FriendOfDeSoto

Constitutions are just documents. The US one isn’t bad, save for a few amendments. A constitution only works well if the people in the three branches act within the spirit of it. Once you get people in who DGAF you see all the breaking points in the system that are normally papered over by decorum and moral standards. And those are things you cannot necessarily write into laws. The exception to that is the way political parties and campaigns are funded; that’s definitely something that should be addressed.

It doesn’t really matter who will be the next US president. They won’t be the leader of the free world any more. They will be increasingly isolated on the world stage and dealing with a domestic landscape somewhere between unbelievably fractured and civil war.

At UN level, it will be pretty much impossible to sanction the US. They’ll just veto everything away. Either by procedure or behind the scenes diplomacy.

It is also debatable if UN level sanctions are that effective in 2026. North Korea kept finding creative ways to get around them.

And these days, WGAF about international law anyways? International law, shminternational law. Sorry, I’m busy. I’m off to abduct another dictator on trumped up charges and then run his country.

The EU resorted to counter-tariff the US where it hurts the financial contributors to 47 and his bootlickers the most. Harleys, jeans, and whisky were the first package, I think. I believe this is the only viable way to exert pressure. In 2026 that means playing hardball around the hardware for all this so-called AI stuff, somehow weening people off of US controled internet services, and not buying weapons from the US - just a few examples.

I’ve recently read it on a hotel key card in the instructions: insert key card and depress lever.

I think this is a rare case of where an actual phone conversation might clear up the confusion. If you have the number, that is.

I think it’s a happy balance of them not wanting to federate and many of us not wanting them to federate with us. Let’s not rock that apple cart.

Iron ≠ vitamin. You are really pissing out most of the vitamins in vitamin supplements. And when I say most it’s closer to all of it.

You can describe yourself any way you like. It’s helpful to provide context, like you did here. Without it you may not be understood. So know who you’re speaking to and provide it, especially when puzzled faces stare back at you.

The Anerican political theater has twice as many viable parties as North Korea. Contrast that with virtually any other democracy where there are at least a handful of parties fighting to be in charge. That doesn’t mean though that you don’t have enough different opinions to fill a party-political spectrum like that in the US. The dominance of the two parties just forces most people under one of the big tent roofs. So you have more conservative Democrats (and there used to be more liberal Republicans) in the party that are bigger in relative numbers compared to what you’ll find in the social democrats in Germany (or among the conservatives in France). The Democrats are nominally the more left leaning party. But if you compared the party programs they would align more with the conservative parties of Scandinavia. Everything is further to the right in the US thanks largely to gun laws and lack of social security. And that explains why you have non-lefty people in the nominally lefty party. And while bigotry and hatred are certainly not a new thing, there is a culture that permeates down from the political leadership. And if name calling and pouring oil into the fire of social issues are the new MO, and admissions and convictions respectively of sexual assault don’t keep candidates out of office, many people feel they are now also allowed to say the quiet part out loud.

For shits and giggles I watched Phantom Menace today. Because I figured I’ll never have as good (?) a reason to watch that … wonderful … movie again. And I had time. As with all things I know I don’t like, the rewatch was more enjoyable because I could brace for the trade dispute Jar Jar pod racing medichloriean bullshit and not get pissed off. But that’s really besides the point. Anakin is six in that movie and too old to be trained as a Jedi. And Padme is closer to 18. I think in terms of the actors’ real ages it’s more than a decade’s difference. And I totally forgot Ani is a Jesus baby too because Shmi doesn’t remember the conception. JFC, what a family, the Skywalkers.

And mesa totally fine with Padme and Ani eventually becoming a couple. Mesa no okay with the children slaying for love though. Big doo-doo dat one.

… and can be replaced later down the line at the central bank.

I think there are countries in the world where that is not the case. India maybe 2 years ago removed one of their large denomination bills with like a week’s notice to get it changed and after that you were SOL. I think (but am not sure) old Sterling notes may also no longer be more than paper.

Unless your schoolmate is here, I don’t think you will get a definitive answer. And what people do on social media is not necessarily representative to what they would do in real life. So don’t take this block personally.

A mixup of names has been suggested a a possible explanation. It could just as well simply be a mistaken touch on the app or a misplaced click on the site. That person may have their own ghosts of school life past to fend off and they’ve chosen to make a clean break and not keep in touch with people from that time for their own mental health. Or they are friends with the people who used to bully you and doesn’t want them to spot you on their friends list. Or, while they treated you nicely and stood up for you, it’s still possible they just don’t like you regardless. There are many possible explanations.

But he was fucking Padme who was a decade or more his senior! How can this list be complete without addressing this crucial issue?

And I have to admit that I find the classification of killing children in the way that he specifically did as “not evil” a tad unconvincing.

It’s not like the king of pop didn’t have other bad sides to him we learned about already. So if the fucking teenage boys he groomed himself headlines didn’t prevent the making of this movie, why should an Epstein link?

You’re free not to watch the move btw. I’ll be right by your side not watching it.

You have a choice in life. You can accept certain things you cannot change. This one, you won’t change. Even if you spearheaded a popular movement I doubt you’ll get it changed. Everybody hates DLST and we still can’t get rid of it.

So I suggest you adapt your language. You don’t talk about the night of the fifth but the night from the fifth to the sixth. Three additional syllables in this case and the confusion evaporates quickly. You’re focusing on the perceived problem and not on the solution. If you do resolutions for the new year, maybe add that point to your list.

You are applying the thinking of wholly owned platforms and how to judge their success. They have to grab a sizable and hopefully growing number of users who keep coming back to be successful. Because they need the data from their users and/or their eyeballs on ads for commercial success. None of that applies to the fediverse really. It can grow as slowly as it wants to or not grow at all. As long as there is a small percentage of people who spend time and money to keep the instances going. This laced corsage of economical necessities is much tighter for a centrally hosted platform which will have a thirsty boardroom to answer to. Popularity isn’t so much the factor why reddit is/was more of a success, it is/was the quality of information others got from it and it definitely used to be the ease of getting to it. People who got pissed off at reddit will slowly add to our numbers here (or another iteration of a service like Lemmy) as the idea of becoming your own algorithm becomes more normal for the non-techy minded users as well. We’re playing a long game that we don’t even want to win.

Doctors can share the details of your genial warts as well as long as it doesn’t become painfully clear they were taking about you. The same logic applies to therapists. They can share your story but not the fact that it is yours. And if they have a lot of patients they have a certain level of obscurity. And if they’re clever they change a couple of things about the story to make it less obvious.

The distinction I would make here is the intent behind sharing the story. If it’s a function of venting with other professionals, I get it. They’re only human too. If it’s meant as a sort of teachable moment to others present, I think that’s alright. If it’s a “get a load of this shit” story telling and I found out, I would change therapists.

I would say it isn’t that stupid. The old humans picked one of the extremes, in this case the most complete absence of the sun (which includes the lowest point in the sky for some of the Vikings etc.) to mark this change. I think if they had picked midday we would have the same argument just about the daytime. And if they had picked any other time there would have to have been a “good” reason, like a religious one. It’s the time of day Mohammed went to Medina or the Buddha looked at nirvana. Otherwise the old humans wouldn’t have been onboard with that decision for centuries.

Time keeping is like the imperial system of measurements. It works but it doesn’t make a lot of fucking sense.

Let’s be realistic and not console ourselves with rosy fantasies.

Let’s take the most pessimistic view instead and project we’ll all get plugged into the Matrix.

It’s not a foregone conclusion that so-called AI and automation will replace all of those jobs. It’s also not a foregone conclusion that all these people will be destitute because they cannot be put in other positions. This is not the first time we as humanity have faced this big a structural change. We have largely gotten pretty good and are not dealing with a lot of bloodshed and poverty in the wake of such a big change. This transition will probably not be great for everybody but it won’t be a big human tragedy of the proportions you imagined. Worry more about our climate. The bigger threat of mass destitution will come from that clusterfuck.

On top of that you could argue that Latvia and Germany are probably more favorable regardless in terms of them enjoying largely functioning rule of law.

The ties to “ML-ism” are just as strong as to the social democratic movement. So you can be of two minds here: either you say WGAF what the commies did to the term and go on using it. Or you say it’s been historically so tainted you have to move on. I don’t think there is a right answer. On top of this being not the most pressing concern of our age.