One of the very rare moments of AI being used completely for good.

This is kind of my problem here. There’s a lot of hobby based communities in Reddit that hasn’t made the move and pretty dead over here so it’s what keeps dragging me back.

But gah, the new style is completely unreadable to me.

I was at the early end of when programming was being pushed thing. Found a welding degree was an option.

Get a welding degree, welders will never go out. The 08 slump happened, and suddenly I was coming out of school requiring 2 years of work experience to get a job, but couldn’t get an entry level job because I was too experienced when the local factory moved to Mexico.

Moral of the story, the industries are not your friend and are happy to fuck you over no matter what you pursue.

In the US I’ve been saying “Libertarian is a Republican who wants to smoke weed.” But seeing as they’re not villianizing it much anymore the Libertarians really don’t have a talking point left in the country.

Remember the stories about how wifi does a good job of telling where people are in the house? They might already be on that way.

I can forgive the ones who say “I don’t know what I was thinking”. I can forgive the ones who say “I was tricked” or “I was not paying attention” or “I believed he blah blah blah”. I can forgive the ones who are remorseful, and the ones who work to undue the damage they caused.

Nah.

First time around with Trump, sure.

Second time around. Anyone who was under 18 at the end of Trump’s first term are the only people that get the pass. I was a dumb kid in high school who didn’t pay attention either when I couldn’t vote. But anyone after, he wasn’t some “dark horse” or “outsider” or all the dumbass lies they sell.

But then again, I live in a state that’s been red over a decade, who voted in the least educated governor in the union, that is about to get rid of income tax “because it’s what Texas does” despite the fact our neighboring state did the same thing and nearly went insolvent until a Dem governor got elected for the first time in decades and fixed it, that our traitor of a Senator got voted as Senator before he finished his first term as AG despite campaigning as AG for not using it as a ladder to further political aspirations, then his protege did the EXACT same thing, and Hawley got re-elected. I’ve watched Republicans get shocked EVERY time they got fucked over, then promptly voted the same people who fucked them over because it’ll hurt someone else.

I’d even say the people who were remorseful and work to undo the damage… but #1 Republican before Trump, McConnell SPECIFICALLY ranted and raved about how guilty of Trump was of trying to overturn the election and that he wasn’t above the law… then did everything to stop justice. Republicans are only out for Republicans. If things get too bad they’ll dial back the damage just enough to stop hurting themselves, then start hurting again.

It’s why I can understand what we need to do to go forward as a nation is forgive… but I also cannot do it.

I mean… read the second part of my post. I’m not ready to forgive and most definitely not ready to forget.

This is going to be the problem. If the country is going to come together we have to be able to forgive and start building bridges together.

But I’ve watched Republicans say that too many times then stab us in the back by tripling down on partisanship I don’t see the path forward because I’m VERY much in the same boat.

I don’t have an answer to make it better unfortunately.

#1 CEO skills: Selective Hearing and Selective Amnesia.

This was my reaction. I read the question and thought “Optimistic much?”

I mean… conservatives.

There are some places where the leadership has to turn to whatever their followers say.

Trump did push Operation Warp Speed to help push the COVID vaccinations faster through the regulations and manufacturing.

The fascinating moment was watching him become an anti-vaxxer. He had a speech gently encouraging people to get the vaccine, saying he got it, and said it should be anyones choice but he suggests they get it. The crowd turned on him and booed and he immediately dropped it. After that day he was pure antivax.

It means there is potential to get some nonsense conspiracy from the ground up under these assholes. It’s hard, but its possible.

reducing men to women’s roles

It will be this. 100% this. They don’t hate women and see them as nothing more than breeding stock.

Conservatives love women, when they also do what they say, stay in the kitchen and “do womens work”

This is one of those troubles with the whole “communist” and “capitalist” things. None of them are actually truly what they say they are.

China and USSR started competing hard core on the global scale in the capitalism games, and lets be honest, look at China now and it’s fully on the capitalism train while still calling communist.

But that isn’t to say the US is any better on the capitalism wagon. The US is quite happy to drop capitalism if a company desires it. This is where we get our "too big to fail"s or companies that are given “loans” during the pandemic that they never have to pay back.

It’s almost like the terms are a joke by the upper echelon to fuck with the rest of us.

I’ve also been in construction long enough to know there are faster ways into a house than through the doors if I’m trying to be dishonest.

Only super tangentially unrelated, I had a friend ask if he should get me a lockpick set. I told him I tried to learn, it’s not my thing, it doesn’t make sense in how I feel. He asked what if I needed something open.

“I have a sawsall with a demolition blade. There are very few things I cannot open.”

I’m so tired of unelected people making rules for my life.

When people ask if I trust the government on any conversation that things like this come up I tell them my motto is “Don’t trust the government, unless it means trusting a corporation. Then DEFINITELY don’t trust the corporation.”

I think the United States as we knew it is dying

I grew up in the US south.

This IS the US as I’ve known it.

The rest of the country got complacent about the people that supported the splitoff faction that wanted to own people as backwoods hicks and not as a viable threat despite them infesting many of the states that literally sent men to die to stop them. Laughed when they said “The south will rise again” despite them having an outsized power in politics and when called out were nice when they said “It’s heritage, not hate.”

They were ready to arrest those who went against the president during Bush Jr era. Nixon welcomed them into the fold after LBJ pissed off the Dixiecrats by signing in the Civil Rights Acts and every Republican since, just as the Democrats did before. The country never finished the job and now the house is infested.

“we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it”

I use that so much I legitimately forget the whole “cross that bridge” when I’m in serious conversation.

It’s amazing how many people cheer for corporations. There’s few consistents in the world but a big one is corporations are not your friend.

Having worked in factories, the coffee in them is usually the strongest and always available, Blue collar lives on the stuff,