🦆… 🗞️💥

I am ashamed to admit that I saw “Hawkeye” and thought - “Wow… I don’t remember that bit from Endgame / the Hawkeye Disney+ show… I need to watch it again…” 😓

There are no safe havens for multiple reasons… there are places you can probably guess will be less bad… but there are potential worse consequences for each. For example :

• US military power already far exceeds that of every other country on Earth. It is not post WWI 🇩🇪 rearming after licking its wounds. If you go somewhere that “resists,” there is no guarantee you won’t fall under its 🎯
• COVID has seemed to have a lasting effect EVERYWHERE in the world. Look how many other countries have now elected far right wing officials. In 🇩🇪, the non-right coalition government has just collapsed.
• as an immigrant in any of those countries with newly elected right-wing anti-immigrant governments, you will be the first they punish for any perceived failures of said governments to improve their existing citizenry’s lives.

In truth, despite things like inflation getting “better” overall and other economic indicators seeming to point to improvement, an overwhelming number of constituents who participate in voting across the world have felt pain from price increases without sufficient wage increases to offset that pain… and without action being taken that “feels” like it improves people’s material conditions, they are further ripened for the 🐂-💩 scapegoating of demagogues who gladly lie to pretend they will make their lives better… so everywhere they are being elected.

It’s not fair, but history shows us this is what happens…

My favorite way to explain this to normies is with a weird thing that Denny’s breakfast joint did years ago…

For those I don’t know, by the way, Denny’s is a US crappy breakfast joint that sells two cent pancake breakfasts for five bucks.

Every year Danny’s used to have a “free breakfast” day… Where you could come in and they would give you a free breakfast.

Now again, this breakfast is crappy, but it’s completely free. And as a result of this, Denny’s all over the US have always had lines out the door of people coming there to get that crappy free breakfast.

Do you know why the line was around the corner?

Because people like simple good things like a free meal, no strings attached or special actions needed.

Now ask yourself this :

Would Denny’s have near as many people show up if they offered a means-tested 70% off reusable coupon that actually had unlimited uses and ultimately saved you more?

Or a mail-in rebate that only worked during a certain day of the week, or if they said “hey Denny’s customer! you better come to Denny’s on Tuesday because they’re going to otherwise get rid of free breakfast day later this year.”

The answer is no.

It’s stupid and sucks and is counterintuitive and even if the coupon had infinite uses, less people show up than would just for “free breakfast.”

People are dumb and their needs should be directly and fully resolved, not simply just gestured toward or only marginally addressed.

And so - just like if you tell them “you’re gonna lose the access to bodily autonomy” or “the ACA” or anything else… People don’t show up… At least not enough of them will.

See, generally no one cares when you tell them they’re going to lose something… they show up when you OFFER them something simple and that ACTUALLY improves their lives in a measurable material tangible easily-connected straight-line way.

Anyone posting here keeps up with the news and is well aware of every single policy proposal that each party has and their records…

…BUT 10 GODDAMN MILLION LESS PEOPLE VOTED this time and - as stupid as they are - it wasn’t third-party voters’ fault (because even if every 3rd party vote auto-went to Harris it wouldn’t have been enough for her to win) and the 🍊 didn’t get more votes than he did last time.

Yes, racism, sexism, etc. plays a role but inflation outpaced wage growth and there are people who remember getting a COVID check when Trump was president and the check stopped when Biden was president.

These people are unreachable with platitudes and telling them that “things are better” seems like gaslighting to them when they seem to not be able to afford as much, and they haven’t gotten a raise that even comes close to making up the difference.

It doesn’t matter who is actually at fault - they just know who is in charge when it was hurting… and unless you tell them, “I’m not like the person there now and I am going to fix it” and you make them believe you and you are fully and simply and directly addressing their concerns immediately - Not with a “70% off Denny’s coupon,” but with “free breakfast” kind of simple policies (even if you just lie to them like 🍊 does so openly)… then they will simply (and unfairly) vote for whoever is not “currently in charge” in their minds.

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Was gonna say - how long after Elden Ring did Shadow of the Erdtree DLC come out?

I know it’s in vogue to shit on Apple…

Apple does have a lot of vertical integration which allows first party stuff to function well and they work closely with a lot of their premium 3rd party software partners, but you try running an actual RAM hungry process like a local LLM model, for example, and all but the highest end latest edition MacBook Pro WILL shit the bed.

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Completely laughable. Literally had 16 GB of DDR3-1600 for my 2600K from 2011 that I handed down to a kid nephew for their first PC to tinker with. Hell, my local NAS has more than that…

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How is it that 2 days after this posted no one has said “Craigslist.”

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Because the world shifted to the right a bunch more regarding sexual content… fucking websites now want you to show your ID in some states to view porn.

I think acclaimed director Paul Verhoeven put it best when he called our country a land full of gleefully violent prudes when people freaked out about his use of sexuality, nudity and people being comfortable naked around members of the opposite sex.

Payday 2 was a really novel idea a long time ago. Highly scripted replayable missions with unique aspects but RNG for procedurally variable elements like guard patrol positions, locations and security aspects… in addition to dynamic changes based off how successful the player was at doing a job without letting security escalate the mission to going “loud.”

It made otherwise boring repetitive loops of missions feel new and different enough each time that it was exciting. Being randomly matched with others fed into the unpredictable heist aspect as well…

But instead of focusing on constantly further improving upon those systems, fixing terrible issues related to both friendly and antagonistic A.I. (I remember how for the longest time your teammates could not literally pick up a duffle bag), they saw dollar signs with in-app-purchases… and with Payday 3, they doubled down on that aspect… so no one got on board… and eventually longtime players like myself stopped playing Payday 2 as well.

“Can we have healthcare?”

“Sorry, best I can do is crappy mandated privatized health insurance that doesn’t really cover anything that we will also fine you for not having if you fail to pay thousands for it every year… and we’ll try to compromise with Rs who want to further sweep away any of the crumbs you have cobbled together… also missile contracts to feed the military industrial complex.”

I don’t know who “won” but I hate watching Allred - the guy who is supposed to be a Democratic alternative to Ted Cruz - repeatedly adopt right-wing framing on every issue, which just stands to let Republicans further ratchet everything to the right and normalizes the objectively brutal policies of the Rs.

This guy has my vote, but man neoliberal DNC stooges are always just giving Rs a win, depressing turnout and alienating anyone who wants to vote against the candidates who want to lock up kids in cages.

…a spellchecker on steroids.

Ask literally any of the LLM chat bots out there still using any headless GPT instances from 2023 how many Rs there are in “strawberry,” and enjoy. 🍓

I always thought “lollygag” was a southern speech idiom, like “piddling” or “dilly-dallying.”

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