what the fuck are historians going to point at in the US that lead to the rise in fascism? fucking gamergate? The self-inflicted 2008 crisis?

Losing the Cold War. America wasn’t beaten militarily, but brought down via foreign propaganda. (It also hit the UK, with Brexit, and other countries with similar harmful things going on domestically to them.)

Livejournal was one of the earliest “modern” social media sites (for those who didn’t experience it, it was like a longer-form tumblr–longer text posts, fewer images), and it was sold to a company in Russia in the early 00s. I remember scratching my head as a 20-something about why the servers kept going down, then I learned that intellectuals in Russia had taken it up as THEIR social media and due to politics “on the Russian” side it was getting DDoS’d.

I was still too young to connect the dots then, or understand what all that really meant (hindsight is always much better, isn’t it?) but basically they perfected control via social media first on their own people, probably trawled through all the content of the original LiveJournal users posting in English, then perfected using what they learned there on later social media sites.

And because Americans A) thought the Cold War was over, and B) have a bit of a head-scratcher conundrum when it comes to free speech because it’s valued so highly and nobody likes censorshiop, nobody did anything or even realized anything was happening until the harm was already done.

Personally, again with hindsight, I think company-designed social media algorithms that just suggest content to you as “trending” or whatever should be illegal (and block buttons should be mandatory). Users should have to be forced to follow, one by one, the content they want to subscribe to.

Having “trending” algorithms that have no transparency in what they show or boost allows malignant actors to game the algorithm.

If you force people to follow others based on word of mouth or reblogs from their actual friends, and give people a way to solidly block someone that’s easy to find and instant to use, it will cut a lot of the bullshit down. People will be somewhat less inclined to fall down wells of stupidity. It won’t completely stop it, but people are lazy and if you don’t dangle shit in front of their nose many will go off and do something else instead of putting in the effort to find something horrible.

(all the gums are closed)

I don’t know why, but I find this typo hilarious.

So are you like…16 or 60?

This is the way ^

Furious learning about the subject at hand is how I cope with my losses. Make that anger work for you instead of blowing things up.

So you’re saying there’s a future where a wizard will cast mend buttcrack, and thus nobody will ever stuff things up their bums ever again?

Trump is an abuser. (He has a long history spanning decades of fucking people over.) If you look at human nature on a small scale, in domestic violence situations usually the abuser will first isolate the person they are abusing from any allies that may help them or go to their aid. On a small scale, this would be things like siblings, parents, friends, and such of the person the abuser is abusing. On a larger scale, it means breaking longstanding international alliances.

Since Putin wants to break America, he’s giving Trump instructions to isolate America from its allies, just like an abuser will drive away any friends or aid from the person they are abusing, because when someone is isolated (whether an individual or country), they are easier to control and abuse.

Trump probably gets PERSONAL benefit of staying out of jail/not being thrown out a window by Russians by complying, so he does what he’s told. Musk is likely a Russian asset too (I suspect he got into deep financial trouble when he was forced by US regulators to buy Twitter, and that’s when Russia swooped in, but he might have been compromised earlier too.) Musk, not suffering from the dementia that Trump currently seems to be having, is Trump’s handler. That’s why he’s always around now to make sure Trump doesn’t forget to stick to the script.

So from a “what benefit to tariffs” is there perspective, what’s happening is that geopolitically the US is under intense attacks from enemies to the US that are purposefully attacking things that make America strong and killing them so that it is easier to shove the final knife in. It’s the same pattern that happens in domestic violence situations, just written much larger.

Others smarter than me have pointed out Putin probably wants the USA to have a breakdown like the fall of the USSR, and is directing things so that this happens.

Babymetal also did a song with Electric Callboy that’s awesome.

Some have speculated it’s complying in advance with stealth editing of books to remove whatever content has been decided to be censored. If you can’t download the original copy and keep it, they can change the one you have and make it seem like the original text never existed.

It sounds like a Disco Elysium reference

You could start by NOT sowing despair.

but I was around listing to music in 2001 and we all voted that Creed sucks

Can confirm, was also listening to music in 2001, and Creed sucks

Given current events though, I wonder if Disturbed and System of a Down will be moved to make something new.

Everyone else thinks I was cute. Which I take to mean everyone is being polite

I don’t know if this helps, but someone who loves the adult-you will absolutely look at your baby photos through the same filter as they look at you now. They’ll see those photos as a little peek into the past of someone they already like. So you could genuinely be ugly as hell as a kid–but if they like you now, that’s not gonna matter to them, you’ll be cute.

This doesn’t have such a large age-gap, but someone I knew had a crush on me looked at my employee photo (that I fucking HATED) and decided they liked my “little smirk”. Why did they love the photo I hated? Because they had an emotional connection to me (on their side at least) anyhow.

About three days. I get headaches, and shakey, and at some point in the first twenty four hours the hunger pangs vanish. So if I focused through something without eatung I might only realize due to headache and the empty vibrating feel.

It happens less as I get older as I understand body signals better and eat before the point when the hunger pangs fade.

I’m having a bad day, but kitty cats make me smile, so give him a pat for me. And a hug.

As a writer, this is why I’ll never condemn cozy books with happy endings. This type of media, whether it’s games or books or music, helps real people get through crappy times intact, even if elitists sneer that overly happy stuff isn’t this or that. Usually people who are going through the worst times irl are the ones who need avenues of escape most. If you’re already living through crap, you don’t need media to remind you of the crap, you already know good and well that crappy things exist.

Learn why the Japanese like squid.

Even if you didn’t mean to coin an euphemism, I love this new euphemism.

If you have your back to them, they don’t emit light either!

Edit: Well, reflections, for you with the FANCY GPUs…

Yep. I eventually realized the car headlights don’t actually have a blue LED dot included in them…my glasses and/or crappy eyes are doing something funny that splits out a blue dot.

I grew up reading paper books and I don’t like how narrow my phone is, or how reading for 8+ hours at a time drains the battery so much so quickly unless I attach a tether to it to charge while I read (I don’t like the sensory feeling of that phone charger dragging over my body as I shift in bed). Phones also provide too many “quick gratification” distractions like apps and social media. Also, as I get older, I have to increase text size because my eyes already sucked before aging got to them, then they got worse, and large text on a tiny phone screen is ridiculous.

eReaders have better battery life and a bigger screen and are easier to read in full sun without glare washing it out.

This is when you use the kiteh as your pillow. (It’s a massage pillow; it vibrates and kneads.)