Plus not everybody sees every news story.

Can we start with something fun and light, like adding THC into those chemtrails?

That reminds me of the fascist playbook, where the enemy is both strong and weak.

Maybe we should just call it the “lying to control others” playbook.

the people that like trains and struggle with social cues and are sensitive to sound

Well there goes the last shred of doubt I had that I’m high masking AuDHD.

It’s not new information, and it’s simple stereotypical stuff, but something about the way you phrased it made it hit different.

My kid is exactly like me, so learning how to deal with my issues is doubly valuable.

Why does the real world have to be a YA novel adaptation with paper-thin and one-dimensional villains who are not believable?

I just thought of a great way for the current Pope to really make a name for himself as the one to stop so much evil pedo shit. Man, talk about rehabbing the image of the church (in the minds of people who pay little enough attention).

Live global broadcast of Trump doing confession with the pope. Trump info dumps either with a camera in the confession booth, or by making a public statement afterward as penance, even if he just reads a prepared statement in either case.

Then the pope says ok you’re going to heaven, and the rest of us try to get the gears of justice turning again.

It’s like if you think of all the ways we influence other people and show our worth to others, all of the most immoral and unethical tactics that actually work in the real world seem to come to Trump instinctively. He doesn’t even have to think about it. I think that helps him instantly jump to conclusions (linkedin filter: he’s decisive and a risk taker!) and have the unearned dunning-kruger arrogance to plow ahead (LF: he radiates confidence and stands up for his beliefs!) and wreck the country just to make some numbers go up for people who otherwise want for nothing.

Or maybe he’s just being controlled by malicious forces. (linkedin: he has high-level connections in the international community!)

I hope they write stories about how a mysterious giant asteroid made of strange synthesized polymers must have smashed our planet. It was probably a devastating mass driver attack by a technologically superior enemy capable of alchemy.

I don’t like how clearly I can hear this gif.

it may not always be projection, but the narrative they’ve been convinced of by their media

You are absolutely correct for the vast majority of ordinary conservatives, in my experience anyway.

They don’t care about finding the best cause or even about being correct. They need to feel outraged and persecuted, so once that’s fed to them they latch on.

It’s pretty wild. There were a few years in the early 2000s where I listened to a lot of talk radio on my commute. I had not yet stumbled upon things like streams/downloads of the Howard Stern show, or the world of podcasts. So I got to hear a bunch of the scary republican talking points back then.

That was about a decade before the dictator projection discussed in the meme, and what sticks out in my memory that is super relevant today?

“Activist judges!”

“Legislating from the bench!”

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

But also, just because some activities are annoying on the phone does not mean you should be locked out from them.

Oh definitely the stairs, since that’s the “frail old man” tell that he seems most afraid of. And with nobody anywhere near him, and on a beautiful clear day with no wind and no sun in his eyes.

It has to be clear as day that it was a failure of his body and not foul play or trickery.

You may be 100% correct, but I would still fear that the corruption soaked deep into our institutions by this bonkers insane second term would enable the fascist train to keep rolling and take us on the rest of the ride we’ve already started. Everybody around him is appear running the administration.

Maybe if the timing of the passing of the empire is favorable we might have some elections that seem valid maybe?

All developed nations are going to realize they are in a population crisis in the coming decades. It’s no surprise to see bigotry/xenophobia/conservatism hurting the future of a nation, but it’s a bit surprising to see how popular it is across the globe.

I mean, I’m in the US and we are batshit stupid about it too. It’s been the joke all my life about how Social Security won’t be there when I retire one day. So hey instead of adding some of our most efficient workers (low pay, high labor output) to the tax base, let’s commit crimes against humanity! Yeeeeehaw!

We all know the brain drain started in academia, but I’m surprised I don’t hear about it in just about every field.

Just yesterday I wiped the drive and installed Linux on the 3rd old PC for the LAN setup I’m putting together, literally “for the children!”

It’s an i7-920 from 2008. It has TRIPLE channel ram, baby. I installed Linux Mint Cinnamon and it was as quick and painless as usual.

I already get the warm fuzzies when I walk into the room and find my 3rd grader playing on my PC instead of their tablet or even the console. Our first LAN party is gonna be sweet.

Yeah that controller might just have a hardware problem.

I’ve had pretty good luck with Xbox controllers from multiple generations, but it sounds like a LOT of people have problems with them. Even the elite controllers! It’s a shame because their shape and layout work great for me, and I’m sure the same is true of other people with broken controllers and no spares.

Controllers needing to be updated is dumb in a way, sure. But as somebody who has worked in the design/manufacture/test of embedded electronics & software systems, I know the development of those dumb little accessories was a massive project, and there’s so much potential for bugs or security issues down the line. After a quick search it looks like MS claims it was over $100 million in R&D for the xbone controller, and that’s 15 years of inflation ago.

Back around the same time It was part of a $10M project at my job and that thing took over most of the damn company!

I think better questions to ask first might be things like “Can I pass the controller USB connection to windows in a VM?” which is probably yes, and “Can I just never update this controller?” which I would normally say is a yes, but it sounds like yours has issues.

Eww, an activist doing something to bring attention to their cause?

So now that’s on their permanent record and all they got was trying to save some human lives or inspire others to!

I’m not a big fan of theocratic countries myself, but if my choices for the state of the world tomorrow morning are two theocratic countries or one theocratic country next to a field of charred bones, I think I could pick the former pretty easily.