On the other hand, in a sick and twisted way, this all does lend credence to the whole “good guy with a gun” idea. you can’t tell me that microphone in his hand isn’t a weapon, and you sure as shit can’t tell me Charlie Kirk was a good guy.

In other words, this was justifiable self-defense, that sniper protected those college kids from a cognitohazard.

It’s gonna get a whole lot worse before things get better, but they’ll be remembered as some of the first, yes.

personally I’m of the opinion that society goes in cycles, generally, if you know history. We’re either about to have civil war or mass revolt, I’m pretty sure – when the circuses are still going but there is no bread, for millions, and it’s only getting worse – that’s generally when shit gets real. Massive, massive oversimplification, mind you; but more and more people in the US are feeling the economic squeeze that republicans (and by extension also, late-stage capitalism) pile on more every year.

In other words, we’re in the opening paragraphs to a very long chapter in some high schooler’s history class on this period of American history in the future – probably also lumped into an economics class with the 1929 stock market crash and the consequences thereof. How it will be written about I shudder to imagine, but you’ll have a lot of “patron saints of fucking around/finding out/delivering unto thee the finding out”.

I’m paraphrasing his quote on gun violence.

In a way, he’s right – this death? Worth it. Totally. I just wish it didn’t come at the cost of many schoolchildren and other innocents before (and after) him.

Dude literally died for what he believed in. We should be happy for him.

More than that, it’s “worth it to have the cost” of everyone owning guns, so that we can have some fascist pricks die every so often.

No Sunlight - Death Cab for Cutie

When I was young
Lying in the grass
I felt so safe
In a warming bath
Of sunlight, of sunlight
The vast open sky
Could do no harm
Like an embrace
Of a mother's arms
In sunlight, in sunlight
In sunlight, in sunlight
With every year
That came to pass
More clouds appeared
'Til the sky went black
And there was no sunlight, no sunlight
And there was no sunlight, no sunlight anymore
And it disappeared at the same speed
As the idealistic things I believed
When the optimist died inside of me
No sunlight, no sunlight
No sunlight, no sunlight
It disappeared at the same speed
As the idealistic things I believed
When the optimist died inside of me
No sunlight, no sunlight
No sunlight, no sunlight
No sunlight, no sunlight
No sunlight, no sunlight
No sunlight anymore

Little slow on the uptake, there, eh Donny boy?

and it’s a multi-billion dollar corporation, that already makes more money than you or I will ever see in our lifetimes, that actively strives to make the user experience worse for people who don’t pay, when they’ve got a practical monopoly in the “free video sharing platform” market. And you’re whiteknighting for them. 🤡

“If you just give them your wallet right away, the mugging isn’t so bad, really. They didn’t even kick my teeth in!” 🤓

.ml users try not to play the victim challenge: impossible

The universe thinks correctly.

we’ve been in the dumbest timeline for a good, long while now – you’re just now figuring this out?

golly gee whiz it sure looks like I’m finally getting around to getting off the stock android on my Pixel, I’ve been lazy and dragging my feet for some time. Thanks, Google, this is just the kick in the pants I needed!

if say, Spotify or YouTube complain about them.

… who owns YouTube?

Yeah, they’re going to block ReVanced.

god damnit, I hate it that one of the most milquetoast neoliberals of our time hits upon an A+ strategy. Whatever staffer in his office had that idea deserves a raise. If it was his own idea, I’d be shocked.

It’s gambling all the way down.

And it sure would be a shame if such cameras got vandalized somehow. Spray painted over, shot at, knocked off the proper viewing angle… So many terrible fates that could befall a camera near you!

I’m not saying you can’t do that, but booking.com or Expedia could just as easily be hacked. They might invest more in security, but they also have a much larger attack surface. Furthermore, when you use a third party site, your credit card details usually won’t be passed on to the hotel directly, that’s true – but then, when you arrive, third party reservations (which only have a virtual card on file from the third party site) usually need you to provide a credit card for incidentals. So one way or another your card details will end up in the hotels system.

Travel credit cards are always a good idea, or pay in cash, just be prepared to have to leave a deposit with the front desk for damages (that you’ll get back if you don’t trash the place) if you choose to pay with cash. Dealing with the hotel directly, though, will almost always drastically reduce your headaches. Need a refund? Just talk to the front desk or management. Need to change your stay dates? Call the front desk directly. No waiting in a queue for an available operator in a call center in India, no “well the hotel has to approve of it before we can […]”, no bullshit.

I am legitimately trying to save you the headaches I watched probably hundreds of different people go through for five years on night audit, and almost every time it was a problem I couldn’t solve, it was because it was a problem created by a third party site.

okay I don’t know who needs to hear this but as someone who has actually worked at hotels:

Stop. Using. Third. Party. Sites.

They do not care. Booking.com, Expedia, Trivago, Travelocity, whatever fucking stupid ass third party site out there – they only cause more problems than they solve. You want a good deal? Hell – you want a straight-up better experience? Call the hotel directly, explain the price that the third party site is showing you, and ask them to match it. 99 times out of 100, they will, because when you book directly with the hotel, the hotel doesn’t have to pay the third party site jack shit. The way third party sites make their money in the first place is by telling hotels charging a rack rate of $200/night “we’ll promote your hotel to guests in the area for $175/night, but you’ll only be charging us $150”. The guest pays Expedia or whoever $175, Expedia pockets $25 as a fee for promoting the hotel and passes on $150 to the hotel. In other words, they can either lose out on $25 by price matching, or lose $50.

Every hotel would prefer you book directly, and will happily price match, so they don’t lose any money to a third party site. More than that, if there are any problems with your booking – wrong days, wrong room type, want to cancel, whatever – you would have to go through the third party site again to do any of that. And waiting on or talking to customer support staff with thick accents at 3AM while your kids are wailing and you just want to go to sleep to fix a problem with your booking that, had you not gone through a third party site, the front desk agent standing in front of you could fix right now, is not fun.

Please stop using third party sites. For the love of God and all that is holy, use them to get discounts but do not book with them.

Like, yes, this wouldn’t have done anything about the bedbug problem this hostel had, but the point remains that any issue is much easier to deal with when you don’t have to play a game of telephone with a middleman corporation that does not give a shit about you as a guest.

He looks perpetually like he got into a fight with a beehive and lost.

That’s some good bait, right there.