You make some perfectly valid points, the only thing I take issue with is

Money is actually pretty useless

So, I do historical reenactment and one of my focuses is the history of money. Money has been in use, in some form or another, all over the world, for about ten thousand years. Roughly twice as long as written language.

Again, I agree with what you’re saying about time and how important it is. But go back to when humans had huge swaths of free time and you still find money. It’s just INSANELY useful.

Bladderworts have medicinal uses.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3353273/

3.2. Potential as Medicinal Crop Utricularia is recorded to be edible and high in nutrients. Some species used as folk remedies are mildly astringent and diuretic. U. caerulea is used to dress wounds while U. bifida is used to treat urinary diseases. Although yet to be widely researched, the medicinal potential of this species-rich genus is immense. In Peninsular Malaysia, U. bifida and U. minutissima are pioneers of open disturbed wetland and are often locally abundant, although U. caerulea is increasingly rare. U. bifida is highly suited for acidic damp soils. Neither chemical nor organic fertilisation is necessary. It can be cultivated without having to modify bad drainage or liming the soil to increase pH, therefore, it is a suitable alternative for small-scale herb cultivation on nutrient-poor, waterlogged soils.

I mean, I do believe in the power of friendship.

But yeah international law is a joke.

Russia is very good at maintaining plausible deniability for things like this. Like the polonium in the tea. Everybody knows, but there’s no proof that Russia was behind it, which makes it harder to take action over it.

Why would Russia put itself at risk by directly taking out an under cover CIA agent when they can just publicly reveal the agent’s identity and let things take care of themselves?

Right? Headline should really read “Trump admits Epstein list is real, defends some of the people on it.”

In my previous comment “good” is synonymous with “least bad” which apparently isn’t obvious enough despite my previous clarification about the world not being black & white.

So no, when faced with multiple options, all of them bad, picking the least bad option ISN’T the same as picking the most bad option and therefore a person picking the least bad option can’t reasonably be “shit on”

Voting FOR trans rights accomplishes nothing beyond making sure that trans people have rights.

Voting AGAINST trans rights undermines the freedom and safety of everyone.

I don’t disagree about anything you said, just a quick note because it’s a term that’s worth understanding:

“Newspeak” is a concept based on the dumbing down of language in order to make communication more difficult and complex concepts almost impossible. It’s not just new words or phrases. If it’s not damaging our ability to think and communicate, it’s not Newspeak. For this reason, “politically correct” alternatives (like “POC”), as well as increasingly specific terms (like “omnisexual” or “demi girl”) don’t qualify as Newspeak because they either continue the existing ability to think and communicate or enhance it by being more exacting about the concepts involved.

I’m not trying to be pedantic, it’s just important to me that people understand what Newspeak really is because the fascists really are trying to implement it as a means of reducing resistance against them. My favorite example is “climate change” which was a term introduced by right wing think tanks to undermine the more accurate (and more alarming) term “global warming.” And it worked.

Anyway, again I don’t disagree with your points, so please carry on!

Not having a good choice doesn’t excuse making bad choices.

It’s --almost like-- we live in a world that not black & white and people have to make the best choices they can under the circumstances

Of all the other criticisms people have had of Newsom, you’re only posting about his relationship with Israel. This suggests an ulterior motive or a bias on your part.

So you are saying that by not voting, you voted for everyone.

Literally not what they said. They said “supporting,” which is different. One doesn’t need to vote in order to support. But by giving equal support to all candidates, you bear some tiny responsibility for whoever wins regardless of whether the winning candidate is “good” or “bad.”

Basically your abdicating control of your responsibility to everyone else, but that doesn’t make you any less responsible for it.

I enjoyed the whole thing, but I also had a friend who had already seen it all help me adjust my expectations appropriately.

I think, with the proper expectations, it’s not hard to enjoy anything.

There’s an essay titled “Ur-Fascism” by Eco Umberto. It’s available online for free, you can Google it. It might give you some good insight on the subject. It’s mandatory reading, imo.

Exactly. Fascists operate in bad faith, there’s absolutely nothing to be gained by engaging with them in good faith.

They’re now the most well funded domestic law enforcement agency to exist in the world, ever. With the sole task of deporting non-citizens.

What happens when there aren’t any more non-citizens to deport? Well they sure as hell are going to find SOME way to justify all that funding, don’t you think?

Obama asked permission from McConnell to release the info about Trump. He could have just done it, or even done it regardless, but he didn’t.

That, and the way he wasted the first six months of his first term trying to be bipartisan, are two of his biggest mistakes ever and radicals altered the course our country would take. I’ll genuinely never forgive him.

And he’s still the best president I’ve ever had the opportunity to vote for :(

Right. You’re talking about specialized AI that are programmed and trained to perform very specific tasks, and are absolutely useless outside of those tasks.

Llama are generalized AI which can’t do any of those things. The problem is that what it’s good at, really REALLY good at, is giving the appearance of specialized AI. Of course this is only a problem because people keep getting fooled into thinking that generalized AI can do all the same things that specialize AI does.

It’s already happening, but the issue is so big it’ll take a lot more than this to even make a dent.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/28/plastic-eating-bacteria-enzyme-recycling-waste

Yup, because eugenics is part and parcel to ethno states. The logic is simple: improve the ethnicity, improve the state. Never mind that eugenics doesn’t work, anybody who thinks ethno states are a good thing is going to be too stupid to realize that anyway.