As we have learned over the last few years, laws are only as strong as their enforcement mechanism. If the institutions responsible for upholding the law fail to do that, or even enable violating the law even more, then the law is useless.

That’s basically my only hope. Incompetence, bickering, infighting, and just generally falling apart from within their own hate machine as these kinds of ideologies tend to do.

We are past this though. I remember screaming this into the air at the radio listening to Jack Speer on NPR in 2016. He was going on and on about the awful things Trump was saying and how we shouldn’t be hearing this. I screamed then why the fuck do you keep repeating it Jack, why?!? I blame the media 100% for his election in 2016, all that free publicity. 2024 though…I really don’t have any answers…

Well thank goodness the US just elected a person and party that are totally dedicated to climate change mitigation! And our political process in general is well oiled and poised for real meaningful change! And the American people all acknowledge the existence of the problem and in no way deny it, and are all united in fighting the clear and present danger it poises!

Isn’t that completely missing the point of this post? 15-20 is old enough to have some experience, opinions, thoughts, hopes, fears, dreams, etc.

I hear you, but idk what to do. I can’t engage with someone who says out loud things like “I want trump to become a dictator” and “democracy is overrated” and “your body my choice” and don’t seem to care at all that mass deporting 10+million people WILL lead to mass murder. It’s impossible to have a discussion in good faith with these people. They’ve just demonstrated that the last 8-9 years is a feature, not a bug, and let the mask off about who they really are. They’ve alienated themselves by leaving the realm of reality.

Ctrl+F Hitler, ah, there it is. I feel like the xkcd comic missed an opportunity to have a 1932-1945 segment in there about the biggest cause of death for time travelers being OTHER time travelers killing them before they can successfully go back in time and kill Hitler, lol.

Re: conservation of reality, I feel like if I went back and shot Hitler, I would miss, or be stopped by security, or bad weather, or my gun would misfire, or even if I managed to actually do it, he’d be replaced by a look alike, and then it would turn out the guy we always thought was Hitler was actually just an actor, or something. Like if someone went back and killed baby Adolph when he was six months old, the parents would adopt another kid and name IT adolph, and there you go. Whatever happened happened and can’t be undone, not through magic resuscitation of a corpse, but through smooth and natural intervention of reality itself, if that makes sense…

I hear the universe is infinite, and no matter how far away from earth you go, there’s just infinitely more universe. So like if you are standing on earth looking twelve billion light years that way and then twelve billion light years the other way you are in a sphere of unimaginable size right? But if you actually went twelve billion light years that way once you get there you can still look this way or that way and see twelve billion more light years every which way. So from that perspective, pretty much anywhere in the universe is the center of the universe…from a certain point of view…

That’s such a great angle, calling all republican presidents DEI hires from the electoral college lol

You’re a very unpleasant person.

Calm down professor. The US is one of the only countries in the world to tax worldwide income, even if they are a nonresident of the US. That is NOT how it works in every country.

Here’s a pretty good article about it from the WSJ if you want to educate yourself on the subject: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WB-34630

It’s somewhat accurate to say “every penny they make is taxABLE to Uncle Sam” which is different from saying 100% tax rate. Americans living outside the US still need to file a tax return and report all their income, and pay tax on it to the US, even if it is from a foreign source. That said they could claim the foreign tax credit if they paid tax to a foreign regime on that income already, or the foreign income exclusion under some circumstances which would reduce their taxable income to the US.

…How does that work? Who pays for the lumber, cement, electrical, plumbing, etc?

I spoke with a far left friend of mine about this. His position essentially boiled down to the risk of a massive nuclear disaster outweighed the benefits. I said what about the known disastrous consequences of coal and oil? Didn’t really have a response to that. It doesn’t make sense to me. I’ll roll those dice and take the .00001% chance risk or whatever.

It bugs me when people call any stupid little picture or comic a meme. It also bugs me when people say they are making a meme. One does not simply “make” a meme. It must become a meme on its own. Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve got some clouds to yell at.

I really wonder if people like this have a playbook, like have they read history and put together a step by step guide at this point for maximizing assholery, or does behavior like this sort of emerge naturally as the assholes take control? Like why do we see this over and over in authoritarian regimes, is it natural or are they copycats?

Sidebar: today I learned the word assholery is a real word, I thought I just made it up lol

Have kids if you want. It’s just insane to me to plan your entire life and make major decisions on a cataclysm that may or may not even occur in your lifetime; and it (climate change) may present in ways that we can’t even imagine now.

Edit, fine, fuck me, it’s raining fire and brimstone out there, billions of people are dying in the streets, the horsemen of the apocalypse are here, it’s game over for the human species, my bad. Nobody have kids, it’s over, might as well just shoot yourself right now.

My advice is to live your life as best as you can without worrying too much about things you can’t control. Try and build a life around yourself that’ll help you be happy through it all, regardless of what happens. Enjoy your 20’s. 30’s are good too and 40’s don’t suck either.

To paraphrase Sun Tzu: do not choose a path to victory. Instead, choose a strategy such that all paths lead to victory.

I’ve barely even noticed this writers strike because I’ve hardly even bothered to watch any new Hollywood movies or TV shows in literally years. Everything I have seen recently has been complete garbage. So I find myself watching older shows again and again, more YouTube content, educational and history stuff like that…heck, I’ve been following some modern film critics like Red Letter Media and just watch their commentary vs the real thing, and it’s usually much more entertaining.

I think Hollywood is going to use this opportunity to replace the writers with AI. If it works great, if it doesn’t work, nobody will notice or care.