we need to fix the actual problem: oligarchs.

the problem is, nobody is angry enough yet to do what needs to be done.

there is no peaceful solution to this problem. as soon as the oligarchs stop deserving to live in houses with unbroken windows and unburnt lawns, we’ll be ready for the solution.

America has the problem all conqueror cultures have - they exist only as long as there are things to conquer.

The history of itself that America tells itself is a long series of self-serving revisionist narratives about how we’re justified in our unjustifiable actions. White Americans tell themselves its totally okay to appropriate from other cultures what is lacking in their own. Whiteness is not a cultural identity and that inherent hollowness produces what we see around us. There is no community of whites like there is community within the cultures the white identity seeks to oppress (while admiring and stealing from). If left unchecked, white supremacist identity seeks to stamp out the oppressed they’ve exploited (then tell themselves all of that stolen culture was rightfully theirs all along).

The whole “bootstraps” culture is a community-destroying myth that Americans have perpetrated upon themselves solely to keep rich pedophiles in power.

Just remember - we’ll get out of this the same way we got out of it the last time.

We’ll do it just as soon as enough folks realize last time wasn’t resolved peacefully.

Who’s european in this conversation? I’m not.

Projection ain’t just for the cinemas, my guy.

Maybe instead of making assumptions, try asking questions instead. You don’t know as much as you assume.

Shits too important to waste effort on lost causes.

If you really believed that, you’d be focusing your efforts elsewhere.

2025 was the first time since 2017

Your timeline is misaligned by at least a decade and missing the forest for the trees. In 2025, we’re on the brink of WWIII. The DNC has been hand-in-iron-fist with the GQP since 9/11 and the Patriot Act. Both parties merrily marching us to fascist authoritarianism. The only disagreement being who’d be the eventual Fuhrer.

But shit changed, and if Martin paves the wave for FDR 2.0

This is the problem with Dems. They’re fixated on repeating the mistakes of the past because they’ve only read the sanitized versions of history used in public schools. FDR 1.0 caused the double-dip in the Great Depression with his New Deal. Friedman’s Economic History of the United States covered it thoroughly. Maybe try reading some more modern economics strategies, like UBI, or wildly crazy shit like re-enacting the prohibition against Congress owning securities, enacting anti-gerrymandering legislation, and open-auditing of all electronic voting machines, plus enacting a general cap on all campaign expenditures of a nominal value with any remainders automatically allocated to the federal treasury to restore impartiality to our elected representatives.

The anger you’re seeing is because not only is the process long, but the outcomes are stupid and not worthwhile. Biden put on a demonstration of what competent leadership looks like. It was impressive to watch the things his cabinet was accomplishing. If it were any other yesteryear, it would have been an administration lauded for its competence.

But literally the one thing they didn’t touch was any of the linchpins to their lucrative kleptocratic establishment. All of the mechanisms that could have prevented allowing a known pedophile a second term in the oval office would have required addressing systemic corruptions that would have disturbed their seats of power. Instead, the Biden administration had other priorities instead of preventing what did happen - a rigged election. Thanks for the “assist”, Elon. As a reward for his help, Elon gets to rummage around in federal databases destroying evidence of this and other crimes. And Dems get to watch once again, as the minority party plays them for the fools they are.

You might not think this is the time to quit. I don’t think you should have ever started because you’re still pulling for the wrong team. There is no evidence to suggest your efforts are anything but too little, much too late.

At this point, I am incredibly skeptical that America has a peaceful way out of the current situation we’re in. Dems are very much not anti-authoritarian. They will not give up the executive powers that the GQP has so graciously secured for them. That’s the one thing you can always count on. Power, once centralized, is only ever decentralized through violence.

Nobody said that was the only step. Don’t be daft.

The rest of this will get fixed (as much as it can be considered “fixed”) after November, when the impeachments start. Everybody with a handful of neurons to rub together knows that. Steve Bannon’s been chirping about how they’re all going to prison after November for months now.

Between then and now is damage control. Starting with getting the pedo out of the White House.

Iran’s going to be a problem for years to come. There’s very little we can do about it now. We can stop the aggression. We can’t force the strait open. That’s up to the Iranians. And they’ve been spending recent weeks dragging neighboring countries into this mess. So, now nearly the entire middle east is involved. When we pull our folks out, we cannot guarantee what happens next. Israel seems fairly intent on continuing to pursue their goals in the region with or without us.

Plus, now China’s playing games in the South Pacific in response to threats from PedoTUS and there’s recent information that Russia’s entire military effort in Ukraine is propped up by China as well. Iran, similarly, is propped up by Russian and Chinese munitions. This entire fiasco in the strait is part of a much, much bigger US-China conflict that we’ll be dealing with for quite a while.

The global balance of power has irrevocably shifted.

I don’t understand how people keep falling for billionaire propaganda.

Because there is, quite literally, nothing else. Who is talking about it being fixed besides you? Anybody with any credibility?

The DNC’s problem is exemplified by the old joke - If a Democrat found a magic lamp, rubbed it, and got three wishes from a djinn, they’d negotiate down to one and then wish for whatever the nearest Republican wants.

The DNC doesn’t stand for anything beyond lining the pockets of insider traders like Nancy Pelosi. Same as the Republicans, just minus all the goosestepping, conspiracy theories, and shilling for supplements. They aren’t the same, but being the only alternative doesn’t inherently make them better by default. They lost the plot trying to make the Clintons into a dynasty.

Fixing the systemic problems at the root of this goes all the way back to how these parties responded to Ross Perot and the elimination of third party viability. A strictly two party system is not a functional democracy. It’s a one party system masquerading as two parties.

There’s really one political party in the USA - the monied party. Which is why there’s so much billionaire propaganda for people to fall for.

Call your representatives. Demand they invoke the 25th amendment or Article 2 Section 4 of the US Constitution. Demand they remove an obviously demented and incompetent President from office.

The point is, literally nobody reacts to subway malfunctions with, “and we call this progress???” as if returning to previous modes of transport is somehow the right answer to problems with far less drastic solutions than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

LLMs are a new technology that people are still figuring out how to use effectively. Part of that process is becoming reliant upon “the new way of doing things” to prove that one can rely on it. Clearly, there’s more work to be done. (My dayjob includes working on this same reliability problem.)

One can argue the wisdom of being an early adopter in any new technology. Some thirty years ago, I was told I was insane for going all-in on Linux. The times change. The sanctimoniousness of the peanut gallery hasn’t. The lunatics betting the farm on all that wacky open source stuff three decades ago turned out to have been largely right, despite the numerous failed ventures involved in getting to here.

This is just how the new technology cycle works. With every new tech, a whole lot of people discover all of the ways it doesn’t work before somebody figures out the way to make it work more reliably than any alternative.

Funny how nobody seems to use this argument every time there’s a problem with the NYC subway.

You were also likely taught that the genocide of indigenous Americans was a past event, too.

I have met people who did not realize that indigenous Americans still exist.

Nice. Good for him.

I first met Chris around 2006 or so. Always been a decent person and very dedicated OSS contributor.

Oh good. Next wave counter-culture is starting to name itself. This is a fun period in any movement.

I was present for the early copyleft era that corporate software development exploited then squashed with more “business-friendly” OSS licenses. Now we’re seeing the mega-scale tech companies enshittifying their products necessitating a new wave of open-information counter-culture to fight the Big Tech birthed from the post-dot-com OSS movement.

History doesn’t repeat itself. It often rhymes.

TTT2 is just Tekken with some extra mechanics. Getting good requires learning the fundamentals of Tekken’s style of play. Juggle combos can be powerful, but it takes practice to get the timings down. Counters and Counter-Counters are important aspects of advanced gameplay. Use of the lateral movement capability is often under-utilized by most players, but can be powerful against excessively linear opponents.

The option going unused doesn’t invalidate the need for the option to be there, moron.

Some people make it pretty clear that the only thing they understand is forced behaviors. Almost like what they’re really after is eradication of individual choices on favor of top-down uniformity.

I’m pretty sure there’s a name for that kind of centrally held power…

? Trades people in the US are making really good money right now, and that’s because

Look up the average age of plumbers, electricians, and welders. What happens when a body of knowledge living in the collective heads of an aging population gets removed from the labor pool faster than we can get younger folks interested in learning that information?

Wages are high right now, in part, because finding a highly experienced, capable tradesman is constrained by the available supply in a given geographic region.

ROFL. Stow the faux benevolence. It’s nonsense. Nobody is acting out of the goodness of their hearts in a capitalist transaction. They’re choosing to pollute instead of choosing to do other things. That’s not for anyone’s benefit but their own. The long-term consequences are so well-understood that only the extremely selfish are optimizing for the short-term.

China’s choice to build a national highway system instead of a national railway system wasn’t done with ecological concerns as the priority. They’re, again, choosing to pollute more purely because of the short-run benefit instead of doing something else that optimizes for humanity’s collective benefit.

So weird how the supposedly collectivist country isn’t acting in all of our best interest. Communism is an idea so good that they’ll silence you forever if you disagree.

China is still the world’s leading polluter, in a time where those so-called “scientists” most definitely know what they’re doing contributing to global climate change like they are. No country is innocent, but making no attempt to not be first isn’t a defensible policy position.

I do. Do you?

A fetish is not necessarily something that needs or must be indulged. Some fetishes are better addressed with therapy. For a lot of the same reasons that nobody should be encouraging indulging in fetishes involving children.

Seek help.