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What a coincidence! I’ve been testing something myself! I call it, “Not using Instagram for anything ever in any way whatsoever.”
Developer and refugee from Reddit
What a coincidence! I’ve been testing something myself! I call it, “Not using Instagram for anything ever in any way whatsoever.”
It’s always the people you most suspect.
Assuming “hast” is supposed to be “heat” and “dinner” is supposed to be “summer,” then yep… I’m starting to wonder when we’ll see people literally fleeing north to save their lives.
Texas is becoming uninhabitable.
It’s beginning to look like the only true passage in that book is the one where she describes killing a puppy.
Arch Linux user here to say… Ubuntu’s fine, man. Love all the derivatives that can take advantage of the core Ubuntu system (e.g., Mint, which I’ve installed for family members).
I love Arch. I use it all the time. I will not inflict it on any family members.
My son is trans. Please vote for Joe Biden so he can have the protections he needs and I don’t have to stay up at night worrying about him.
What the actual fuck is wrong with Republican politicians? I mean, I already know what’s wrong with Republican voters - brainwashing by years of Fox “News” - but the politicians? Are they all literal sociopaths?
It’s certainly to be hoped, but given the Israeli mobilization in the last 24 hours or so, I’m not holding my breath.
And suddenly, Israel seems much more interested in diplomacy.
This is partially true. The rich have definitely benefited more than everyone else. But the actual statistics don’t lie… Wages are not actually stagnant, they’ve been ticking upward, and it’s finally happening faster than inflation. It’s not helping everyone, of course, but it’s not all doom and gloom, either. And inflation really is down - importantly, lower than the global average by quite a bit.
I’m not going to argue that everything is going perfectly, because it’s clearly not. For one thing, everything that can get passed in the House has to overcome Republican obstruction right now, only to face Republican obstruction in the Senate, too. We have a half-&-half government where one half is sociopathic, and that’s not amazing. In fact, while some economic indicators are good, the whole thing does appear pretty fragile.
Which is kinda the thesis of my original comment.
Good, but fragile.
Let’s talk about the fragile first:
We have unrest due to the genocidal war in Gaza. Israel is a long-term ally of the United States, but… their government has lost its mind. They’ve responded to a horrendous terrorist attack with an even more horrendous war that it’s hard to see a good ending to. Lots of blame to go around on it, but as for the United States, we’re stuck with a particularly sticky political problem because of it.
If we cut off support for Israel, it’s likely that they’ll face invasion by their neighbors, plunging the entire region into war and strengthening Russia.
If we give them everything they need to raze Gaza to the ground, no strings attached, they’ll… raze Gaza to the ground, and probably try to destroy all of Palestine in a grotesque act of true genocide. This will also result in their neighbors attacking them, and likely cause an even more horrific war. Biden is currently trying to thread a very difficult needle between these extreme outcomes.
I genuinely don’t know if he will succeed and ultimately convince Israel to stop the horrific destruction, but at least he’s trying. If Trump wins the next election, we - and Palestine, and Israel, and everyone who isn’t Russia or Iran - are fucked.
We have a serious long-term problem that threatens the stability of the entire country, which I will sum up in two words: Fox News. This misnamed infotainment channel is almost single-handedly responsible for a decades-long - and horrifyingly successful - campaign to make an entire half of the country stupid, misinformed, bigoted, and angry all the time about utter nonsense.
Have you heard about how trans people are beating all the “real” women in sports? Or raping them in public bathrooms? Have you heard about how DEI is flooding every business everywhere with unqualified employees, because white people are superior reasons that will remain carefully unspecified? Is Disney trying to turn little Timmy gay? Is the “woke mind virus” something you’re familiar with?
Then you’ve probably either seen Fox News, or interacted with its victims. And I mean that: victims. These are people who have been intentionally targeted for, quite literally, brainwashing. If you’ve ever found yourself in an argument with a Fox News victim, you’ll have discovered that they’re remarkably impervious to facts, fully capable of believing complete balderdash without a single scrap of evidence, and are prone to become angry - sometimes violently so - in defense of their worldview and in response to anything that causes the discomfort of cognitive dissonance.
We haven’t yet figured out how to really counter bad actors, both foreign and domestic, who take advantage of all of the above to try to destroy the United States as it is right now.
Domestically, actual white supremacists and Neo-Nazis are absolutely thrilled with the current state of affairs in Israel and Palestine, because 1) they hate absolutely everyone involved anyway, and 2) they see it as an opportunity to try to recruit new white supremacists from college students who are angry about the genocide. Does that make any sense? Of course not; if they’re upset about the horrific slayings of thousands of Muslims in a majority non-white country, it’s absurd to believe that they’re likely to be turned by white nationalism. But it’s not like Neo-Nazis are known for their critical thinking skills, and they still might succeed in dividing enough of the electorate to help Trump get back into office. They certainly want to.
On the foreign front, there’s Russia, of course. Russia still wants to do everything it can to destroy the United States. Putin and his ilk have long since concluded that the easiest way to become a mover and shaker on the world stage isn’t to make a strong Russia, it’s to make everyone else weak. They’ve utterly squandered the opportunities of perestroika. And they are hell-bent on making the world suffer for it.
Pretty depressing, huh. But it’s not all bad:
So… yeah. Good. But fragile.
Oh, it won’t be meaningless. The meaning will be remarkably clear: “Hey, everyone, we’re having hundred-year worsts every week now, and you should all be shitting your pants over it instead of what you’re actually doing, which is sticking your fingers in your ears and going, ‘la-la-la, I can’t hear you.’”
Issue them, ICC.
Yep. I still worry about that fucking asshole’s pro-virus fan club, though. You just know they’ll go out of their way just to contract H5N1 and “prove” it’s just a cold. And they’ll die in droves again, taking Innocent people with them.
According to the CDC, vaccines are already in the works.
I can already hear the cries of “99.7% survival rate!” and “Give me hydroxychloroquine or (and) give me death!”
And you know the same mouth-breathers who rejected all factually accurate information about COVID-19 and vaccines will just refer to this as the next “plandemic” and pretend viruses aren’t real. Some will go out of their way to visit farms and drink milk straight from the cow’s udder just to “prove” there’s nothing to worry about.
I’ve never even heard of it. They sure weren’t putting their VPN front and center.
Well, of course. I mean it’s not like you paid for a Microsoft Windows license when you bought your computer, so obviously they have to advertise to financially support it. If you’re getting something for free, you’re the product.
…
…
…
Wait, I’m being told that when people buy computers with Windows installed, they are, in fact, paying for a Windows license, too.
So this is actually Microsoft trying to turn products they’ve already sold into continuous revenue streams at the cost of usability and customer happiness.
In other news, apropos of nothing in particular, Steam on Linux is working really well these days, with lots of AAA titles running just fine via Proton. Make of that what you will…
New motto: