catbum

But we should certainly accept anyone who has had a true change of heart in voting for Trump and regrets it or even felt pressured to vote that way in the first place.

Just an FYI, although they aren't physical products like this Roku, many apps and digital services have added the very same binding arbitration clauses recently.

The McDonald's app for one. I ended up deleting the app after it tried to force me into binding arbitration and I didn't want to go through to opt-out process for marginally cheaper, shitty food, so I just deleted the app altogether and haven't eaten there since November.

Watch out for it if you drive for doordash or ubereats as well. I opted out of both, although they claimed you couldn't opt out in an new contract when you didn't before (a bunch of BS, if the current contract you are about to sign says it supercedes all others, you can't make the lack of an opt-out on a previous contract hold up).

On-going services might make sense for these shitty enough clauses, but to be strong armed into it for physical product you bought free and clear ... Disgusting.

It's like all these companies are locking themselves down to minimize legal exposure because they know that their services and products are getting more awful or something.

The following was initially part of a reply to another person:

Maybe the simple, gentle, "everyday" language here is truly the point? There are so many things to attack about Trump, so many legitimate concerns for his fascist, racist, sexist, ad nauseum behaviors. We've heard it all before. But simply calling him weird could spark a little reflection in his supporters and would-be voters while obviously delivering a shock to Trump's vanity.

It's not something you can easily deny as a conspiracy theory or fake news or any other excuse about his words and behavior. The man is weird. And psychologically, I think it's harder to defend a person described that way, or at least makes a defender get a little self-conscious. Trump being deemed weird is really indefensible, and I think it could work in deflating the cult of personality around him.

Not everyone can identify maniacal dictator rhetoric for what it is, and the power dynamic is clearly alluring to Trump supporters. However, knowing a weird person or even being called weird at some point is something almost everyone has experience with.

It's uncomfortable. It makes you ask yourself what it is about a person that makes them weird and how you should deal with it. It prickles something very basic in the human psyche. So I think they're on to something here. It might give supporters pause and will most definitely give Trump a complex.

I feel like I'm stating the obvious here, but this seems so off-the-charts guaranteed to backfire on him. What even mild Swiftie isn't going to figure out (or hasn't already) just how fake this endorsement is? Of any celeb to fake, Taylor seems like a such a flamingly dumb choice in terms of the fandom's social media engagement.

With all these increasingly stupid moves... Is he really that detached and senile, or is there more behind his [team's] style of psycho-political warfare going on?

I don't think I've seen it pondered anywhere on social media, so I must ask: Does it not seem like Trump is purposely trying to throw the election at this point? If that's the case, I fear the heightened degree of nefarious intent for whatever guaranteed political unrest we will face in November. I don't think this is baseless conspiratorial thinking on my part, unfortunately.

Or ... Or ... Maybe his patently obvious mental decline has eroded away just enough of his super-sized ego to let in juuust enough reality for him to consciously recognize that he is going to die soon whether he likes it or not, and now he doesn't give a shit-a-minute if he wins anymore. Can you imagine?

Am I the only one who didn't realize the film Hillbilly Elegy was based on this particular guy's memoir? No wonder it left me with a bad taste in my brain.

I remember deciding to watch it back when it was promoted on Netflix (in 2020-21?), going in completely blind to its background and bent, but wooed by the branding of it being "nominated for awards" and the imagery of a frazzled-looking Glenn Close.

I'll try to reflect on what I thought of it then without reference to what I know now: The whole movie was uncomfortable, felt weirdly holier-than-thou, and made me question what was supposed to be so good about how this guy was "overcoming" traumatic circumstances. I don't think I finished it in one go, only doing so because Glenn Close and Amy Adams brought talent to these painfully stereotypified roles. (I had just finished Sharp Objects, so you can imagine how disappointed I was that Amy had to work with so little substance, no pun intended, in this role's storyline.)

I remember thinking I really disliked the actor who played JD Vance for having such flat personality and boring acting skills. As it turns out, the actor did a helluva job! Bravo!

Ahem... Loosh dentshursh.

I had just opened my Max app for some Saturday night distraction when I saw CNN Newsroom suggested front and center, with the description "...the rally where President Trump was injured."

This is terrifying on so many levels. At this point, it doesn't matter who wins the election; the stage is completely set for violence come November.

I haven't found any active comment threads on this yet, and I don't even want to entertain the inevitable conspiracy theories and possible acts of retribution that will rise after this attempt, so I'll leave it at this: I would be utterly shocked if "Donnie Van Gogh" memes don't exist yet.

Hi human, I'm high. Are you high, too? Because this reads like something I would write while high. And I'm for serious.

It took me all of 90 seconds to read through your comment history and confirm you are in some kind of pain, the kind that breeds misplaced anger at the lack of stability in your own identity.

You did, however, ponder one valuable bit of insight at the end of your recent AITA post (15 days ago) regarding your wife quitting her job and her not listening to you. Please follow your instinct here. Please do be open to your wife about going your separate ways.

Real talk, she will be better off without you. You act as if she's holding you back, all the while it sounds like she's been holding you up. It seems you are the one holding both of you back, and projecting this financial and identity instability onto others is illustrative of your own issues.

You don't seem like a legitimate troll. You seem like you're fighting for your own identity and you're projecting your frustrations by asserting other people are deluded in knowing who they are and somehow insane for wanting a modicum of human respect. Yet I think you and many, many others like you, are those truly struggling.

I think you are currently showing a lack of respect to others because, deep down, you don't respect yourself. And that is not okay. Needing and seeking help and direction from others, including mental health professionals, is not a blue-haired liberal thing, it's a human thing. Please consider it.

I love geography and boy oh boy was I excited to visually confirm that Ohio is indeed The Sweaty Ass Crack of America®!

I got carried away drawing the rest of the human creature American specimen. Thoughts on better knuckle placement?

Unfortunately there are young fucks (relatively) who do the same damn thing. In re: Kristi Noem, SD gov (if anyone hasn't heard of her, she's a potential running mate for Trump, and hasn't paid an ounce of attention to her state since she was sworn in, in 2019). She flipped out when SD passed their recreational measure in 2020 and had the state supreme court overrule it with an incredibly flimsy argument essentially saying the measure wasn't valid in the ballot as written (the state's fault really, or was that "oversight" some kind of conspiracy?). Went against the majority, in a state where 2/3 of voters are Republican, forfeited millions in easy tax revenue, all to reject the will of the people simply because she doesn't like it.

Party of small government and freedom, eh? Her words are like her lips: bloated and fake, fully ingenuine.

I'm sorry but why does he look like an aging emo?

I hadn't seen this before, and it was generally really enlightening that these Trump supporters have genuine concerns for the working class, obvious as that should be by now. It just sucks that they've been hoodwinked into thinking that Trump is their savior from the corporate oligarchy that is clearly affecting us all. Misplaced reverence to a guy who is a mechanism in the same pro-corporate atmosphere. If only they realized that the Democrat party (flawed as it is) actually works toward their interests with policy (edit: toward improving wages, taxing the ultra rich more fairly, healthcare ideally for all, social programs, etc.), rather than attaching themselves to this "not-a-career-politician" who couldn't care less about them. Maybe not all hope is lost on trump supporters, but the cult of personality is much too strong and has been for a long time.

And not to mention tough for their UNDERAGE CHILDREN!!!

^/s^

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

When you said "check for [spy] bugs," I first thought you meant literal insecty bugs, and that made plenty of rational sense to me, because who wouldn't come back with even more potent insecticide to douse those couches, maybe some Super-Potent Fabric-Penetrable Bug Annihilator, one formulated for Previously Penetrated Couches, in order to kill the very particular kinds of creepy crawly bugs that JD seems like he carries around on his creepy crawly body.

You know, I've been thinking ... There's gotta be another layer of complexity in all that projection vectored through his hating on "childless cat ladies" nonsense, other than the obvious "I'm scared of happily independent women" business.

Fleas. I'm thinking he has fleas. JD Vance has fleas. You know, because something, something, cats.

Bed bugs would also make sense. Him fucking furniture and all. Bed bugs are, after all, the herpes of the craft couch-coitus world.

The worst part is knowing that they're (most likely) just listening to the loudest voter in their household even if other opinions manage to exist in their family.

I only remembered my dad talking about Bush or scoffing at this or that "donkey" thing so I thought it was Bush and the elephants I was supposed to like. I know I would have voted as such in something like this because I didn't know any better at 6-8 years old, although I'm not finding the kids' age ranges in this mock election. Anyway, I still didn't know any better in junior high, I remember voting for Bush again in a 7th grade social studies poll on the 2004 elections. I recall the teacher saying even the results amongst one class were usually a pretty accurate reflection of the actual election results, right down to the goob who voted for Nader.

It took me going to college in the purplest damn section of a pretty red state for me to come to terms with what I actually believed and felt about people and politics. Further education was definitely key, and intertwined with that, it opened me up to people. Just talking to people in an environment where you're all on essentially the same operating level day to day is huge.

My dad kept doing his thing in the small town where everyone knew everyone and somehow managed to sleep with everyone, too. He turned into a Trumper. I did my thing and I admit, it took me a lot of those four years of working on projects and getting pissed about loans together but really just enjoying life with a modestly diverse, pretty tolerant student body (still a lot of white raised-as-protestant types) to undo the damage of a conservatively skewed and Catholic childhood. But I can tell you that by 2014 I was annoyed at myself for not caring about the 2012 election, this first time I could vote. And you can guess I most certainly never even considered supporting Trump or any of the terrible things he represents when he suddenly-to-me showed up.

Would it make any reasonable sense for my dad to go to college at his age? No, probably not. But how do we get people to "simply" live around and be exposed to more people with relatively little prejudice in social status?

Do we just ... Idk where I'm going with this I got high but wait just a tick here did I just reason myself into communism ^fuckity^^shit^

Oh

Oh no

I feel like I just read a Dr. Bronner's soap bottle label.

I uninstalled the McDonald's app last November(?) when they tried to make me accept their bullshit binding arbitration T&Cs.

Saving money, feeling better, not supporting fascism.

Noooo!! You've managed to both unlock a core memory about some unnameable PBS show featuring clock-loving clown ladies AND INSTANTLY RUIN IT!!!

wot in the nation of tarn

Alright, so I quite literally haven't stepped foot into Walmart since June of 2015. The only money I've given them since was for two grocery pick-ups during early COVID when it was in a 5% cashback category on my CC. I have no idea of what changes have been made in the physical stores since then, and this sounds ... Horrifying. What happens if the price changes before you check out? I would feel duped. Are they going to make you "check in" when you enter so they can give you the price at time of entry? Or are you SOL if you don't make it to the cash register in time? And wouldn't that extra rush to get out make them lose money on stuff you pick up wandering around? Or maybe they want you in and out as fast as possible. What a clusterfuck.

I do love telling people about my Walmart-less living when it suits the conversation, and 90% of the time they are shocked, absolutely flabbergasted. "How can you do that?! Where do you get all of your stuff?!?" Well, like many middling American cities home to at least 20,000 people, there is a Target, Walgreens, a regional grocery store, Maurices, and for some reason like 12 auto parts stores right down the street. I can't recall anything in Walmart, aside from exclusive clothing brands (if you can call them that), that I haven't found elsewhere in at least some quantity-per-package. I get that people want a one-and-done shopping experience, but besides my routine Aldi stops, I don't shop that much anymore, even online.

My reasons? I would like to say that I am boycotting them for paying shit wages, being viciously anti-union, and all the other ethical shortcomings that never seem to improve. And that definitely is a part of it. But the main reason, the one setting me on my path toward Walmart Recovery (I should start up a Wal-Anon) was from the experience I had the night I needed to buy a broom, my last night or day in that store.

It was somewhere between 11 and 1 am (definitely after 11) and I had just moved house into a... House. (I was in an apartment previously.) The place needed a serious cleaning, and I simply did not have the correct broom for the job. Picked out the broom and a few other cleaning things, all was well. But shortly before checking out, a group of rowdy youngsters in their late teens sidled by me, laughing about something while also eyeballing my cart with the broom and other boring household accoutrements. I was but 23. I guess I hadn't shaken the adolescent anxiety of feeling judged about appearances and actions at that point, but the thought that these slightly younger peers were making fun of my broom shopping was too much to bear.

"Oh my gawd, who buys a broom on a Friday night?? Get a life, ya loser."

"I did. I did get a life! I'm moving on up, bitches! I went from a 500 sqft apartment to an 800 sqft house with fuckin windows on all sides! I can put plants in every room, every nook and tiny-ass cranny! And I can bring my cat! And if that damn house of mine needs a broom at midnight, then my gods, I am going to go out and fucking GET ONE."

Anyway, that's my story about how I broke up with Walmart. DM me for requests to join Wal-Anon, we have plenty of seats for everybody! (The room will be free of any and all Mainstays furnishings and the coffee will be served sans Great Value cups, I assure you.)

Maybe your annoyance (understandable) is part of the point? There are so many things to attack, so many legitimate concerns, that simply calling him weird could spark a little reflection in his supporters and would-be voters, let alone the obvious shock to Trump's vanity.

It's not something you can easily deny as a conspiracy theory or fake news or any other excuse about his words and behavior. The man is weird. And psychologically, I think it's harder to defend a person described that way, or at least makes a defender get a little self-conscious. Trump being deemed weird is really indefensible, and I think it could work in deflating the cult of personality around him.

Not everyone can identify maniacal dictator rhetoric for what it is, and the power dynamic is clearly alluring to Trump supporters. However, knowing a weird person or even being called weird at some point is something almost everyone has experience with. It's uncomfortable. It makes you ask yourself what it is about a person that makes them weird. I think they're on to something here. It might give supporters pause and will most definitely give Trump a complex.

Soooo, I kind of got déjà vu reading this article because ... Six days ago I "foresaw" the relevance of "weird." Comment thread here (I think) or just check out post my post history.

The author brings up a ton of specific points I called out, including using similar words like "flip" the script and referencing how "basket of deplorables" was too directed. Were we all thinking sbout "weird" in this context six days ago already? If not... I am weirded out, y'all.

On the flip side, too much of that sweet, sweet serotonin will fuck you up. At the very least, it'll make you sweat like a stuck pig while you (unknowingly) begin tiptoeing toward the precipice of full-blown serotonin syndrome.

Source: Was on Adderall 30mg plus tiny 25mg Zoloft dose "for anxiety maintenance" for two years. Well, at some point this past fall and spring, I must have started making more serotonin naturally or magically idk, not a doctor or witch doctor. And I only recently reread the serotonin syndrome symptom shortlist and finally put two and two together. One's face should not literally drip sweat walking around a 74° house to grab laundry and one's heart rate should not be spiking to 160bpm merely attempting to put gotdamn makeup on that very same face, the face full of fuckin sweat fountains.

I wasn't just maintaining my anxiety, I physically manifested my anxiety in all the worst ways.

This is actually really fascinating to me, the idea that citizenship/nationality is a bigger factor in how you feel and that race isn't a key factor. It tells me maybe society (globally, generally) is getting less plainly racist, but anxieties around nationality (and what that could indicate about individual attitudes and intentions) is obviously rising and taking its place, so racism ends up being obliquely adjacent to the more direct fear of the state. In other words, general society is making progress with being comfortable with people of different races, whereas country of origin becoming more worrying and slowing down progress.

What a strange disconnect there. We don't fear individuals, we fear what they represent.

(I ate a gummy an hour ago tho sooooo I feel like I'm just stating the obvious so ... Maybe?)

Waaait... I am on Adderall for ADHD but also enjoy an herby comedown at the end of the day. So what does that make me? A filthy centrist?! What is this dichotomous drug-fueled political identity crisis I'm experiencing?!?!

^/s^

I get where you're coming from, and you make a point with "deplorable" being meme-ified into some twisted identity thing. But I also think the collective "basket of deplorables" doesn't apply here. Harris isn't calling Trump supporters weird; she's calling just him weird.

This does a few things: it keeps the focus on Trump, allowing supporters to distance themselves from the statement. The lack of attachment to any particular action, statements, belief, etc. lets a person think about it "nakedly." Why is he weird?

Yes, we both know why, but this flips the script from the last 10 years from "here are various reasons why Trump is horrifying and could also be considered weird" to "Trump is weird, I'll let you chew on that."

It's all in the delivery. Stating what he is without explaining why.

I think it's worth returning a bit of agency to people in general to assess how they feel about that statement and come to their own conclusions. Edit: Especially because many of these people have attached themselves to Trump because they feel they have no agency otherwise. Could this be a means to cracking through the brainwashed masses? Something akin to, "wait, why am I idolizing this guy again?" Wishful thinking, yes, but being"plain weird" is such a broadly sweeping generalization that something should organically pop up in trump supporters' brains, without our prompting.

I think maybe it's both? Too harsh of sentences (in some cases or jurisdictions) might contribute to a general police mindset which "conflates" the legal repercussions of rape with murder. This leads to or reinforces victim-shaming questions like, "do you really want to ruin their life over this?"

The rule of law and law enforcement need to strike a better balance in both directions I think.

With the rest of the house being normal-to-very clean, it's almost like the parents were never able to make her clean her room because she was a territorial "devil" child, and they just let it slide for years and years.

Maybe what started as s genuine attempt at hangout ended up with her finally recognizing how embarrassing the situation was, leading to her cooling off during later chats?

Either that or it was all an elaborate ruse to get the wild child a free room cleaning and the parents were somehow in on it and everyone except you in this story is actually nuts!

Quite the spectrum of possibility, really. But honestly, I have a feeling your help might have helped her grow up and out of her family's (or her own) neglect. It was a kind thing you did, regardless of the weird-ass circumstances!

What if we work backwards on this?

1. Introduce community boxes at junction points where USPS already delivers, and/or next to a parks so you can say hi to your neighbors and stuff. Ensure any box is within a tolerable walking distance for the average community member served. (Best figure five minutes here folks.)

2. Allow residents with mail being delivered to their physical addresses to opt in to delivery at their associated neighborhood box.

3. Market the boxes as happy medium between visiting a staffed post office at the center of a city and risky doorstep delivery. Locked boxes large enough to accommodate everyday parcels basically nix those pesky pilfering porch pirates.

4. Continue regularly scheduled deliveries to individual addresses because the route will continue to exist at some level of specificity anyway no matter how many or how few community boxes materialize. Carriers essentially keep the same routes but get to drop mad loads of male mail into a bunch of ready and willing local slots near you, driving efficiency up and logistics strategists wild.

5. Promote additional box patronage by offering a slight discount whenever postage/shipping is purchased for a specific physical address utilizing delivery to a community box. Immediate and total coverage of community boxes across America is neither expected nor necessary, but hell, reward those who lighten that load for others.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk!

sincerely, louise dajoy

Edit: got high while writing and it took a turn for the weird

Pay him under the table, through the grapevine, what have you. I get the feeling he'd have no qualms about such an arrangement. I would rather have bribery bidding wars than (any more) real war.

Edit: Unless bribes have historically started wars, idk I am high and forgot any and all history trivia long ago to the clouuuuds. Also, am I in a fever dream?

I must admit, I am a bit high right now, but I tittered heartily at your lighthearted turnabout, and then my mind, well, now it's blown, because I now must ask... Does any particular ethnicity or racial identity have a statistically significantly higher birth rate than any and all other identity groups simply because, and with all other factors controlled for, they find themselves and people like them just so irresistibly sexy that they can't help but have the sexy sex with each other, and because they are both so damn sexy they can't even right now, and "we're having sex can't you see" and ask you to come back later to ask your weird sex questions???

Any particular one? ... Anyone?

My brother in Christ you have described almost the exact same specs I visualized. The only difference is in the level of resolution of my "scene." And by that, I mean essentially I did a few more render passes in my head to anchor everything you've written within a sort of Impressionistic, highly softened, out-of-focus backdrop. I saw hints of shadowy cabinets, the concept of a darkened kitchen out of sight. The shape and finger placement of my slightly more textured, clothed yet featureless male. The gray-brown feeling of a floor below, a dark white ceiling above, and the faded glow of sunlight through an unseen dining room window grazing one end of that oaken table.

But the basics ... They're the same, and before being asked to recall them. Damn.

And it sounds like you are still overlooking all of the qualifiers and nuance in my nonscholarly, inebriated statements. In neither post did I assert "society is not racist."

I wonder if the effect would be akin to mixing every paint color and getting "super dark greyish black-brown" as a result.

My guess would be "super icy horrifying franken-fruit."

Yup, I sure do! (Does this help me figure out what I am?!?)

Have you heard any specific reasons for the mail hoarder's actions at your current workplace, or is it still a fresh case? I'm guessing it was nefarious, since the mail outbox was closer and seemingly more obvious than the secret stashing cabinet. Just wanted to be a dingus to intended mail recipients? I'd also be curious if it was all mail they handled or just select pieces. So many burning questions!!

I am a contractor so I don't work in a standard office setting right now. I miss the heck out of juicy office gossip, at least about those who deserve such sordid stories! (Karen in accounting is actually really nice, Carl.)

Aaaaand now I wonder if you (and your friend) are experiencing a wicked case of DID. Please consult your totally real psychologist on that for more info on how to reign in your diverging personalities. (Wouldn't wanna have to get your lawyer involved, you know, like if your online troll personality state starts wreaking legal havoc in real life. Who would be to blame? You?! Or you?!!?!)

Serious question. And making the forgiving assumption your "friend" wasn't just a cover story. This troll business you opened up here, do you you actually believe and stand behind what you profess?

Not too bad! All things considered anyway. I started coming down with what turned out to be COVID last Thursday (sigh), 4 days after returning from an insanely fun time at Chicago's Riot Fest (yay!). Lucky for me, it's been the equivalent of a moderate cold, with much less fatigue and lack of desire to do literally anything than when I had it the first time 14 months ago. Then again, I slept well into Friday afternoon and now I can't sleep again and it's 4am CDT, oops.

Back to Riot Fest though... Oh man, I wish I could go back! Seeing 17 full sets from various punk rock, emo, indie, avant-garde, metal, post-hardcore bands was the highlight of my year. Turnstile, Death Cab for Cutie, Queens of the Stone Age, Mr. Bungle, AFI, and The Dresden Dolls were probably my favorite. Hawthorne Heights and Silverstein were solid, Bowling for Soup was surprisingly fun, and Death Grips was just inteeense. I'm really sad I missed Corey Feldman though, huehue.

Anywho, this is my first post ever on Lemmy. I have no idea how this will even show up (username? at something?) so this is fun. Cheers!