That you know of. That seems like a pretty broad brush to be painting with. It may be generally true but I’d be extremely surprised if there were no exceptions.

I’ve got a pair of these that I like. They do the job as described. They’re not great at anything else but I like them for laying in bed.

What’s the alternative? AI is telling people to eat glue so that isn’t a viable option imo. I don’t think anything else exists that isn’t human managed, although I’m not entirely sure what you mean by that.

Cool, so no plan then, nice. Good luck.

Yes guns are used to shoot people in the face in war. What’s odd about that to you?

We get it, you don’t like guns and you don’t think they have any place in society. However, you haven’t made any other statements than that. In this hypothetical situation that’s looking more and more like our future reality every day, your plan to resist fascism is what exactly? Because at the end of the day I think you know that having a gun opens up more options than you would otherwise have and you’re just having a hard time picturing guns in any other context than you’re used to talking about them in.

Cops have families too. Generals need to buy groceries. There are plenty of ways to resist a fascist government given the proper motivation. Firearms are just one (pretty effective when used correctly) way to accomplish that goal.

Vietnam and Afghanistan are both great examples of how a guerilla force with access to primarily small arms can force a much more powerful army to expend so many resources fighting a war of attrition that it eventually becomes untenable to continue. It’s not glamorous or particularly quick but it’s an option that isn’t on the table if the most resistance you can muster is trying to get close enough to stab the right people.

The uncertainty you’re expressing is why the 2nd amendment exists. Trump is exactly the type of person the founding fathers had in mind when they wrote it.

I’m with you on that. I’m not giving up I’m just not the kind of person that can ignore the scope of the problem. In fact, I think it’s impossible to address the problem without a solid understanding of where we stand, no matter how uncomfortable that may be to acknowledge.

If that’s what it takes to get rid of CEOs then I’m on board.

Seriously though, that’s the best application of AI. CEO is a simple logic based position, or so they tell us, that happens to consume more financial resources than many dozen lower level employees. If anyone is on the chopping block it should be them, in both senses of the phrase.

We conquered our resource scarcity problem years ago. Artificial scarcity still exists in society because we haven’t conquered our greed problem.

We’ve already waited way too long. That’s the point. Talking about it like you are makes it sound like we haven’t missed our window for slow and methodical transitions but that part of the conversation happened in the 80s and we decided that path was for pussies. Now here we are in the “October hurricanes are flooding Tennessee” timeline. If that sounds like the right time to be discussing getting the most out of our remaining diesel engines then you’re not paying attention.

Same. I do pretty close to everything I can to help but I don’t have any illusions that it’s going to fix the problem

That’s not untrue but the problem with phrasing it that way is that people will interpret it to mean we can implement relatively unnoticed measures to mitigate climate change. That may have been true 50 years ago but it’s not anymore. Meaningful change will be very painful at this point and that’s exactly why it’s not going to happen until it’s literally impossible to ignore the problem. You would think we’re there already but humans are very good at maintaining delusional thinking.

More hopium. We’re in that funny period in public sentiment between “climate change is a hoax” and “it’s too late to do anything about it”. Both are completely incompatible with the amount of societal reconfiguration required to minimize the impacts of climate change. We will not even consider drastic measures until more than half of us are dead. Call it doomerism if you like but that’s where we are and anyone taking an honest look at the situation knows it.

Maybe not before but it is now

You’re assuming they give a shit what you think about their actions. I don’t think that’s true at all. We’ve been in the “what are you going to do about it” phase of authoritarianism for a while now.

I’ve known this guy for a long time. He’s grown up in rural America so he has all the same reasons for supporting Trump as those people typically do with the added oddity of being more impacted by the negative outcomes of those policies. Guns, immigration, general economic stuff. At least those are the reasons they’ll state publicly.

It seems more like an in-group thing than anything else to me. I would have expected some sort of expression of disagreement with Trump on this particular issue but he says he thinks Democrats will do the same thing despite all evidence to the contrary. That is how he’s chosen to rationalize the situation.

I know a Ukrainan born US citizen with a significant amount of family still living in Ukraine who is also a Trump supporter. He hates Russia and wants Ukraine to maintain independence. I asked him a couple of weeks ago what he thought would happen to Ukraine if Trump was reelected and he said Ukraine would probably be left to fend for themselves. This statement did not come with remorse or condemnation, it was delivered in the same way you would describe the winner of a sporting event. A simple statement of fact.

I don’t know how to respond to that kind of thinking. If the understanding that your vote might lead to the death of your family members doesn’t break through the political polarization in this country and make you reconsider then I don’t think anything will.

$600 million / 55,000 claims = ~$10,000

Not a great deal imo but not exactly $3 either

I’m completely confident that people 150 years from now will say very similar things about us and our contemporaries. Maybe that knowledge will help you chill the fuck out, even just a bit.