It’s always interesting to hear what animated character was somebody else’s furry awakening. For me it was Krystal also, but every time I meet a furry younger than myself, I can see clear distinction between what age group they belong to and which anthropomorphic character they were sexually attracted to as a kid, lol.
Anybody who has ever been unfortunate enough to have to apply for any of these healthcare or food stipend programs would know that it’s not as easy as the government makes it seem. In fact, the amount of bureaucracy, means testing, and highly restrictive income limitations means that most people don’t qualify period and people who do qualify have to spend an inordinate amount of time waiting to hear back from the government to know if they have been accepted or not, all the while hoping and praying they don’t get sick and can manage their money long enough to continue feeding themselves.
Case in point, my fiance is out of work right now and actively seeking work. She applied for both MediCAL and SNAP and was denied for MediCAL because she had earned too much already that year to qualify and the SNAP benefits totaled out to $20/month in food stamps, based on historical income, which is insufficient even for the most frugal of individuals to make work. This is for someone currently earning $0/month and being almost entirely supported by me.
After a certain point, it becomes a massive drain on your time and resources that could be spent looking for a job, so you stop bothering with the system altogether because who wants to spend hours doing paperwork and submitting claims just to get enough spare change to buy a bulk bag of rice to feed yourself a struggle meal?
I don’t want to hear shit about “handouts” from anybody. My fiance paid her taxes faithfully for years without ever having to rely on the program, so where are her benefits? She has undoubtedly paid more into the system than she will ever extract.
“I don’t use social media and never have.”
So what are they going to do if someone fires back with this? Deny their visa because they didn’t agree to be spied on by a few of the worst companies on planet fucking earth? Is the government going to be able to somehow make me prove that I don’t have social media?
We have the stupidest people in charge right now.
US: “NATO members need to up their defense spending!”
NATO: “Okay, we’ll do it.”
US: “Actually, We’re leaving NATO.” 🤡
I use only Lemmy. It was easy for me since I pretty much only used Reddit until the mass exodus happened about a year ago and then shortly after they killed the RiF app for Android and I lost the way that I consumed Reddit 95% of the time so I transitioned to using Lemmy full time. I didn’t have much of a choice unless I used PC to access Reddit, which I will still do from time to time for niche subjects, but I avoid posting.
I’ve never had any other “traditional” social media accounts. Call me a hipster, but I thought that shit was lame when people were constantly asking about adding me on MySpace or Facebook and just never bothered to jump on the bandwagon. Eventually, when it came out that those places were cesspools run by unethical hacks I avoided ever signing up intentionally and thanked my lucky stars that I was a grumpy and rebellious contrarian in my youth. I think I was forced to make a Facebook account to use my Oculus VR headset, but I put in as little factual information as I could get away with and never interacted with their terrible algorithm.
I still can’t get over that the dude’s name is actually Burger, and Burger isn’t being used as a mild slur to mean “American” like I’m typically used to seeing in these sort of greentext posts.
Real life is too wacky.
We could go back to the old internet any time we wanted, but people have been supping on the convenience aspect of having everything bundled into easy-to-digest “apps” that they would have to deprogram themselves first and come to understand that finding shit on the old internet used to take work. Small wonder that people hear that X (formerly Twitter) is going to be the “everything app” and like the idea of that. I personally find it horrifying how many people are glued to social media, and meanwhile I’ve never had a Facebook account, never had Twitter, never had TikTok, and I’m still doing just fine.
We let corporations get their sticky fingers on everything, so now everything has to be profitable or it isn’t worth anybody’s time. Even YouTube videos are now all about maximizing engagement, interaction, and viewer retention so that the uploader can collect a paycheck from Google. I don’t give a fuck about whatever excuses they use to justify it, people still made great quality content before YouTube partnered with people for revenue sharing.
If TOR wasn’t so godawfully slow, I’d be using TOR and visiting .onion sites for everything. It perfectly recreates that “old internet” feeling of web design that has function over form and small communities built around niche topics.
That’s still the purpose of the second amendment, for people to own guns to defend themselves and others against tyranny
It isn’t, and has never been. The language of the constitution is plain as day:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”
The mythos of the 2nd amendment being this poison pill for a tyrannical state government is only so pervasive because institutions like the NRA perpetuated it for decades in service of arms manufacturers and their bottom line. No sane government anywhere in the world would bake such a clause into their constitution, it’s antithetical to government itself.
The 2nd amendment is absolutely an artifact of a bygone era of American history where, as a fledgling nation, we did not have a powerful standing army to rely on for defense against foreign adversaries. A people’s militia was the final defense against such a threat.
However, all that being said, I agree with your sentiment that leftists should be arming themselves. Just because the 2nd amendment has almost completely lost it’s original intent or meaning, doesn’t mean we can’t take advantage of the fact that it exists with tons of legal precedent to strap up in preparation for what might come next. Things are unlikely to get better from here, and if things get worse you will be glad you have a firearm for protection.
Thank fucking christ. Now hopefully the AI bubble will burst along with it and I don’t have to listen to techbros drone on about how it’s going to replace everything which is definitely something you do not want to happen in a world where we sell our ability to work in exchange for money, goods and services.
Cancelling a pre-loaded pride event because you’re scared of right wing nutcases being mean to your playerbase is the very definition of letting the terrorists win.
The NRA never actually gave a shit about any of that. It was always a front for gun lobbyists to stoke fear so people would stockpile more weaponry that they definitely didn’t need while also promoting the American political faction that would be less likely to pass gun control legislation that would harm their bottom line.
Republicans were just useful idiots. They do not care if Trump is an oppressive tyrant as long as he doesn’t even think about the word gun control. If tomorrow the positions on gun control reversed, you’d see a flip-flop so Orwellian it would make you question your concept of objective reality.
Did she ever accomplish anything other than going to places getting arrested and changing absolutely nothing?
It’s got you here talking about it with your terrible opinions, hasn’t it?
Take a look at this image and tell me if you think these guys accomplished anything other than going to a lunch counter and getting arrested and changing “absolutely nothing”?
Can ChatGPT actually play chess now? Last I checked, it couldn’t remember more than 5 moves of history so it wouldn’t be able to see the true board state and would make illegal moves, take it’s own pieces, materialize pieces out of thin air, etc.
Fresh wounds always hurt the worst. This sounds like it just happened. You are obviously going to need time to emotionally move on from a failed relationship.
My advice is to distract your brain from the event in the short term. Play with your pets, go see a movie, hang out with your friends, eat some ice cream, focus on your creative hobbies. When this sort of thing happened to me when I was younger, I would flip it around and use my newfound single status as a positive - I can enjoy the foods and activities that I knew my ex-partner didn’t like, I didn’t have to plan my schedule around making time to see them and include them in stuff, and I just generally enjoyed the liberating feeling of being single, even though it still hurt to lose someone so close that I had been so attached to. By the time I started to feel like the feeling of being single was losing it’s appeal, I was emotionally ready to move on and meet new people.
In short, just give it more time. Distract your brain. In time, this too will pass.
Be aware of your surroundings. This is not just a safety thing for yourself, but a courtesy thing for other people.
I’m not talking about state mandated education. Nobody is required to attend university.
If you go to a college worth attending, they will teach you critical thinking skills as part of the course requirements.
Regardless, the situation with generative AI is not helping in that regard.
Imagine paying tens of thousands of dollars (probably of their parents saved money) to go to university and have a chatbot do the whole thing for you.
These kids are going to get spit out into a world where they will have no practical knowledge and no ability to critically think or adapt.
Nobody seems particularly alarmed by this, least of all Finland. I doubt Putin is going to go from losing a war against Ukraine to losing a war against Ukraine and Finland and the rest of NATO too. Seems like this “buildup” has been there for a while and is only growing presumably because Ukraine is getting really good at striking targets inside of Russian borders.
I came here to say exactly this. Well done.