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.

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.

Blake’s a good guy, but a little off-putting in person. He’s what my grandmother would call “a character.” I have no doubt he believes what he says, but I doubt the versatility of his claims on this.

The British Royal family. I’m an American, living in America, and the number of people here who follow the royals to the point of being sycophants is so freaking weird. I literally do not care about the machinations of a bunch of rich fucks who’s sole claim to fame and fortune is being sprayed out of the correct penis before then falling out of the correct vagina.

I think the most good I could do would be to go back to the mid-1700’s colonial America, probably a center of education like Philadelphia, Boston, or New York. Patient a couple of simple but yet-to-exist technologies like the addiator calculator, rifled gun barrel, etc, but especially the optical telegraph. I would try to leverage these devices/systems into myself joining the Continental Congress as a representative. The optical telegraph is 100% technology that was possible, but not in existence and one that I think could have had unforseen relevance to the founding of the United States. Imagine if long distance, nearly instantaneous communication had existed when the Constitution was being written… think about the implications of that for communication privacy protection. Might even be able to convince the founders to include such a system to be part of the constitutionally mandated post office. I think all it would take would be to point out how important communications had been in the War of Independence: “imagine Savannah has been attacked by Spain. It would take several days for a place like Boston to be alerted to that event… with the optical telegraph the whole nation would know within a matter of a few hours.” After all that, I’d probably try to help get germ theory off the ground and write rebuttals to push back on the various scientific racism theories floating about at that time.

I personally know Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who announced publicly in 2022 that he believed Google’s LaMDA large language model was becoming sentient. He doesn’t have a whole article about him, but he’s a whole section on LaMDA’s Wikipedia article.

Found out yesterday that a manager that hates me is extremely demoralized, currently job hunting, and already tried to quit.

Earlier this month, I found out that a different manager, who in the past tried to get me fired, themselves tried to resign at the beginning of the year. That manager’s contract is up in August and their department is failing on just about every metric imaginable so, they’re likely going to quit or be asked to resign at that point.

Finally, a coworker who was working with that second manager to try and get me fired was themselves fired by corporate for a multitude of reasons. These reasons include but are not limited to: credible accusations of drunk driving company vehicles, harassing and bullying others, offering cocaine to both coworkers and clients, and allegedly attempting to extort someone else out of their job… which is a felony (we’re currently encouraging their victim to go to authorities, but it involves leaked nudes and they are understandably embarrassed about the whole thing… which is their decision, no one can force them). This fired coworker once told a whole room of people “well if [TrueStoryBob] and I both walk into the GM’s office, who do you think is gonna walk out with a job.” Well, we can now definitively say it was them who would walk out of that office unemployed. They had to be forced off company property; like physically escorted onto the sidewalk by the GM and the Business Manager.

All of this has legitimately put a pep in my step. Overall, I like my job, however I was already putting my CV out there just in case. Now, I can stop the job search and not worry about potentially having to move as I also like where I live. By the way, my manager is an absolute dream who’s been watching these other two departments burn to the ground with unadulterated glee as both of these managers walk ass backwards into their own demise.

Jeans, a t-shirt, unbuttoned long sleeve flannel, and crew shoes. I keep a hoodie in my desk just in case.

I work at a TV station, it’s 68°F (20°C) in here all year round.

I think it means like a person is taking something that is foolish or misguided far to seriously.

Differential, différentielle, or diferencial

In English, French, and Spanish, it just sounds cool no matter what accent.

Nah, they’re probably planning to do what Amazon did with their “Just Walk Out” stores… force children into mines and just claim it’s actually AI. As NFT’s, Cryptocurrency, and so many other hype tech fads have taught us: marketing is cheaper than development.

You want a nearly risk free investment, I suggest a high interest bank deposit. No one “deserves” a return on mass mortgage speculation.

He’s already got my vote. He’s by zero means perfect, but I live in a swing state and cannot throw out “meh it’s terrible, but good enough considering” because it’s not perfect.

Here’s some things he could do to make “meh, it’s terrible but” into just “good”:

• Put any kind of pressure on Israel.
• Expand the Supreme Court.
• Executive order giving the NLRB Sectorial Bargaining at the Federal Level.
• Force the FCC to regulate data collection.
• Go back in time and allow the railroad workers to strike and threaten nationalization if the hedge funds that own the railroads don’t play ball.

Grounds Keeper Willy voice * They’re mortal enemies, like punk rock fans and k-pop fans, or punk rock fans and rap fans, or punk rock fans and punk rock fans… DAMN PUNK ROCK FANS, RUINING THE PUNK ROCK FANDOM!!!

Also, like as a joke, it’s just lazy. There are better and funnier ways to mock Trump and his allies. Going “her dur gayz” is hack.