A
That’s fucking dumb. How long ago was that? The antidepressants thing is particularly upsetting. We shouldn’t be turning people away if they’ve ever been on antidepressants (or are currently on antidepressants); I mean, it’s not like we get free government healthcare or anything. I’m sorry you had to deal with that. That sucks.
The 6-3 ruling penned by Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett in Department of State v. Muñoz held that a citizen has no “fundamental liberty interest in her noncitizen spouse being admitted to the country,” denying a couple’s plea after a U.S. citizen’s husband was denied a visa.
Hold the fuck up, I thought visas were basically guaranteed to those married to US citizens. This seems like a pretty big deal, so why haven’t I heard more about it?
'member when conspiracies were relatively harmless like flat earthers and ufologists?
'member when the main source of Christian extremism (in the US) was the Westboro Baptist Church, and most people just laughed at them because no one really took them seriously?
What the fuck happened?
I’m actually very confused because the US 10yrs ago was radically different than the US now. How did everyone completely lose their minds? This is a semi-rhetorical question because I’m aware of some of the contributing factors, it’s just… I feel like somewhere in the past 10-15yrs I slipped sideways into some kind of an alternate reality.
The most extreme Christians I knew didn’t approve of homosexuality, but also weren’t yelling “god hates f*gs” at people for being gay. They believed in a 7-day creation, but didn’t lose their minds and thirst for blood at the sight of Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
The worst racists I’d met believed in white supremacy, but weren’t cruising around looking for POC to lynch (with the exception of cops, that is). They hated Hispanic people, but mostly kept it to themselves.
Maybe I was just really sheltered, but while it seems like our level of tolerance has grown, the extremes have gotten worse. Like, the graph of tolerance is still going up, but the data point distribution is getting worse.
Edit: to put it another way, my experience growing up in Texas’ suburbs was that people were “tolerant” in a “I don’t like you but I won’t bother you so long as you don’t bother me” kinda way. Not ideal, but not terrible either. Now though, it’s more “I don’t like you and that bothers me, so I’m gonna bother you”.
Imo expecting someone who’s done drugs to quit and never do it again, is one of the dumbest, most bone-headed things anyone has ever come up with. Like, shit man, drugs are awesome. Yeah, they can seriously fuck you up if you get addicted, and some drugs are extremely addictive. However, expecting someone to toss all those crazy experiences, the good and the bad, into the trash and never, ever even be tempted to pick up drugs again is… stupid. It assumes that drugs only create bad experiences, but that obviously isn’t true because even the most non-physically-addictive drugs can become addictive with the right environmental factors. So obviously people aren’t doing drugs just because they’re addictive, they’re doing them because they’re fun, or because they give you an escape. As such, imo, it’s better to teach people how to use drugs in moderation than to try and attempt total abstinence. Unless their body is so fucked up from drug use that they literally can’t do drugs without risking death, you should be teaching them how to use them in moderation; like as a reward for getting a promotion. That sorta thing.
Hylics 1/2
Half Life 1
Myst
Jet Set Radio Future
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
Factorio
Doom II (heavily modded)
OpenRCT2
Voices of the Void
The Sims (I like the series as a whole, I feel like each game has its own pros and cons)
Edit: Archived site
Edit 2: y’all taking the low hanging fruit when y’all know time cube is the most unhinged. If you don’t know about how the earth has four simultaneous 24hr days duirng one rotation in sixteen space-times then I don’t know what to tell you.
…which is why cruelty is the point. They’re getting pleasure out of hurting others. Their pleasure from torment might not be the “true” motivator - I highly doubt the people making these decisions are cackling to themselves like a comic book supervillain while coming up with novel ways of hurting people (though their brainwashed underlings might) - but they get pleasure from power and control, and are willing to pursue it at all cost, which means they do things that are cruel in order to maintain it.
To put it simply, they get pleasure from power and control, which comes at the cost of hurting others. The result is that while cruelty might not literally be the point, cruelty is the end result.
“I’m sure that Gov. Noem doesn’t mind a focus on tensions with the Native Americans in South Dakota because if we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about her shooting the dog,” Jillson said.
Ha! Jokes on you, we can do both. Watch:
Kristi Noem was expecting for the tribes to learn how to behave from Republicans. Now she’s mad because they’re obviously untrainable and out of control and she can’t legally put them down like she could with her dog.
A typing game like Mario Teaches Typing or Typing of the Dead except all the sentences are ad slogans or brand names.
Emergency phone lines have ads at the beginning of the call to help pay for emergency services (because the government won’t pay for them).
Revoke regulation that requires disclaimers on paid endorsements (in other words, you have no idea if someone is endorsing a product because they like it, or because they were paid to talk about it).
Digital piracy is now a felony on par with drug felonies.
Ad blocking is now digital piracy.
Copyright is now indefinite, applied retroactively. An agency is formed to pursue copyright infringement on behalf of deceased rights holders and defunct companies.
Criticism is no longer considered free speech if it leads to direct or indirect economic damage (“your rights end where mine begin!”)
Referencing or speaking about a copy-protected work in-depth constitutes copyright infringement. However, enforcement is up to the rights holder except in the case of deceased individuals or defunct companies.
The last three may seem tangential, but together it means companies can take action against you for talking negatively about their advertisements and products, regardless of how old they are. Now companies like Disney can use copyright to permanently erase things like The Song of the South or Walt Disney’s Nazi boner.
Advertising is allowed on voter ballots (the voting process can be expensive after all).
Politicians must publicly endorse companies which endorse them (it’s only fair). Failing to do so is considered a form of ad blocking.
Public schools may include advertisements in their curriculum to augment teacher salaries. There are no restrictions on how many advertisements are presented, how they are presented, or the extent of their presentation. Choosing not to present an advertisement that is part of the curriculum is considered a form of ad blocking. "You have to pay teachers somehow, and I’ll be damned if it comes out of my pocket".
I could probably come up with more, but this is making me depressed.
Hey, whatever you can divide Americans with. That way they stay busy fighting about immigrants vs xenophobia, straights vs gays, etc instead of demanding changes that would hurt their corporate overlords.
It wasn’t just minstrel shows, and the UK contributed, but for the most part you’re correct.
A couple links that’ll help:
Tl;Dr: blackface has an extremely racist history in the US and is almost universally frowned on, even if you’re doing it out of genuine admiration for a black person.
Tl;Dr: US officials are shitting themselves because arrest warrants could undermine any attempts to negotiate a cease-fire, but more importantly, because if the ICC issues arrest warrants for Israeli politicians, they might turn around and do the same to US politicians. No, seriously. Straight from the article:
US House Speaker Mike Johnson slammed as “disgraceful” the ICC’s reported intention of issuing “baseless and illegitimate arrest warrants” for alleged war crimes against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi.
“Such a lawless action by the ICC would directly undermine US national security interests,” Johnson said Monday. “If unchallenged by the Biden administration, the ICC could create and assume unprecedented power to issue arrest warrants against American political leaders, American diplomats, and American military personnel, thereby endangering our country’s sovereign authority.”
Absolutely not lol. Firstly, you’re assuming that Texas, a state literally larger than France, has one, singular culture. Secondly, just no. Listen, Texas has a lot of problems. There are a lot of assholes in Texas. However, being unable to trust anyone is not one of those problems.
They were extremely loud. That doesn’t mean they should have stopped making them, but people aren’t joking about them being loud.
Yeah, I’m not surprised. I’m currently not working (living with parents), and personally, if I had a guaranteed $500 a month in my bank account I’d be much more willing to go out and get a job, regardless of how good or bad it is.
That $500 a month is a form of financial security; so I know that even if I get fired, I’ll still have something to fall back on. It would ease the anxiety of having to deal with shitty managers, being potentially overworked, underpaid, etc, because it’d mean that if one job sucks, I can go find a different one without worrying that the rug was being completely pulled out from under my feet.
It also means that, if I am getting underpaid, I still potentially have some spending money that’ll allow me some luxuries despite the low wage/salary being given to me by company I’m working for. That increases my flexibility for bullshit and allows me to be more tolerant of shitty managers.
The fact that you have to roll the dice and hope the company you’re going to work for won’t have shitty managers, low wages, overwork, etc is a real disincentive when you have family you can live with. That $500 a month makes the dice roll more tolerable.
My biggest concern is that if Universal Basic Income becomes, well, universal, then the cost of everything will likely spike in proportion to whatever UBI is. It’s greedy, but logical that if all your tenants are getting $500 a month from the government, then that means you can raise their rent. Companies would also look at it and one department would say, “we can lower wages because of UBI” while another department says, “we can raise prices because people have more money via UBI”. As such, the government would need to implement protections against such actions.
How do you do that though?
Do you peg the cost of rent to a formula based on land value, income, etc?
Do you peg the price of a product to the product’s cost + X%?
Do you try and mandate wages based on performance, seniority, and job type?
At what point do you look at the tangle of laws and formulas and say, “this is insane; maybe instead of giving cash, we should give housing, food, water, electricity and other modern necessities.”
Ultimately, I’m not sure any of the protections required for UBI to be successfull will be implemented. I’m not against the idea of UBI, but I don’t trust the government (well, the US government anyway) to have the foresight to successfully pull it off.
Edit: At the end of the day, I don’t want to live with my parents. I don’t want to be unemployed, I don’t want to feel like a drain on society, and I don’t want to feel like I have nothing to offer to the world. I like to believe everyone has the potential to change the world for the better, either in a small way, or a big way. Right now I feel like I’m not doing anything, and I don’t like it. However, I’ve had some very bad experiences with “”“unskilled”“” jobs and the industry I’ve spent time training for (video games) is a fucking mess and is getting worse.
As someone else mentioned, some jobs have micromanagers who get pissy if they think you aren’t working, and keeping up appearances is draining.
From a different perspective, however, is that when it comes to creative fields specifically, downtime means you aren’t improving your skills, creating portfolio work, etc. Due to the contracts creative jobs often have, anything you create on company time (and sometimes outside of company time, not that they can legally enforce it, but they’ll try) is typically owned by the company. As such, working on personal projects during downtime is a great way to lose ownership of a passion project you’re working on, and no official work means you aren’t improving or adding to your portfolio (not that creative fields typically have downtime, usually they’re the opposite).
It’s speculated that that’s why Valve had some major staff members leave the company a few years before Half-Life Alyx; they had nothing to do and were just sitting there spinning their wheels.
Iirc that wasn’t just staring at the sun, that was staring at the sun during an eclipse.
I have mixed feelings on the electoral college, but imo “winner-takes-all” voting should be unconstitutional. That particular implementation of the electoral college carries the potential to nullify 49% of the votes in our current two-party system, and it gets even worse when you have more than 2 parties. If there were 3 major parties, “winner-takes-all” has the potential to nullify 66% of the vote if it’s split 33%-33%-34%, and becomes more egregious as the number of major parties increases.
I’d assume they’d be required to pay taxes once they’re old enough to, but I’d be willing to bet that most of them don’t unless they plan to ever actually move to the US.
I wonder how often the IRS actually goes after American citizens who don’t live in the US, especially ones that haven’t traveled to the US in more than 5+ years.
Edit: they might also be completely unaware that they need to pay taxes. If I’m not mistaken, the US is literally the only country in the world that requires you to pay taxes when living abroad. Logically speaking, it makes sense that you wouldn’t have to pay taxes to a country you don’t live in.