What’s funny is the flipside to it… Telgram is absolutely fucking full of furries so grok’s gonna learn a shitload of gay leftist shit too.

Oh I get it completely. There’s a bunch of subreddits I miss, my industry I work in which is very niche, leatherworking, heck even the motorcycle community in Lemmy is… lacking.

On the other part you brought in… OH BOY! Unhinged TED talk time.

So I live relatively close to the Royals and the Chiefs stadiums. John Sherman, gas magnate, the owner of the Royals decided he wanted to move the stadium to downtown, where things have been picking up. Specifically he wanted it in the Crossroads where there’s a lot of local community shops and everything, because he wanted it near Power and Light district where there’s bars and the like which… oh right, he owns a lot of. Troubles came up that the stadium proposals took foooooooorever to even come up, looked like it was drawn on a napkin instead of anything serious, and wanted a tax levy to be put on the city to continue one that still hasn’t been paid off for the last time the two stadiums were built. The whole time saying “Look how the stadiums bring business in!”… the area around the two stadiums have managed to keep a Denny’s and a Taco Bell alive, the big resort hotel couldn’t even survive. Yea… real great for business.

Another trouble is… as I say, I am one of those who actively detests sports… I wish I could find the post, there’s an old Reddit post describing what not liking sports was like and used archeology in how it invades everything around you so it’s easy to go from “I couldn’t care less” to “Okay, I hate this thing now. It is insufferable.” I say all that to say, just paying any attention to the news I knew at the time the Royals was the second worst team in the MLB, they were that bad. So they knew they couldn’t get this move off the ground so they went to the Chiefs who was the most recent superbowl winner which of course was happy to get money their way, and the ad campaign went out. And despite the Royals/Sherman being the push on getting this going, it was all Chiefs all the time. I literally even got a flier in my mail “The liberals are trying to take away our teams!” paid for by the team push, so yay politics even drug in. The whole time threatening “Well if you don’t vote it in, we’ll move. Maybe to Kansas (right over the border) or hey, even Tennessee.” Thing is, the state remembers St. Louis on the other side had the rams, built them a stadium and whoopsiedoodle they packed up and moved to California leaving a city with a stadium and fuck all to do with it.

So we’ve got all sorts of issue in state and local level, but holy fuck all the political pressure since the voters turned down the tax is “How can we keep these teams in Missouri!” And it’s funny, I said I’d be more okay paying for it if we got ANYTHING out of it… I don’t mind paying taxes to keep our zoo going and it’s nice I get a hefty discount when I go, but the Royals and Chiefs are giving a nice hearty “go fuck yourself” for us paying taxes so the billionaires have their teams.

On to the “Why are you a fan?” question you brought up. I don’t question it… but I’ve never understood it. I grew up in Arkansas that never had a pro team so college sports was big… I got to hear the “calling the hogs” my entire life and never comprehended the why. Probably because dad was not a sports guy and had the opinion “Why do I want to watch people play a game?” even though he played in high school and I’ve been pretty much the same. I get the community stuff, and that’s fantastic. I’ve just found a community outside of sports so it doesn’t resound to me. The reason I’ve become so against sports beyond it’s completely impossible to ignore it it’s so inundated in culture, is the sheer amount of money that goes into it in all levels. High school, if you’re one of the “football” schools, your school only has 3-4 sports, all the big stadium ticket getting team sports, the smaller less prestigious schools get more sports like wrestling and the like… guess which situation I ended up in? And watching schools dump money into the sports above all other things like theater, labs, etc. “But it brings in money for the school.” Cool cool… so why are we getting asked for a tax levy so the school can build yet another stadium? Repeat this for the college level so the “Hogs can have a proper place to play!” and now the city with pro teams level. And I hear the ticket prices and think I wouldn’t pay those prices to see my favorite band… and again, those ticket prices and yet we have to pay for their shit?

I’m not a sports guy, I’m pretty anti-sports actually (I can go on absolutely unhinged TED talks about how the local teams are trying to drain the city for taxes… I want to continue, so feel free to ask but not doing it here.) But I agree with you on the niche hobbies and local flavor.

I still have to use Reddit because there hasn’t been a good community for local on Lemmy (yes, I know everyone going “it’s user generated” but I’m like 1 of 5 instead of the hundreds still on reddit) and small hobbies in a lot of the crafting world is non-existent on Lemmy.

I don’t have an answer on this one, just sucks. It’s the trouble of being one of the first ones in the door.

Gonna disagree there, gamers can’t give up pre-ordering games through studios that regularly bait and switch and throwing money at the biggest AAA studios.

So he learned from the video gaming industry?

I’ve picked up the gardening hobby and actually seem to be keeping up with it.

Nothing like a crisis where food is looking to be a concern to get ones ass in gear.

For a lot of us even before the election. Yup.

I don’t think I’d ever leave the makerspace.

Look, US here. I’ve been saying this for years and turns out as normal I’m fucking right.

A leaning majority of the gun nuts are the ones cheering for this and wanted a fascist regime. The other half has always been cosplayers wanting to look tough. The 2A crowd of our country has always been cowards that was willing to sacrifice children to protect their precious sacred cows.

God I hope so. Don’t hope for the US to learn.

We didn’t on guns after Sandy Hook so get some popcorn for the horror show to come for us.

“I’m a dumbass who’s too embarrassed to say I vote Republican.”

I’m going to say doubt on there actually being an H-1B crackdown…

But if Trump were to decide to do one, monkeys and typewriters because that’s something I’d actually support.

I’m waiting to see how he’d fuck it up and make it worse though.

Pretty much this. Like I said about my Focus, I’ve straight up driven with 2x4s that wouldn’t fit in coworkers trucks because the 4 foot bed is useless for that and I could fold seats down.

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh if we were allowed to have the Toyota Hilux here I’d buy one immediately. Fucking closest to a truck I “like” is a Ford Maverick because it’s a “smaller truck”…

But they ONLY come in crew cab. For fucks sake I want a standard cab full size small pickup truck about the size of a HIlux or a ranger from the 90s. And frankly if they made one a hybrid I’d have a dream car, but hell I’d take a 4 cylinder. But nope. Around here they’re the shortest fucking bed for the biggest fucking motor that’s effectively an SUV that is somehow MORE useless because the wall between the bed and the cab means I can’t lay seats down. A fucking mini-van is a better truck in the US.

I apologize… this is an angry angry rant I have to do like once every other week…

Modern pickups are bad. Old pickups were fantastic for “I need to pile a bunch of (insert thing here) in the back.”

But now every pickup is a massive motor for a tiny truckbed that my ford focus wagon has better hauling capacity.

If you’ve read Orwell, then you know we have.

Shoot John Wilkes Booth before he got into the theater.

Surely it was a glitch that set the Teslas on fire themselves and no one was involved.

I’ve stopped asking about States Rights to do what, they just sidestep it. I just ask them about the confederate constitution.

Article I, Sec. 9(4), Article IV, Sec 2(1)(3), Sec 3(3) (I’ll give a hint, it’s where the CSA federal government outlawed states enacting laws to outlaw slavery. States Rights my ass)

If I get the sputtering boat of “butbutbut” after that it’s what are the secession declarations of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

At that point either they really didn’t fucking know… I grew up in the South and I was an adult before I knew a lot of these, it certainly isn’t in the education system I’ll tell you that… but if it isn’t the really didn’t know category, then they’re as much a lost cause as their myth.

Someone else pointed it out, Freedom Convoy was effectively the next “States Rights” Don’t argue with them in good faith, they don’t argue in good faith themselves.

They’re the ones that cry “2A” about guns but worship the ground of Ronny Reagan who enacted gun legislation to go against the Black Panthers. This is the group that also talks about 2A and would storm the capital attacking police but calls Black Lives Matter riots and cheer when police show up. Hell, they cry about 2A when they worship Trump who said “Take their guns first, due process after.”

They talk about “Freedom of Religion” but it’s always their religion. War on Christmas, how dare they take down the ten commandments, while cheering for the guy who wanted a Muslim ban, attacked Sikhs post 9/11 because they couldn’t even get the religion they were mad at right, and want to force their religion into schools and courthouses.

They talk about freedom of speech when they scream about being able to lie, but cheer that Musk will throw people off that will actually fact check. The party of “Fuck your feelings” cries how they’re being attacked and needs protected when it’s turned around on them.

They cry about discrimination with Affirmative Action, but it’s simply the new Southern Strategy post Obama. Had a black president, racism is over, wave the flags. Oh, still helping minorities, RACISM! But they still stand with people who wave the swastika and the confederate flag and manage to say with a straight face they are not racist at all.

They made use of the social contract of tolerance, that we’re all supposed to get along as a society. They have done so by spitting in peoples faces, enacting violence, screaming epitaphs and being the worst people ever, then run back to society every time it’s turned on them.

Do not give them the good faith they ask for. Do not treat them as reasonable human beings, they are not. When they can act with basic fucking decorum that is required to be a person, then they can be treated like members of society again.