Worth it. Some of those dim bulbs are still kind people who are great to be around.

I’ll just apologize ahead of time, but you made me think of this.

https://youtu.be/0TdJSRg2S9E

Thin white woman, long blonde hair, lots of eye makeup, full lips, etc. It’s not that they’re twins, it’s that they’re a similar type.

And it doesn’t matter what we think. The president is the one that wants to fuck her, lol.

That first reply highlights a major difference in how people approach the world.

Speaking very generally, conservatism and right wing politics seen to attract those who see everything as a competition and that dominating other people is what it means to be a good person. Funny that it also leads to frustrated, angry, isolated people.

So if we want to switch to using a website that doesn’t promote hurting/killing 2% of the population, we are now BOWING DOWN to the minority some of us would not rather murder.

It’s the same reason they hate DEI so much.

But that would break the first rule of Usenet.

Hey now I didn’t suggest not working against the system and the fascists. I pointed out that targeting the morale and well-being of individuals close to you might not be the best use of one’s energy, assuming underlying motivation is to make the world better for yourself and others.

And you can sabotage the work without being hostile towards an individual. That individual is somebody you should be getting on your side.

You need good characters to make a good show regardless of the setting, and also to help the viewers relate to the “big” stuff going on around them.

Don’t get me wrong, I think I like the stuff you like. I’d happily watch a documentary about all the made up technology and new science & life they discover, with zero need for conflict or personal growth or “feelings” or whatever. But that wouldn’t be the TV show, which is experienced largely through the eyes of the crew.

I get how all parts of this are effective to sabotage an economy and hurt the ambitions of those at the top. But, as a regular person working within the system, I choose not to discriminate against or complain about other individual workers just trying to get through their day.

That seems counter productive. The best way to resist the oligarchs can’t be to fuck with the other poor people we’re trying to help.

You do realize the US has the biggest prison population (also used for forced labor) in the entire world?

Textbook whataboutism. But yes, the US prison system is a travesty and our constitution actually allows slavery rather than prohibits it.

Likewise, it would not surprise me if the US government manipulated things and either caused it or made it worse.

Your first link describes how well they treated their captives. They are practically saints!

The U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor concluded earlier this year that China’s mass imprisonment and forced labor of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity—but there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide

Over the next year I am more curious about how much the Democrats will go mask-off versus the Republicans.

The republicans will do much worse things, of course. They took off their mask and burned it. But while they’re catching all the news coverage and committing their atrocities, will the democrats just continue to expose themselves as a foil for the republicans in the overall story of funneling money to the oligarchs, at the cost of literal human lives? That’s their starting point with a lot of people anyway.

There’s no looming election now. The pragmatic folks who threw you anti-Trump votes were not enough in the election, and they won’t help you at all now. Come up with something good to present to the people. Ask Bernie if you need ideas.

Going for some Ivanka resemblance, perhaps?

This journalist is going to have the nuclear codes in the tabloids before long.

American here, and what you wrote sounds pretty good on the surface. The problem is that the nutty vocal 2A fanatics are the exact people who delighted in putting the fascists in charge.

When I first saw the headline, I thought it sounded like one of those stories about how many Nazis are at the table or at the bar.

When you exist in a 2-party system, and one of those parties are mask-off fascists, and people suspect you of supporting them, saying you’re neutral isn’t a good look.

As an American, I could get on board for lower military spending, fewer people deployed, and Europe building up their own defense to make up the difference.

But I don’t trust for one second that Trump is doing this for anything good. Maybe Putin thinks Europe will pay less attention to him if they have to make up for lost American defenses.

I wonder that too. Hiding a kill switch deep within the F-35 is just the kind of shit our government would do. Maybe make the kill switch only able to be activated by something in the F-22, so it won’t ever be relevant unless things go really sideways.

This is the mental dead end I reach every time. It’s not even just “elections have consequences” or “voters are frustrated.” It’s that huge numbers of Americans are passionate supporters of this specific monster. Many of them have bad reasons, or are ignorant, or have been deceived, but the support that matters is there.

Things like the electoral college, FPTP, and gerrymandering are serious problems we need to fix. But fixing those will not fix the hearts and minds of the people. There is so much more that has to change.

It has had me seriously wondering if whatever hellish stuff Trump’s handlers have planned to dismantle the government is going to be the FASTER way to get to the part where we rebuild something better.

Well that explains why my psychiatrist’s nickname for me is “Peter, Philip, and Johnny in a trenchcoat.”

Yeah that’s what I was getting at. But so many people are conditioned to think the opposite. Say those last couple sentences to a random Christian in my town and they will think it’s the darkest and possibly most hateful shit they’ve heard in a long time.

Your boss sounds like he buys into bullshit for a living. Maybe that’s what drew him to the job, lol.

I think believing in our corporate AI overlords is even overshadowed by believing those same corporations would pass the productivity gains on to their employees.