With a few exceptions, I’ve basically given up on YouTube. It’s a Pacific Garbage Patch pile of trash, as wide as it is deep.

The efforts to further automize the slop has only stiffened my resolve to stay the fuck away.

Deeply depressing to read what Americans have done with all the Afghani translators and aids and families of US occupation allies, then to turn around and find out even the Russians are better on this issue than the Americans.

Why would anyone ever set foot in that third world fucking shithole?

Money, mostly.

We had a good five or ten minutes somewhere in 1945. Also, gotta admit that Moon Landing was cool.

Everything else I could probably live without.

We need a strong USA.

Glances at the last 40 years of US history

Do we?

The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke

The authors present quantitative data to demonstrate how American middle-class families have been left in a precarious financial position by increases in fixed living expenses, increased medical expenses, escalating real estate prices, lower employment security, and the relaxation of credit regulation.

The result has been a reshaping of the American labor force, such that many families now rely on having two incomes in order to meet their expenses. This situation represents a greater level of financial risk than that faced by single-income households: the inability of either adult to work, even temporarily, may result in loss of employment, and concomitant loss of medical coverage and the ability to pay bills. This may lead to bankruptcy or being forced to move somewhere less expensive, with associated decreases in educational quality and economic opportunity

Among the expenses driving the two-income trap are child care, housing in areas with good schools, and college tuition. Warren and Tyagi conclude that having children is the “single best predictor” that a woman will go bankrupt

Warren and Tyagi call stay-at-home mothers of past generations “the most important part of the safety net”, as the non-working mother could step in to earn extra income or care for sick family members when needed. However, Warren and Tyagi dismiss the idea of return to stay-at-home parents, and instead propose policies to offset the loss of this form of insurance.

Warren and Tyagi attempt to overturn the “overconsumption myth” that Americans’ financial instabilities are the result of frivolous spending – they note, for instance, that families are spending less on clothing, food (including meals out), and large appliances, when adjusted for inflation, than a generation prior.

Normal people either can’t afford these devices or don’t have time for all the hassle

Had a friend who was getting by on $2k/mo and got herself a $1400 top of the line iPhone, because her carrier gave her a reduction in her monthly payment plan (for an obscene amount of debt and locked-in service on the back end). Her brother jail-broke it for her and did the normal “cleaning off all the bloatware” due-diligence.

This is just something we all put up with in the modern day. “Normal people” have a harder time navigating the bullshit, but its a lake we all have to paddle through.

Reminds me of getting a notice in Middle School, decades ago, about how a pager was considered “drug paraphernalia”

There was also a big Bloomberg-Era push by the NYPD to arrest any woman carrying condoms on her person, on the grounds that a woman carrying a condom must be a sex worker.

Yeltsin was such a drunk idiot

Backed by the US in a coup against the Russian government

Putin wouldn’t be President of Russia if the US and the USSR had been able to settle their differences without a 60 year long series of proxy wars and regime changes. Neither would Trump, for that matter.

You played yourselves.

Doesn’t seem like years of sanctions on Russia, Iran, or North Korea had a sufficient impact to cause any change.

Seems like it made them more insular, more self-sufficient, and more hostile to future diplomatic entreties.

Change by force can have negative results, and change by economic means can have positive ones

What if, instead of trying to extort or kill a nation’s residents in order to force them to adopt your preferred foreign policy, you simply afforded them an opportunity for peaceful coexistence?

Genuinely wonder how much mileage you could get if you just went on Truth or Rumble or 4chan or wherever reactionaries are pooling today and started posting a bunch of “These are the machines that the Deep State is using to control the weather” entirely unironically.

Slap in some numerology, blame California Leftists and Chinese Communists and George Soros. Get the QAnon-ers to bake on it. Might get a few of the more enthusiastic zealots to start seeing coal fired plants like Christian Conservatives see abortion clinics.

…made in 2018 by a Russian team. Way before the whole Ukraine war thing, you understand

Flipping through a history book on Russian/Ukrainian relations in the 21st century

Closing the book, putting it back on the shelf, whistling, and walking away

More seriously, I’ll never understand folks who hear “So-and-so is from Nationality X, so now I must/must not purchase products from them because of their bloodline.”

I am a professional encoder and I always put all my codes in a single big file marked EXE for faster execution.

6’3" Dutch-Irishman with crystal blue eyes and perfectly manicured cuticles.

he was ACTUALLY born on American soil from the Birthing Matrix.

Reader: “How is he not an immigrant alien?”

90s DC Retconners: Slaps the side of a weird techno-widget “Space Wizards did it.”

He can’t even claim Birthright Citizenship

Canonically, I believe he was still technically gestating in the pod before he arrived. So he’s more of an Anchor Baby.

Red Son is the only correct version of Superman.

Everything else is bourgeois revisionism.

chinese companies are notorious for stealing IP

American companies sell the ip to China in exchange for access to capital and labor, then claim they’ve been robbed when the Chinese firms innovate and expand on the patents they’ve acquired.

The end result is a car company that produces better vehicles than anything an American or Japanese or German company can manage.

Curiously, these superior vehicles are “stolen” while the Teslas keep exploding under home grown technology.

Holy shit, are we still on Grey’s Anatomy?