As a professional email reader, these all read like typical boomer emails to me. And Jeffrey was, in fact, a boomer. I wouldn’t read too hard into his capitalization, because he probably didn’t even know where his account settings were to change that.

My guess is that it’s because the FAA started shutting down private flights as more and more ATCs stopped working without pay. As soon as the billionaires were affected by the shutdown, the dems capitulated.

I’m consistently reminded of when TikTok got banned, and all of the Americans moved to Rednote. The Chinese users were gracious and accepting of the refugees, and it was a unique chance for them to talk to Americans directly without the governments meddling too much.

They started listing some of the “propaganda” that their government had created. All of it was so outlandish that they didn’t actually believe it was true. So many Chinese people were like “so the government tells us that your healthcare is cripplingly expensive, to the point that people will actively avoid medical care. But you’re the richest country in the world, and you have universal healthcare, right? If you go to the doctor, it’s free.” And all of the Americans had to be like “oh nope. Uhh… No. That one is true. I needed stitches in middle school after a bad fall. My parents gave me a double dose of over-the-counter painkillers, doused the entire thing in rubbing alcohol while I screamed, superglued it shut in our bathroom, and told me they’d beat me if I got tetanus from it. I still have a really gnarly scar from it…”

Then they were like “oh well okay, that sucks. But at least you all have houses. The government tells us you all struggle to afford housing. Housing is so expensive here. It can cost upwards of three years of salary, just for a single family house! The government provides low interest loans, but they’re difficult to save up for when we’re spending 20% of our income in rent… All of you Americans live in gigantic mansions, right? If you can’t afford housing, the government provides a luxury apartment for you until you can buy a house.” And the Americans had to be like “Oh. Uhh… No. That one is… Uhh… Yeah that one is also true. We’re in the middle of a housing crisis, with a few billionaires buying all of the properties and artificially inflating their value so nobody else can afford to buy, then renting them back to us at 70% of our monthly income so we can never hope to save up for a down payment… It is driving a massive homelessness crisis, and many Americans are having to choose between rent and food.”

And then the Chinese people were like “wait they’re having to choose between rent and food? If you can’t afford food, the government gives you food. You don’t need to pay for any of it, because the government takes care of that if you’re too poor.” And all of the Americans had to be like “Oh uhh… Yeah no, government assistance is actually comically difficult to get here, has a LOT of stipulations, and is critically underfunded to the point that the entire system is about to collapse. Food instability rates are reaching all time highs, especially among the homeless and the elderly. And the system is designed to keep poor people poor, by punishing them for making too much money if they do manage to get assistance. Once you get on food stamps, getting off of them is an extremely difficult process… Because as soon as you start trying to raise yourself out of poverty, the government pulls the rug out from underneath you and takes your food stamps away.”

And then the Chinese people went “well at least you can always go get a second job to pay for food, right? Our government tells us you work a ton of hours, but we all know that’s fake. You only work a couple of hours a week, right? Our factory jobs can be pretty grueling, with 12 hour shifts and 72 hour weeks. But most people here just do that when they’re young and fresh out of school, to springboard into better jobs.” And then the Americans had to go “Oh uhh… No. We’re struggling to afford everything even when many people have two or even three jobs. Our pay has stagnated for so long that many people are working 80-90 hour weeks just to barely pay the bills. We have people in “good” jobs who are waitressing on the side to afford their food.”

And at that point, the Chinese people started going “so uhh… Real talk for a second… Why the hell are you guys tolerating this? We would have been lighting fires in government buildings and publicly executing government officials a long time ago…”

And the worst part is that things have only continued to devolve since the TikTok ban happened back in January. Every single thing I posted has gotten much worse since then.

Yup, the “don’t let them take you to a second location” kidnapping rule 100% applies if they’re masked and don’t identify themselves.

For the unaware, anything a kidnapper will do to you on the street will be infinitely worse if they manage to get you to a second location. Their primary goal is getting you off the street so they can get you to a private location, (away from any bystanders or prying eyes). If you’re getting kidnapped, you should assume that “getting killed in the street” is the better option, compared to whatever the hell they have planned after they have you in private. So you should force them to either leave you alone or murder you right then and there. This includes using lethal force against them, because we’ve already established that murder is their best intention.

And if ICE is masking up and refusing to ID, they should be treated like kidnappers. Which means the “make them kill you on the street” rule applies.

Yeah, that murderer should be paying child support for the rest of her life, and the kids should inherit everything she owns when she croaks, because she deprived those children of a mother who would have done those things for her.

My neighbor was a retired cop turned gun dealer. One time while I was chatting with him, he mentioned that back in the 70’s and 80’s, he and his buddies used to claim “the defendant violently groined me in the knee, causing injury” on their police reports. In other words, they’d knee someone in the crotch, then say the person attacked them with their groin.

I’d take it a step further and say that police testimony without body cam footage should be outright exculpatory. If the prosecutor is allowing a cop to testify without also trying to admit the footage, it should be grounds for the defense to get the charges dismissed with prejudice.

Yeah, the vest distributes pressure, but doesn’t stop it. It’s not a magical force shield. You can still feel things… If someone pokes you, you feel it pushing on your chest. But you feel it with your whole chest, not just where they poked.

Honestly, one of my biggest conspiracy theories is that US employers (which are almost universally rich conservatives) use pre-tax income specifically to garner hate for taxes. Because conservatives always want to lower taxes on the rich, so they try to poison the average person’s view on them to sway public opinion. Whenever Americans discuss their income, it is always referencing the pre-tax amount. For instance, if an American says they’re making $50k per year, they’re probably only taking home ~$42k. So they tend to see taxes as an extreme burden, because they’re always looking at their pre-tax amount when they think about their income.

The American tax code is also intentionally kept extremely confusing, to further stoke hatred for taxes. Taxes could be an automatic “hey, here’s how much you owe, and how we calculated it. Let us know if you have any deductions we missed, and we’ll amend it for you” letter from the IRS. But instead, Americans are forced to calculate their own taxes, (even though the IRS already knows how much they owe), which means every American is annually reminded of how much income they’re “losing” to taxes every year.

In contrast, the rest of the fucking world uses post-tax income, because that’s how much money you can actually plan to take home. The taxes are a consideration, but if a job advertises €50k, it means the employee is taking home €50k. The taxes are more of a given, and are handled on the backend where the employee doesn’t need to worry about it. They apply for a job that makes €50k, and they know that’s how much they’ll take home. The taxes are already calculated for them, so they don’t need to worry about it.

Same for things like sales tax. If you see an item on the shelf for $1.00, it’ll actually ring up as $1.08 (or higher, if their state also has a sales tax) at the register. So Americans are constantly reminded of how much they’re spending in taxes, because every single purchase they make is noticeably taxed and hits their bottom line. Whereas Europe just lists the post-tax amount. So Europeans don’t need to worry about sales tax, because it is already factored into the cost of the item. If they see something on the shelf for €1.00, it will only cost €1.00…

It is a failure to pass a law that appropriates money to government agencies. Not all government spending is subject to appropriations – in particular, Congress is still getting paid, because their salaries are not subject to yearly government appropriations.

Yeah, it’s worth noting that the government shutdown is not budget related. The budget has already been passed. We know how much is going to be spent, and how it will be spent… This shutdown is because the appropriation was run separately, meaning the budget has passed but the various accounts for the budget have no money in them yet. The money already exists. It could be spent. But it’s not in the correct accounts, so the various agencies can’t access it. Thus, those agencies are shut down.

Long press on their username, then “Edit Tag”. Once the tag is made, that Edit screen will have a little comment button. Pressing it will take you to the comment you used to tag them. Handy for when you can’t remember why someone is tagged a certain way.

Every day I thank the Voyager dev for user tags…

I’ve had them tagged as “bOTh SiDEs r bAd” for months now, and it has virtually always held true. Nearly every single time I see a post from them, it is some sort of “but but but Democrats caused this. We should be blaming them instead of the people who actually voted for it” type of rhetoric.

“Exile” to a gigantic mansion on a sprawling estate, with a £100M annual stipend? Yeah, he’s really being punished. This is just a payoff from the crown, so he doesn’t go author some tell-all book that exposes the rest of the pedos. It’s hush money, plain and simple.

Yeah, my favorite taco place is in the back of a gas station. The cashier doesn’t speak a single word of English, but you can get by with some pointing at the menu, hand gestures, and “más queso por favor, y extra picante. Limón apardo.” Tacos are $2.50 each, a giant cup of refried beans is another two dollars, and he’ll usually slide you some extra tortillas to go with the beans for free if you’re a regular.

Sadly, I changed jobs and haven’t been there in a long time. I still occasionally think about making the trek across town, just to get some tacos. I hope he’s okay with all of the ICE raids… People that are pro-ICE shouldn’t be allowed to eat seasoned food.

Yeah, this will hopefully end up being a huge boon to her campaign. It’s proof that she’s not just an empty talking head; She actually puts her words into action. People are sick and tired of out-of-touch nonagenarian lawmakers shitting in the pool right before they get out.

I mean, the Secret Service takes care of the “ducking and diving” part, but you basically just described a MAGA rally.

Here’s a reminder that wage theft is the single largest form of theft, larger than every other type of theft combined. It is literally over 51% of all theft. And it goes largely unpunished, because the people being stolen from either don’t or can’t speak out about it.

And wage theft isn’t just refusing to pay someone. Employers are smarter than that, because they know something so blatant and easy to prove will get them slapped. Instead, they do things like skim off the top by unfairly adjusting your clock in/out times. Or they’ll do things like require you to show up 15 minutes before your shift, then refuse to let you clock in until your shift is scheduled to start. Or they’ll force you to clock out right when your shift is scheduled to be done, (under the guise of avoiding overtime) even if you have another 5-10 minutes of work to do. Theft by break infringement is also common, where employers will have you clock out for your break, then try to dictate how you spend your time on the break.

All of those tiny things, multiplied by thousands of employees at a large company, adds up to theft on a truly massive scale.

If you started walking into a gas station at the same time every day, and blatantly stealing a $2 candy bar, they’d have a cop waiting for you to show up by the end of the first week. But if that same gas station (with locations all across the country) systematically steals $2 from thousands of employees on every single shift, that’s a civil issue but it’s not worth the money for any single person to sue (if the employees could even afford a lawyer) and the department of labor is critically understaffed.

Yeah. Table saws and lathes are typically the two scariest machines in a shop. Table saws tend to get more injuries purely because people tend to use them for mindless tasks. With a lathe, you’re hands-on and focused the entire time. So accidents tend to be because the piece snapped free and went flying across the shop at Mach Jesus. But table saws are just the right blend of powerful and utilitarian, to be really dangerous.

Oh. I need to cut 50 identical pieces. Set up a jig on your table saw, and have at it. You get into a pattern. Set material in jig, grab sled, push sled to cut, retract sled, move cut piece, repeat… But by piece 20 or 30, you’ve started to think about what you’re going to have for dinner tonight. Maybe there’s still some leftover soup in the fridge? But the wife won’t want that, because we had it yesterday. Maybe we could get a rotisserie chicken from the grocery sto- Aaaaaaand your thumb is gone, because you pushed the piece directly instead of pushing the sled.

Because the phone company (miles away from you and your local power outage) still has power, or has battery backups and automatic generators. The phone runs off of 48v that is sent directly via the phone line. That’s why you don’t need to plug your landline into a power outlet. It was also historically a fairly important safety feature, as people tend to need emergency services after their power goes out. For instance, maybe a bad storm blew through.

This actually turned out to be a problem when telecoms started transitioning towards digital phone lines. These days, they usually send everything via coax or fiber. Then a modem will take that incoming line and decode it into phone, internet, and TV signals. The modem also provides that 48v power on the phone lines. But that presents an issue, where a power outage will kill the customer’s modem, and therefore kill the customer’s landline phones. And we’ve already established that landline phones are an important safety fallback during emergencies. So now, you can actually get battery backups directly from the telecom, to be able to keep your modem powered (and thus use your landline phones) even during power outages.

It’s even worse than that. He has been noted talking about the Nazi symbol several times throughout the years. So the man has been saying “I didn’t know it was a Nazi symbol” for a long time now. He only claims to have covered it up now because it finally blew up in his face.

adding he was unaware until recently that the image has been associated with Nazi police

Apparently he has a pretty generous definition of the word “recently”. Or, the more likely answer, he has known for a long time (likely even when he got it) and has only recently seen it stop his grab for power.