You are likely scanning my profile and history because I said something in a tone that made you feel funny or angry. This is called being reactionary. You can overcome it.
The Coal Rollers are going to have to start using alternatives like graphite pigment dust, maybe play loud recordings of engine noises as their electric motor whirs away quietly under the hood.
Flail harder, it will only serve YOU better in life if you train yourself to not be lazy in a medium that's already massively effortless. But yeah, go ahead and be the victim of a "cruel, wicked redditor" or whatever group you need to imagine is attacking you to preserve your ego.
Part of me almost wants to see it through, so that all the angry chuds who empowered and supported this also start getting put on trains because they're out of shape, smelly, autistic, have weird hair and poor fashion and don't want to work. The pinnacle aryan mascline aesthetic that fascism wants for the US doesn't have a place for dudes who live off mom's chicken nuggies and have rooms covered with anime and My Little Pony porn.
This was the most comment I've read all day.
A lot of people also really need to understand that their shells aren't just a covering or dead, bony plates. Their shells are actually quite sensitive and I've had a few tortoises that love back scratches. Please be kind to turtles and don't stomp on them, despite what video games have taught you.
I really, genuinely, with all my heart, hope the thing becomes a 15-year boondoggle that stays snarled in red-tape and scandal and the whole country has to just stare at like, a quarter of the whole white house in ruins for years and years to come as a reminder of how fucking stupid this country is and how broken we are as a society.
I want any references to Trump in the future to always feature a picture of a partially mangled white house in the background.
I don't trust people to do this anymore. A lot of people, across just about every segment of the population, are blisteringly stupid and can't actually form critical thought.
I get in an argument almost every week because someone, either in real life or online, can't tell what "better" or "worse" mean. This is a rising effect that emerges from large-scale cognitive decline, a black-and-white system of analysis of the world. So if I say to someone "This tie-down system is more safe than the tie-downs you're using" I fully expect now for someone to say "My system isn't dangerous, why are you saying it's dangerous?" instead of understanding that there are risk levels that scale and I'm not talking absolutes. I never had interactions like this before and I have to now carefully tip-toe around every professional conversation because nuance is dead.
This is one tiny sliver of an example, but it's widespread. People largely are having a very, very hard time figuring out anything on their own. Even basic shit like values and ethics... had a friend suddenly convert to evangelical christianity out of fucking nowhere because he had a crisis because he couldn't figure out if he was "good" or not and now just preaches gospel every interaction and admits it makes it easier because he "doesn't have to think about it" and just knows he's "saved."
A bigger example: the entire covid 19 thing.
please fucking do the thing your entire country is built on and riot against tyranny
I'm not so sure we've ever done that, as much as riot to create our own systems of tyranny that we wanted.
I read history. Not just modern history, but for the last several thousand years we've been doing this. As long as there's been money or political power, there's been people using it to game the system and get away with heinous acts against others, particularly rape and murder... we apes really love our rape and murder powered by money.
Because there's always going to be some segment of any population who will do this and leverage trade and political capital to get away with whatever they want, there always needs to be regulations to protect us from ourselves. The problem is, too many of our dumbest people see that idea as unfair, because somewhere inside they want to be the ones who can get away with anything and think they might have a chance still.
Back in the Before Times, there was a lot more freedom in airports, you could wander in and out of the terminals and there was more to do. I remember distinctly the Little Rock airport had a lot of arcade games and Nintendo 64 kiosks through the whole Southwest terminal. This was before 9/11, when our whole country decided all at once that we need to self-immolate ourselves and stop enjoying anything ever again.
This is the social attitude that forces of capital want every human on Earth to share, and it's spreading like fucking fire through dry brush right now. It knows no borders, it's just the the USA was the big dog on the block that everyone looks to, so we see it here first. It's wrecking many other countries as we speak in the exact same way.
The bigger concern here is that tech companies and governments can now use this to shape conversations, social attitudes and forge consent with the touch of a button.
For example: if you read a big reddit post that has thousands of comments, and everyone in the comments are saying how ridiculous it is to think the sky isn't green, you're going to say "What the hell is everyone talking about? The sky is blue." And then 40 very real-seeming people in comments pile on you and make fun of you, call you crazy or stupid, tell you that you're either dumb or you don't know the names of colors, tell you that you're a member of some group you've never heard of before, send you links even to a site that explains talks about people like you who don't know what color the sky is, etc. etc.
Well, you're going to probably feel really strange and maybe even go outside to look up and make sure. Even if you don't actually change your mind and accept the sky is green, enough social pressure got you to question something you know deeply to be true. (Sorry if you're colorblind, but the idea stands.)
That's something major that's easy to confirm and it will still seed doubt in some segment of the population. What about less obvious things? What about political agendas, wars and ethnic cleansing? "race science" and other tools of fascism?
Imagine if you see three top posts a week talking about how useful it is having cameras upload all your daily data to a mysterious new tech company "Wow, Ritnelap's new full house surveillance system caught another burglar trying to break into my house last night!" "Yah, same! These systems are great, I don't know how I lived without them before!"
And on and on.
If you know in advance that copying and pasting an AI summary isn't going to go over well, why do it?
I mean, really I want to dig in here... you didn't even read the information and click the links and summarize yourself, you didn't even type out the AI summary in your own words, you didn't even actually copy and paste the text... YOU PASTED A SCREENSHOT.
You need to look at your life son. Seriously, what are you doing here. You need to question what your brain is doing and how you're managing it, I'm not even kidding, these are warning signs.
"Sorry Mr Musk, that company name was ALSO taken already, the owner says he has no desire to sell it."
Good, the US needs to hit Europe prices to start appreciating how easy and insulated they are from the rest of the world. I genuinely hope our whole country grinds to a goddamn halt and people start gathering outside the white house with empty gas cans.
I mean, I would rather see people gathering outside the white house with FULL gas cans, but in this economy?
It's not a coincidence that the "peter explain the joke" and "what is this thing" and "What does this mean" kinds of subreddits and communities saw such a sharp spike in activity in the last couple years, and why so many of these posts are baffling and asking about the weirdest things.
It means two things:
- Yes, of course they're letting complex chat bots out to learn human behavior and even go as far as to let them make posts and create engagement in order to train themselves. This isn't even secret, Reddit's partnership with Google was announced years ago and they said this would happen. Of course it's going to spread outside reddit as more and more companies discard ethics and truth to get an edge in manipulating populations.
- People are actually getting significantly less aware and less cognitive. Scrolling was the gateway drug, AI summaries, youtube shorts and AI-made clip farms and distracting news cycles are the black-tar heroin.
I guess I'm just not down with "petty civility politics" but I care a lot more about the fact that we're starting another endless, pointless war that has already killed hundreds of children, designed to distract from the hundreds of children harmed by Epstein's friends, as the climate starts to boil over and the most dangerous weapon we've ever invented is being deregulated, all to make rich men richer, than I care about if the guy who is figureheading the entire thing wore a fucking hat.
The families of the dead soldiers will take no comfort if he wore a hat or not. The families of the Iranian children and families won't care, the families of the countless thousands killed in Gaza with the US support won't care. the MILLION PEOPLE dead from cutting off USaid won't care.
I hate that OP even shared this. Nobody is "ripping" anyone, it doesn't mean anything, it's more distraction, it's more pandering. The right is getting their own version of the same exact fucking story that says "Libs ENRAGED over Trump's hat instead of supporting our brave soldiers!" and neither side will ever, ever connect, capitulate or care what the other thinks. This is just pathetic masturbation about non-issues while the world literally burns.
It's called "bait" and it's what 90% of the internet is now.
I'm torn in that I know what you mean and I want to agree, I'm sure it matters to some segment of the old-guard republicans, I just don't think it matters where we need to the most, which is voting and political engagement.
I mean, if you want to see just how bad it is, read the 2024 exit polling where people are asked their politics and why they voted what they did... countless people who don't like Trump voted for Trump. Countless people who voted for Obama and Biden voted for Trump. There are interviews with family members of people who have been detained, deported or even murdered by ICE who shrug and say they will still vote for Trump.
That all ain't normal and I've been around a few. I feel strongly that something has shifted in public discourse and the only thing that will break the spell now will be if enough of these people who don't seem to care if anything is real or not, suddenly become really, really uncomfortable as a consequence of politics, otherwise it's all fake to them, it's all theater and suspension of disbelief for the sake of being part of a narrative. The 2020's and Covid have accelerated a lot of people into a kind of headspace that isn't reasonable or logical and AI and slop media is making it worse every day.
I think the $100+ per barrel gas prices right now are probably going to do far more to swing conservatives and liberals than all the ceremony and tradition in the world.