I don’t disagree. But we’re living in interesting times.

I don’t like most of the people on the ticket I’ll be given in November, but you know what’s objectively worse? Actual fascism. Fascism always ends in genocide, and these white Christian nationalists aren’t even trying to hide it, going mask-off even before they have the power to back it up.

When fascists can be this bold and still keep their seats of power, that’s quite worrying.

As I saw someone say earlier, we’re in democracy triage.

I’d vote for Biden’s corpse before trump or not voting. We must wrest all power from the fascists before we can squabble about who’s more left.

That’s objectively bullshit.

The only other option is trump. Are you trying to get people to vote for trump? If so, why?

I hope people stop believing the bullshit that’s trying to get progressives to not vote or to vote for 3rd parties. Progressives absolutely can win democrat tickets, and that’s exactly why there’s so much propaganda trying to convince people otherwise. Progressives have a lot of political power right now, and the whole system can swing left if people don’t just give up. Progressives giving up is the only play the right has.

Fascism. They keep dancing around it, but what they want is fascism.

This isn’t politics. They want to remake US politics into a fascist state, and they’re not even that shy about it.

Thankfully only about 30% of US adults are falling for this grift. Unfortunately about the same percentage of Germans fell for it in the late 1920s. It seems really low, but it’s enough if the rest of us are complacent.

So let’s not be complacent.

This is why NATO has begun ramping up defense purchases recently.

Trump has been polling higher recently, and that scares the fuck out of Europe, because they know Trump will at best allow Putin to steamroll the region and, at worst, actively use US resources to help dictatorships expand their sphere of influence, culminating in WWIII.

They’re not willing to wait until that happens.

Annual reminder that it’s now been 14 years since Hannity promised to be waterboarded for charity.

He talks a big game, but that’s all it is – and his talk gets cheaper by the day.

They spelled ‘eat’ wrong.

Corsets. They were not uncomfortable or restrictive, and they did not make women faint. Only the Victorian equivalent of the Kardashians were into dangerously tight lacing – for regular women, they were just a fitted support garment, no worse than spanx. I’ve worn them for 25 years as a late-Victorian reenactor. They’re actually really nice for back pain.

On the other hand, hoop skirts were immensely dangerous, and women were burned to death when their skirts caught an open flame (of which there were many), were dragged to death when their hoops caught in coach wheels as they disembarked, and fell to their deaths when the wind caught their hoops and sent them flying Mary Poppins style from rooves and balconies.

Corsets were fine; hoop skirts were a death trap.

My father has been designing and building bespoke aircraft for 45 years, was an FAA test pilot, inspector, and trainer for most of that time, and was in the US Air Force during the Korean War. He has more aviation experience than most.

His license plate reads GO RAIL and he won’t fly commercial if he can avoid it.

e: I am not surprised.

Fascists always do the ole ‘he hit me first waah’ gambit. All you can do is ignore it and treat them like the crybabies they are.

Perhaps if someone gives trump a dummy (binky) and rocks him gently we’ll all be able to sleep for a while.

‘It’s okay, you were the bestest president, sleep now, everyone lubs you. Shhh.’

Followed by a brick.

The fuck? There are conspiracies about this already even though there was a live stream of it? What the fuck is wrong with people?

Daily reminder that unregulated capitalism hurts all of us.

Yes.

Also phones made in the US have back doors that the US government can access. It’s not really secret.

Watching the party call MAGA Mike Johnson – the guy who they hand chose because he was as MAGA as they come – call him a RINO because he couldn’t unite their basket of rabid weasels is just

But wait! He was able to name a rhinoceros and do differential calculus! Person woman man camera tv!

He brags about ‘acing’ that test, but here’s the actual test:

The most difficult maths problem is to subtract by 7s.

The answers to the 5 words memory question would never be ‘person woman man camera tv’, because they’re always carefully chosen to not be related in any way, because that would defeat the purpose, since related words are easier to remember. They’d be things like ‘daisy chair monkey water picture’. Even from his very first retelling, he didn’t remember the words, he was just naming things he saw in the room at the time, and he was bragging about passing a test that if you fail, you may be deemed unable to care for yourself.

We know this is the test, because he talks about the rhino part, then says it gets hard from there (eta: in his own words, 3 years ago), and now says almost nobody can pass the rest. And he says the doctors told him he’s one of the only people they’ve seen pass it.

This is himself recounting the story last month, January 2024. (e: Sorry for the Twitter link; I couldn’t find a better one.)

And his cult cheers this shit. It’s utterly bonkers.

e: Link, and another link. And one more.

e2: I couldn’t help but add this. I am so sorry. If it must be in my head, now it’s in yours too.

Ya know what? He’s not wrong. I forgot about that for a while. I hate him a more now because it worked.

On the other hand, why is Europe depending on the US for their own defense?

They’re not. That’s kind of a weird thing to say, if you have any understanding of the situation.

The point of NATO is to present a unified front against the ever-present authoritarian threat in the region that’s been ongoing since WWII, and the US as a founding member has spent more on their military by orders of magnitude, so has had an outsized voice in NATO.

If they pull out those resources, that would hurt the coalition because, again, with their military spending being more than ten times the next ten countries combined, they’re the silverback gorilla in the room, and losing that against countries willing to throw their entire population as human cannon fodder into conflicts because they don’t care about human costs would hurt a lot. What happens when Russia decides to reclaim the rest of the countries Putin thinks are rightly part of their federation, because Putin has delusions of becoming an historical tsar? What happens when Trump’s US backs Putin in that effort?

Your few guns will not fix any of this. Your few guns will not even help stave off anything in your own county. That’s never how this has worked. This will be ushered in while you get your groceries and watch Netflix, with no clear enemy to fight, after an authoritarian has been voted in as president, as everything else is just a Tuesday.

I appreciate that you think you can head off the next major fascist regime because you’re armed, but that’s not how this works. You will never have a target to shoot at. You will be just like average Germans in the 1930s, waiting for the moment it has gone too far, and then in the late 40s trying to figure out when that moment actually happened.

e: also, there are no ‘orange shirts’. Your terminology is tres bizarre. It’s Brownshirts or red caps. That’s an embarrassing mistake to make.

It’s a prank or one of those faked outrage memes.

When this was posted on reddit with a title saying it had been purchased this way, some people who worked at ice cream factories chimed in saying that was bullshit – they could tell by the way the ice cream was swirled under the frog. They said it looked like the ice cream was normal when purchased, and someone had added the frog after the fact.

Apparently they could tell because the container would have been sealed in the factory before the ice cream had set, whilst it was still quite soft. If the frog had entered at that time, it would have mushed down into the ice cream more, rather than being just on the surface. You certainly wouldn’t be able to see the feet like that.

Tl;dr: It was originally posted as outrage bait, IIRC.

(e: found the reddit post)

We should have seen this coming. I remember the early 80s when cable was the new hotness, and it was cheap, with no ads unlike broadcast television. That was its major selling point.

Then over the next decade the ads crept in, and we were all paying for cable with ads, even though the whole point had been no ads. Then the price skyrocketed and the ads remained.

Steaming was always going to follow the same path. Cheap with no ads at first, then adding ads, then skyrocketing prices, then crazy prices with ads too.

They know as long as all of them raise their prices, where are we gonna go? They have exclusives. We can’t just take our money elsewhere.

Well fuck me, apparently. The Adobe and Sibelius fees already break me, and I’ve invested enough in Unity assets (not to mention the learning curve) to get a game close to preproduction, and this could drive me out.

I’m a tiny Dev just trying to break into VR, console, and mobile by myself, and am dirt poor with no support, just my knowledge and talent. I’m working on three beta projects, but this makes me scared to continue on Unity.

I’m a good designer and developer with industry experience, but my health has forced me into smaller Indy projects. I put all my eggs in Unity’s basket and now it feels like they’re ditching me just at the point I was ready for production.

God dammit. :(

Many of them are dominionists who actively want the world to end so Jesus will come back. These people will kill us all for their fairy tales.

Thank you for your work to keep that despicable trash out of our feeds. Sorry you have to deal with it. Fuck those losers.

Wait, they just figured out that famously hateful far-right pundit Candice Owens spews hateful, far right talking points? Who could possibly have seen that coming?

People downplay that Access Hollywood tape, but he wasn’t joking. He was completely serious. In his mind, he could - and did – literally grab women’s pussies because he thought they’d just let him do it.

Here’s the thing, as an SA survivor, there are several natural reactions to situations like that – fight, flight, or freeze. In close quarters, you often can’t flee, and with a large attacker, you can’t always fight. Freezing is a very common response to sexual assault.

So all these years, when he says ‘they just let you do it’, he’s been describing his victims’ freeze response. And yet his followers and the media have turned it into a joke.

I think I can speak for many SA survivors when I say that’s disgusting, appalling, and hurtful.

e: a few words

It’s infuriating that people are beholden to this fucking loser.

The thing about unregulated capitalism is it will always fuck over society in favour of sociopaths. Unregulated capitalism rewards sociopaths because it focusses on profits above all else – shareholders get stupidly rich only if they don’t care about the damage done to workers and the public, sociopaths who don’t care about such damage can promise the highest profits, and that’s rewarded by a hyper-focus on the bottom line.

Unregulated capitalism rewards ruthless cost-cutting, treating people like robotic assets, slash-and-burn corporate policies, and a culture of near-slavery.

Adding new tech only makes inhumane policies easier to implement. It’s why people like Musk have more money than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes. When the goal is to maximise profits at all costs, of course the consumer will get fucked. That’s rather the point.

E: in short, prices will continue to increase as these people try to find the ceiling. Ps: there is no real ceiling.

Also because billionaires tend to be sociopaths since that kind of wealth hoarding isn’t really possible unless you have little empathy for others. Sociopaths love fascism because it lets them take what they want by force, ignore social norms, and enslave or genocide anyone who they deem an impediment.

“Reem’s has a deep commitment to uplifting social and racial justice in our communities,” the statement said. “This includes fostering an environment of safety for our staff and customers. In a time of increased gun violence — particularly impacting people of color, youth, and queer people — we believe that maintaining a strict policy of prohibiting guns in our restaurant keeps us safer.”

They don’t want guns on their property. It’s pretty simple. They have the right to restrict guns on their property.

Calling them ‘bigots’ and ‘discriminatory’ is disgusting, because those words mean hating people for inherent qualities that can’t be changed, like skin colour. You can leave your gun and uniform behind and poof you magically aren’t in the ‘discriminated’ group.

Black people can’t leave their skin in their car. See the difference? No? Then you might be a bigot.

e: anonymous downvoters, don’t be a pussy, reply please. That’s the whole point of this forum. Engage or gtfo.

So he’s either a bigot, which should disqualify him, or he’s got serious memory deficits, which should disqualify him. And this is the best (R) they have.

Relevant xkcd.

I’m actually surprised he was able to find lawyers in the first place.

I’ve legitimately lost track of how many of his lawyers have been disbarred, fined stupid amounts of money, or pled guilty to felonies. I kept track for a while, but there are just too many.

Any lawyer accepting his cases at this point must be assumed to be dumber than potted light bulbs or under duress.

Thomas should have recused over a lot of things..

But of course he didn’t and he won’t, because fuck you.

Well, of course. The search algorithm has no way to know the difference.

67,055. Amateurs.

e: proof:

A lot of the thousands of Reddit comments per post were variations of ‘this!’ or inane joke responses, and I don’t miss that at all. It’s not the quantity, but the quality, and I’ve found discussions here to be more like Reddit’s early days when comment threads were more worthwhile.

But if you’re looking for the Reddit experience, I’ll help:

Came here to say this.

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted.

Username checks out

This deserves more upvotes.

I’d give you gold if I could.

Shots fired.

Nailed it.

You. I like you.

Tree fiddy.

You had one job.

That’s enough internet for today.

Happy cake day! 🎂

I have the weirdest boner right now.

Directions unclear.

Banana for scale.

5/7 with rice.

Mom’s spaghetti.

I laughed harder than I should have.

Sauce?

Someone give this man gold.

Circlejerk is leaking.

This was not my proudest fap.

What did I just read?

Risky click.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

(☞ﾟ∀ﾟ)☞

(ಠ_ಠ)

¯_(ツ)_/¯

You dropped this: \

Woosh!

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Weirdly, it’s a real thing. AMC made them a double feature. I’d never have guessed the crossover demographic would be that big, but what do I know.

That’s not a wrench; dear god, these headlines.

Donald Trump demanded they use the opportunity to “defund” Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team.

That’s not how any of this works, lol. This idiocy will be denied like all similar gambits he’s flailed into under the advice of incompetent counsel.

It’s two hours since they hit the iceberg, and they’ve commandeered all available lifeboats. Many are taking on water. Some of them are bailing frantically, some are taking the opportunity to stick their hands up the skirts of women trying to bail water or vomiting over the side, and some are boring more holes or denying they’re in a lifeboat to begin with.

Meanwhile, though they can all see the rescue ship right in front of them, trump is facing the opposite way, demanding they row away from help because he knows better. McCarthy dressed as a woman to board the first lifeboat, but he’s been discovered and is trying desperately to explain why he should be there.

I’ve tortured this metaphor enough, but the ship has sunk and we’re witnessing the cutthroat mess as survivors begin fighting each other for space on the door. It’s sad and frightening in equal measure.

e: I’d love to see this scene as a Garrison-style comic. Seems like a thing AI could do.

Honestly, it makes perfect sense to me, but that’s probably because I have astigmatism.

We’ve seen the head as the seat of intellect for millennia, and glowing things (the sun, moon, and stars) have always been endowed with mystical and miraculous properties.

Glowing things look like pointy rings if you squint or have impaired vision. Combine those simple concepts – pointy glowing wreath on the head – and you get a crown.

(And earlier renditions were just gold wreaths, often made of leaves, like the Roman laurels.)

Lockpicking Lawyer is great.

I also love:

• ElectroBOOM – for learning about electricity whilst giggling at his mishaps
• Gutsick Gibbon – for anthropology and busting creationism in the sweetest way
• 12tone – excellent analysis of modern music, immensely educational and fun
• Casual Geographic – zoology facts made fun
• Dominic Noble – highly insightful and critical book and movie reviews
• MertKayKay – detailed critical game analyses from a UXD perspective , and some movie/tv reviews, too
• NeverKnowsBest – very in-depth game reviews and industry analyses
• PBS Space Time – popular sci
• Professor Dave Explains – lots of educational topics, and his F/E and creationist takedowns are a guilty pleasure
• TodePond – creative coding
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – interviews with survivors and presentations, lest we forget
• Stanford Online – full lectures on many subjects, free to watch