Yeah I was thinking the same, I feel like I’ve seen one or two of these a week for over ten years now

lol yeah it’s only been two weeks

The world will be smart to tariff in return only those goods that Trump supporters peddle. This happened last time with bourbon, and it cratered corn producers and we wound up bailing out Agriculture. They made the country pay for the tariffs and our deficit zoomed. It made Trump scramble for months to try and fix the damage. He’s even more vulnerable to reprisal like that now that he relies on the oligarchs to keep prevalence, all the world has to do is make Amazon, FB, and Tesla / Twitter suffer

Ah yeah, I remember watching it happen. I’m sorry that it happened there, and now here as well. We really are just an incredibly gullible species.

Which country?

His fans think they’re sticking it to everyone by doing this. It’s maybe the most incredible confidence man job I’ve ever seen. He’s harvesting everything they can yield and they’re sneering at us while they lose it all.

The only problem with blocking people early and often is that it produces no signal for everyone else, downvote style.

Think about it: “shithead42088 (blocked by 83 people)”. Or more subtly just downgrade the relative sorting of their posts for everyone else if you don’t want to reveal the number.

Our world is a network of networks, just like these apps are. In the real world, echo chambers are highly desirable. We carefully shape them. My neighborhood, my city, all of it is a narrower set of people that I’ve chosen. Beyond that, my crowds are echo chambers. My family.

Being forced to listen to the abhorrent is the unnatural state. Drinking from the firehose of repulsive opinion is something that never occurs in the real world without conflict. Sometimes violent.

I don’t have to listen to something I don’t want to listen to, and that, too, is freedom.

:)

What’s incredible to me is that they don’t realize that societal collapse will render their resources more or less worthless. Their options are the same as everyone else’s: get a bug out plan, be ready to abandon all belongings, etc. What are you planning to do to keep your bunkers stocked past the first month? How will you pay your security if your banks are gone or your currency is worthless?

Yes, of course we can estimate it. We can just guess, that’s estimation. From there, it would have to come along with clues, or metrics, though. At that point, that’s when the real problem emerges: each company has a completely different impact on the planet, economy, culture, etc.

So, in other words, you can’t proceed with a single model, and therefore the models are difficult to compare with one another in terms of their accuracy.

It’s almost better to, instead of trying to measure each company (depressing, time consuming, complex) just come up with a threshold of what constitutes too much death. Then it becomes clearer that the problem is that we’re looking for a certain tally to determine if a line has been crossed or not, when we already know the answer:

One preventable death is enough to warrant a major response.

No amount of bureaucracy or legislative tissues can change the fact that it’s morally wrong to broker death for profit. Scale of profit doesn’t matter, plausible deniability doesn’t matter. It’s the end of someone’s life for money. Either it is okay, or not.

We often get caught up in the numbers because they introduce a debatable, grey terrain where the gravity of what we’re really discussing isn’t as hard to face. But it’s the trolley problem, and ultimately most of the actions we do in the interests of debating it just serve the purpose of letting us talk and ignore the lever. Meanwhile the trolley barrels on.

The Martians deserve him

I think there’s a lot of evidence backing you up. The Blizzard reps always said on the forums that they took forum chatter into consideration but had actual game and player metrics as well, and that they weighed that higher

The fundamental difference between then and now is that there is no limitation to be had from refusing to invest in social connection. You can get the gear, do the dungeons, finish the quests, all without establishing a reputation.

(A big footnote: you could be a total jerk and still have powerful connections. This wasn’t a “be good or else” culture, though people were mostly nice to each other.)

In many ways, the way things are now is better: you had some terrible addictive patterns emerge in the older version of the game. People were obsessed, and the obsession would pay off! You’d accomplish more, the more you invested.

It’s also sad, though. I miss my old crowds. They were good folks, and many of us made bonds that lasted. It’s a shame that this isn’t really something that happens anymore.

I suppose they also say “Froderick”

:)

You might mess up! That’s normal. Even experienced professionals do. That might be part of your apprehension? Like, if those experienced professionals can goof up, imagine what an inexperienced person might do?

But, the reality is that you’ll mess up the same when you mess up. It’ll be a little cut here, a little singe there. Your kitchen won’t explode, you won’t catch on fire. All in all, you stop thinking of some things as mess-ups and start thinking of them as just a normal outcome.

Here’s what I would recommend doing if you want to practice in safe ways:

• Practice mixing drinks. Not necessarily cocktails! Like, mix some herbs and juice in with a club soda. Tada, that’s cooking.
• Practice making salads with take-home kits. Add some vinegar or oil and herbs in addition to what you’ve got out of the kit.
• Make hot drinks: teas, coffees, things like that. Eventually start making your own syrups for them: look up simple syrup recipes and infusions.
• Get frozen pizzas or other frozen foods. Buy extra shredded cheese and Italian seasoning. Cook them as normal except add the cheese and seasoning on top before you do.

Here’s what I would recommend if you want to increase your own personal safety:

• Get a fire extinguisher and put it somewhere obvious in your kitchen.
• Look for “cut resistant” gloves. They help protect your hands when you’re working with knives and stuff.
• Get some timers with magnets on them and practice using them. The most likely way something’ll catch fire is if you’re distracted and timers will help you avoid that.
• Get some silicone mitts and handles for the oven. They’re incredibly heat resilient!

I’d also maybe just say familiarize yourself with cooking enough to demystify it? Like, marathon watch Good Eats or Iron Chef or something? Put it on in the background while you do other stuff, and just get used to seeing kitchens and food in action?

Fundamentally though this might be worth talking to a therapist about, because it could be that you’ve got some kind of reason (maybe more rational than you imagine) to have this apprehension. If that’s the case the first step is, honestly, talking it out with someone and not ignoring it and forcing yourself to do something you’re uncomfortable with.

Yup! It took them like 10+ years before they managed to get a presidential candidate too. but they immediately got into the legislative wings, it was already well underway in Bush’s second term. Hell, they were powerful enough to thrust Palin on McCain when he ran.

The people who say this can’t exist because of FPTP are right… but only for the presidency.

In every other part of government, extra parties are very viable. Even more so if they get into legislation and prove an ability to establish coalitions. The whole dynamic of elections can change in the House every 2 years.

I’m sick and tired of this stance because Republicans have done it with Libertarians and “quiet conservative” Independents for the last decade.

It’s not the Greens because they don’t take local or legislative elections seriously. But a pro worker party that backed up the right legislation would be amazing.

Good, eventually. Bad, at first.

It seems that way because I chose to say “you”, which is my bad. I meant it in the broader sense though, most of us are choosing not to sleep with the rest of us, most of the time.

There is no added exclusion to that just because some of us become more firm in refusing to, and give reasons why.