TommySalami

@TommySalami@lemmy.world
0 Post – 70 Comments
Joined 1 years ago

It is a funny coincidence though.

Walberg explicitly encouraged Uganda’s leaders to resist opposition to the law from the U.S.

Can US representative just blatantly undermine US foreign policy, or is this one of those things where it's wrong but won't be pursued in any official way?

4 more...

It's the use of "rigged" that throws me. I agree money in politics is bad, and adds improper influence and incentive into the whole thing. That is not the same context that we have widely seen "rigged" used in the last 8 years. The term brings to mind GOP lies about election integrity, and bogus claims of fraud.

If this was just someone I was talking to I would brush the statement off as bad word choice, and move on if there was nothing else. With it being a statement after an election loss from someone with political experience I struggle to let it slide. Word choice and presenting ideas/policy is a major part of the job she is running for, and I think such poor word choice in a statement she had every opportunity to proofread and consider is worthy of some criticism. Doesn't make her an election denier, or anything of the sort, but it does warrant a little slap on the wrist from the public.

Overall she's right, but there were many better ways to say it.

4 more...

Fuck you anti-cop assholes. Get robbed, get mugged, get in an accident, lose your kid, need some help, and see what song you're singing then.

I come from a cop family, and I hate this argument. Of course people are going to call the police when shit happens. That is literally the only option available to reasonable and lawful people. Doesn't mean police haven't actively damaged their reputation with decades of abuse and corruption, and force the decent cops out if they try and buck the trend.

Police in general have some major issues right now, and first among them is outright denial there are any issues at all. Just look at 2020 where the first protests were met with immediate escalation and violence (it was like day 1 we had videos of cops shoving elderly people to the ground. They cracked that one guy's head open). Tone-deaf and completely dismissive of concerns raised by their own communities. Nothing has improved since then, in fact the police seem to have deepened that ' us v. them' mentality.

I'm not saying I agree with banning armed police, but I can agree that this type of stuff is where we're headed with the route police and their most ardent supporters are taking. Policing took a bad turn back when cops starting calling non-police 'civilians', as if police were a military branch. "Community policing" is dead, and it's no surprise the reputation went with it.

Theres some truth to this, but a lot of people do use this as a shield against the general cultural acceptance that piracy is stealing or otherwise morally underhanded. I do it, but I don't have any illusion I'm one of the activists. I just get indignant and refuse to pay someone for content or entertainment who I think is damaging to the medium or predatory in general. I feel like if I really wanted to make a statement, I just wouldn't consume their work at all -- but life is short and I want to have my cake and eat it too.

2 more...

Come on, man, it's "water under the bridge". I want to contribute but it felt like we were drifting into malaphors there for a second, so I'm gonna play it by year and just see what comes next.

8 more...

Yeah, I'm right there with you. He came up in a conversation over the holidays and I had to go through how in my opinion he had potential to be one of, if not the best, comic of his generation and he squandered it by needlessly punching down and taking oddly vindictive stances. Maybe this is always who he was, but I think the fame and frustration that came with how his career played out changed him.

I can't reconcile the Dave from old interviews and shows with this one, and it's kinda sad.

I always just wrote this little tale off as "good at reading people", and honestly that's still my assumption. After reading Blindsight though, I think it's a good allegory for possible intelligence without consciousness. What if the horse just has the ability to perform those kind of calculations when incentivized, but has no concept of what it's actually doing beyond responding to stimulus.

Then again I knew a horse that would recreationally lick electric fences, so probably not that. Interesting thought though.

1 more...

Coequal branches of government, that's well below an 8th grade civics understanding. Crazy that people genuinely believe the Supreme Court is untouchable by congress and the executive, who do they think appoints them?

3 more...

That has happened to me so much in recent years, both with clipped songs and bands/artists I like becoming popular. I don't hold myself with any music pretention, and the vast majority of my "underground" discoveries are just random chance and Spotify algorithm. There is no way I have found to explain "no, I've been listening to them since [insert album]" that hasn't been met with some form of hipster comment.

5 more...

You know what, I'm here for it. Anytime I hear about the cicadas coming back it's always over the top dread. People freak out, and there's so much acting like seeing a cicada is going to grind life to a halt. Everyone seems to lean into the bit.

The fact that the growing answer to the cicadas this year is a wildly different "fuck it, we'll eat them and then they can't get us" could not be more beautiful to me.

3 more...

You're gonna get a lot of different answers. The primary issue we're facing with the border right now is not so much an unprecedented wave as much as it is an overloaded asylum system. Due to how we handle claims and the lack of manpower, individuals who may eventually be denied asylum are living in the US (still unable to legally work, I believe. Someone might check me on that) for years awaiting a trial date. Republicans are tackling this issue by focusing on solutions to non-existent problems, or are tossing the issue out when it seems the outcome might benefit democrats (i.e. no border bill, because then Dems can rightfully run on progress with the border issue). Dems have kicked this particular can down the road for a bit, and recently made a good faith effort in the Senate to construct a bill that would have addressed the actual pressing issue (the degree it would help is debatable, but it was objectively progress). That bill was killed by republicans for the aforementioned political reasons.

Don't even have mothman as number 1, what are they even doing. That bizarre being is a hero, and he deserves respect.

The idea the my life is so low stress that I can enjoy simple pleasures? That's the dream.

The number of people who are politically disengaged is staggering. What better to motivate those people than to prompt some anger over an issue and hope they care about it enough to stay angry and vote. Also important to note this stuff is never done alone, there's other outreach happening at the same time. It's a numbers game, and those few disengaged folks you got fired up with a stupid ad could make or break you.

That said, I think most attack ads are damaging to political discourse by nature of demanding a concise, pithy message. Never going to get genuine criticism out of that.

That's been the GOP M.O. for a while, but according to the info presented in the article the Dem appointed judges have actually been slightly more lenient (sentenced less than what prosecution sought 92% of cases, against the Trump appointed 90%).

I'm sure there's more nuance to it if you look at it case by case, but it seems like across the board judges are handing out lenient sentences for Jan 6.

3 more...

Yeah, I'm out. I'm still learning this whole Lemmy thing, but it's scratching the same itch that Reddit did.

I think this killed reddit for me, even if they reverse their shit it's still the same company that desperately tried to push it in the first place. Only a matter of time before more of the things I liked about it are stripped away, might as well rip the band-aid off now.

"Man, my job pays horribly and the benefits barely cover anything, but they have a ping-pong table so it's honestly a tough call."

I struggle to understand how someone could seriously write something like that question without a lack of self-awareness so dire that a walk to the kitchen would come with a near-death experience. It just can't be real.

It's a skill issue. It's takes intelligence to conceptualize an issue or idea without accepting it. Seems many people talking about Israel/Palestine (in terms of everyday people) just aren't bright enough to break it down for themselves.

The whole thing is a legit clusterfuck. Israel has been commiting war crimes against Palestinians for as long as I've been alive, and Palestine's de facto government is a legit terrorist organization who has done some unforgivable things. In the middle you have everyday people suffering for no reason beyond being born in the "wrong" place, and being further radicalized by unconscionable IDF actions. There's no good guy on either side (in terms of those capable of taking action on a collective scale), and that breaks the brains of some. People ignorantly want a cut and dry solution, and a bad side to rail against, much more than they want to actually understand the issue and it's causes.

As a non-fat person who doesn't exercise consistently, it's not that simple for the vast majority. There are a lot of factors including health/genetics and the stuff mentioned in the comment you responded to. I'm not skinny because I avoid meals, I'm skinny because I lucked out genetically and I really don't have to worry about what I eat in terms of gaining weight.

Also, avoiding meals is like the worst way to maintain your weight and you should stop implicitly recommending it. It's just going fuck up your metabolism, nutrition, and ability to maintain your weight. Quality matters substantially more than quantity, and quality is prohibitively expensive for many.

9 more...

I could see it working as an animated "job of the week" sitcom style show about a team of DRG miners. There's nothing about DRG that ties it too strongly to the concept though. You could just make a show about space dwarves without any mention of DRG, might even be easier without whatever "lore" the game has in place (I like the game a lot, but if there's a story I haven't found it).

yeah man, just like you go scuba diving oo-nderwater.

it's a dead end. We can't pretend that "g" can't also be pronounced as "j", or that the words making up the acronym matter. It's all preference and since GIF's dad called it "jif", I'm gonna call it "jif". At least that's based on something beyond my own hubris.

1 more...

Biden needs to send the Army in and take over the Texas Border enforcement.

He legally can't. He is not able to unilaterally use the military as a domestic police force. This keeps the executive from using the military as their personal cudgel.

I agree with the strong arming via national guard though. I think there are some hoops, but there's absolutely plenty of precedent for a president taking command of a state's national guard (specifically in regard to border control as well).

1 more...

You're not going to take time to shave, every second counts. The solution is the extra adhesive pads most every AED has. You plant one of those on the the chest hair and rip, and you can get an effectively hairless spot for your lead.

I mean, the answer is "Your vehicle is too large to park here." It's one of the reasons I drive a smaller car, parking is a bitch where I'm from and I'd hate passing up spots because I can't fit.

Ridiculous. Human Ted Cruz is only one being, and not several.

Not a landlord, but I had a similar excuse thrown at me by a dealership. Towed my car an hour for a recall to a college town because everywhere else was booked for a while. They did close to $1000 of unauthorized work and then threw a fit when I told them I would not be paying for it unless they could show me a signed document where I agreed. When they realized I wasn't a broke college kid after I threatened legal action and to report my car stolen if they were not willing to give it back, I got the "this was a misunderstanding, it never should have went this far" from the owner who had just called me a liar 10minutes prior. Such obvious BS

I don't get this. I was raised by a cop, and I'm very comfortable with firearms. Flashing your concealed weapon in public is immature at best. I can think of zero reason to flash a concealed weapon in public (unless you intend to defend yourself with it, right there in that moment), even if someone is asking to see it the answer is, "It's not a toy". It's an object designed to kill, the threat is inherent in revealing it.

Not calling out you specifically, but the irreverent attitude of the loud pro-gun group has pushed me way further left on gun control than I used to be. Actions like OP tell me the leaders advocating for it do not have a healthy or mature view of firearms.

1 more...

You cannot reason a man out of what he never reasoned himself into.

In a lot of cases that limbic system is the only shot you have at changing their minds. A massive number of conservatives don't believe the way they do because they've sat down and thought about their worldview. It's cultural, and has become an identity for them. In many cases it has become directly tied to Christianity, which only worsens the shitty blurring of lines. You're not going to logic that out, and most need to have their worldview shook pretty damn vigorously to even begin to see things differently.

Some of these people live in a totally different reality. You can't even begin to find common ground to jump off from without directly challenging their worldview. People turn emotional the moment that happens. Even if you get so far as to present opposing facts they will be mostly ignored/rationalized, and anything accepted will be conveniently forgotten shortly after the conversation. For as many complaints as we see from conservatives about "indoctrination" they made a fine job of doing as much with their base. It's a much bigger problem than people give credit to -- I wonder if that's due to ignorance of the issue, or if we're just afraid of looking directly at it.

They're terrified of seeming political, or making a mistake that will let him walk. Republicans have stacked the courts with people who barely grasp US law, and certainly have no respect for it, and the Democrats have put up glorified bureaucrats. We need a judge willing to force the issue and say "if you were anyone else this behavior would land you jail awaiting trial, so that's where you're going.", Or I dunno, maybe stop giving breaks with fines. Let the morons whine and cry about being biased, or an activist judge; make the USSS have to coordinate with corrections to maintain protection while being held. Show this isn't a game. Prove that you have some conviction when it comes to the rule of law in the US. History would look kindly on the person who chose the make the right call when it wasn't easy.

I feel like a broken record with how much I've said this in the last handful of years, but: someone needs to be the fucking adult in the room.

There are over a hundred million working adults in the US, and all of them with their own opinions and needs. Many of them completely out of touch with the world outside of their bubble, and some who even approve of the current trajectory. The idea of organizing a generalized strike is a complete pipe dream. I'd love to see it, but we are nowhere even close to that. We must work with reasonable, attainable solutions.

People who've never lived in Texas really don't get it. Everything is spread out to an almost ludicrous degree. I drive an hour to get to my friend's house, and I don't even consider him to be far away. We both live in the same metroplex.

Public transportation is almost complete failure here due to not being prioritized, and driving anywhere is a pain in the ass with drivers from all over just winging it on congested streets. Don't even get me started on overpriced tolls that have become the only reasonable way to travel 30min+

Texas is not ok.

I'm not sure the comment calling for regulation is a corporate shill. It's a pretty level-headed look at things imo, because the truth is YT cannot afford to operate for free. We live in a system that just doesn't allow that, for better or worse. Unfortunately, the way we went about funding things on the internet (outside of ridiculous amounts of capital flowing to startups for years, which doesn't really apply to YT/Google) was ads, and they have gotten wildly out of hand. This is on top of an insane amount of data harvesting. We have to face the reality that any major, data-heavy platform like YT is going to need significant revenue.

We need a solution to either lower the cost of (opening things up for individuals to host), or more efficiently fund, services we like if they're going to stick around in the current state of the world. Even if we say "google can eat the cost" we're still putting all our faith in the goodwill of an entity that is designed to do the opposite of what we're asking. That's begging for issues.

Peer-to-peer stuff is the best solution I've seen, or self-hosting. I'm far from an expert, but from what I understand the tech just isnt there yet for it to become the norm. All that data has to go somewhere, and storage is prohibitively expensive at a certain point.

I'm pretty sure "did we have a moment?" got me out of a minor ticket once.

You know, from the eggshell fragments.

How much force are you people using to crack an egg?

1 more...

There've been fantastic CRPGs in the last handful of years. Off the top of my head: Divinity Original Sin 2 (2017), PoE/PoE2(2015/2018), Tyranny(2016), Torment: Tides of Numenera(2017), Pathfinder Kingmaker/WotR(2018/2021), and Disco Elysium^1^ (2019).

There's definitely been a comeback, I feel like I've been eating good on that side for a while now.


^1^Play this game if you haven't. It's so fucking good

#1 The Guardian is left leaning, and they certainly don't pull punches with conservatives. This is also an article about a widely known talking point that conservatives are not shy about. This is not the counter to the article that you think it is.

The reason people disagree with #2 is because they can handle abstract thinking. Teaching about a race massacre in the 20s is not in any way designed to make white kids feel guilty. Nothing of the sort made me feel "guilty" as a child, but it did help me wrap my head around the seriousness of civil rights and the extreme difficulties many minority groups had in the US.

No one is telling kids they did it, no one is telling them white people did it because they're evil. It's a ridiculous notion, and it's used to justify white washing important history. I've seen lesson plans for subject like this, and they're as milquetoast as they can be.

6 more...

Interestingly enough, 2/3 of those are subs I dropped within the last year or so based on a lack of quality/content for what they cost (never bothered with ESPN, NHL games are easy to find). Seems like streaming is starting to collapse a lot quicker than TV did.

4 more...

Kind of rude. Farts can be funny, and they don't deserve to be disparaged like this.

I haven't seen it because I have the opposite problem.

I can relate to that. I'm one of those people who won't even squash bugs, and even heavy-handed, poorly written emotional moments in movies can make me tear up because I'll inevitably find something in there that speaks to me. Shits wild compared to my friends and family