Man I collect library cards. At this point I’m a member of three different library systems. No joke, libraries are amazing and one of the best resources we’ve got left in this country. Go get a card man!

I don’t necessarily disagree on the complexity point, but I don’t think breaking up the functionality of a web browser fixes the issue.

Web browsers are one of those basic tools everyone who uses a computer relies upon. Breaking that up would not only lead to user frustration, I think it’d introduce brand new territories bad actors like Google could monopolize. Now that unified “web browsers” exist it’s incredibly difficult to ask users to stop using them. It turns from “download this program” to “download these four or five separate programs and follow this guide to learn how to daisy chain them together into a browser equivalent.”. That’s a reasonable ask for some people. Hell, it’s a reasonable ask for me frankly. But your average user isn’t going to have the time nor the patience to attempt to make that solution work.

That is really neat! I wish we could figure out something similar in English.

This ranks so far down the list of problems with society that it’s not even worth mentioning. But every day of the week should start with a different letter so they are easier to abbreviate! Having two “T-days” is just fucking nuts to me. I’m ok with the weekend days both starting with the same letter because that can just be a signifier that it’s the weekend. But ideally? Every day gets it’s own letter and you can just say “something happens T-day” instead of “something happens Tues”.

Part of the social contract in America (at least… this is what I believed growing up here) is that we all kinda share in this thing we all have going. Like, let’s say we get into a war. The government can (and does) ask citizens to join the military and fight and the reason that works is because we all kinda implicitly signed off on it. Yeah, sure, you had nothing to do with the country getting into a war. But because you participated in government, in the system, because we run this thing (nominally) by the standard of democracy and consent of the governed, everyone owns at least a small part of the responsibility for the country’s actions. In the case of a war, that might look like joining the military and “doing your part”. More commonly it looks like paying your taxes and still “respecting” the government, even if it’s not the one you voted for.

Now, like I said, that’s more than anything what I felt when I was a kid. Speaking personally, I’m in a very different headspace now as it relates to governance. I also feel like generally speaking all that’s shifting, though I’ve very little to back that up save… gestures at the past couple of decades of American politics.

More to your question however, I think that the kind of social contract I laid out above kinda explains some of what you’ve asked. Even if you want to say it’s purely performative, that’s fine. But the fact that Americans are “asked” about how they should be governed implicitly puts the idea in our heads that we’re responsible for what our country is doing. It’s not just “some dottering old idiot at the top of the org chart decided this thing”, it’s we. America is doing this thing. Even if the truth really is that some dottering old fool made a decision out of personal ambition or greed. We get it drilled into our heads from a very young age that this is our government. And no matter how much you try to distance yourself from that… it still irks you, somewhere in the back of your head.

Maybe, at some point before I was born, that was expressed as a point of pride. I could see some folks being proud of what America was or what it stood for, once upon a time. Now though? I find it hard to believe that that mindset could find any other expression but shame. And weirdly, I believe that’s true regardless of what your politics are. Different reasons are at play there depending on what your politics are, of course. But lately it feels like everyone’s got some grievance against the government. Some reason to feel ashamed about what “our” government, what “we” are doing. Whatever that thing is for you, you don’t want it being done in your name. But the central trick of American “democracy” is that you don’t get to just walk away. Whatever is being done is being done “in your name” whether you want it or not. And it’s been that way since before you were born.

A tangentially related correlate here is that I feel like a lot of Americans don’t feel represented by their government anymore. I certainly don’t feel that way, and I haven’t since Obama was president. That was roughly back when I was young enough to uncritically believe some of the views I’ve expressed here. Things have changed a little bit. Anyways, the reason I bring this up is because part of what I think is going on is that the social contract is breaking down along the lines of nobody feeling like the government they have is actually representing their interests. Maybe, if this goes on for long enough, the social contract will change into something different entirely. Maybe this “shame” we all seem to feel will turn American society into something different than what it currently is, if it’s given the time to do so. But, I can’t really read the tea leaves on that one. All I know is things just can’t keep going the way their going. Something’s gonna break eventually.

Oh yeah no. If your working backwards from the end result I totally get that approach. I’m not making a moral defense here. All I’m saying is that while we’re in it it’s important to understand what’s going on (and perhaps more importantly what isn’t) in his head so that we have an understanding of what’s possible. What he might be thinking. In that world, not that of the IC or one that’s capable of assessing legal culpability, it’s important to draw a distinction between a principled ideologically driven actor and one that’s just floating on the whims of their shattered psyche.

“Useful idiot”, minor but important distinction. At the end of the day yeah, he’s an “asset” in the sense that he’s doing what Russia wants. But he’s not doing it because he’s a traditional intelligence asset who’s taking marching orders from Putin. He has no ideological loyalty to Russia, hell, he can’t even muster that for the country he supposedly runs.

Rather, he has to be finessed into doing what you want. That can be a bribe (as we’ve seen many world leaders figure out for themselves) or it could just be simple praise. Throwing some narcissistic validation into the howling void where his heart should be.

Thing is, that gets both easier and more complicated as he gets more senile. Easier in the sense that (to the extent he ever had one) his conception of reality is eroding. That means he’s becomeing even more malleable as even this most baseline level of resistance degrades.

It gets more complicated in the sense that the same is true for everyone else too. Trump’s always had a tendency to agree with whoever spoke to him last, even before the very obvious recent decline in his mental faculties. Dementia is probably only going to make that worse.

The main upshot here is that if you know what your doing this man is more suggestable than ever. Which effectively means you now have to account for what eveyone else around is telling him and trying to accomplish. At least, to a greater degree than you were before.

Just a thought here, but maybe we’d have a slightly better time with leaders who aren’t suffering from extremely obvious mental decline. Anyways, I look forward to the 2028 presidential election, when America will finally elect Ronald Reagan for a posthumous third term via the proxy of a ouija board operated solely by Henry Kissinger’s corpse.

I legitimately can’t tell anymore what even they think their trying to do.

Like… yall are monsters who think government shouldn’t help people, yeah, I get that. But… like… if you want to speed-run violence in the streets, artificially fucking with the food’s a great way to do it.

And… again… I’m just perplexed. Do you want the violence? If you wanted to invoke the riot act or whatever there’s easier ways to do that that don’t involve blowing up half the economy along with it. Is this a “principled” stance? Do you believe government shouldn’t help people so much that your willing to stand ten toes on causing hunger riots? Or is this desperation? Do you want to loot that discretionary fund so bad that your willing to risk sparking a revolution to do so? Is the money even still there? Or are you fighting this hard against SNAP because it was stolen long ago?

On top of all of the rest of the anger and outrage, it’s frustrating that there’s likely no answer to these questions. Or as many answers as there are right wing chuds with their boots on the nation’s throats. At least in movies the villian have a devious master plan. Here in reality it feels like we’re speed running accelerationism and it’s hardly even intentional. Just equal parts malice and stupidity.

As a rimworld player I fear sims players. Rimworld has a certain degree of violence inherent to it, it’s part of the game. The Sims though? Particularly unmodified Sims? It inspires creativity. Horrifying, horrifing, creativity.

Along with what the others have said, legally I think it’s just too close to the fire for them.

Porn has always existed in a bit of a legal grey area, that much is true. But with the more modern evangelical assault on it I feel like it’s more in the grey area than ever.

It’s one thing for them to say “I’m sorry Texas, but the ip says it’s coming from California. We can’t digitally sluth the locations of every user on our site.”. It’s another for them to say “We got a porn website that’s legal in some states and a VPN that’s legal in the rest! Assemble it yourself!”.

Is it legal to do that? Sure? Probably? I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer. Is it smart? No. I don’t think it is. Pornhub scrapes by because they can be seen to be putting in the token effort to comply with the puritanical laws foisted upon them. At present, that’s enough for everyone to declare victory and go home happy. If pornhub starts flaunting those laws though, by doing things like for example packageing in a service that bypasses state legal restrictions, lawmakers will get pissy and get even more draconian about shit. Which means pornhub will either have to get more creative or maybe won’t survive.

It’s eminently stupid, but this is the dance we’re all locked in at the moment.

I only “disagree” in the sense that I don’t think they’re thinking that far ahead.

I think a lot of what’s driving a lot of the more stupid capitalist behavior lately is an emphasis on stock price above all else. Don’t get me wrong, capitalism never had a fantastic incentive structure, but right now I think that the base instinct is to do whatever you can to bump that stock price. Even if that means laying off your workforce and ripping the copper out of the walls.

It comes out to the same place at the end of the day. Eventually you’ll simply do too much damage to the company and you certainly don’t want to be the one left holding the bag. But… I genuinely feel like noone’s thinking beyond the current quarter. It’s like capitalism’s in a panic mode where “the apocalypse is happening tomorrow so you might as well cash in whatever you’ve got” and has been for years.

I love how deep-facebook boomer mindrot is the official stance of my government! It only got better when the mindrot could generate itself at the low low price of boiling an ocean!

Fuck this reality man. Who can I talk to about cashing it in for a new one?

Not sure the UK’s interested in having us back at this point.

It’s that “everyone with a brain” bit that’s different now. Because you’re right, nothing here is new. Trump and Epstein’s ties have been pretty common knowledge to anyone not in the cult.

What’s changed is that those inside the cult can’t really ignore it anymore. They went from “the democrats are all pedophiles and the Epstein files prove it!” to “they have the Epstein files on their desks, they are just doing some final checks before they release them” to “there are no Epstein files, there never were any Epstein files, and if you think different you need to shut up.”. Cognitive dissonance may be a powerful force, but “the Epstein files” have been the conspiracy bread and butter that’s been holding this cult together for a while now. They were probably willing to bend on just about anything but that.

A lot of hay is made out of the fact that Trump managed to fuck up running a casino, and it’s true. In a business where the saying goes “the house always wins”, it takes a special breed of incompetance to bankrupt the house. This feels very similar. Dude could have said that aliens stole the Epstein files, Q-anon folks would have bought it. Or better yet don’t say anything at all. I think a lot of folks wouldn’t have bat an eye if Trump’s cronies were still “working on releasing the Epstein files” in 2028.

But he didn’t do that. He made a huge song and dance about “releasing the Epstein files” then obviously canned it at the last minute. For the rabid conspiracy theoriests that comprise his base, the folks who were willing to invent an entire child trafficing code for pizzagate, that was probably the one manuver even he couldn’t pull.

Will this mean anything in the long run? Well, I’ve kinda had my hope beaten out of me in that respect. But this does kinda feel different, I will say that.

Yeah, I think this is more valuable to her as conservative bonafides than anything. “I stood up to libral, woke, Disney and won!” will probably play great fox news and the other rocks these folk thrive beneath. It’s a further step in a career in the rightwing culture-war bullshit sphere, not back twords Disney.

This has been a republican strategy decades in the making. The comment above framed it as an arms race and that’s a good way to put it. They’ve had the overthrow of democracy in their heads as an objective and have undertaking a concerted strategy to achieve it.

The democrats were always going to be at a disadvantage simply responding to that, but that disadvantage is made a lot worse by the fact that they don’t seem to want to respond to it. They have an idea of what this country is and that comes with a bunch of lines their unwilling to cross. Meanwhile republicans had a clear idea of what they want this country to be and were willing to trample any line, break any law or norm, in order to make it a reality.

This? The news story we’re responding to? It may represent the first stumbling steps off the starting line. But it doesn’t change the fact that the starting pistol sounded decades ago and the republicans have been running the whole time.

Too little, to late. I don’t want that sentiment to be true, but I find it hard to look at this situation and view it in any other way.

Yeah, I know. Just leaving room for miracles I guess.

On paper there’s plenty that could. The Supreme Court could have stepped in to stop a lot of this. Executive orders only stand in places where a full fledged law from congress doesn’t cover the issue. The military is theoretically as obligated to disobey an unlawful order as they are to obey a lawful one and states are theoretically pretty insulated from federal interference except in a few explicit areas.

But, we don’t live on paper and none of those protections exist unless there are people out there who are ready, willing, and able, to act on them. What happens if the Supreme Court somehow manages to rule against the administration and they just flagrantly disregard the order? What happens if Trump orders the military to start attacking US citizens openly or starts an illegal war without congressional approval? What happens if Trump runs for president again in 2028? Or just says he’s president for life and we’re not doing elections anymore?

The answer is nothing, unless people stand up against him. And… so far… we haven’t seen much of that. Not from people in government at any rate. We’ve seen a bit from normal folks on the ground in places like LA, but our government’s been working to neuter the power of popular protest since the civil rights protests, perhaps even earlier. So reasonable people can disagree on the efficacy of that.

I really don’t want to echo the doomer line I’ve seen written here a lot, but yeah, we’re probably fucked. Like maybe if something was done like… a decade ago? Two? Maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation. But… as things stand? I don’t even know if the damage from the first Trump presidency can ever truly be repaired and more damage is being done on a weekly, almost a daily basis. Personally? I think it’s only a matter of time before this man breaks the global economy irreparably. In a way that simply can’t be swept under the rug again. Domestically? Who the fuck knows at this point? I have to resist the urge to laugh out loud whenever people ask where I see myself in five years because at this point I’ve got no idea what the next two weeks are gonna hold.

So… yeah. Fun times in the ol US of A.

I mean, we kinda already ended up there with the Ashley Madison hack in 2015. Problems with that site aside, I feel like it’s kinda the blueprint for everything wrong with companies that retain personally identifable info on folks. If a company collects details like your driver’s license, it’s not a question of if it gets out but when. There’s just no way to collect that sort of data and truly keep it safe.

But, it seems like we’ve kinda forgotten how to learn lessons in the modern day, so I’m sure this was an isolated issue and we’ll never see it’s like again.

(/s on that last part, just in case that wasn’t blindingly obvious.)

I feel like you could actually do some cool comedy game turned horror with that. You know it’s all fun and games until he gets it right.