Only thing I’ll disagree with you here is the machinist comment. My dad’s been a machinist for like 45 years now, same industry, same building.

He is constantly complaining to me that they can’t find machinists, or even people who are willing to learn. I have zero machining experience, and he was trying to get me hired at one point, that’s how desperate they were getting.

And it’s not a bad company, to be clear, they’re a government contractor, have very good benefits, competitive pay (he’s even complained they’ve given guys with a year’s experience multi-dollar raises to keep them), etc.

According to him, if you have mechanical aptitude and are willing to learn all of the intricacies of machining, you can and will make a decent salary for the rest of your life so long as you’re willing to work.

Third comma? It’s a lot cheaper to bribe a US politician than that. Many will vote in your favor for a few thousand dollars in campaign contributions.

My dog has to smell my breath after I eat/drink something. If I’m eating a sandwich, he’ll watch the whole time, and when I’m done, he’ll hop up and start sniffing/licking for crumbs.

Then he’ll stand on my lap, and put his nose up to my face, sniffing and kinda wagging his tail. I’ll open my mouth wide, and start exhaling, and he’ll eagerly start sniffing riiiiiiiiiight up against my mouth, wagging and kinda shifting his weight on his front legs. And if you don’t listen closely enough to his sniffing…

… He’ll sneeze in your mouth. 😂 He makes my friends do it too, and I do warn them about keeping their mouth open too long.

Beyond that, the only other weird thing he does (besides his crazy yoga poses he does in blankets on the couch) is lick the floor. If I’m cooking, he’s standing by the stove, ready to lunge at anything that falls to the floor. But when I’m done cooking, he’ll basically walk the entire kitchen floor, focusing primarily by the sink and stove, licking every speck of oil and crumb he can find. You’d think I never feed him based on how he acts towards food, but here we are. 😂

He nabbed some chili seeds off the floor one night before I could get them, and I asked him how they tasted while he’s walking around the kitchen, licking his chops over and over. Moved to his water bowl, drank a good chunk of that, moved to the living room, laid down there for a bit… All the while, licking his chops, trying to get the spicy to go away. And then he came back for more 😂

No, you’re trying to play it off as the other commenter pointed out, as if it’s just kids will be kids.

You don’t accidentally stab someone to death. This wasn’t a “fuck up,” if you read the article, or even what I wrote in the comment above, you’d see that the kid followed the victim around after they had already tried to disengage from the guy with the knife.

Knife guy sought them out, escalated the situation despite the victim and his group trying to get knife guy to leave them alone, and then stabbed him in the chest.

Where’s the accident in that?

We’re not, the victim lost everything: their future, their life, moments with family, etc. And you’re making it sound like, “Well, yeah, but he just made a mistake.”

You don’t stab someone to death by mistake, it isn’t a “fuck up.” Killing someone via stabbing is an aggressive, personal, close quarters kind of death. You can’t stab someone to death “accidentally,” and during the act, did he ever stop? While the victim was likely shouting in pain or pleading or trying to get away, did the kid stop his “fuck up”?

No. He knew exactly what he was doing, and there’s no rehabilitating that, especially if it occurred after a brief conversation in public. He forfeited his right to his life as soon as he took his victim’s, when he chose to willfully stab a man to death.

Edit: Literally the first sentence details how the two boys had the four-minute conversation with the victim, followed the victim around Birmingham’s city centre, and then stabbed him to death despite the victim being a complete stranger.

And neither boy showed any remorse or emotion during their sentencing. The one who actually stabbed the victim tries to claim he feared for his safety, and was “just trying to scare the boy.” Guess that’s why he needed to plunge a large knife into the kid’s chest when, as the judge pointed out, all they did was try to get Mr. “Just Fucked Up” to leave them alone.

The kid fucked up.

He stabbed someone to death, he didn’t accidentally total his step dad’s Corvette.

The man he killed is never going to go home again, and he’s not going to do anything for the next 70 years. His family will spend every holiday without him, every milestone in their lives passed without him.

Because “the kid fucked up.” 🙄

I attempted to deliver cremated remains once while I was a carrier for USPS. I say “attempted” because you have to have the recipient sign for cremated remains, but they weren’t home…

I’m not sure how I’d describe it, but it’s an odd feeling leaving a “Sorry We Missed You” pink slip for a person versus a package.

Lol, sorry buddy, not something I can just… Do. There’s gotta be context/history/etc, lol, they’ve gotta earn it.

I have, and even told you I hope she continues to follow her progressive voting record and prove me wrong.

But based on her campaign, I don’t understand why you’re all acting like she’s a hugely progressive candidate. She’s just not, I’m sorry, but she’s not.

I didn’t come back to Lemmy for five hours, and you and the other person both basically said the same thing. So you both got a combined answer of your comments.

Glad you’ve resorted to insults when all I’ve done is give you what Harris is showing us and saying to us. But yep, someone challenged your position, and instead of acknowledging that it may not be as steady as you initially thought, you accuse them of being a bot, and then insult them.

I don’t get this. Y’all on Lemmy are constantly screaming about, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them,” about people like Trump and the GOP, but you won’t acknowledge the same about Democrats.

You’re right, Bernie is older than Biden, and some of the Squad are in their 40s/50s. I never said otherwise. And AOC is the youngest a president can be.

Bernie ran on a progressive platform, Biden did not, and Harris is not, by her own admission. The Squad have progressive ideas they push and campaign on, Harris and Walz have not shown support for these same policies. She’s showing all of us that is not a progressive candidate, which is all this discussion is about.

She’s the far better candidate compared to Der Orange, no one should be voting for Trump. This isn’t a “y’AlL nEeD tO vOtE tHiRd PaRtY” comment, or one telling anyone to stay home, or any of that.

Harris is just not a progressive candidate, and a 60 year old woman who’s lived her entire life in the upper middle class has much less in common with the average person than someone like AOC.

That’s what this whole comment chain was about: someone asked why Harris may have pressure behind the scenes to oust Kahn as FTC chair, and that would be the only reason I could think she’d do it: her wealthy donors want a less progressive FTC chair so they’ll stop going after the oligarchs, and Harris’s campaign seems to be very “return to the status quo” like the Democrats always seem to be doing.

I don’t get this. Y’all on Lemmy are constantly screaming about, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them,” about people like Trump and the GOP, but you won’t acknowledge the same about Democrats.

You’re right, Bernie is older than Biden, and some of the Squad are in their 40s/50s. I never said otherwise. And AOC is the youngest a president can be.

Bernie ran on a progressive platform, Biden did not, and Harris is not, by her own admission. The Squad have progressive ideas they push and campaign on, Harris and Walz have not shown support for these same policies. She’s showing all of us that is not a progressive candidate, which is all this discussion is about.

She’s the far better candidate compared to Der Orange, no one should be voting for Trump. This isn’t a “y’AlL nEeD tO vOtE tHiRd PaRtY” comment, or one telling anyone to stay home, or any of that.

Harris is just not a progressive candidate, and a 60 year old woman who’s lived her entire life in the upper middle class has much less in common with the average person than someone like AOC.

That’s what this whole comment chain was about: someone asked why Harris may have pressure behind the scenes to oust Kahn as FTC chair, and that would be the only reason I could think she’d do it: her wealthy donors want a less progressive FTC chair so they’ll stop going after the oligarchs, and Harris’s campaign seems to be very “return to the status quo” like the Democrats always seem to be doing.

I told a cousin once I wasn’t going to be lectured on morality by a woman whose sole contribution to society was how much money she could spend at a liquor store. That whole post I wrote was honestly, according to my brother, some of the best criticism he’s read, quote, “You called her a lush without ever actually using the word, while also going up one side of her and down the other, saying everything the rest of us wanted to.” That cousin, to this day, will not interact with me at family gatherings.

I also once threw shitty advice I was given back into my boss’s face in my resignation text, to the point where he mentioned it felt “personal” when he called me to try to get me to stay. That was the resignation friends/family told me I should be a writer because, “You have a knack for telling people to go fuck themselves in a way where they thank you afterwards.”

My go to, though, when someone insults me is to usually respond, “I’ve been called worse by better.”

When it stands up, it made me think that RoboCop and the Pixar Lamp had a baby 😱

The examples I gave have been from her campaign this year, I’m glad she’s voted progressively compared to most US Democrats, but she is campaigning as a moderate.

As for her age, yeah, I’m glad we don’t have someone who’s an octogenarian running, but she’s closer to Biden’s age than she is AOC’s, an actual progressive Democrat.

Well, to start, politicians will say anything to get elected, so their words mean absolutely nothing, regardless of party affiliation.

This article was the first I’d even heard about Harris potentially ousting Kahn, so that’s potentially a good sign. However, Kahn and the FTC have been taking swings at the oligarchs via their Google monopoly lawsuits, going after Apple, etc.

Harris (and Walz) are centrist Democrats, they are not progressive. A progressive candidate would be calling for the minimum wage to match where it’d be if it was tied with inflation, around $26/hr, not bringing up the $15/hr debate that should’ve been done a decade ago. She hasn’t signalled support for Medicare for All as far as I remember, she went back on her promise not to expand fracking, and she’s made no mention of enshrining LGBTQ+ rights into law or stopping weapons sales to Israel (she has said their would be contingencies, so she still agrees to help the guy actively working against her with her opponent), all progressive ideas.

So, she likely doesn’t support these things because her party, and more importantly, the donors who line their pockets, don’t want her to. She’s a career Democrat, she’s not that much younger than Biden in comparison to someone considered progressive, like AOC, so her policies are going to closer align with the Status-Quo centrist Democrats versus the We-Need-Change-Now progressive Democrats.

Tl:dr: Harris is a centrist Democrat whose party (and by extension, her party’s wealthy donors) do not want progress made, they want a return to the status quo, as their policies have shown (Palestine, M4A, Fracking, etc). Her donors likely don’t like that the FTC chair actually has a backbone, and since the status quo is more important to the Democrat Party (look at how they treated Bernie) than progress. So, the donors are likely pressuring her behind the scenes to put a Garland-esque Chair in charge of the FTC: someone with no backbone.

My dad asked me recently how much I made per paycheck. I told him I take home $1100 every two weeks, assuming I didn’t miss any work because I don’t get PTO.

Dad: “You make $2200 a month?!?”

Me: Yep, I told you, I’m broke.

Dad: “You’re not broke, you’re poor.”

Me: No, I’m both.

When I had my clearance, we were told if we had a conversation with a foreign national at a bar, we had to disclose it, even after we had already received our clearance.

I was put through a multi-hour polygraph interview from hell, where I was told I didn’t know how to breathe and was threatened with being failed and losing my clearance, because I was having issues remembering online foreign penpals from high school.

But motherfucker is talking to Putin on the regularly, and he’s a billionaire with billions worth of government contracts? Tell me again, US Government, why any of your citizens should give a fuck about anything, again?

I’m 30 next month, I joined the military right out of high school, and I specifically remember them teaching us a bit about 401k’s because of our ability to participate in TSP.

The instructor very clearly told us, the average American needs $1 million in their retirement account when they to to retire to live comfortably. Not extravagantly, comfortably.

Just a couple weeks ago I saw an article saying the average American now needs $2 million in their retirement account to be to retire comfortably, and this is assuming they don’t have a mortgage payment, etc.

So in 11 years, the amount needed to retire comfortably has doubled, and yet my wages haven’t doubled… Minimum wage hasn’t increased in decades, sure they’re talking about $15/hr now, but that should’ve been 10 years ago. With inflation, minimum wage should be around $26/hr, yet even in my blue state, it’s like $15.60/hr or something, it’s barely over $15.

Throw in the recent news about the inevitable and quickly approaching AMOC collapse and the climate hellscape that’s going to come with it… Our futures were robbed from us for profit, and even if I started making triple what I make now, I’ll never be able to retire, nor do I even have a retirement account anymore (I cashed mine out to help me during some really rough financial times right after the pandemic, y’know, when the government told the average American to go fuck themselves). And I was one of the few among my friends who even had one.

So, like many people around my age, my retirement will either be societal collapse in the next couple decades, or a bullet to the head (if I could even afford the bullet) as I die in old age, homeless, while we probably have six trillionaires at that point.