Paulie T

Liberal, maybe; But radical?

People are really starting to get into the dual state thing. Normative state for 'us', prerogative state for 'you', with only quibbling over the definitions of the groups.

Of course, they'll argue in turn that non-government-entities will step in and alleviate suffering, and that it's more just since it's voluntary. It's just offloading the problem to empathetic suckers while the people with means just avoid the suffering masses.

Mostly raising armies and police forces to protect us from external entites and each other respectively. From this perspective,suffering is just a civil disorder problem. Suffering people run at cops and get shot: TaDa! No suffering people. They can also die peacefully if they prefer.

"Only a government indifferent to suffering is truly fair". Basic libertarian logic where using the government to force people to be generous to the needy is itself cruelty that should be stopped.

Soup is the food of humanity, but filled-starch is the food of civilization.

I feel inordinately proud that I didn't buy a new guitar this week. I have no place to put it. But heavens it looked cool and affordable

Runs a mega-successful campaign, trounces all competition except one person whom he actually trusts and stays in the race on principle, then drops out of the race and airs out all of the dirt at once.

I'd go up to four, and have a different sort of Old-retired-batman story. Zero action, still some gadgets. I'm imagining Semi-retired billionaire philanthropist political skullduggery, but any sort of "non-world-saving adventures that a ridiculously perceptive could take on" could work.

This feels like a renovated jack-and-jill bathroom that went off the rails.

I finally successfully made Fig Jelly without solids. Protip: Add more lemon juice than you think you should. I made it with a normal amount of lemon juice (1/4 cup lemon to 3 cups of fig juice and 5 cups sugar) and it didn't set, but adding another 1/4 cup of lemon juice and recooking fixed it.

There is some neat tech behind it, but I don't like the idea of decentralized currency. It's hard to peg it to real value, even the 'guns and taxes' backing of fiat currency. It's like trying to live on calorie free food. There's no 'there' there. 'Mineable decentralized currency' is even worse.

Cryptocurrency is just pump-and-dump-as-a-service. I get that it's backed by a cryptographic distributed ledger, but the actual value is just the hope you're not the last sucker left holding the bag.

Why is there golf on the screens at the airport?

Only how quickly it happened. We're not 6 months in yet!

Certainly, I wish I hadn't. These days I just facilitate it being downloaded automatically, which is still kind of icky.

Related: is it possible to hate the Oracle Corporation enough? Even the computer from "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" seems woefully inadequate.

Jaws isn't long running enough, but the dropoff from the first to the rest of them gives it an honorable mention.

Ever make a plan several months in the future and think to yourself, "man, I have to survive HOW long? I'm SO tired already"

Recently acquainted through ACX with the terms "Hellbanning" and the weirder "Heavenbanning". Thinking about it, I doubt if I'm ever "Hellbanned", I just truly don't have thoughts that reasonable people consider worth hearing. And I figure they're probably right.

It's a complaint, and you should respond with the same tone. "I ran it last week, looked fine. Though, if you describe the problems I could check and see if I missed something."

He has decent lefty takes on US political nonsense that play well on this platform, but maybe too many of them. It's his thing, kinda exhausting. Though in fairness, keeping up with the US political nonsense is in-and-of-itself exhausting.

I can't believe I understand this.

What then, when one does not have hardship, is joy?
This feels related to the basic reasons as to why the children of the rich rarely create great art.

I grapple with this a lot in terms of art; On the one hand, it's the best time ever to be a artist (for many arts at least) in terms of tooling, knowledge, and material; but it's the worst time in that everyone is competing not just against each other but against the entirety of the recorded past.

A big problem with the current configuration of our society is knowing that a lot of things that are worth doing are (for many people) difficult, and we're constantly being given easy solutions. There's this constant suggestion that if you aren't good at something immediately, then don't bother.

Learning is hard. Relationships are hard. Generally not eating cheap-fast-unhealthy trash is hard. At this point I can't blame anyone who would prefer to take a medication than constantly worry about how to eat right and stay motivated to do so. It's how we've structured our society.

More like $14/month since 2013, there was a two year gap after I bought portal before I bought anything else. But it's still well within streaming service cost range.

I keep spreadsheets on a lot of things, one of which is Steam purchases. Over the last 14 years, I've spent almost exactly $2000 on games on that platform, totaling up 375 games (and a bunch of soundtracks, I always pay a little extra for those when available). I don't know how to feel about that.

Almost forgot! and I had 31 albums in my cart waiting

I don't think I can play Balatro. It has just enough fun poker math, friendly gambling vibes, loot boxes, card collecting, roguelike challenge, on and on. It's a nesting doll of things designed to addict. Even for a one-time-price I don't think I can play it responsibly.

And my followup fear from that is simply that the only way to defuse the right wing machine once fully operational is a generation of profound misery and suffering. And that the pendulum always swings back as the generational memory fades. <glances at the great depression leaving living memory>