Lol I said that he’s either pandering to racists by saying “colored” or pandering to morons by saying “college” and you think I’m defending a racist? Nah, he’s wrong in both cases. I’m pointing out that the only defense they can claim also isn’t good for them.

Thanks. It was initially a series of commas, but I thought nested parentheses was significantly clearer, so I switched right before submitting lol.

I’m not saying that he said college, but I’m also not saying that he didn’t say college. If he did say college, he must have also bumped his mic or something because it sounds like he said something like “collid- sorority” which very much sounds like somebody who doesn’t enunciate the R in “colored” or somebody who started but didn’t finish the G sounds in college.

As for why he would need to clarify college sorority, the right has been demonizing college students since at least the Vietnam war protests. Educated people question authority, so they want fewer educated people to question them. That’s why tuition has gone through the roof, it’s why bankruptcy doesn’t forgive student loans, it’s why certain people have become proud of their ignorance, and it’s why there’s this opposition to student loan forgiveness with the framing of “taking your money to pay off their poor financial decisions”. Specifying “college” while talking about sororities tickles the buzzword receptors in their viewers’ zombie brains so that they can connect the dots to “thing bad because man said ‘college’” because it’s possible that they don’t know that “sorority” already implies “college”. Implicit subtleties are not their forte.

So now they’re in a weird position which is admittedly pretty unimportant culture war stuff: did he say “colored” which is racist of him, or did he say “college” because he assumes that the viewers are so intellectually stunted that he has to spell out that they should be angry because buzzword. Because they don’t give a shit about this, they’ll handwave and say “so what” because they’ve already decided to support and defend who they support and defend. Fox News is their gospel, and they can only be shaken from supporting that gospel if their other gospels (trump, reagan, NRA, televangelism, etc) conflict or outright condemn it.

This won’t move the needle, and some independents might think it’s petty to put a lot of attention on this. It’s probably best to move quickly, point to it and say “hmm, okay he either thinks you’re racist or he thinks you’re dumb. Both are bad. If you join us, people won’t assume that you’re racist or dumb. Prove it by voting for our smart, more equitable policies.”

Haha, brilliant. I’m still running my 5a, so that sounds kinda crazy to me.

Thanks <3

It’s almost exactly as I had imagined.

You’re completely right. But it is incredibly fucking hilarious to me that, out of context, your question to an assumed layperson is that they should know how nuclear power (a very complex subject that I (a power plant operator who worked at a nuclear power plant in various contracting capacities for about ten years) cannot fully explain) works.

Idk, it’s like overhearing from a table over in a restaurant “how do you think brain surgery works?” How the fuck should anybody without intense familiarity with such a niche subject know that?

But yes, you are absolutely right. All you have to do is google “do nuclear subs have batteries” lmao. We all could have that level of knowledge with two seconds of “work”.

Is there a source for this? I tried to look it up but just kept getting links about him reading a poem called The Snake and using it to compare to immigrants or some shit. I’m guessing that poem is what he’s talking about here? Was the quote you and the post gave from one of his stupid rallies in the past 48 hours?

Also, fucking ludicrous that his dipshit followers will simultaneously question the extremely credible Democrats’ credentials’ credibility and pine on and on about personal responsibility, all while their guy takes personal credit for his uncle’s education and career as if his uncle’s accomplishments have anything to do with Donald Trump, convicted criminal and fraudster. It’s painfully obvious that it’s intended as a dog whistle but is actually just a racist, eugenics-driven regular fucking whistle that everybody can hear, interrupting everything in every crowd, forcing everybody to say “what the fuck, why is that guy blowing that very obviously normal whistle and then getting butthurt when everybody looks and points and asks why he keeps on blowing that obviously normal whistle and disrupting everything around him with it? Did he think that it was for secret signaling like he’s doing something covertly? Is he, in fact, a stupid person, blissfully unaware of how stupid he is, yet somehow getting away with convincing his stupid fans that he is smart, exclusively because of the confident fervor in which he is claiming that he is not a stupid person and is instead some sort of stable genius? Is the answer to that question ‘yes’?” And the answer to that question is yes.

He would be hilarious if he hadn’t somehow swindled like 80 million people into doing things that put all of us in danger.

• Just convincing them to wear ear bandages?

Fucking hilarious.

• Buy a specific brand of beer specifically to destroy it, illustrating that they don’t actually know how boycotts work?

Pretty damn funny.

• Wear his ugly hats?

Kinda funny, except that all red hats are kinda ruined now, but funnier if you aren’t a Caps fan who now laments the Rock The Red thing.

• Disregard masks during a deadly pandemic;
• incite xenophobic, racist violence;
• dismantle regulations that protect the planet and therefore all of humanity in exchange for money;
• storm the Capitol with the intent to murder democratically elected politicians and/or engage in a coup?

Markedly less funny and, dare I say, bad.

I got off track and perhaps foolishly have decided to not delete all of that. I could’ve instead used this time looking harder for a source, but then I wouldn’t have made you push air out of your nose slightly more forcefully than you otherwise would have. And that’s slightly more important to me than verifying that the stupid thing that the stupid man supposedly said was in fact what he stupidly said. But I still kinda wanna know where you got the longer quote from so I can still verify that he stupidly said that stupid thing stupidly like some sort of stupid.

I guess that’s why he’s capped insulin at $35/month through Medicare, costing those drug companies quite a bit while simultaneously setting a precedent for Medicare negotiating drug prices in a time when people are finally warming up to the idea of expanding Medicare to most and eventually all Americans. Those drug companies sure do love him for that. /s

Yes, Biden clearly showed signs of losing his mental acuity. I didn’t really believe it until I saw it in the past couple of months. But a lot of conservatives weren’t really articulating acuity, they were saying he was too old.

Age in general is a concern to me as well because these old fucks don’t understand how different the world is now compared with 30-50 years ago. Wealth is also a concern to me because wealthy, privileged people haven’t struggled like average Americans have and/or do. Congress needs more people like Katie Porter who understand what it’s like to make difficult home finance decisions and be thankful that there’s even any semblance of choice involved.

Yes, I was fully on board with Sanders in 2016 and 2020. I also liked Warren. One day in the future, maybe Buttigieg or Jeffries. It’s exciting to speculate on all of the rising, younger Democratic stars.

I have my issues with Kamala Harris, but I think that she’s probably the best person to run against trump in 2024 especially with only 3.5 months (which sounds like plenty of time to pick anybody to me, but I’m not qualified to assess that). She’s not my favorite, but I’m more excited about her than I would’ve been for Biden.

My only real concerns for Harris running are what the media spoonfeeds to the gullible masses and what the October surprise will be this time. There’s a part of me that wishes Biden would resign just to take away the talking point of “trump has been president and she hasn’t; is she capable of running the country?” Plus we would already have had a couple months of a woman running the country before the election, so people could see that that’s not an actual thing to be concerned about.

I never said to fall in line. I said to look up bullet points on what Project 2025 is, look up who is for and who is against it, and get to the polls. I didn’t even say who to vote for. Everybody voting will result in the will of the people, and as somebody who likes having a democracy, that’s what I’m advocating for. I have my own opinions about which party is more pro democracy, and it’s probably pretty obvious to anybody who is paying attention to politics, but I was intentionally vague so that people can come to their own conclusions based on “doing their own research”.

But I guess for you, telling people to inform themselves and vote based on factual information makes me an authoritarian. Cool.

For those who struggle with math, that means that Biden is less than 4 years older than trump. The people criticizing Biden’s age and not trump’s as well never actually gave a shit about Biden’s age. Look forward to those same people making up bullshit reasons that Harris is less capable than trump. They know they’re full of shit, but it’s not about making sense, it’s about trying to obfuscate what’s pretty clear so that independents and undecideds give up, get frustrated, get confused, and/or get demotivated so that they either stay home or vote 3rd party. There are only two viable parties in this bullshit first past the post system; one of them wants Project 2025 and one of them doesn’t. Look at bullet points for what that is and then get your ass to the polls. It’s that simple. The only people trying to convince you that it’s not that simple are the ones who don’t want you to look at those bullet points because it’s pretty obvious whether most people are for or against that playbook. It’s damning.

Clinton didn’t call trump out on being a weird little freak during debates. Harris will. If he tries to creepily follow her around like he did to Hillary, Kamala will stop, turn around, and be like “wtf are you doing, you gross creep? Quit following me. See, this is what I’m talking about. He’s a predator. He doesn’t know how to conduct himself. He’s too antagonistic and weird to be trusted to keep tensions low and Americans safe. This sex pest belongs in prison, not the oval office. No other world leader behaves in this manner. I don’t know why my secret service detail is even allowing this convicted felon to be this close to America’s Vice President in the first place, especially while he’s practically foaming at the mouth. Why are you so angry? Just retire and go golfing already. Stop forcing Melania to make public appearances to reinforce the illusion that the third time was the charm just so you can take credit for Nazis ruining the country some more… Anyway, back to the question…”

I firmly believe that “will you shut up, man?” was what won 2020 for Biden. Kamala Harris needs to keep her cool like 98% of the time and then allow her frustrations as a fellow human in this absurd time to leak out past her diplomatic filters 2% of the time. It just needs to be firm and calm, and she needs to not apologize afterward when Fox News tries to pretend that she’s unstable or “hormonal” or whatever misogynistic/racist framing they come up with. I hope she would double down and say “the man’s an asshole. I’m not apologizing for him being an asshole. If you want an apology, go bother him for one.”

Maybe they should’ve looked into that tech instead of obsessing over hydrogen cell tech…

I think that a significant factor in the cross section of “need purpose” and “work = purpose” comes from a sort of brainwashing though. When you’re taught (intentionally or otherwise) that amount of money, marketable skills, monetization of hobbies, etc all directly correlate to your worth as a person, it’s absolutely surprising nobody that people who stop working (whether through retirement, disability, having children, etc) become depressed.

I totally agree with you, except for the part where you say that it isn’t dystopian. A utopian society would be beyond that frame of mind imo and retired people would feel free to explore hobbies and passions, feeling more fulfilled than they ever did selling their labor for survival. I don’t think these people want to go back to work; I think they want to feel useful. And they’ve only ever felt useful as workers. They can’t imagine any other productive use because they’ve never experienced it.

This thread isn’t about that. The original comment in this post was about the 25th amendment and the first reply was asking who would replace him. The line of succession is crystal clear that the VP is acting president when the president cannot discharge duties.

Who runs if Biden drops out is a different and important question, and while I don’t have a great and confident answer, there’s absolutely no reason why Harris wouldn’t be a good pick when we already decided she’d be fine when we voted for her to be plan b behind Biden’s 77/78 year old body, so idk why that should necessarily change right now. It’s like we agreed that she should be president if/when Biden couldn’t do it anymore, and now we’re saying he can’t do it anymore, but maybe now she shouldn’t be the backup plan we already decided that she should be?

Hear that, everybody? PythagreousTitties isn’t on board with the VP of the sick and confused 81-year-old president being president. It’s kinda the biggest aspect of the entire point of the office of VP, but PythagreousTitties says no, sooooo 🤷‍♂️

No explanation, no nuance, just “fuck that” so let’s just pack it up and cross our fingers, I guess.

Nope. $60B was allocated to the IRS. They’ve spent $5.7B of it so far, most of which I’m assuming was for hiring and getting their ducks in a row to start being able to go after the big fish. It’s actually pretty impressive that they’ve found so much revenue in such a short amount of time that would’ve just not been collected.

It’s from January, but here’s some other info on this that’s a little more in depth than that shitty nyt article.

And all these “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” keep on voting to keep it that way.

Somewhat related to this so I’m piggybacking here, look into power plants. Once you’re generally competent holding wrenches and understanding OSHA compliance, you can easily become some form of laborer at power plants. From there, learn everything you can about power plants while getting friendly with some in-house people and you might get yourself into Operations or Maintenance. It took years and luck, but I got in as an entry level outside operator at a bit under $40/hour a few years back; after raises and a promotion I’m now operating the on-site ZLD plant for $52/hour. Control Room Operator starts around $60/hour here. This area is expensive so these rates might be higher than you’d find near you, but I’ve heard of higher rates than this in some plants. The only real drawback is that rotating shift work is pretty standard.

I’m not sure what it might be called, but I totally get that. I think it has something to do with the anxiety of expectations. Maybe you feel judged for how you’re choosing to spend your time, or maybe you feel like there’s an expectation that you’ll get better at whatever it is that you’re doing, or maybe it’s as simple as just not wanting to be viewed as predictable. If you’re unhappy with this tendency that you have, I highly recommend working with a therapist to either find a way to change your behavior or change how you feel about your behavior. It sounds like you’re not hurting anybody, so it seems like there’s just some unhappiness for one reason or another that a professional could help you out with so that you can get a little more enjoyment and peace of mind. If the 94 in your username is your birth year, then you’re 30ish and maybe just struggling a little with being comfortable with your identity in some capacity, like you “should’ve” figured out who you are and become comfortable with it by now, and you might be feeling some additional anxiety for not achieving that? Idk, I’m just some guy on the internet who had a similar thing, and it’s helped for me to adopt a slightly more complex version of the hakuna matata philosophy, which I think of as a sort of optimistic existential hedonistic nihilism: nothing matters, so there’s no sense getting spun up; just do what you feel like doing so long as it isn’t fucking others over. You like CAD? Then fuck around in CAD. Enjoying a video game? Hell yeah, that’s something cool to look forward to spending some time with this weekend. Knock out chores and errands for a bit and then you’re free to do whatever the fuck you feel like doing. Hell, light a scented candle while you’re at it. Really enjoy it.