Same where I’m at. 😞

They know what they did.

Awe… I miss my Blackberry Torch… easily in my top five favorite phones of all time.

Especially in the books. Duarte in the books is just like all the worst parts of Caesar (which I guess was part of the idea the writers had).

While I would love this to be a reference to The Expanse, they’re probably talking about the former president of the Philippines. Rodrigo Duterte had a policy of basically legalized vigilante murder for suspected drug dealers.

The average American has been convinced that when they are done being a worker for the day, they become something “better” and more important… the consumer. The consumer has no needs other than consumption. The consumer has no wants other than consumption. Their fellows economically simply become their servants as that is the illusion created by the culture of consumption.

Look at most folks making less than $100k/year and who are voting Republican. Ask them why they are voting and they will give you a myriad of reasons, but (in my experience) it mostly boils down to “they’re hurting the other team and I want to be part of the winning team.” Some liberals will give you the same type of response, but it’s less common (or less enthusiastically so maybe). It’s less that our electorate has been dulled to political activity and more that politics has been turned into a participation sport with teams, branding, and merchandise.

In my experience, the greatest example of this are the folks who’ve been completely demoralized saying “both sides are the same.” It is true that both the Republicans and Democrats are the same… if the only way politics affects you is economically (or if you can convince yourself that that is the case). It’s not the politicians or even the parties that are hurting the average American, it’s the Consumer Capitalism all sides of our politics back that’s hurting us. Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you a fairytale like “USSR was good actually” or “PRC is good actually.” Just as America and it’s systems have problems, those countries and their systems had/have their own problems.

Being the core of the post-WWII Western hegemony, American politics has problems that are uniquely it’s own; the old adage of “there are no poor Americans, only temporarily embarrassed millionaires” sadly holds true. It affects every level of our politics, culture, and society to the point where no one needs to propagandize to that effect… it’s merely self-reinforces at this point. You work doubles at the Walmart to feed your family and to afford your cell phone plan because you’re just one magic algorithm lift away from TikTok stardom… it’ll happen -any day now- why worry about politics?

One would think that that an elderly judge would appreciate hand rail regulations.

The off the shelf commercial parts (game controller, computer monitors, etc) weren’t that bad of an idea… the bad idea was to not get anything that was fire safety rated. That whole submersible was a fire trap.

It infuriates me how the narrative goes like this: Hamas (or any Palestinian group with even an ounce of power) is comprised of conscious actors who have agency and can/must be held accountable. Meanwhile, Israel is just this nebulous force of nature that happens and thus cannot be held accountable for it’s actions (like a hurricane or earthquake).

If you can’t afford Clorox, store-brand bleach is fine.

Naive libertarian.

But you repeat yourself.

It feels like a part of that deregulation politicians keep going on about. Deregulation ruined the airlines and now they’re ruining our buttholes… when is enough enough?

Lol at the idea of gendered buttholes… like a dude burning down a California town celebrating his butthole’s gender reveal.

Awe… I like Arby’s. Their curly fries are easily on my top 10 best fastfood fries.

As a cis dude who’s asexual, I’ve gotten weird questions from straight dude bros… one asked me if I “had to be super careful” to not get myself pregnant. Honest question coming from a person our country’s education system has failed.

Yeah, more clean but not completely… this is not to mention the amount of damage caused by the bomb. Striking Kiev or another city would effectively decimate Ukraine’s infrastructure and economy for decades. If the goal of the war is to subjugate, you don’t want to be in the hook for all those repairs. A nuke on any of Ukraine’s cities would make that dam break last year look like nothing.

Nobody forced them to make risky business decisions.

Exactly… you want to make a nearly risk free investment? Try a long term bank deposit or invest in government bonds.

If Russia were to strike Ukraine with a nuclear bomb, first and foremost that puts every nation on a knife’s edge globally… someone else with an itchy trigger finger could launch against Russia in the confusing hours afterwards. Next up, the PRC and India would likely abandoned Russia as waves of condemnation would flood the global media. Finally, the whole goal of the war is to take Ukraine, not to make it uninhabitable… why nuke what you want to own?

Unlikely. There’s kind of only two hard-and-fast rules for nuclear war:

• Never strike first.
• Never strike a non-nuclear enemy.

Awe… little Burrito. So cute.