I feel like this isn’t visceral enough.
It’s so insanely true, but people don’t understand… When they accuse someone of something, they’re about to do it, if they aren’t doing it already
I think this is why I found myself sobbing when my personal AI assistant called me human too many times…
I agree, but I don’t think we have 4 years. It took like 2 weeks for things to start falling apart, a month to dismantle all of our global soft power, and probably like 6 months for people to start dying in the streets. Our economy is collapsing, and with it the global economy
Bird flu could make the jump at any point too… Cutting regulations and public health funding is basically breeding another pandemic. Hell, honestly we might not even know it’s happening until we have a whistleblower
On the plus side, we’ve got constant protests, Europe is stepping up in a big way, and Trump has hurt right wing causes across the globe. We’ve got maga people screaming to get Musk out of the white house, Republicans and Democrats alike are booing their representatives for not doing something, and Trump looks like he’s rapidly aging. Billionaires who handed Trump the presidency control the media, and you know what most people aren’t seeing? The daily speeches trump is making, weirdly turning everything into something about real estate development. People hate Vance - Trump seems to be setting musk or his son up to be his successor, but they’re pretty universally hated too
We’re over the cliff - the pax America is over, there’s no going back. Things are going to get rough, things are going to get complicated, but an end is a new beginning. Maybe we can start building something better. I think we will. To me, the only question is how many people will die along the way, how long will we have to endure this slow (but now pretty fast) decline before we get past this
Or maybe this is just the end for our species. Either way, I don’t think there’s a “next time” in 4 years… There’s no going back. Only forward, into the unknown
You mean the guy who dropped out?
Biden won on basically not being Trump… That strategy only works when Trump is still in office. Public memory is short, shit is fucked and people want change desperately. Billionaires control the media, and they managed to convince enough people that Trump would be good for them (whether financially, religiously, or because they’re racist)
And let’s not forget, Trump barely won, no matter what he says. Between voter suppression and the manipulation we know of, that margin is razor thin - districts called it long before they finished counting votes
It would have been a blow out if the Democratic party wasn’t fucking around. Obama won on “change”, and didn’t deliver… People are so desperate for something different and the Democratic party is actively resisting the demands of their own supporters, let alone the people
I was joking that there’s literally about 10 trans athletes in college sports out of a couple hundred thousand total, it’s crazy how much of a non-issue it really is
You want us to name all 10?
That’s so wholesome. I’ve just told everyone I’ve ever worked for “I have to write and doodle to process information”, and after a few well timed comments they accepted it. I’ve been late because I had to grab a notepad, I’ve been questioned why I was taking notes when they were already writing down the tasks for everyone… Eventually they just all accepted I doodle and take incomprehensible notes during meetings
If I had a boss who just recognized why I do all that, I’d instantly feel more loyal to them. I mean, assuming they’re a good boss otherwise
Not really… Space travel is doing things without room to cut corners, it’s an enormous money hose in the short term due to government funding
In the longer term, the first group to set up full manufacturing outside the gravity well wins capitalism forever. Oxygen is corrosive, gravity and air pressure are constraining. You can make whatever you want in insane quantities, no risk of pollution, dirt cheap resources (if you can make it work)
The fact that billionaires aren’t putting more towards space flight exposes the lie of capitalism. Spaceflight would force us to learn how to live in our world without destroying it… It’s not the problem
The problem is they want to do it and be paid for every step of the way. They don’t want to risk their fortunes to gain even more… They want us to do the work for them, to make them richer in comparison to the rest of us
I used to have this pet theory that Elon was doing a zero’s requiem - to be such an oppressive billionaire that after he destroys everything, we’ll be able to rebuild fresh with a deep seated hatred towards billionaires and the systems that let them come to be
The idea is he goes from the “hero billionaire” that brings us the tech we need to fix the world and move forward, then shows his total ineptitude as he destroys the global economy, and finally dies or fakes his death so we can build a better world
But between the Nazi shit and the reckless destruction of things we need to handle climate change, the thought doesn’t come to my mind often anymore
I think the CIA has used them pretty extensively, but I don’t think they set them up directly
What the US did is force Mexico to join in on the drug war. We threatened to block all pharmaceuticals to Mexico if they didn’t ban marijuana, which they really didn’t want to do
I really hate this tendency to call everything AI. Especially this - my writing is very stream of consciousness if I don’t edit it, and I get accused of being so AI
Which is crazy because AI doesn’t do stream of consciousness. It usually is overly structured, or it’s nonsense. AI writing has low information density per word, where stream of consciousness is high (if harder to understand)
She was the VP, and who else did Democrats have? They didn’t primary and changed horses at the last minute… They had no one built up for it and little time to do it
I didn’t even hear very much about her being black or a woman - Trump took some shots, and they tried that angle on Fox and such, but most of that fell flat. They ended up calling her a communist and running on the economy - it seems extremely telling
Honestly, she did great until her advisors told her to ease up on the rhetoric and attacks, and basically crippled her already watered form political positions to the point it was “we’re going to do good things in a nuanced way, but we’re not going to take firm stands”
Lol, the first thing I was taught was to float over your floaty to distract them (if you have one) and approach them from behind, grabbing them over the shoulder and across their neck to their other arm pit
Then you pull them onto their back, so if they pull or cling to your arm no big deal, they have no leverage. And if they’re still flailing, you can pin their arms or even choke them out. You just have to be careful going in to avoid a head butt, but once you’ve subdued them you can focus on swimming them out, if they’ve calmed down they can even help by kicking
I’m really curious about the timeline of this progression, from “you might have to punch them” to “here’s an efficient way to fight them” to “let’s just take a few more seconds to subdue them gently every time”
I mean, they’re really drowned out under the sheer number of his terrible actions. It’s so much it sounds fake or exaggerated
That’s the most frustrating part to me. They tell you what they’re going to do by projecting it on Democrats, then when you try to have a conversation with someone who watches mainstream media it’s near impossible to find common ground
Bad idea. We’re at a point now where an all fish diet would actually poison you. We’ve dumped so much shit into the water that tends to bioaccumulate, and since big fish tend to eat smaller ones…
It kinda does… We’ve had a dark history. Our period of being better was basically just WW2 to recently
More accurately, they think everyone is as hypocritical as they are, so the fact they did it in their favor means they “won”
Orders of magnitude more competent. He could’ve come in there with his own accounting system and used bugs as an excuse for why the money wasn’t going where it was meant to. He could just deny and delay until people stop caring
Or if he was really competent, he could’ve gotten a list of all funding and put together his own teams to take over the contracts. Trump could’ve awarded contracts to musk left and right in the name of savings, and if he failed to deliver, oops.
The public wouldn’t even know he’s skimming off the top of government spending until it’s too late - he could build a business empire like that, even force through the payment platform he wants so bad by making everyone submit taxes through it
The game is rigged, and right now he’s sitting at the controls… He could’ve slowly entrenched himself while manufacturing problems to sell the solution, he could’ve created opportunities to stealthily invade every corner of our lives for power… Instead he’s basically just smashing the panel for the copper
Nope. The rest of the world will have to play defensive for this - it’s not just air traffic control causing these problems
It’s manufacturing and maintenance too - they’re going to continue to slash regulations and the inspectors enforcing them
Got an international flight coming in? Hopefully they’re meeting your standards before they take off. Our standards were more strict than most places outside Europe, and now if airlines don’t have to meet that bar to do business…
Yup. I had the exact same reaction - there’s no way they come out of there and say anything other than “some amount of the gold is missing”
The only question is are they going to follow that up with “and so we’re moving it to the Whitehouse for safekeeping” or are they going to walk out of there with $ print sacks
And the insane part is I can say the first part, and most people will agree. Everyone knows on some level that Trump will “find” any problem he goes looking for, reality be damned.
But say “he’s totally going to steal the gold” and suddenly it’s a bridge to far. He’s a billionaire, why does he need it? That’s absurd, the president wouldn’t rob fort Knox. He’s just auditing for corruption.
And honestly, solid chance a lot of the gold is missing already. But either way, in a few months we’re going to see him using a gold brick as a paperweight and a lot of people will still try to explain it away