ThunderingJerboa

I agree with most of that however The King in Yellow was made when he was around 5 years old. People sort of put it into the Lovecraft universe because of the themes but nope has 0 connection at least in its inception. The whole Lovecraft universe is sort of a hog podge of other’s authors work as well who sort of expanded and formalized parts of it. Its honestly very cool what a group of authors can do when IPs and such aren’t hoarded in a huge vault being left untouched until its economically advantageous to use.

Yeah it does make it a bit hard to listen to those audiobooks in the car…

I mean if they have read some of his stories, it should be pretty obvious he was pretty fucking racist. The cat thing is a fun meme but if anyone has read at least call of Cthulhu the work most people know about its pretty on the nose. Every human antagonist is either black or a foreigner and he is pretty blatant about it. Hell don’t get me started on Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (or The White Ape), that one is just so funny with how bloody racist it is because the conclusion is so absurd, you can’t take it serious.

That is funny but not as bad.

Can’t say too much but god I hate this so much. Used to work a call center and someone had a username that was all 1,l,I s and there was no way to easily identify between those 3 characters. For someone to verify who they were they needed to tell us their username and some other info. So I had to waste nearly 30 fucking minutes dealing with this stupid shit before we could proceed forward and we couldn’t just DC the person.

I mean even federal holidays don’t help. At least for the lower classes since businesses are not forced to follow said holidays. It may be good for federal/government workers but from the private sector it will mean very little.

You know ignoring your comment that the war has been going on for 3 years. Its only been a year and halfish maybe closing into 2 years. Its laughable that a country like Ukraine whom’s military budget before this was several fractions of Russia’s is able to hold them back in open fucking warfare. I know you are gonna say whatabout Vietnam or “War on Terror” but those were insurgencies (ignoring the ethics of the US being in those wars since really we shouldn’t have been) the US and Nato trying to capture territory typically goes smoothly as we seen in the Gulf War and Desert Storm basically being called the 100 hour land war

I mean asymmetrical warfare is a messy affair. Hamas gets new recruits who are angered about their family and homes being destroyed. Big nations typically don’t win these kind of engagements in the modern era because at least to modern sensibilities we don’t really want to see pointless slaughter and genocide, this isn’t to advocate for it, quite far from it but historically typically you would have to be ruthless to subjugate people but thankfully modern sensibilities say that is pretty fucked. So really this will either end up another “forever” war or one of the sides will be wiped out entirely.

Sorry but you are foolish. Your peaceful wonderland bullshit is just going to lead to a another great war. You don’t see how our people benefit from denying a geopolitical rival to limited resources. You think if Russia had a larger supply of natural gas, oil, and food production they wouldn’t exploit those around them. Yeah the Military Industrial complex does benefit from this but you are acting like Russia is innocent on this shit. They are actively in this war and started it. You can bitch and whine about how the west has interfered in Ukraine but that doesn’t give a sovereign nation a right to invade another country.

Like holy shit your fucking bullshit logic would have meant the US had a right to invade Mexico in 1917 with the Zimmermann Telegram. We already see the signs of China testing the waters with Taiwan. You don’t see how this war in Ukraine can possibly dissuade a more impactful war when all our electronics are basically made in Taiwan. Appeasement isn’t going to help here and letting Russia take Ukraine shouldn’t be on your table. They will continue, they have done this so many times now.

We don’t have to act like its either we get healthcare for all or support the war with Ukraine. This is some broken ass logic. You are acting like its choice when no it is infact not a fucking choice. We have internal pressures from the for profit medical industries that are pushing against universal healthcare, it has nothing to do with the MIC

You would have to be blind not to see how this war benefits America and the west. I mean if we don’t care about the ethical/morality around it (I think these are important) but from a simple strategic point of view denying Russia, a geopolitical rival, access to more resources and making for a strong ally right on the border of said geo political rival. Finally getting field testing for weapons that were literally designed against Russia, showing the US’s stance on defending other nations, which means we hopefully won’t have to get into a far larger war down the road. What do you think is going to happen if Ukraine falls to Russia, this shit continues and possibly on multiple fronts in the future. So its better to squash this now or it will continue. We seen what appeasement does in 2014 and in the past.

While yes it is customary to to release your tax returns if you are running for office but its not a legal requirement and if we want it to be an actual requirement, we should enforce a law that makes it so. Its a private document that a private citizen has and to say its to be force out via a leak is not a great look. I agree I want my candidates to release their tax returns for the public to see but we as the voters should be demanding this, clearly it wasn’t that important for the base that Trump is following. Would you like it if your Tax returns were out in the open for everyone to see? Fuck Trump, he is a corrupt shit businessman who has not done a single thing unless it was in his interests but having to rely on someone to leak intel is not great. Remember when the DNC and RNC were both hacked into but conveniently only the DNC’s emails got around to being exposed. Wonder who could of done that and why, maybe to benefit an outside power.

Nah, what this person did wasn’t right. Is it funny to see them revealed absofuckinglutely and a good thing for the “greater good” but authorizing people do whatever they want because of the supposed “greater good” is a dangerous path to take. That fucking idiot who leaked many military documents on his stupid ass discord server was doing it for a supposed “greater good” but all it was harmful. We can all laugh and agree when its happened to X “bad person” but what happens when its someone you support it gets messy or its taken out of context. We had 8 fucking investigations on the nothingburger of Benghazi, while a tragic incident trying to pin the blame all the blame on Hillary Clinton was a bit much and those investigations wasted millions of dollars.

Oh yes, instead of the IRS we get private companies who knock on our doors and harass us, who will take a far larger cut than before for the sake of privatization. Taxes gotta be collected and sorry its pointless to be angry at the IRS when they are just following the laws that congress have established.

Yeah its not a great look but at the same time, human memory is a very fickle thing. There is a reason I’m all for dashcams and the such since eye witnesses are worthless and can easily be primed to see what others want them to see. Maybe he is doing it for clout but lets be honest here I doubt most people would remember exact dates/times of something that happened 22 years ago. Hell I legit can’t remember anything I did 15 years ago, its all sort of a blur.

Fundamentally disagree. You are just opening the system to cheaper bribery. Senators like Bernie Sanders would be thrown out even when he has one of the highest approval ratings by his constituents. Term limits do nothing for congress but make said congress people look for their next opportunity after the gig (which is already a problem). Its on voters to make sure candidates like Mitch McConnell or Dianne Feinstein get replaced. The call for term limits is just change for change without any thought on its possible effects. You may ask why do I have this double standard for congress but not the president? The simple answer is there are 100 senators and 435 House Representatives, most people barely fucking know who their senators/reps are but you are just making for a revolving door to disincentivize even caring about them now since eh they are going to disappear in a couple years anyway, the power difference between being the sole power of a branch of government vs being merely a member with either 1/100 or 1/435 the power of the body changes things since congress is far more a collective than any of the other branches.

I mean they are but they aren’t. They are doing this because it only benefits them to deny ranked choice voting. There is literally no negative to it beyond it being only slightly better than FPTP, which we have been stuck with for centuries.

Note: Splitting the vote and the spoiler effect are stupid problems of FPTP and we shouldn’t have to deal with them.

I think you are sort of missing the point. Currently Blue no matter what is sadly the best choice right now. Its clear we are seeing that democrats are 100% willing to screw over others to get theirs as well seeing as they are trying to block ranked choice voting, which is a net good thing. Its just straight up first past the post+ (FPTP+).

Edit: This isn’t to advocate against democrats at the current moment because clearly Republicans are just worse in almost every fucking way but we need to be vigilant and its clear we need to fight for Alternative vote/Ranked Choice Voting since the other poster is right, right now Democrats are relying heavily on you have no fucking option besides us. So sit down and shut up and we will give you crumbs rather than the Republicans just shitting in your mouth calling it chocolate.

Except really I think these kind of reveals will slowly lose their relevance since we are getting tools that make it far easier to do “Deepfakes”. So it will just become the goto answer. In some ways its liberating, in other ways horrific since it will mean accountability is far harder. Hell we already have the trial run with this whole discussion of “Fake news”.

I wouldn’t say fifty years. I mean there were 2 states added to the US in 6 years from 1861 (Nevada and Nebraska, I am not including West Virginia since they wouldn’t have existed in a non civil war scenario). I think they saw it as a beginning of the end for them and their oh so loved “WaY Of LiFe” so they struck out when they were in theory at their strongest.

I’m not sure about that. I think it was more started on the fact that it was clear the Republicans at the time were aiming not to abolish slavery but to stop its expansion. Which in political terms means slave states were basically fucked as more states were introduced. Many people see Bleeding Kansas as a prelude to the civil war because it was about seeing if a new territory will be pro or anti slavery. Like yes the southern states were hypocrites about states rights but from their perspective* however skewed that was. The threat of anti slavery was expanding while those who were sympathetic to it were losing power in house and senate. So secession/war over slavery was inevitable, it was merely a can the founding fathers sort of kicked down the road for others to figure out.