 

[ChloeTzang]

The Roman Empire was also affected by a variety of climate disasters. So yea, maybe we’re on our way out too.

https://www.science.smith.edu/climatelit/rise-and-fall-of-the-western-roman-empire/

True, that. Seems there was also a link between cold, dry periods and devastating plagues between 200 B.C.E. and 600 C.E. that affected the Roman Empire. From 200 to 100 B.C.E, for instance, the climate was stable. Then, the findings suggest three very cold periods struck the region: between 160 and 180 C.E., between 245 and 274 C.E. and after 500 C.E. All three of those periods line up with documented plagues. The first was the Plague of Galen, also known as the Antonine Plague, which likely originated in western Asia and caused diarrhea, skin pustules and fever. The second cold snap coincided with the Plague of Cyprian, while the third aligned with the Plague of Justinian, the first known outbreak of bubonic plague in western Eurasia. The stability brought by Rome, and the many land and sea connections throughout the Empire also facilitated and sped the transfer of infectious diseases across the empire's territories. So to did the urbanization brought by Rome, with 20% of the Empire's population living in cities, which were net population sinks due to endemic diseases and high death rates.

The Antonine Plague (smallpox) hit first, with perhaps 10 percent of 75 million people living in the Roman Empire never recovering. “Like some beast,” a contemporary wrote, the sickness “destroyed not just a few people but rampaged across whole cities and destroyed them.” The plague waxed and waned for a generation, peaking in the year 189 when a witness recalled that 2,000 people died per day in the crowded city of Rome. Smallpox devastated much of Roman society. The plague so ravaged the empire’s professional armies that offensives were called off. It decimated the aristocracy to such a degree that town councils struggled to meet, local magistracies went unfilled and community organizations failed for lack of members. It cut such deep swaths through the peasantry that abandoned farms and depopulated towns dotted the countryside from Egypt to Germany. However you look at it, the impact was devastating and severely weakened the Empire.

The Roman Empire was, however, nothing of not resilient. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius responded to the deaths of so many soldiers by recruiting slaves and gladiators to the legions. He filled the abandoned farmsteads and depopulated cities by inviting migrants from outside the empire to settle within its boundaries. Cities that lost large numbers of aristocrats replaced them by various means, even filling vacancies in their councils with the sons of freed slaves. The empire kept going, despite death and terror on a scale no one had ever seen. Writing after the turn of the 3rd century, the Roman senator and historian Cassius Dio called the empire under Marcus “a kingdom of Gold” that persevered admirably “amidst extraordinary difficulties.”

The Plague of Cyprian came next, starting in Ethiopia around Easter of 250 CE. It reached Rome in the following year eventually spreading to Greece and further east to Syria. The plague lasted nearly 20 years and, at its height, reportedly killed as many as 5,000 people per day in Rome. Contributing to the rapid spread of sickness and death was the constant warfare confronting the empire due to a series of attacks on the frontiers: Germanic tribes invading Gaul and Parthians attacking Mesopotamia. The variety of known symptoms suggests a combination of diseases including meningitis and acute bacillary dysentery. Kyle Harper, in his article “Pandemics and Passages to Late Antiquity,” argued that the most likely culprit was a viral hemorrhagic fever possibly Ebola or something similar.

The last great plague was the worst - the Plague of Justinian - or the first occurrence of bubonic plague that tore across ancient Europe and Asia between 541 and 750 A.D., claiming an estimated 25 million to 50 million lives and killing off an estimated 25-60% of the Empire's population (there's huge variations in these guesstimates). Anyhow, the climatic changes did not directly cause the disease outbreaks. Instead, they likely exacerbated other factors that made people more susceptible to illness. Farmers might not have been able to grow enough food, leading to malnourishment. Farming created a surplus when their economy was thriving, but the margins were very small, and very climatic changes could impact those margins substantially.

Now at the same time as these plagues impacted the Empire, you had the onset of the Barbarian invasions, and the Justinian PLague coincided more or less with the tail end of the "Great Migration Period" on the Eurasian Steppe. This was a period that lasted from 375 AD (possibly as early as 300 AD) to 538 AD, during which there were widespread migrations of peoples within or into Europe, during and after the decline of the Western Roman Empire, mostly into Roman territory, notably the Germanic tribes and the Huns. This period has also been termed in English by the German loanword Völkerwanderung. For obvious reasons, this period, and these tribal migrations, are not a well-documented, and it's probably an understatement to say that these migrations were violent in the extreme.

The migrants were made up of war bands or tribes of 10,000 to 20,000 people, with the first migrations made by Germanic tribes such as the Goths (including the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths), the Vandals, the Angles and the Saxons, the Lombards, the Suebi, the Frisii, the Jutes, the Burgundians, the Alemanni, the Scirii and the Franks. These tribes were later pushed westward by tribes from the Eurasian Steppe; the Huns, the Avars, the Slavs, the Bulgars (originally a nomadic group from Central Asia, but occupying the Pontic steppe north of the Caucasus since the second century), the Magyars, and many others.

The Huns, for example, were non-European, with their origins in central Asia, who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe, between the 4th and 6th century AD. According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part of what was known as Scythia at the time; the Huns' arrival is associated with the migration westward of an Iranian people, the Alans. By 370 AD, the Huns had arrived on the Volga, and by 430 they had established a vast, if short-lived, dominion in Europe, conquering the Goths and many other Germanic peoples living outside of Roman borders, and they may have stimulated the Great Migration by causing other tribes to flee, a contributing factor in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. They crossed the Volga and Don, absorbed the Alans, drove the Goths into the Roman Empire, raided the Roman Empire and broke up. Fragments of their confederation reappeared under other names.

Some modern historians have associated the Huns who appeared on the borders of Europe in the 4th century AD with the Xiongnu who had invaded China from the territory of present-day Mongolia between the 3rd century BC and the 2nd century AD. The Chinese Han dynasty send huge armies, numbering hundreds of thousands of soldiers, against the Xiongnu. Starting from the Emperor Wu's reign (r. 141--87 BC), the Han empire changed from a relatively passive foreign policy to an offensive strategy to deal with the increasing Xiongnu incursions on the northern frontier (which may also have been caused by climatic changes affected their grazing), and also according to general imperial policy to expand the domain. In 133 BC, the conflict escalated to a full-scale war when the Xiongnu realized that the Han were about to ambush Xiongnu raiders at Mayi. The Han court decided to deploy several military expeditions towards the regions situated in the Ordos Loop, Hexi Corridor and the Gobi Desert in what was a successful attempt to conquer these lands and expel the Xiongnu.

The war then progressed further westwards towards the many smaller states of the Western Regions. The nature of the battles varied through time, with many casualties during the changes of territorial possession and political control over the western states. Regional alliances also tended to shift, sometimes forcibly, when one party gained the upper hand in a certain territory over the other. The Han Empire decisively defeated the Xiongnu, and the Han Empire's political influence expanded deeply into Central Asia. As the situation deteriorated for the Xiongnu, civil war further weakened the confederation, which eventually split into two groups. The Southern Xiongnu submitted to the Han Empire, but the Northern Xiongnu continued to resist and were eventually evicted westwards by further military expeditions from Han Empire and its vassals, and the rise of Donghu states like Xianbei. The Han-Xiongnu War resulted in the total victory of the Han empire over the Xiongnu state in 89 AD. Due to their devastating defeat by the Chinese Han dynasty, the northern branch of the Xiongnu continued to retreat north-westward; their descendants may have migrated through Eurasia towards Europe, sparking of the Great Migration of the tribes into Western Europe.....

You can look at all this and see some rather remarkable similarities to what's going on now....I'm sure your imagination can extrapolate from there.

 

[AlexBailey]

True, that. Seems there was also a link between cold, dry periods and devastating plagues between 200 B.C.E. and 600 C.E. that affected the Roman Empire. From 200 to 100 B.C.E, for instance, the climate was stable. Then, the findings suggest three very cold periods struck the region: between 160 and 180 C.E., between 245 and 274 C.E. and after 500 C.E. All three of those periods line up with documented plagues. The first was the Plague of Galen, also known as the Antonine Plague, which likely originated in western Asia and caused diarrhea, skin pustules and fever. The second cold snap coincided with the Plague of Cyprian, while the third aligned with the Plague of Justinian, the first known outbreak of bubonic plague in western Eurasia. The stability brought by Rome, and the many land and sea connections throughout the Empire also facilitated and sped the transfer of infectious diseases across the empire's territories. So to did the urbanization brought by Rome, with 20% of the Empire's population living in cities, which were net population sinks due to endemic diseases and high death rates.

The Antonine Plague (smallpox) hit first, with perhaps 10 percent of 75 million people living in the Roman Empire never recovering. “Like some beast,” a contemporary wrote, the sickness “destroyed not just a few people but rampaged across whole cities and destroyed them.” The plague waxed and waned for a generation, peaking in the year 189 when a witness recalled that 2,000 people died per day in the crowded city of Rome. Smallpox devastated much of Roman society. The plague so ravaged the empire’s professional armies that offensives were called off. It decimated the aristocracy to such a degree that town councils struggled to meet, local magistracies went unfilled and community organizations failed for lack of members. It cut such deep swaths through the peasantry that abandoned farms and depopulated towns dotted the countryside from Egypt to Germany. However you look at it, the impact was devastating and severely weakened the Empire.

The Roman Empire was, however, nothing of not resilient. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius responded to the deaths of so many soldiers by recruiting slaves and gladiators to the legions. He filled the abandoned farmsteads and depopulated cities by inviting migrants from outside the empire to settle within its boundaries. Cities that lost large numbers of aristocrats replaced them by various means, even filling vacancies in their councils with the sons of freed slaves. The empire kept going, despite death and terror on a scale no one had ever seen. Writing after the turn of the 3rd century, the Roman senator and historian Cassius Dio called the empire under Marcus “a kingdom of Gold” that persevered admirably “amidst extraordinary difficulties.”

The Plague of Cyprian came next, starting in Ethiopia around Easter of 250 CE. It reached Rome in the following year eventually spreading to Greece and further east to Syria. The plague lasted nearly 20 years and, at its height, reportedly killed as many as 5,000 people per day in Rome. Contributing to the rapid spread of sickness and death was the constant warfare confronting the empire due to a series of attacks on the frontiers: Germanic tribes invading Gaul and Parthians attacking Mesopotamia. The variety of known symptoms suggests a combination of diseases including meningitis and acute bacillary dysentery. Kyle Harper, in his article “Pandemics and Passages to Late Antiquity,” argued that the most likely culprit was a viral hemorrhagic fever possibly Ebola or something similar.

The last great plague was the worst - the Plague of Justinian - or the first occurrence of bubonic plague that tore across ancient Europe and Asia between 541 and 750 A.D., claiming an estimated 25 million to 50 million lives and killing off an estimated 25-60% of the Empire's population (there's huge variations in these guesstimates). Anyhow, the climatic changes did not directly cause the disease outbreaks. Instead, they likely exacerbated other factors that made people more susceptible to illness. Farmers might not have been able to grow enough food, leading to malnourishment. Farming created a surplus when their economy was thriving, but the margins were very small, and very climatic changes could impact those margins substantially.

Now at the same time as these plagues impacted the Empire, you had the onset of the Barbarian invasions, and the Justinian PLague coincided more or less with the tail end of the "Great Migration Period" on the Eurasian Steppe. This was a period that lasted from 375 AD (possibly as early as 300 AD) to 538 AD, during which there were widespread migrations of peoples within or into Europe, during and after the decline of the Western Roman Empire, mostly into Roman territory, notably the Germanic tribes and the Huns. This period has also been termed in English by the German loanword Völkerwanderung. For obvious reasons, this period, and these tribal migrations, are not a well-documented, and it's probably an understatement to say that these migrations were violent in the extreme.

The migrants were made up of war bands or tribes of 10,000 to 20,000 people, with the first migrations made by Germanic tribes such as the Goths (including the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths), the Vandals, the Angles and the Saxons, the Lombards, the Suebi, the Frisii, the Jutes, the Burgundians, the Alemanni, the Scirii and the Franks. These tribes were later pushed westward by tribes from the Eurasian Steppe; the Huns, the Avars, the Slavs, the Bulgars (originally a nomadic group from Central Asia, but occupying the Pontic steppe north of the Caucasus since the second century), the Magyars, and many others.

The Huns, for example, were non-European, with their origins in central Asia, who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe, between the 4th and 6th century AD. According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part of what was known as Scythia at the time; the Huns' arrival is associated with the migration westward of an Iranian people, the Alans. By 370 AD, the Huns had arrived on the Volga, and by 430 they had established a vast, if short-lived, dominion in Europe, conquering the Goths and many other Germanic peoples living outside of Roman borders, and they may have stimulated the Great Migration by causing other tribes to flee, a contributing factor in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. They crossed the Volga and Don, absorbed the Alans, drove the Goths into the Roman Empire, raided the Roman Empire and broke up. Fragments of their confederation reappeared under other names.

Some modern historians have associated the Huns who appeared on the borders of Europe in the 4th century AD with the Xiongnu who had invaded China from the territory of present-day Mongolia between the 3rd century BC and the 2nd century AD. The Chinese Han dynasty send huge armies, numbering hundreds of thousands of soldiers, against the Xiongnu. Starting from the Emperor Wu's reign (r. 141--87 BC), the Han empire changed from a relatively passive foreign policy to an offensive strategy to deal with the increasing Xiongnu incursions on the northern frontier (which may also have been caused by climatic changes affected their grazing), and also according to general imperial policy to expand the domain. In 133 BC, the conflict escalated to a full-scale war when the Xiongnu realized that the Han were about to ambush Xiongnu raiders at Mayi. The Han court decided to deploy several military expeditions towards the regions situated in the Ordos Loop, Hexi Corridor and the Gobi Desert in what was a successful attempt to conquer these lands and expel the Xiongnu.

The war then progressed further westwards towards the many smaller states of the Western Regions. The nature of the battles varied through time, with many casualties during the changes of territorial possession and political control over the western states. Regional alliances also tended to shift, sometimes forcibly, when one party gained the upper hand in a certain territory over the other. The Han Empire decisively defeated the Xiongnu, and the Han Empire's political influence expanded deeply into Central Asia. As the situation deteriorated for the Xiongnu, civil war further weakened the confederation, which eventually split into two groups. The Southern Xiongnu submitted to the Han Empire, but the Northern Xiongnu continued to resist and were eventually evicted westwards by further military expeditions from Han Empire and its vassals, and the rise of Donghu states like Xianbei. The Han-Xiongnu War resulted in the total victory of the Han empire over the Xiongnu state in 89 AD. Due to their devastating defeat by the Chinese Han dynasty, the northern branch of the Xiongnu continued to retreat north-westward; their descendants may have migrated through Eurasia towards Europe, sparking of the Great Migration of the tribes into Western Europe.....

You can look at all this and see some rather remarkable similarities to what's going on now....I'm sure your imagination can extrapolate from there.

Ain’t it great the way people so often decide their interests are more important than other people’s lives?

 

[YDB95]

Assuming you are referring to Trump, which businesses did he run into the ground, and how does that compare to his total number of businesses he has?

• Trump Vodka
• Trump Steaks
• The board game
• Trump Airlines
• The casinos
• GoTrump.com (luxury travel search engine)
• Trump Magazine
• Trump University
• Trump Ice
• Trump Mortgages
• New Jersey Generals

Successful Trump businesses: ?

Depends on how you define "successful". This study lists eight "successes", but look at how they define that success. Just for one example, Wollman Rink, renovated under budget - sounds great, but the place became a total wreck on his watch, and the city got rid of him in 2021. Some success. Or how about the Trump Tower? Notice it says "Labor lawsuit concerning controversial construction settled in 1999". That's a nice way of saying he stiffed his creditors, as usual. Is it really a "success" if what he succeeded at was essentially stealing people's labor? Trump Model Management is marked a success, but also "currently the defendant in multiple lawsuits". The Apprentice? Well, it was a ratings winner, but that's neither here nor there with respect to Trump's business acumen, which the show never proved in any way - remember, we now know the fix was in at the start of every episode. Trump knew who he wanted to fire and the producers just had to find a way to make that person look bad no matter what really happened.

Last time I checked, the Trump Organization has around 500 businesses under its belt.

That's including all entities in which he is a trustee or owns a share in. For the great majority of those, he's not the one making the decisions or providing meaningful leadership (and knowing him, even in the cases where he could do that, he's probably too lazy and ill-informed to bother).