Why

You’ve been explaining “why” such a revolution is important from the get-go. Now you’re denying all those reasons for the sake of a petty jab.

You know full well why it’s important. You’re just angry at receiving a call to action, despite sitting around calling others to action.

Now look, do you want us to fix this mess or not? Because if you sincerely do, you should understand why in-fighting between those with a common cause isn’t helpful. Tearing down people who are trying their best and asking for help, or who are celebrating small wins because that’s the best they’ve got, serves no use to anyone. OP’s absolutely right that we need suggestions to get the ball rolling. We’re at a stage now where we’re still organizing, which is hard when authoritarians have access to monitor practically everything in this country.

Think about it - we can’t just make a webpage or online group for like-minded people to meet up at. We have to go out to meet people and talk face-to-face. That takes a lot of time. Our best shot at networking is at the protests (which plenty of people who’ve never been to one criticize as “useless.”)

If there are reasonable ways to catalyze such a movement, we’d appreciate being made aware of them. Right now, online warriors seem to think that one person can become an instant hero, despite having zero logistics for how that’s supposed to realistically happen. If you happen to have knowledge of such logistics, please share them. That way we can all move toward the future that we all want.

When Americans got upset that John Lennon said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, at least Lennon owned his words. He never called it a joke or belittled his critics. He calmly stated his reasons and eventually apologized for upsetting people.

I’m not saying this to hold up John Lennon as some epitome of goodness (he’s had his share of skeletons in the closet.) Rather, that even a snarky lad who built his public persona on taking the piss at any given opportunity didn’t fall back on the “it’s just a joke, bro” defense.

Random, but this pulled up an old memory. When I was a kid bordering on teenagerhood, one of my friends was excited that her parents were finally permitting her to swear. “No shit, Sherlock,” was her favorite, and it ended up practically becoming her catch phrase.

If they went to local protests, they’d meet those other leftists. Networking absolutely occurs at these events.

Didn’t King of the Hill do an episode about the change in cheerleading?

I know compliments we’ve received aren’t necessarily the answer, but it’s hard to think of anything that could top when a former coworker had a baby and told me, "I hope she grows up to be just like you."

Ah yes, high-heeled shoes on a wet deck while leaning on the railing of a giant, moving ship. What could go wrong?

Almost half of all Americans fear a total economic collapse. The other half are looking forward to it.

You wouldn’t take it on a highway

Heh, it’s not a bad idea, but sadly it wouldn’t be practical for most in the US. Living here, you’d be hard-pressed to find many people who don’t need to use a highway to get to work. Maybe in small towns and big cities? At my own job, I can’t think of a single coworker that lives in the same town as we work, and almost every person needs to take a major highway to get there. Theoretically we could take back roads, but it would take so much more time vs the highway that leads right into town. Commutes of a half hour or more are common.

That’s so bad for a child’s development. A computer can’t guide a kid’s hand to practice fine motor skills. It can’t impart social skills to help kids interact with each other. It can’t help kids revolve conflicts with each other, or handle behaviors that require a human touch. Imagine a couple kids fighting because they can’t share - what’s a computer gonna do? A kid can just ignore its instructions. What’s to stop a kid from physically attacking a robo-nanny or whatever fresh hell gets developed in this field?

I work with kids with difficult behaviors. There are ethical boundaries we need to be aware of. Will a robo-nanny be imparted with those rules? How accountable would it be if it did something ethically questionable? What will it be trained on - actual knowledge of children’s psychology (in which case, using a robot at all should be discounted right off, as children thrive on human interaction)? Or will it be trained on what parents/teachers have already been doing, which would inevitably result in being trained on outdated techniques that don’t follow updates in science? If a robot thinks spanking, isolation, or withholding food is okay, that’d be extremely troubling. There’s so much that could go wrong, and knowing this tech isn’t being designed with ethics in mind makes this whole endeavor terrifying.

Are parents going to be comfortable with their kids being alone in a room without an adult? A group of kids could simply band together to lock the robot in a closet or something and let chaos reign. They could figure out how to power it down, or throw things at it until it stops functioning. A kid having a tantrum can be a powerful force, potentially injuring other children in the act, and I highly doubt a robot alone could handle that situation effectively. Where I work it can take a team of adults with blocking pads, and coordination with even more adults to clear other students from the area. Sometimes those other kids are playing games and don’t want to leave, and it takes a trusted adult to convince them that yeah, no, we need to move now. Which brings us to the relationship the teachers have with the students, and how it is crucial to gaining what’s called “instructional control,” which basically means, “this kid will listen to your instructions.” Can a robot foster that? Do we want a robot to be able to foster that? I don’t like the idea of kids personifying machines to that extent, and we’re quickly learning how damaging (literally, it can cause brain damage) that can be for young minds.

I could go on and on, but suffice to say this whole topic is an ethical clusterfuck.

Same boat. I work with small kids, oblivious to politics, full of hope for the future because that’s how they should feel. I clock in and lose myself in their version of the world for 8 hours a day. It’s no wonder why I’m actually happier at work than at home these days.

It’s true and I hate it

… is that the POTUS, for literally the first time in history …

To be fair, there are a lot of things Trump has done that were firsts for the office. I initially misread the headline too, simply because I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump did something absurd like replacing Noem with himself. Because he does a lot of absurd things that have never been done by a US president before. I understood it correctly after reading more, but if someone’s misreading the headline as something bizarre, it’s probably because every headline is bizarre nowadays.

Saying confidently wrong things based on feelings. Yep, that’s Trump all right.

I’m not surprised that feelings elicited a memory for him, but he lost track of the exact details. It’s absolutely in line with dementia. When I worked with dementia patients, a lot of them liked me, and when they saw me they felt better. But they didn’t remember who I was exactly, or what my relation to them was. I was often mistaken for a granddaughter, not because I resembled their grandkids, but because they felt warmly toward me.

The only thing is, Trump has always acted based on feelings. As a spoiled nepo baby, things have always worked out for him, so I doubt he ever developed a strong mind in the first place. The patients I worked with used to be sharp, and dementia made a marked difference in their decision-making. Trump’s still Trump, just more unhinged (somehow.)

Tbf there’s not much practical difference between the two.

Maybe he was invited, but the weather was too nice in Texas at the time.

Damn it, I went to flight school in that area, including using this airport. This means I might have flown over Trump’s house and not even realized it.

Well, at least now I have an answer for that “if you could go back in time and tell your younger self something” question.

Amen

People who treat the law as a suggestion often think everyone else thinks the same way. I’m sure that to him, everyone is doing illegal things - and considering the company he keeps, that belief makes sense. Everyone he knows lies, so he fits right in. Following laws, telling the truth, being a decent human being, to him these may well just be façades that people put up, but that nobody actually holds themselves to. That’s the world he’s always known. Full and true moral bankruptcy.

Ugh, the pro-ICE propaganda reeks. The tone of this article makes me feel like I need a shower.