That’s objectively bullshit.

The only other option is trump. Are you trying to get people to vote for trump? If so, why?

I don’t disagree. But we’re living in interesting times.

I don’t like most of the people on the ticket I’ll be given in November, but you know what’s objectively worse? Actual fascism. Fascism always ends in genocide, and these white Christian nationalists aren’t even trying to hide it, going mask-off even before they have the power to back it up.

When fascists can be this bold and still keep their seats of power, that’s quite worrying.

As I saw someone say earlier, we’re in democracy triage.

I’d vote for Biden’s corpse before trump or not voting. We must wrest all power from the fascists before we can squabble about who’s more left.

I hope people stop believing the bullshit that’s trying to get progressives to not vote or to vote for 3rd parties. Progressives absolutely can win democrat tickets, and that’s exactly why there’s so much propaganda trying to convince people otherwise. Progressives have a lot of political power right now, and the whole system can swing left if people don’t just give up. Progressives giving up is the only play the right has.

Can’t.

I’ve had literally insane run-ins with the US healthcare system, and have a bad enough health issue that I’ve been absolutely ruined by it: physically, mentally, financially, and socially. I do mean utterly – that was not hyperbole.

I have nothing else to add right now, because I have medically-induced PTSD and can’t even think about anything medical without having a panic attack now.

Just wanted to chime in with how bad it can get, and I know my situation isn’t as bad as it can be. It ruined everything for me and destroyed my family, but I never had to care for a dying child. There are no forbidden depths.

Well that seems to have backfired.

Excuse me, I seem to have facepalmed my eyeballs into the next room. Fuck.

Yeah, but some new tech won’t work at all if you don’t.

Plenty of people aren’t aware of that, and when you’re buying shit, it often obfuscates that fact.

Most people will buy shit having no idea the thing will require you to connect it to your wifi.

e: television is only one of the things. It’s getting harder to name things that don’t require this.

On a drive when I was ten, I asked my dad why the tall, skeletal towers had blinking lights. He said so planes wouldn’t crash into them. So I asked what the towers were for, and he said to hold up the lights.

That fucked with me for like ten more years.

This will sound ridiculous to most people:

I didn’t go to school after the 8th grade. I dropped out for several reasons, but even without lying, I talked my way into a very good career in IT. There was no database of schooling and I was hired on my personal merits, then I built a user experience department before that was actually a thing.

Within a few years, I was responsible for hiring but couldn’t hire anyone like myself. I wasn’t allowed to even consider anyone without a college degree, so I would have had to reject myself.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. That was 2002, and now in 2024, we’re rejecting people who might be awesome at their job (not to toot my horn, but I was very good at what I did and won industry awards) because they can’t afford to get a degree, as I couldn’t.

Most industries are pay to play now, and you can’t even break in by being exceptional nowadays. We’re trapping people out of what they’re great at and would love to do just because they were born into poverty.

Imagine the gifts we’re suppressing and squandering.

These lunatics have a disturbing amount of control in the US government.

Laughing at them might be fun, and I was doing it until recently, but they’re not joking. The worse our climate disasters become – and they will very soon – the more scared people will become, and the more these groups will take advantage of that fear. We’ll see more climate refugees, more desperation, and more fear. These groups prey on fear, and they’ll amplify it on purpose.

True fascism thrives on fear, which is why these people amplify it like they do. When climate disasters accelerate, these groups will harness the social upheaval to take control. I don’t know what we can do to stop it, but we should all be thinking about and sharing ways to head it off, because they’ve got plans in place already.

I know I sound paranoid, but I’ve been watching them and these aren’t my ideas, but theirs. They talk about this a lot, and if we aren’t prepared, their plans could actually work. I don’t want to live in the fascist future they’re planning. If we don’t combat it, we’ll be living in the Handmaid’s Tale before most of us realise.

Yes.

Also phones made in the US have back doors that the US government can access. It’s not really secret.

Hard disagree.

If it were that easy, why hasn’t the US put this to bed over the many decades this situation has been going on in that region?

If your solution can be stated in one sentence, I promise it’s too myopic to work. The situation there is massively complex, and every easy solution has been tried at least once.

Biden is president of the US, not the world. He has little more ability to stop the latest flare up of that decades long conflict than does Trudeau or any other nation’s leader.

What do you expect him to do about it that he isn’t already doing?

e: more to the point, what do you think Trump would do that would have any real effect?

I never stopped wearing masks since the beginning, and get boosted every time it’s available.

I’ve always taken Covid seriously, same as the flu for which we get yearly boosters.

I’ll always be angry at antivaxxers that this thing that could have been contained like SARS was turned globally endemic because morons refuse to live in reality, so I’ll probably have to mask for the rest of my life (I have autoimmune issues that don’t play nice with Covid and I’d likely die very, very horribly, slowly and painfully drowning alone in an isolation room).

So yeah, I won’t forget who’s fault this is.

Pall Malls were marketed to pregnant women for stress control by people who played doctors on television as late as the early 1980s. You could even smoke in your hospital room.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

I’ve got this weird disease where my body can’t process fruits or veg, only meat, rice, pasta, and dairy.

I’m so excited for sustainable, lab-grown meat, I can’t even tell you. Living on rice and pasta alone sucks (even with dietary supplements), so I can’t ditch animal products.

They keep promising it, but every related headline is this bullshit. Hey corporate meat scientists: stop trying to make animal farming a thing in the future and start growing cloned steaks, please.