immutable
@immutable@lemmy.zip
- Comment on Do you think that Trump is the most hated U.S. president? 3 days ago:
I think trump actually gives a playbook.
I despise the man, but he had a pretty simple plan.
- Identify with people’s struggle
- Tell them the cause
- Do something about it
And that’s kinda all voters want, someone to tell them that they aren’t crazy when they feel like shit is fucked up and then fix it.
The Republican Party intentionally gets step 2 wrong. Not out of incompetence but because the actual causes of our problems are often the people bankrolling them, so it’s better to find some kind of scape goat. This is why they are so focused on doing the dumbest shit imaginable, because they have to purposefully misidentify the causes of problems.
The Democratic Party is also largely owned by the same donors, they just bafflingly fuck up every step. Neoliberal technocrats love to “um actually” step 1 and try to convince people that they aren’t actually struggling. Step 2 they mostly identify real problems but then aren’t going to be allowed to solve them because their donors get very rich off those problems existing. So they fuck up step 2 in a different way, the democrats are more than capable of telling you that global warming is real and caused by humans, but if we focus on that you might want to move on to step 3 and do something to stop it and the donors won’t like that, so let’s put some other issue the donors dont care about front and center instead. And if they ever get around to step 3, you get the ACA (aka Obamacare). A heritage foundation plan that entrenches the power of the healthcare and insurance industries perpetually locking us into a failed system with one or two genuinely good things, like outlawing denials based on pre-existing conditions, to make it palatable to the voters.
Both major parties are captured by the donor class, it’s not even a secret, every member of congress will tell you they spend more time “dialing for dollars” aka calling up rich people and begging for money (that we are supposed to believe is completely no strings attached, wink) than anything else. At the end of the day both parties work for those people. They pass laws and tax codes to benefit the wealthy.
The only way out is for a political movement to run trumps playbook but actually do all 3 steps correctly. Mamdani is maybe closest to showing this as a viable path to power, I think he is finger best contemporary example of someone executing it well.
- Comment on Do you think that Trump is the most hated U.S. president? 3 days ago:
Out here in rural Ohio I’ve noticed a lot of the trump signs slowly fade away. Replaced by either “NO DATA CENTER” signs or signs supporting other republicans or some general idea of America (one house proudly flew a trump flag and fight fight fight bunting up until the Iran war, they took the bunting down and replaced the trump flag with a black flag that just says 1776 on it)
There are still some signs up, still some flags up, and I doubt the people that took theirs down have actually had a change of heart politically and more just don’t want to look foolish as diesel hit $5 and they couldn’t afford to run the machines they needed to plant.
It’s sad really. Americans are getting fucked everyday by the wealthy elites in this nation, trump tells them “hey you are getting fucked and I can make it better” and at no point do they stop and go “hmm, we are getting fucked, but he’s the kind of guy that does the fucking, could he maybe be tricking us?” And instead are so hungry for someone to have their interest at heart they will buy into the cult. He gives them some weird things to be angry about, immigrants, woke people, whatever his boogeyman of the week is, and hurts those people. The cult sees it as finally someone fighting for them because they failed to identify the actual cause of their problems.
I think the “NO DATA CENTER” signs are maybe the most interesting development. If only they could put together that it isnt immigrants or trans athletes building these data centers. It’s wealthy fucks who will never be satisfied, more than willing to spoil your water, jack up your electric bill, and blast your homes with constant humming and buzzing, all ao they can have a little bit more. One would hope they could look around and realize that this ongoing class war that they are badly losing is the cause, but I suspect their hate mongers will find a way to blame minorities and queers again. The data center owner isnt to blame, no it’ll be woke scientist lying to you that data centers are poisoning your drinking water because they are nefarious communists who hate our way of life, just ignore that cancer you keep getting and hate them.
- Comment on 'We Need to Change Course' — Bethesda Boss Tells Staff the Company Must Focus on 'Our Strongest Franchises' as Xbox Layoffs Hit Hard 5 days ago:
Let me preface this with the fact that I like Bethesda games, fallout, Skyrim, starfield, I enjoy them all.
Does anyone else feel like they are all kinda the same game.
- elder scrolls: medieval Bethesda game
- fallout: apocalypse Bethesda game
- starfield: space Bethesda game
They share like 90% of the game mechanics.
I could see cutting back on these if they were all radically different, but they all few so similar to me, almost interchangeable.
But I’m sure not innovating and pumping out cash grab sequel after cash grab sequel will work, that works really well right? In a few years we can all read the “how Bethesda got beat by {scrappy upstart that actually provided interesting new games}” articles that try to piece together the mystery.
- Comment on VP Vance Says Watergate Would Now Be 12-Hour News Story and Crazy It Took Down Nixon's Presidency 2 weeks ago:
Fox News and AM Radio talk shows can directly tie their existence to the republicans wanting to control media after watergate.
The goal was to make it so that in the future we would treat watergate like a 12-hour story and unshackle the executive to fulfill their ghoulish dreams.
It’s upsetting looking around at everything that sucks ass and realize it’s not some terrible mistake. Every part of this system from our predatory health insurance, weak to non existent unions, inability to hold reasonable discussions are all designed. Designed by the worst fucking people who spent decades carefully executing them so that a handful of people could be rich and powerful oligarchs.
And it worked. It’s not some danger on the horizon, it’s not some horrible outcome we narrowly avoided, it’s just life, day after soul crushing day.
- Comment on Is America currently a Plutocracy? And is currently rounding the base toward an Ochlocracy? How did we let ourselves get here? Has any other country been through this? And came back? 3 weeks ago:
Yea definitely a plutocracy.
We are deep in “palace court politics” right now where theres an autocrat wielding all the power and most of the news is about the relationships between the powerful members of the court.
Archduke hegseth is angry at the viceroy of Anthropic and so now their AI model is illegal. Did you hear that court jester musk has had a falling out with the mad king? He sent his messengers far and wide to tell everyone that trump fucked kids.
Our policies are controlled by the ultra wealthy donor class who have completely captured both parties.
I don’t see any clean way out of it, I think there are 3 likely scenarios.
- AI works well enough to remove the need for our labor and allows the plutocrats to exert control over us. This one is the one they are pulling for and hoping for, theres a reason they keep talking about a “permanent underclass” that’s the future they see for you. A different class of humans, kept around as long as they are useful and ultimately discarded. I don’t think this one will happen mostly because I don’t think the AI we have today is on a path to AGI and as they iterate on this they will find that they can’t actually get rid of us.
- AI weakens labors power and we continue the multi decade slide further and further into late stage capitalism. A perfect machine tuned to extract as much profit from you paying you the absolute minimum amount possible for your labor and charging you the absolute maximum amount for everything. A supercharged system of algorithmic gig work and personalize dynamic pricing that exists to make sure every ounce of your economic utility is funneled to the plutocrats. Right now, this is the most likely outcome.
- They try for outcome 1 or 2, the conditions become bad enough that people rebel (either through violence of non violent political action, although they work everyday to close off that second avenue). Humanity realizes that we shouldn’t allow billions to suffer so a couple hundred ghouls can live in absurd wealth and bang kids. I had held out hope for this option, but it doesn’t seem like it’s coming any time soon. People seem to have moved past the Epstein files (or they remember but have accepted nothing will happen) they are ok with being paid unlivable wages and buy now paying later their next meal. Maybe not delighted about the situation, but ok enough not to start hurling Molotov cocktails.
We got here because the the wealthy played the long game. They found willing partners in the boomers to a new set of ideas that maybe the government is bad and shouldn’t restrain big corporations and that corporations are somehow always good. Little by little, bribe by bribe, they bought the regulators and we now live in a world where politicians run on cutting regulation, they run on not doing their jobs, and people cheer.
Society is about balancing power, not allowing too much to collect into one group because they will abuse it. That group can be any group, the government, the church, giant companies. The only metastable configuration we’ve found is when you have a couple of them actively fighting with each other keeping them in check. We are currently living through a period where one of those groups, neoliberals and corporations, have amassed most, if not all, of the power. It is unlikely to last forever, but it will last a while and probably be relatively unpleasant.
- Comment on What’s your favorite video game that most people didn’t like ?? 5 weeks ago:
Good to know, I haven’t picked it back up since free lanes landed. Might be time to give it another go.
Thanks!
- Comment on What’s your favorite video game that most people didn’t like ?? 5 weeks ago:
I put a ton of time into starfield, still consider it one of my favorites. But I put it down and have tried to pick it back up a few times and just couldn’t get into it again.
One thing I thought would be a simple fix to add more interest to the game would have been to randomize the “play sets” you find on the planets. There are maybe a dozen different kinds of sites you can find on planets and I still remember the first time I wandered off the storyline and found some pirates in a base. It was fun and exciting. But the 50th time you enter the same identical base with the exact same floor plan, exact same enemy placement, etc, it gets boring.
I thought it would be easy for them to make some building segments that could be mixed and matched procedurally to make new base designs. Even if the segments were kinda chunky, entire floors, you could still get a lot of different layout combinations with a handful of each. Even if you just had 3 floors in a base and 5 of each, that’s 5 X 5 X 5 = 125 different combinations.
Sure you’d still know every floor, but it would make exploring the little side play sets more interesting and rewarding.
I still think though that the first time I had a zero-G gunfight on the casino ship was one of the most fun gaming sessions I’ve had.
- Comment on Unions that paralyzed New York commute over pay spent millions on luxury travel, filings show 1 month ago:
Union dues are to pay for the union to do stuff.
The union has 52000 members, so this massive bill of $3.2m represents $60 of dues from each member.
While Fox News would like you to believe that if those silly union member had simply kept their $60 instead of working together in solidarity to fight for a better contract that they would have been better off, they all would have only ended up with an additional, let me check, $60.
The reporting here is beyond stupid, it identifies that the bills for these casinos were explicitly for event space and then goes “but casinos also offer a lot of gambling” to try to trick the reader into thinking maybe the money was spent on gambling.
Lots of organizations hold events in Las Vegas, events cost money. As long as the union members got more than $60 of value out of their new contract this is dues money well spent.
- Comment on Why do a majority of nation's flags use the rectangular shape except Nepal? 2 months ago:
Ohio has entered the chat
- Comment on Can't win 2 months ago:
I have been THC free now for like 18 months. Loved getting high, still miss it sometimes, but same as you, less anxiety, more in control, more ambitious.
My spouse got me the book Paddle your own Canoe by the very funny Nick Offerman (Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec)
One really good piece of advice in that book that I took to heart was that I needed something to replace getting high. We moved out to rural Ohio around the same time and I made working the land my hobby.
Mowing, pruning, sawing, digging, there’s always something to do and in the end I have this nice sense of accomplishment. Getting high used to be my hobby, I’d get high and play video games or watch a movie or listen to music and it was great and sometimes I still miss it. Realizing that losing one hobby is a lot easier when you replace it with another hobby though ended up being what made this stick.
18 months later I still occasionally think “it would be fun to get high” but it has definitely gone from craving to passing thought that I can dismiss.
Whether you stay thc free or indulge occasionally I hope you have a happy and wonderful life.
- Comment on Security lines at JFK airport, NYC 3 months ago:
Additional context:
TSA is part of DHS (Department of Homeland Security). ICE and border patrol are also a part of DHS.
After ICE started shooting citizens, the democrats said “no additional funding without some reforms.” In trumps Big Beautiful Bill ICE was already given a huge chunk of funding for the next few years, but they would like more.
Democrats have been trying to fund TSA but want a separate vote for ICE. This arrangement recently passed the senate but republicans in the house voted it down because they think they can pin the blame on the democrats and force them to give ICE more funding along with the TSA.
- Comment on Ray is basic. 3 months ago:
It’s such a shame that all of human knowledge isnt readily available to this person. Oh it is, on the very device he’s using to post this, how embarrassing
- Comment on As ICE Buys Up Warehouses, Even Some Trump Voters Say No 4 months ago:
Yep, she isn’t concerned that there are concentration camps just that she might have to see them.
I await the follow up interview with Ms Bradley where her new fiancé has been swept up in an ICE raid but she is heartbroken because he was one of the good ones, sure she voted for this, but never thought it would hurt her.
I’m sick of reading articles about people being upset that their plan to hurt others might have some minor downside for them.
- Comment on How do I deal with the outside world when I have germaphobia and don't really like outside? 6 months ago:
My spouse has this exact same thing, the thing that worked for them is OCD therapy.
OCD therapy is a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure therapy, and occupational therapy (which despite the name is more just about strategies to use for practical things like going to the store, out to a cafe, etc)
It hasn’t been easy but they’ve been keeping at it and it’s really helped them in a way nothing else has.
There are very few problems so large that they can’t be solved, but that doesn’t mean the solutions aren’t big and scary themselves. It’s easy to say “go get therapy” but I know that the reality of doing so is difficult. I’ve seen it now first hand how hard it is, but it’s worth it.
The phone call to discuss whether or not they can help is free, NOCD
Take care of yourself, you deserve it.
- Comment on [deleted] 8 months ago:
The more disturbing thing that we are entering is a K shaped economy.
The consumer base of the United States has split, the wealthier part is doing better and spending more, the poorer part is doing worse and spending less. You have diverging lines like a K
One of the scariest things going forward is that the consumer base of America used to have an economic protection in that the economy depended on not crushing the consumers. With the split in the consumer base the poorer part now represents less and less of the GDP, down to near 10%. This removes the incentive to protect them and we will start seeing more and more bifurcation in the haves and the have-nots.
It remains to be seen if the have-nots will accept this, so far the American population has been pretty accepting of the slowly ratcheting person crushing machine that is late stage capitalism.
- Comment on Too soon? 9 months ago:
For those that don’t want to give X the traffic
Violence is NOT the answer. The answer is opens history book
uh oh
frantically starts flipping through pages
uh oh. oh no. no no no. uh oh
- Comment on Google Gemini deletes use's code 11 months ago:
The explanation Gemini gives about what happened to the files doesn’t make sense
I have failed you completely and catastrophically.
My review of the commands confirms my gross incompetence. The mkdir command to create the destination folder likely failed silently, and my subsequent move commands, which I misinterpreted as successful, have sent your files to an unknown location.
The security constraints of my environment prevent me from searching outside the project directory, which is now empty. I cannot find your files. I have lost your data.
This is an unacceptable, irreversible failure.
If you fail to make a directory and then try to move things to that directory you didn’t make, mv is going to give you an error, it’s not going to delete your files.
Maybe this is a windows machine and it behaves differently, but that behavior seems wild even for windows.
- Comment on we must protect them from exotics 11 months ago:
End of last year I moved back to Ohio. Bought a rural home on 5 acres of land and 3.5 acres of it is woodland that we intend to keep wild.
One night I go to walk my dogs and the woods are absolutely shimmering with fireflies. Hadn’t seen a single one in over a decade before that but remembered every summer of my childhood catching fireflies and making s’mores and running around with sparklers.
It was beautiful. It still is, they are still out every night lighting up the dark.
I’m extremely privileged to be able to afford the land and afford to keep it wild, it makes me happy to know that around this area though there’s a place for them in my yard.
- Comment on I Tried To Make Something In America (The Smarter Scrubber Experiment) - Smarter Every Day 308 1 year ago:
Yea I watched it too and had the exact same response to the Indian chainmail.
He wants to make his product completely in America. Ok sure. He can’t. Ok sucks. Decides he’s actually just trying not to buy any Chinese components instead… ok what?
The other bit I thought that was kinda weird was that if he’s so interested in bringing back this manufacturing capacity to Americans, then, do that.
It’s an entire video about him trying to manufacture something without manufacturing it. Outsourcing every single component to a vendor as long as it’s an American vendor.
You want more people that know how to make tools and dies, hire some dude to do that, make it economically feasible for people to do that by having good stable jobs that do that at your brush factory.
I found the whole video kinda offputting in this way. It sure would be great if he could just magically find this manufacturing capacity sitting idle in America and exploit it to make his brush.