spaceguy44

[spaceguy44]

"Great question! You've touched on an important and subtle issue...."

shut up shut up shut up shut up SHUT UP!

[spaceguy44]

been getting really into rockhounding lately and the subreddits are great

[spaceguy44]

thank u google thats exactly what i was looking for, not how many days she has been the prime minister of the united kingdom, her height in picometers. you can read my mind, google, its uncanny 

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Who else up thinking about bjj black belt craig jones saying You can give anyone steroids. Despite our best efforts we are yet to give anyone autism.

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woke up and immediately checked the news to make sure they hadn't caught him

[spaceguy44]

"But he was a husband and father!"

It feels like this is one of the biggest ways the MSM, libs, and neocons try to condemn the CEO shooting, and it says a lot about their view on human worth.

Like, if he didn't have a wife and kids, then is it okay to kill him? Well actually, they do seem to think that. Just look at the whole case surrounding the murder of Jordan Neely. He was homeless, and having a mental health crisis on a NYC subway that prompted an ex-marine to chokehold him to death. And look at who all is defending the murderer. Weirdly, it's many of the same people who condemn the CEO murder. It seem that if you do a "bad thing" and you have no family or capital worth in society, the system will just shrug at your murder. But if you are at the top of the hierarchy, hold immense capital, and hold a traditional familial role that society largely imposes, then your murder is a horrendous crime, even if your actions directly result in thousands of deaths.

To be clear, I don't think we should be praising murder no matter who it is. I am very consistent in this matter. I do not support the death penalty when the state does it, and I don't support it when a vigilante does it. I believe sentient human life is worth the same regardless of your class or actions. But we should also look at how people are using the reasonable condemnation of violence to protect a system that most of the public has been justifiably livid about.

Will I encourage more of vigilantes to kill CEOs? No. Will I act like the problem is the vigilantes and whine about how this represents a degradation of our civil society? HELL NO! In fact, the broad support for the CEO killer has actually encouraged my view of our fellow countrymen, even if they allowed Trump to get into office again. It shows that people CAN recognize the real problems, and that we can hopefully use this energy to push for real progress in stead of the fearmongering against minorities that Trump used to seize power.

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We don't know the motive yet, but it's real rich seeing liberals decry the "violence" against the UHC CEO, but don't consider the company's choices that directly lead to thousands of deaths through denied coverage as "violence".

I don't like "violence" either, but when you make it impossible for the capital class to be held accountable for their violence on society, you make violence against them inevitable. I'm just surprised it took so long for this to happen.

Something about our healthcare system needs to change or things are going to get a lot messier, and I unfortuantely don't think killing CEOs is going to make them change heart. Rather, they'd probably double down and sick the FBI on the "terrorists" doing the assassinations.

[spaceguy44]

Why is it called "The Gray"? It's fuckin' GREEN!

[spaceguy44]

The most frustrating point I've heard the past few days is that we need to abandon "woke" politics and shift to the right because that's what drove people to Trump. I have 2 things to say about that.

1. No, "wokeness" is not why Harris lost. (see my previous rant for more)

2. WTF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!?! WE SHOULDN'T FIGHT FOR TRANS RIGTHS BECAUSE IT'S UNPOPULAR?!?! FUCK THAT NOISE! THE FALURE IS NOT ON TRANS PEOPLE! IT'S NOT ON ACTIVISTS! IT'S ON YOU (the campaign and pundit class) TO ADVOCATE WELL ENOUGH! IF PEOPLE THINK RIGHTS SHOULD BE TAKEN AWAY, YOU HAVEN'T COMMUNICATED WELL ENOUGH! YOU HAVEN'T DISPELLED FEARS AND LIES WELL ENOUGH. I DON'T CARE IF YOU SAY YOU SUPPORT TRANS RIGHTS, BECAUSE IF YOU SAY WE NEED TO ABANDON THEM TO BRING IN BIGOTS, THAT MEANS YOU NEVER FUCKING CARED IN THE FIRST PLACE! YOU FUCKING CONVINCE THE BIGOTS, NOT CATER TO THEM! WOULD YOU FUCKING SAY WE SHOULDN'T FIGHT FOR BLACK CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE 50s BECAUSE IT WAS ELECTORALLY UNPOPULAR? (it was). NO! HUMAN RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS. THERE'S NO COMPROMISING. IF YOU THINK RIGHTS CAN BE SACRIFICED, YOU ARE IN A DEEPLY PRIVILEGED PLACE WHERE YOU LIKE THE AESTHETIC OF SOCIAL LIBERALISM, BUT YOU'LL DROP IT IN THE END IF IT FEELS LIKE IT WON'T KEEP YOU ON THE WINNING SIDE!

[spaceguy44]

2024 US Election Post-mortem

I need to get my thoughts out about the election. I'll split it into a few main parts. (This will be long) 1. Why did Kamala lose/Trump win?

There's 2 main reasons for the result.

1. The biggest thing isn't that Trump gained a lot (he did somewhat), but that Kamala lost hugely. Kamala ran an "strong" but status-quo style center-lib campaign. This was not the right move to capture the electorate in today's America. It hasn't been since 2012. People at every part of the political spectrum have expressed disdain with the way establishment Democrats have run things. People want change! They have since 2008. Obama convinced everyone that he represented change. Hillary lost in 2016 because they didn't get that change after 8 years, and wanted something new no matter what. Biden did a good job in 2020 of being somewhat of a change candidate, but it was really COVID that allowed him to win. I do think Trump would've won in 2020 if it weren't for the pandemic. Kamala had momentum at first because she literally was "change." Biden was hugely unpopular, and people didn't like the return to liberal status quo, even if he did do more than even Obama to bring (domestic) left-wing policies to the forefront imo. Kamala represented hope at first that we could get away from the Biden that everyone hated, and bring in a whole new kind of politics and movement that would take us out of the neoliberal malaise that was the again Biden. What happened in stead was the establishment decided that there was a contingent of Americans that were allergic to left-wing politics, and they need to be captured.

THIS IS THE MAIN POINT OF FAILURE FOR BOTH HILLARY AND KAMALA. I do not believe there is a (large) population that is inherently right-wing, and another that is centrist, and another that is left-wing. I do think there are some that you could never convince one way or another, but it's just impossible that so many people could vote for Obama, and then turn around for Trump if people had some sort of weird internal political compass that they adhered to regardless of policy. No, Trump (and the right more broadly) MADE his base. This is the other reason Trump won.

2. Trump did make some gains, though I believe the right campaign from Harris could've overcome that. I think the Trump gains are more indicative of what Harris lacked. Kamala tried to adjust her campaign to match an electorate. Trump didn't give a fuck. He said what he wanted, and people liked that. They don't care about decorum. They don't care about "unity". They want someone they think will "fight" for them. People saw Kamala bringing in the Cheneys and just saw another neolib that would flake on any conviction to grab a vote. People don't want a policy. People want a candidate with conviction. Trump was also adept at playing on people's fears and insecurities. He MADE them into Trump supporters by playing on those fears. Harris did not try to make Harris supporters by playing on fears (at least enough). She was best with the abortion stuff, but that wasn't the issue that exit polls showed people care about. The top issue was the economy. Yes, "the economy" is objectively doing better if you look at the stats, but people don't feel like it because prices are still high despite the buying power of the dollar recovering (inflation was reduced!). People felt that because corporations kept prices at pre-inflation reduction levels. Harris briefly flirted with price capping, which would be the exact sort of populist policy that directly addresses people's fears/insecurities and breaks from the status quo that could excite a mythical "Harris base" that maybe existed for 2 weeks.

It's the same with immigration. Trump created a "big lie" about the border being in crisis, and played on the truly hurting average middle-American's insecurities. You have a population that is hurting for corporate consolidation destroying small local business, that has been devastated by opioids, and is seeing the towns and culture they grew up with decay and seemingly leave them behind. Are Trump's policies going to uplift them? Hell no! Does he talk to specifically them all and directly address their insecurities though? Absolutely. In stead of addressing these people (these are the ones on the red arrow map that's been going around), she accepted the lie about immigrants and rejected making any radical policy change from the system that threw middle America under the bus.

I should say I am literally living in a small rural city in a deep-red state, so I know what they're saying. These people aren't necessarily bigots. Some are, but I think most think they aren't. I think anyone can be prone to getting caught up in a hate movement if the right buttons are pressed, and Trump deftly presses those buttons. What needed to happen was pressing the right buttons to address their insecurities and fears that doesn't rely on hate and scapegoating. This is what I think Bernie Sanders does well in general polls, but there's too much movement within the Dems to preserve the liberal status quo. That needs to change or, the Dems die. LIBERALISM IS DEAD. We address the fears that made people Trump voters, or democracy dies! Here are 2.5 other smaller reasons: 3. Sexism, Racism, and Religiosity. I will not deny that these do play a part in certain parts of the electorate. However, I don't think they're insurmountable hurdles in a general election. I think Obama's campaign is proof of this. But we shouldn't deny that there are a significant portion that wouldn't vote for Kamala for purely bigotry reasons. Hell, I know some personally. But I do think it is a mistake to blame these for our failures. WE LEARN NOTHING OTHERWISE! 4. Believe it or not, but there's just a lot of people out there that just don't care or avoid politics all together. These people aren't bad or deficient, but they just don't include thinking about politics constantly as a part of their lives. They think about the election for a few days, and then get on with their lives for 4 years and tune out everything. Generally, these people are privileged, though there's also some that have been so hurt by our system and policies, that they tune out in pure nihilism about it all. These people vote on vibes, they vote based on what those they care about support, and many just sit out the whole thing. Voter apathy is definitely a thing, and it hurst especially the left imo. I do believe the majority of people would loath Trump's policies if they actually knew what they entailed, so this apathy only takes away from the left. 5. Kamala did NOT lose due to the Gaza protest. She might have lost a bit of support by not being an empathetic foil to Trump's "glass the whole strip" rhetoric, but I don't think it made a significant difference. And I'm gonna be real with y'all; Tumblr is mostly full of it if they think they can accomplish anything with a protest vote for Gaza. I learned this in 2016. That action won't do anything, and it's too risky when a literal fascist is on the other side of the ballot. Yes, I hate that Kamala did not oppose the current Biden policy of letting genocide happen, but Jill Stein/no vote can't pressure these people in the establishment without hurting their campaign financing. The votes are in, and 3rd party votes would not have saved Kamala.

2. What happens now? What is a 2nd Trump admin like?Maybe this is a bit of copium, but I do think that Trump will still be overall very incompetent and unable to enact the worst of his policies. Terrible things will still happen (and I'll get to that later), but I think some of the catastrophizing is a bit overblown. Let's take the mass deportation policy for example. This would be a horrible campaign on the level of the worst historical genocides. He would need to create an ICE apparatus so large that it would rival the fucking gestapo. Just think of all the agents and infrastructure that would need to be developed to round up ~20million people and transport them to the border and detention facilities. There's no practical way to deport that many people. The logical end point is concentration camps. Yes, we have them already to an extent (I mean the euphemistically named "immigrant detention facilities"), but we don't have anything that could handle "mass deportation." Building the facilities, hiring the agents, buying the buses and trains, and executing the warrants all takes a lot of time and money. None of this goes unnoticed, and it won't go without resistance today. Congress still controls the purse, despite what the supreme court says about Trump's immunity to do whatever he wants. SCOTUS said he can't be prosecuted for committing a crime, not that he can break a constitutional rule. The margins are too thin in the new congress, and I genuinely do not think that he has the political tact to navigate around how much resistance he'll get. My main evidence for this is the border wall. He had all the support he needed within congress and his base to try to "build that wall." The GOP even controlled both branches of congress, and shutdown the government multiple times to try to get his way. They had a majority in the house his first 2 years. It meant nothing! He got a regressive tax cut passed, and that's about it. I know there's a lot of bullshit he can pull to push terrible things through, and he'll have ghoulish cronies that will be the actual brains behind things, but honestly, they're dumb as shit too. They're too evil for their own good. They will eat themselves alive through infighting and liberal resistance before they can start a genocidal campaign on American soil. That's not to say there will be some horrible things. Here's what I do think he'll be able to do: - Ban abortion nationwide either through the Comstock Act or SCOTUS. - Completely fuck up half of our federal institutions that keep us informed and safe (ie. dismantling or gutting of Dept. of Education, EPA, FTC, NSA, HHS, and more). - Allow for more religious integration into our public institutions like schools - Essentially turn our government into an oligarchy (or more of one than it already is) - Reverse gay marriage rights (overturning obergefell) and restricting the rights of LGBTQ+ in the public sector overall. - Exacerbate the Gaza genocide - Let Putin have his way with Ukraine - Royally fuck up the economy with Tariffs - Probably get us into some kind of overseas war - If he survives to the end of his term, I do think that our democracy will be incredibly fucked. Like, I think they'll be able to push through so many bullshit rules that we won't be able to come back unless an actual leftist populist makes huge rounds.

Overall, it's gonna suck, especially if you're LGBT in a red state. I think he'll also continue targeting undocumented migrants, but I doubt he'll be able to put together the infrastructure to genocide them. Yes, Hitler and his regime were incompetent too, but it was really the enabling act post-Reichstag fire that allowed for him to start pushing the policies that would become the holocaust. It was only at that point that he had no more resistance, and could order whatever he wants. We're definite not there yet with Trump.

3. What do we (the left) do now?Honestly, just stay vigilant, be active within your community, make connections (even with Trump voters), and don't give in to the despair. Once you're hopeless, it will only make it easier for them to keep winning. We fight against the fascists until the bitter end. The only endpoint of fascism is self destruction. I am a leftist, but I am not a revolutionary. I think armed action rarely leads to good outcomes, and history shows that. However, if we get a Reichstag fire moment or an enabling act moment, that's not the point to lose hope. If people start turning their neighbors into the gestapo-fied ICE, that's not the point to hide. These represent the time where politics should be abandoned, and an actual violent fight for freedom and liberty should begin. I pray we never come to that point. Hopefully, these next four years will look like a continuation of 2016-2020. We'll have a slow degrading of our rights, but if too many of those we all care about are hurt, we can come together and help to reverse it. I know things are super polarized and we all have our own little bubbles in society, but there comes a breaking point where too many people are hurt, and even the biggest MAGA head will have someone they deeply care about that is very hurt by Trump. This is my hope, though it unfortunately relies on things getting worse first before becoming better. 

[spaceguy44]

It is a common error that many faiths believe the souls of the dead depart this plane of existence for some mythical heaven or hell. In fact, the souls of the dead go to UDFj-39546284, a high-redshift Lyman break galaxy in the constellation Fornax, about 32.7 billion light years away. When asked why the dead from across the universe should all be converging on this one faint galaxy, NASA astrophysicists said “it’s like an eel thing,” and refused to elaborate further.

[spaceguy44]

IM FULLY LOSING IT FALIN LEARNS ABOUT THEIR MONSTER EATING ADVENTURES AND IMMEDIATELY IS LIKE "so what about fish-people? :3" AND LAIOS JUST "no the party didnt let me :<"

this right after they feed her red dragon meat whilst she is still unaware that her new body is.. made of dragon meat.... and laios is like "eh its probably fine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

Just

[spaceguy44]

[spaceguy44]

Stress busters. 🩷

[spaceguy44]

Currently 8 or 9 ep. into Dungeon Meshi and this is my view of Laios so far

[spaceguy44]

they need to add two extra hours after ten pm where time doesn't pass so you can do some nice reading before bed

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Minerals formed by serpentinization include the serpentine group minerals (antigorite, lizardite,

lizardite is formed by serpentinization <- things said by a modern scientist and definitely not some kind of alchemist