Given the level of unchecked malice we’re facing at the hands of said government, I expect more edible magnets to suddenly become available.

It would be peak French if this happened while on the way to a protest.

#brandnewsentence

The part that absolutely kills me about this is that there were anti-maskers during the 1918 “spanish flu” pandemic. This suggest that with two valid examples that this is a bad idea, people still chose to not do it. It also suggests that we’re still the same society that we were 100 years ago.

https://www.history.com/articles/1918-spanish-flu-mask-wearing-resistance

This is the part that burns me the most. All this, for a handful of years to sit atop the ashes.

Exactly. God would probably want us to not need, want, or use the guns in the first place.

Ever since the 90’s, I’ve often wondered if some of these bubble companies are just the living end of the “eat the rich” philosophy. I can see no more practical a way to achieve this, than to convince investment capital to empty their wallets, funneling it straight into the pockets of dozens if not hundreds more people. It’s hardly Robin Hood, but it’s also cash that’s no longer hoarded at the top.

Plus, we also know that a worthwhile goal is to not go the distance, but simply become a tasty snack for a bigger company before you go bankrupt. This lets your flimsy business model and weak patent portfolio become someone else’s problem.

While it’s tragic that the mountain is going to add to its death toll on this, the idea of people queued up on the world’s tallest peak just for limited-time virtual merch, made me chuckle a bit.

After that Pokemon Go stampede in Central Park all those years ago, I’m feel like stunts like that are far more plausible than ever.

Edit: I also keep forgetting about the stuff RedBull does these days…

wasn’t the incitement they hoped it would be

I have my social media pretty tuned-up and locked down. The only nonsense I’ve seen about Kirk lately was some 20-somethings talking about how holy rollers were going to spread Kirk’s message about truth, and bring more people to jesus. While that’s some alarmingly twisted mental gymnastics at work, it’s about as pacifistic a response as possible considering the personalities involved. If that’s what’s really going on out there, then yeah, all their attempts to shape optics on this have failed.

to justify their next step, martial law.

Oddly, this gives me hope. It suggests that they don’t have full control of the media just yet, and are still trying to manufacture popular consent. El presidente missed a golden opportunity to lean into the pandemic and do this to enforce quarantine, and he’s been struggling to seize another opportunity even close to that scale.

As someone that has been through both of these crashes, 17 times the size of the .com bubble is really, really bad. I don’t think we can even conceive of how big a hole this is going to make.

It’s worth mentioning that, while possibly true, the book is nonetheless a satire of militarism and fascism.

A tangent if I may: how do we convince people that moving around from service to service after they go sour, is normal for using the internet?

Censorship, like in the article, is clearly a good reason to move on. But enshitification in general is usually the way this goes. I get that this is fatigue-making, especially for people that barely know how their phones work. So, does someone has a way to evangelize better services when the time inevitably comes?

they’re taught that if you’re unhappy that’s because of a lack of faith in the holy spirit. If you are truly faithful then it will always fill you up with happiness and positive energy.

This has to be one of the most soul-crushingly evil things I’ve ever heard. What a monstrously simple and devastatingly unhealthy thing to do to a person’s brain.

Assholes have never even heard of a thesaurus. Plus, we now have AI at our backs. Behold, what ChatGPT ginned up for me a second ago:

1. Global heating
2. Planetary warming
3. Atmospheric instability
4. Rising planetary temperatures
5. Ecological overheating
6. Weather system disruption
7. Global temperature shift
8. Planetary imbalance
9. Atmospheric warming trend
10. Earth system disturbance
11. Heat-driven weather extremes
12. Long-term planetary warming
13. Rising global heat levels
14. Ecological destabilization
15. Planet-wide heat surge
16. Environmental overheating
17. Temperature-driven disruption
18. Global heat imbalance
19. Accelerated warming of Earth
20. Planetary-scale weather disruption

I get that this works as long as they’re willing to play by the rules they set. But if it comes down to getting the word out, and silencing science that could save lives, it’s worth trying.

A “seat at the table” these days requires a heady mix of culpability, and wealthy/connected enough to be useful to someone more powerful. Just monied or just a phone-call away from prison ain’t gonna cut it. That said, the clowns we see doing this are at the kid’s table.

There’s a lot in this story that could use clarification, but that quote takes the cake. And I would love to know, were that even true, how in the world it justifies what was to follow. I’m not deranged enough to just get this.

Point of order. ABC is owned by Disney. Make of that what you will.

Thank you for this much needed perspective. While the FCC’s actions reek of overreach, ABC folding like a cheap card table just didn’t sit well with me. Especially considering how CBS’ parent company went to court first before cancelling Colbert. It makes a lot more sense now.

Exactly. Prompt the other party to exercise the smallest amount of critical thought and you can watch it all unravel. It’s fucking exhausting, but that’s what it takes.

I once heard someone drop some nonsense in a conversation about how “San Francisco is a dirty place.” Not only is “city = dirty” a common right-wing trope, but it had zero place in our conversation. It was just kinda parroted nonsense ham-fisted into our dialogue. I simply replied: “I’ve been to silicon valley and the touristy parts of downtown, and what I saw was a nice clean place; I can’t speak for the rest of it.” The guy stopped for a sec and said “well, I haven’t been there myself so I guess I can’t either.”