Trump supporters generally are cowardly cattle. A few can obviously be riled up and pushed to do violence, but not enough to do any real damage. I mean in terms of a civil war. January 6th was a unique situation that will be better prepared for next time.

Only about 30% of people even like trump; probably about 1% of those people are able-bodied, have weapons, have nothing to lose, and could be convinced to kill for him. Of course that's still like a million people, which sure as shit ain't nothing, but they're spread out, unorganized, and still very few compared to military numbers. As for the block of people who would identify as not supporting trump, I couldn't really guess numbers, but people are wildly mistaken to think that only people on the right have guns; we just don't have murder boners or make guns our whole personality. I hope I only ever use my guns for target practice, but I'm absolutely ready to use them to defend my home and family if ever necessary, and I'm not interesting enough to have any reason to believe that that's a likely scenario. Honestly, my biggest concern on that threat is a scenario where trump wins and releases voter registration info and SuGgEsTs that the second amendment folks do something about those tricksy democratses. The only other people dumb enough to break in while I'm home are cops, and I know that the courtroom is where you fight that flavor of fascism.

Generally speaking, regarding the big question here of what will happen if Harris wins, I think that the answer is "nothing shocking". There will be claims of an unfair election process, maybe some meek attempts at insurrection, continued prosecution and convictions for trump's crimes (and probably slap on the wrist sentences). The economy will gently recover, the future will be invested in, maybe some rights get legislatively protected. Military and police funding will continue to balloon forever. We'll still fund genocides and fuck with any country that pivots toward socialism. "Nothing will fundamentally change" but it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

Then after 4 years of sexism and racism on OAN and Fox News, Desantis or a similar creep wins the presidency in '28. They roll back everything they possibly can and fuck the country up for the profits of billionaires and corporations again. Because reasonable people will get too comfortable to care enough, but unreasonable people can't stop foaming at the mouth over every weekly culture war.

When trump is finally gone, trumpism will still remain. And it will have prettier packaging. That's when it gets really scary imo.

Doubt.

I would prefer Sriracha (shout-out to Underwood Ranch specifically) but to each their own.

I think he does some intentional lying, and he says false shit believing that it is true, but most of what he says is bullshit. And I mean bullshit in the sense that he neither knows nor cares whether it's a true statement, he just knows that it's helpful to his goals in the moment, therefore he says it. When he talks about over 20M illegal immigrants entering this year, it's impossible for him to know a number on that since it obviously isn't tracked, but I'm sure that it doesn't matter what the actual number is at all. He just pulls out a big number to scare racist people into getting upset enough to come and vote for the guy who says that it needs to stop, which is him. He doesn't care that it's not an accurate number, and because he doesn't know the real number for sure then it's impossible to prove that he knows that it's not actually that number and therefore not a certain lie per se. He gets all of the benefit of lying without any of the attached accountability. He bullshits.

Sure. Here's a song a friend wrote with me and then I recorded in Audacity. I didn't realize just how very Andrew Bird it is until much later lol.

Pro-Creation

TL;DR: it's been the hardest and worst influence in my mental health at pretty much every point in my life.

We moved a lot as a kid and my parents fought a lot. Why? Because my dad was in the army because there just wasn't economic opportunity otherwise. I still have some psychological scarring regarding food security, and I'll have something akin to a panic attack if I eat something that tastes anything like Berry Berry Kix because we bought like a pallet of it when it was on sale one time and it's all I had for months.

When I graduated high school in 2007, I didn't attend the ceremony. Why? Because I needed to work. I didn't want to be economically trapped, so I worked as much as I could so I could pay for community college and then transfer credits to a 4 year school and hopefully get some kind of scholarship based on my good grades. While in community college, that plan changed drastically because of the 2008 recession. I managed to complete my 2 year degree though, thankfully.

In 2013, my mom died. She was 51, almost 52. She was very sick in a country that doesn't take care of the health of its people. She drank heavily from the stress of money being tight, and she smoked since a very early age, so I can't squarely blame capitalism entirely for her early death, but doctors weren't interested in helping somebody who was already so far gone that her death would hurt their statistics. In any case, this launched a deep depression in which I stopped finding joy in any sense of artistic expression or productivity for a long while. I stopped caring so much about whether I was alive.

Soon afterwards, while I was already at a low point, I had a boss that was extremely abusive. I learned what gaslighting is. Nothing I ever did was ever worth an attaboy, but not getting screamed at became the reward I would seek. Basically Whiplash, but with chefs instead of musicians. My employment prospects were extremely limited, so I was stuck there. I strongly considered escaping it in the only way I had control over it all, but thankfully opted for a hail mary risk that happened to pay off; I quit and took a temp job scrubbing toilets.

It's a long story, but that led step by step to my current job operating a combined cycle power plant at about $130k/year. I met a lovely woman in July 2016, married her in September 2020 (despite the covid of it all), and we just bought our first house yesterday. Despite my eventual successes in life, I still bash this economic system because I knew that ultimately I just got really lucky. But this isn't the ending. I wouldn't be surprised if housing crashes again at some point and it turns out that we shouldn't have bought. Idk, we're just doing our best here.

I could talk for hours about how profit motivations and economic struggles caused people to clamor for returning to school and work at the peak of the pandemic, which caused a million preventable deaths, but that barely moves the needle in terms of my personal mental health. I was an "essential" worker, which really just means "expendable" but I had already come to terms with that by then. It would be more appropriate to talk about how the music industry changes have impacted my interest in making music since I know it's astronomical that it could ever even be a hobby that pays for itself, let alone make a little extra through gigs.

I hear from people when I cook or play music or engage in other hobbies and interests that I should (paraphrasing here) find a way to monetize that. These things are my escape from capitalist hellfire. They are the pressure relief valve. Why in the fuck would I invite that vampire into my safe haven? I'd much rather give my music away or give away cooking tips. I don't want to cater your fucking wedding. I don't want to track how many listens my mediocre music might get on Spotify. I just want to create.

I make money at work and I make happy at home.

Same. That kinda seems like it would lead to fewer people bothering to want to be a documented immigrant, right? Which, phrased a little differently, kinda incentivizes people to come in illegally or at least remain undocumented once here since that wouldn't be a barrier to them owning a home? The right would've had a fucking field day if he'd signed that. They froth over straws in milkshakes; he doesn't need to draw valid criticisms via bad policy two months before this election.

I'd rather see a remake/reboot where Culkin plays a character similar to old man Marley, accidentally scaring the kid character as a local urban legend. Similar to the scene in the church in the classic, he could empathize with the kid of the movie by talking about how he once wished that his family left him alone in that time of year too, and he quickly found that he regretted that wish and he missed them terribly. A decent writer could roll with that concept and still make it a great scene where the kid has wise advice to impart so it's not just a soulless excuse for people to go "hey, that's OG Kevin!" I'm not that writer, but hopefully a good writer reads this and can get a solid idea together to pitch so I can see that movie in my lifetime.

But they also don't want to pay taxes or see any slowdowns due to repairs or upgrades. The same energy as a child wishing every day were Christmas.

I'm 35. I've had some tough times. I've struggled and I'm sure I'll struggle again at some point, but aside from politics and covid, I've been in a sort of golden age for like six years, and things have been getting better throughout. There have been some shitty spots, but it's been joyful in general. There was a time about ten years ago that I truly thought about giving up for good, and I'm really glad that I didn't. I never thought I'd have so much to live for; I didn't even think I deserved a shot at it.

Work hard (but also rest), stay curious, and tell jokes. Joy is possible, but you may need to be the one to provide it, but it pays dividends.

Ugly Sonic

I literally knew a girl who said this. She truly had no idea that they were the same thing, but rattled on about wanting it gone while benefiting from it.

I also knew an older woman who hated Obama and said "he's arrogant for naming that after himself." She didn't believe me that her favorite channel was the one who named it after him unofficially and that its official name was ACA.

They truly just repeat bullshit until it sticks, and it usually works on the people who don't bother to diversify their information sources. It's so goddamn frustrating.

At least it's not a MadCatz.

lol k

Cool. You are accepting my statement that what you are doing and saying is pushing to help the more authoritarian option to win, and your complaint is that I'm not nice about disagreeing with you. I would happily disagree with a general conservative, but you are posing as a supposed leftist who is arguing in good faith on behalf of workers. But you're not. You're full of shit, you're aware of it, and you're admitting to attempting to bamboozle unsuspecting people, and you're upset that I don't have kind words in calling you out for it. I don't feel the need to be tolerant of the intolerant, and your entire philosophy seems to be all about muddying the waters to help a fascist into power to limit the freedoms of my friends, my family, and people I don't know but care about nonetheless. So kindly fuck right off.

And your solution to this is to do and say things that push for the more authoritarian option to win. You're either a liar or a fucking moron, so which is it?

more fascism than we already have

I guess you couldn't read it the first two times.

Understood. You just want more fascism than we already have. Thank you for clarifying.

I will proudly support third parties

You could've just stopped there. This is all anybody needs to see to know that nobody should listen to you. In our shitty first past the post system, all this does is pull frustrated people away from the mostly reasonable but imperfect choice. You're either clueless or intentionally attempting to dissuade people from voting for democrats in order to help trump to win. In this system, a third party candidate cannot fucking win. There is no actual "blue maga" for you to whine about. Stop spreading bullshit. I'm glad your username is so stupid that it's easy to see on its face that your account's entire existence is predicated on sowing division or you might actually have a chance at convincing some people. Unfortunately for you, most of the people on lemmy are smarter than the people on reddit. If you actually cared about defending American democracy, you'd shut the fuck up instead of saying this dumbass bullshit that serves only to dismantle what crumbs of democracy we have left, whether your sabotaging words are intentional or not. If you keep posting this braindead shit, then I'll know for sure that you just want more fascism than we already have. So for the love of all that you are at least claiming to hold dear, shut the entire fuck up about this. Yes, capitalism bad, so actually maybe let's not hand the country over to donald fucking trump, famous asshole criminal capitalist.

And he can fucking keep him.

Dirty production initiates based on demand. So-called "peaker plants" start up under high demand when cost per megawatt rises. They typically start early in the day as most people wake up and cook breakfast and get ready for work and then shut down after people get home and wind down for bed. More extreme versions of this only fire up for more extreme weather events or when other plants trip offline unexpectedly. If demand is normalized, so too is production, which would phase out dirtier power production like coal and natural gas. As an operator at a combined cycle natural gas power plant, this would force me to find a new job. Which is fine by me. The system needs to be changed to be fixed, even if it causes a little pain for me.

Think of the grid as a pressurized system. To maintain consistent pressure, demand and supply need to be approximately equivalent. When use is high, the pressure drops so demand goes up to maintain that pressure, so prices per megawatt rise to incentivize power plants to step on the gas pedal to produce more. When use drops off, that production needs to reduce to prevent over pressurization of the grid. With battery storage, that pressure swing diminishes. It's effectively a pressure regulator.

Additionally, the home power management system via UPS and inverters does exactly what you're saying in terms of using it when it's available. At times of high demand and high cost and low supply, your home could seamlessly switch over to your home battery supply for your energy needs to remove strain on the grid, and this would be attractive to set up through things like proposed tax credits and generally reducing your home energy bill. So at 3pm in an August heat wave, your AC could be battery powered from when you charged while you slept the night before. And you'll recharge tonight when everybody's AC has switched off for the most part. All this to say: you're absolutely right and we already agree, but also we can use emerging tech and legislation to vastly expedite this badly-needed transition.

there's not enough lithium

I am hopeful that developments in sodium ion battery tech will yield different strategies. The weight and energy densities vs cost and abundance mean that it makes more sense (at this time at least) to reserve lithium ion battery tech for more mobile use cases like handheld devices and EVs, but use sodium ion battery tech for things like grid storage or home energy management solutions. I dream of a day in the next decade or two in which virtually nobody bothers to have a generator for emergency home power and instead opts for a UPS with inverters and chargers hooked up to a home battery, allowing not only emergency power, but a "smart" system to power the home via battery during high grid demand and charge during low demand, normalizing grid supply curves and making power bills cheaper for all. The path to this starts with big scale early adopters like hotels and apartment buildings, which could easily supplement energy needs through solar panels on their large roofs at the same time.

For all the enshittification we're seeing across most industries, I am cautiously optimistic that we might be living at the edge of an energy revolution. We may see fucking huge fundamental changes to our energy infrastructure within our lifetimes, and that's one of the few things I'm excited about for the near future. It's unfortunate that it's taking a crisis to force these changes, but it would be a great pivot nonetheless.

This is why it's a good idea to enjoy life a little bit now instead of sacrificing every joy to be able to do it all later. Climb that mountain now while your knees are still capable. Play that video game now while it's fascinating to you. Learn that language now while you're cognitive faculties can still serve you. Brew that beer you always wanted to, write that short story you've been putting off, teach yourself to paint or bake or play golf now instead of putting it off another year. Strike while the iron is hot or you'll wish you'd done more with your short time here. You won't be on your death bed wishing you'd worked more or watched more TV. You'll wish you'd traveled more or finished that project left undone or spent more time with loved ones, actively living life.

RDR2 is very much not for everybody. It is intentionally tedious. It's the kind of game you sit down and play for at least 2-3 hours every time you play it because that's just how long it takes to get anything done. You aren't fast traveling. You aren't doing things instantaneously in a menu. Your time as a human being is an in-game resource. If you're in the middle of nowhere and your horse dies, a ton of your shit was being carried in the saddle; you need to walk your ass to the nearest town lugging that saddle, vulnerable to wild animals and robbers. It's a game about getting things done with your own two hands at the turn of the century when that was becoming much less valued. It's a game about subsistence. You could have an easier, more prosperous life, but at what cost? At whose cost? It's a game about nature and living in a natural world as a natural being, criticizing the transition into industrial exploitation of our fellow natural world and natural animals, including natural humans. It's not a rootin' tootin' spaghetti western adventure; it's an interactive classic American novel that can occasionally have funny or fun moments depending on your tastes. I fully understand that it's wasn't a game that you or millions of other people enjoyed, but I think it's wholly unjust to label it a "bad" game for that. It did exactly what it set out to do, and evoked impactful emotion in sharing its message as intended for the people who wanted to be open to it. It's successful art, but not all art is for you and not all art is for me. You may have gone in with the wrong expectations for it. I think it really sucks that every rockstar game since the early 2000s seems to be marketed as "GTA but ___" because the Red Dead games and LA Noire are very much not GTA. They're 3rd person open worlds with similar engines, but that's where the similarities end.

If you ever try it again, come in with a similar mindset to wanting to sit down and watch The Godfather, not The Avengers. There's a lot to get out of it if you just focus on the story and the characters and the beautiful setting. Enjoy the honest work, and lament the shootouts and heists.

Nah, a pussy is happy to take its licks. This guy is ingrown scrotum hair. Causes pain in its vicinity and needs to be removed.

Just like he said last time.

Agreed. I hear people talk about him running in 2028 if he loses here, but he's old, eats like shit, and doesn't exercise, plus he's a toxically angry person which can't be good for you. He might not even make it to January. I'm not looking forward to the rabid conspiracy theories that will surround his death. Even if he lived to 200, the cultists would still say that he was secretly assassinated by "the radical, socialist, communist, leftist, fascist, democrats".

Motherfucker is older than every president that served from 1993 to when he took office in 2017. That's right. Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama all are younger than him. Old-ass Joe Biden is only about 3.5 years older than him.

How about "anon culter" instead?

Anecdotal, but from what I've seen from the few stores I know about, they either have a donation program set up where somebody picks stuff up and takes elsewhere (probably homeless shelters and hospitals?) or managers let employees snatch stuff up before it gets to the trash can. Most employees are pretty fucking sick of the food after working there a few months, but neighbors and workers near the location always appreciate a bag full of free goodies once in a while.

Watch Dogs 2. It's free on PS+ extra right now and I've never played it. I did the cold open already the other day and it seems fun enough to put a few hours into even if I'm pretty sure I'll get bored before getting very far. Big Ubisoft games just exhaust me with all the diarrhea Christmas lights.

It's barely more work than just clicking "Not interested." though. Just click "tell us why" and "I've already watched this video" and it knows that you didn't dislike it. Trust me, I've been doing this for a while now and it still properly recommends videos. It just cleans up your recommended queue because it knows that you've already watched those ones in particular. I've watched a lot of music deep dive content this way because the ads stupidly will interrupt at the worst moments and ruin the flow, but that kind of content still shows up on my feed all the time.

I'm not tempted to sign up for something if I don't even know what the features are. Maybe some of their dumbass ads should be for their own fucking product lol. I assumed that it was free from ads, and I think you can download videos and play with your screen off on your phone? Idk, Vanced has been great for me on my phone. And I wouldn't have bothered to get that set up in the first place if the ads and lack of features weren't so disruptively intrusive. If they find a way to shut down every way of getting around their overreaching bullshit, I'll opt to fund a few respectable creators directly rather than pay for the platform.

And I wouldn't want to bother building a queue in the first place unless it were in order to manage ad breaks. Putting that behind a paywall defeats the purpose of what I'm proposing. You can already build playlists all day long.

After watching, click do not recommend and say that it's because you've already watched it. Problem solved.

Pro tip: open YouTube in Chrome, signed into your YouTube account. Allow the algorithm and your subs to continue recommending videos. Find one you wanna see. Copy link address. Paste it into Firefox with adblock, not signed into Google/YouTube. Prosper.

Just watched a YouTube video on my PS5 earlier today while cooking a food and saw for the first time that they will shoot an ad with a "next" button that skips to another ad, and then there's a "skip" button countdown. Ridiculous. I wouldn't bother with adblock if the ads were reasonable.

Here's a free idea, YouTube: build in the ability to add videos to a simple temporary queue and then only put ads in at the very start or very end of videos so they aren't intrusive.

Get out, Greg. It's not too late, Greg. I know that the wedding already happened, but divorce exists for a reason, Greg. Respect yourself because she never will, Greg.

Greg.

Rents have gone so insane that (assuming everything goes smoothly and we close) we will spend like $500 less per month by moving from our 2 bedroom apartment into a 4 bedroom 1800sqft townhouse. It'd be even less if interest rates weren't dog water right now haha. But there was only one other family competing to go under contract, so the high interest rate is how we got ahead of the upcoming gold rush. Houses are about to go for much higher than right now.

I understand you now. I've automatically assumed that "reinvest in the company" is just shorthand for stock buybacks lol. I was like wtf how is that good for the average person haha.

You might be right, but what's silly is that you think companies wouldn't do everything in their power to not reduce pay to both workers and the government at the same time. And they do. In fact, they lobby endlessly to lower their taxes as well as keep wages low, loosen regulations, dismantle the power of unions, roll back labor rights, and take away voting power of the people who would vote against their interests. You need to understand that the entire motivation of these companies is to maximize profit at all costs. "If you're going to lose the money anyway" is not something they have ever or will ever accept. That's like assuming that you accept that you will never eat another scrap of food ever again. Your survival depends upon it, and when access to it is threatened, you will lie and cheat and steal as much as is necessary to ensure your survival.

If the government taxed businesses at a higher rate and used that increased revenue to improve the quality of life and access to opportunities for all, I'd say that that's a much better use of that money. We've tried taxing businesses less in hopes of having anything other than piss trickle down to the workers. That's how we got here. Productivity has boomed, yet wages have stagnated and people are struggling to get by. It's time to stop propagating broken bullshit-ass Reaganomics and start advocating for your fellow human to be able to afford access to the bare minimum of food, shelter, and medical care. The GDP of the US is over $25 TRILLION. So why in the blue fuck are people still freezing and starving to death in this country? Unacceptable.

The amazing economy that these MAGA people dream of getting back to can be largely attributed to two things. The first is lots of manufacturing, which the CHIPS Act is a step in the right direction towards, but is impossible to ever really get back to ever since Nixon opened the door to China as a trade and manufacturing superpower in the 70s, and companies decided to lower costs by sending manufacturing over there. The second is a MUCH higher business tax rate. At one point, it was 91%. I'm not saying that that's the correct rate in the modern economy, but 28% ain't shit. Raise it to 40% at least, and then use that additional revenue to get everyday Americans' heads above water.

I'm an extremely lucky 35-year-old American white guy, married with no kids or pets, denied ourselves several comforts and luxuries, and I'm still just now at a point where I'm trying to buy my first home. I have almost every advantage possible, and I'm still over ten years behind my parents' generation. That shit ain't right. Help us, the people.