According to the data that came out after the 2024 election 78% of farmers voted for Trump. How is it a strawman if 4 out of 5 farmers are MAGA voters?

I’ve had success explaining it to the uninitiated by telling them that the only rules for our relationship are those that we have discussed and agreed upon. I usually give them an example or two and make sure I always frame it as my response to their actions. Like “I won’t expect you to be monogamous or exclusive unless we’ve discussed it”. Then I like to add that it’s less stressful than a typical relationship because we both know exactly where the lines are because we’ve discussed them. I’ll finish the explanation by pointing out that it encourages better communication and that if I were to do something that upset them or made them uncomfortable that they can and should bring it up so we can discuss it.

That frames it in a way that doesn’t seem like I want to screw everything with a pulse and have no accountability (because I don’t), which is what RA sounds like to the uninformed. I guess if someone else did want that, this approach wouldn’t work for them.

I did about 10 years ago. I was working as the entire marketing department for an Oil & Gas services company and I could not stand the owner’s son. At first we were friendly. He and I both struggled with mental illness and sort of bonded over being a little weird (I much more than him).

The problems didn’t start until he came back from a voluntary stay at a mental health facility determined to prove himself to his father. He took over my department (which was just me) and started making big sweeping changes to how I was supposed to work. He had a degree in business management and his only experience in marketing was that he was the CEO’s son.

We started clashing and arguing over every little thing and the more we quarreled the more involved he got. One day I was gchatting on my work computer with my SO at the time and expressed my frustration about the situation. Later that day he came by my desk to watch me work on a piece of collateral and saw that chat which I had forgotten about and left on one of my monitors.

From that moment on he was aggressively an asshole. His sister, the head of hr, put me on a performance improvement plan which is just HR code for looking for a reason to fire me. A few weeks later I was working on a major redesign of the website to reflect the new direction the President (my former boss) wanted to take the company, which Owner’s Son hated. He thought it was a waste of time so he set a bunch of really short deadlines he thought I would fail. When I came in on time and under budget for the second phase of the redesign he couldn’t keep the thin veneer of professionalism that kept our beef low key. He laid into the prototype as if it was final delivery and told me that if it were up to him he’d cancel the project (it wasn’t because I had gone over his head and got the entire C-Suite to approve the project). I was so angry I was shaking and all I could manage to say was that I was glad it wasn’t up to him.

I walked from his office to his sister’s and asked her to fire me (I gravely misunderstood the unemployment laws in Texas). After an hour of conversation she agreed and told me she would in a few days. Unfortunately for me my grandmother died the next day so I ended up taking a few days of bereavement leave. When I got back, while I was at lunch I got a notice from facebook that I had been removed as the admin for the company’s page so I knew before I finished my sandwich it was over.

I carried a grudge for many years after that and many times considered getting revenge. I even concocted a very vile plan to frame him for a crime by hacking his wifi and planting illegal content on his personal computer. Fortunately for everyone, I never did and eventually I realized the best revenge was to forget about him and live my life.

It has become somewhat of a thought terminating cliche I will agree. In the context of my comment though I think it’s appropriate. If the people we purchase things from must be morally pure and politically aligned with the buyer’s viewpoint, the majority of products available for purchase in the US fail that test. Even “good” businesses that pass the test still must rely on an exploitative and unethical supply chain for their materials and distribution.

Regarding the farmers market though, yeah kinda. If we shouldn’t buy goods from Walmart because they are owned by fascists and exploit their workers, why is it okay to buy produce from MAGA farmers using criminally underpaid undocumented migrant labor? The short answer is it’s not. The only difference is scale.

I’m somewhat of a hardliner on ethics and morals. In my opinion something becomes unethical and morally wrong if a single person is exploited. I have no interest in measuring inches and degrees of evil.

• Boyz n the Hood (1991)
• Do the Right Thing (1989)
• Rashomon (1950)
• Seven Samurai (1954)
• They Cloned Tyrone (2023)
• Yojimbo (1963)

There are a lot of films on other commenter’s lists that I would wholeheartedly recommend too.

This might be a controversial take, but yes. In the creative world it’s a conversation but there are a multitude of other domains where no one seems to care. IBM made proto-computers for the nazis to keep track of concentration camp prisoners. Volkswagen was created by Hitler. Continuing the nazi theme there are a lot of medical technologies that were made possible by (often) lethal experimentation on prisoners. Just about every publicly traded company is evil to some degree.

When it comes to the creative world we care for some reason. If it bothers you buy the media second hand. The creator gets $0 if you do. Sure it technically supports the secondary market which effects the new purchases because it makes reselling a viable option, but if you’re tracking things that far removed from you there is pretty much nothing you can ethically buy. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

I wouldn’t say we’re past the point of reform, we lack the political will in our elected representatives and the numbers to force the issue. It is possible, but very unlikely, that we could flip the house and senate with enough progressive politicians that reform would be possible. However the establishment democratic party is unwilling to take the necessary steps or support the needed candidates. Their aim seems to be to become more centrist than they already were and maintain the status quo.

Unfortunately though the reality of the situation is very complex, ambiguous, and inundated with misinformation. Most reforms in the federal government won’t change the policies in red states, which are by far more egregious than what’s happening in Washington. While it’s likely true that there are no true red states, just gerrymandered purple states, there are still a sizable portion of the US population that want some or all of what’s going on in red states and the federal government.

There doesn’t seem to be enough political will among the left to carry out a revolution. Even if there was, there are almost as many right wingers (who are better armed, equipped, and trained) who would stand in opposition and turn the revolution into the second civil war.

Realistically while there are things that could be done to mitigate or stop the far right, not enough people seem to have the bravery, resources, and will to do what needs to be done.

Currently I’m listening to Tom Waits’ 1983 album Swordfishtrombones. The specific song playing is Frank’s Wild Years although it switched to the title track while I was writing this comment.

Waits for sure has some great songs, but he’s an excellent album artist and I would recommend Swordfishtrombones. It’s one of his best albums and I would whole heartedly recommend it. Mule Variations, Bone Machine, and Rain Dogs are also fantastic albums. Fair warning though, Tom Waits is very polarizing, you either love him or absolutely hate him.

The female lesser prairie chicken, the only remaining wild chicken, will peck holes in their own fertilized eggs in times of scarcity making it one of the only other species on Earth that perform intentional abortions.

The first episode of the new season really came out swinging. One of my favorite parts of the episode was all of the call backs and self-referential stuff they sprinkled in. Annie dressed up like a Firecracker dancer was pretty hilarious because of the Homelander Birthday Special where he tried to subvert her authority as co-leader of the Seven by having a bunch of dancers in Starlight costumes. Homelander also called out EBITA Margins in his speech which he was embarrassed not to know about when he first took control of Vought’s board. And so on.

One of the more interesting parts of the episode was the end of Reggie/A-Train’s story. He came full circle by avoiding splattering another woman in the street at the cost of his own life. I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t re-watched the show and gen V prior to the 5th season coming out, but the woman he dodges even somewhat looks like Hughie’s Robin; both have big curly hair, both were wearing different colors of the same jacket, and both performers even resemble each other a bit. Like if you hadn’t watched the first season since it aired it would be perfectly reasonable to mistake “College-Aged Girl” for Robin.

It’ll be interesting to watch how the story plays out. I’m really curious to see how the Gen V characters are used. I heard an interview with Kripke where he said the Gen V supes have a very minor role in season 5, but I am really hoping Marie Moreau gets at least a scene or two to really shine, she deserves it. I want her at the final battle, but I doubt it. She’ll probably use her powers to heal/restore/resurrect a character if she even gets any screen time at all. I really really really want to know if her powers work on Homelander and to what extent. It would never happen, because someone from The Boys will absolutely deal the killing blow to Homelander (if he dies), but it seems like that hold power she used on Jordan a few times where she paralyzed them and lifted them off the ground would shut Homelander down entirely. Tilt his head back so he can’t laser anyone and then stop his heart or something. If she ever does square up against The Seven that’s what she’ll do (minus the heart attack). She’ll hold Homelander or Black Noir or Soldier Boy to set up one of the Boys or their allies.

Sage is the character I’m really rooting for though. From her first scene I had a hunch she would be in the finale. The way things are going though I’m not sure anymore. I think it’s 50/50 that she gets murdered by Homelander over the V1 situation or pulls a double cross and uses the power Homelander gave her to take over the world herself.

Which leads me to believe you singled out the HT because of their brownness or perhaps non-Jeebusness.

I singled them out because it was an obscure source and misinformation is rife on the Internet. If you believe I might be secretly a bigot, you are welcome to check my post history, but I promise you, I am not.

Which are all bullshit in many ways…

100% agree. Not a single source on that list, except maybe the bbc would I trust as a single source, and only then if it were about non-political international stories.

The link I provided says the Hindustan Times has low credibility and their factual reporting is mixed. The post has medium credibility and mixed factual reporting.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t check the others because they were all from more mainstream sources. Especially with breaking news, like this story was yesterday, we should all be giving unfamiliar sources extra scrutiny.

If it makes you feel better though I’ll do the rest of them:

• Hindustan Times: mixed factual reporting, low credibility
• New York Post: mixed factual reporting, medium credibility
• ClickOnDetroit: high factual reporting, high credibility
• Fox 2 Detroit: high factual reporting, high credibility
• NBC News: high factual reporting, high credibility
• CNN: mostly factual reporting, medium credibility
• BBC: high factual reporting, high credibility
• Yahoo News: high factual reporting, high credibility

Fair. Also here is that MSN article.

You probably shouldn’t trust the Hindustan Times, they are not a credible news source

The Hindustan Times probably isn’t a trustworthy source. Especially in this political climate, I’d recommend not believing anything you haven’t seen from multiple sources.

77,302,580 Americans voted for Trump out of a total of 340,865,045 individuals. That makes the total number of Americans who wanted some part of what’s going on strongly enough to take some action is roughly 23%. 75 million Americans voted for Harris and 37 million Americans were registered, but did not vote which is roughly 33%.

Only 55% of the country is registered to vote so it’s really hard to tell what the 45% of Americans who aren’t registered feel politically, but it’s probably safe to assume if they can’t be bothered to vote, they’re probably not down for the civil war remix.

Of the 23% who voted conservative in 2024, not all of them hold far right beliefs. It’s hard to say what fraction of that population would fall on the far right, especially because Trumpism itself holds some far right ideology. Even assuming half of all republican voters are ready and willing to engage in a civil war, that’s only 35 million people or 11% of the population.

They’re really loud online and currently have control of the government, but there really aren’t that many of them. There are far more people who don’t care, centrists, democrats, and leftists.

Raging hemorrhoid, Nancy Mace Craven ghoul, Nancy Mace Human cancer, Nancy Mace

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

That’s irl cyberpunk ice. Absolutely love that for us.

I think it’s a human problem. It’s in our genes. Some of us are supremely selfish and some of those people have no regard for the health and wellbeing of anyone who gets in their way. Just look at our history.