I wonder how much this whole situation resonates with what happened in Argentina, when they elected Milei.

Milei to them was an obvious lunatic who would probably be terrible but had a small chance to be different, versus their traditional party who would very obviously just continue the country’s predictable economic decline.

Then again, I can’t really see any way Trump could be good for you if you’re poor. Not ever by the most charitable interpretations.

Big “The police department have investigated themselves and found no wrongdoing” energy

Best of luck, guys.

I know that doing things that can eliminate a political opposition are incredibly ethically sensitive, but it’s demonstrably the correct choice here. I just wish that it wasn’t a choice that had to be made. How are these far right parties getting so many votes? Where have we failed?

Boris Johnson robbed my country blind; his party’s Austerity sold off and destroyed our public infrastructure and services to such a terrible degree that it’s unlikely the UK will recover within my lifetime if at all, and that’s BEFORE you get into the truly devastating consequences imposed on us by Brexit, or the fact his verbatim orders to handle covid were “Let the bodies pile high in the streets!”. All to line the pockets of him and his billionaire shitbag friends.

…So it is with some regret that I say: I can’t argue with this statement.

Boris Johnson has a similar fascination, you see. This guy wants to be Winston Churchill sooooooooo badly. You would not believe how hard BJ wishes he could be a modern Churchill. It was an open secret that the russian government had some pretty solid influence over Boris, a lot of rumours about them having dirt on his father in particular- and many reasonable and well-founded theories that Boris pushed Brexit through at the behest of Putin. But Boris Johnson saw the war in Ukraine start and he changed overnight. He certainly didn’t give up any of his vices or become a better person, god no, not at all. But he had stars in his eyes at the prospect of going down in history as a big and strong and heroic wartime leader studied in history books, and for that reason, he absolutely jumped at the prospect of helping Ukraine. Zero hesitation.

What I’m saying is that I genuinely believe Ukraine represents Boris Johnson’s lifelong dreams as a human being. And for that reason even if Boris is a terrible person who is certainly prone to bias, he has every intention of supporting Ukraine as much as he can- hence his willingness to speak against someone that he was previously very close with.

But remember, we DO. NOT. LET. UP.

Not until every vote has been cast. Not until it’s over. Don’t get cocky, this is the narrowest race I’ve ever seen and by god there is no room for apathy or overconfidence.

Alright. That’s a perfectly reasonable concern. Do the Democrats have a concrete plan prepared to ensure that this doesn’t turn into Bush v Gore round 2? Because if Trump manages to legally contest this to the Supreme Court, then little problems like ‘Justice’ and ‘Truth’ certainly won’t get in their way of installing a dictator.

Nobody’s ever accused me of being smart! But hey, at least I’m honest

Insanely true, I didn’t give a shit about 90% of the features on my new phone once my old one broke down and I got a Pixel 8, but I was delighted to go from a worn-out 12 hour battery life to a 64 hour battery life. I would actively like to uninstall any sort of current AI function from my phone if it could increase my battery longevity by even 1%.

Also: ew, Apple.

Edit: Really annoyed it doesn’t have a headphone jack though

Ooh, very nice! I’ve visited the country once, and ever since that visit whenever I taste dill I’m instantly transported back there. You guys have some really underrated good food!

Just please remember: Don’t let up until the results are being read. Every vote counts and nothing could be worse than pissing away a win because we got cocky based on some early signs

Yeah, checks out. I’m just a UK guy, but when the Tories were all having a media circus about “Oh inflation is done now, we’ve stopped inflation, the cost of living crisis is done!”, I mean… no amount of lying to my face is going to stop me going to the shops and wanting to scream when I see the price of Everything has jumped up by 20% again.

I can’t imagine that’s any different at all in China. You just can’t really hide something as objective as the cost of a bar of chocolate.

It’s pretty modern if you mean popular, although the idea itself is REALLY old.

Rather than going into specific examples because there are a lot of them (especially in gaming and TV), I’d like to say my piece on cliches.

Basically, cliches come to exist because the cliche trope is a really good idea.

“The Butler did it” as a murder mystery trope is a fantastic idea because some people with too much money will use the protection money affords them to mistreat their employees, providing a great motive you can build on to create a great story with relatable morals and characters. It sets up a character with perfect motives, means and a reasonable position of trust to avoid suspicion.

Similarly, “Hell good, Heaven bad” is a fantastic trope because it lets you step back and analyse things like the negative impacts of religion and how authorities (and the bible) will portray themselves as good regardless of their actual actions. Plus of course there were periods of time where people were told doing virtually anything that didn’t fit into an extremely narrow worldview meant you were going to hell. You know, stuff like basketball and Dungeons and Dragons.

Now, the problem with cliches is when someone sees a popular idea that’s also a very good idea, but doesn’t understand why it was a good idea. As a result, when they use the idea, it rings hollow at absolute best, and that kind of terrible execution of something that’s already known and popular tends to be especially disappointing. I think the best example is The Hunger Games, which absolutely defined young adult dystopian fiction for years because it showed how the media industry mistreats its workers, and Alleigant, which used a lot of ideas from Hunger Games (and some other things) without actually understanding the ideas.

(TLDR: Hunger Games has a love triangle as a prominent plot element, but the actual reason is that it’s perpetuated by the media pretty much on pain of death for Katniss so that she can entertain the viewers. By contrast, Alleigant also has a love triangle but the triangle IS the plot element and the author bends over backwards to make it happen despite the fact none of the characters really feel like they’re suitable for it)

Anyways, cliches aren’t bad but you need to know how, why, and when to use them in order to actually fulfil their potential, and the heaven-hell one you’ve mentioned above is no exception.

Gonna say it, this REALLY feels like a case of the news cherry-picking what parts of a protest they show. Between the unreasonable viewpoint that’s directly adjacent to a very sensible and popular viewpoint and the fact we KNOW the media have a very vested interest in trying to push pro-genocide narratives (such as anti-Israel protests being pro-terrorist)…

Yeah, even someone as gullible as me? I’m not buying this.

Wew, 10% per year? That’s actually pretty solid, if I’m not missing anything. And having a good deal that lasts THIS long actually flips the normal shitty status quo of multi-year contracts on its’ head, now they won’t need to go to the effort of big strikes for a good few years while they’ve got these fair wage increases locked in.

Adblock my beloved

Well the primary reason they would “backfire” is because Trump is perfectly consistent about being full of shit. There is literally no way that he’s going to do something that benefits anyone other than himself. We’ve had 8 years to learn that.

Yeah, seems reasonable. The front lines have proven to be extremely difficult to move once they get set in place, and Russia is provably completely fine with a couple hundred thousand of their Expendables dying every year.

Ending this war quickly definitely requires knocking out other aspects of the russian war machine, anyone should be able to see that. I’m not enough of a military man to tell you WHICH aspects have to be knocked out, but I’d believe those elements are inside Russia in a heartbeat.

Let’s just not go and talk about hitting any major population centers though. Collateral damage is not justice, even if the russian brass have absolutely gleefully been hitting population centres as much as possible. Justice for that is seeing them hanged, not hitting some people that had no real say in all this.

Holy sunk cost fallacy, batman. How fucking much does it cost to operate an ENTIRE GODDAMN NUCLEAR REACTOR just to fuel a tech project that nobody wants???

I wonder if a birth rate that stays low for a while might be what it takes to avoid future wars? Just in general, across all nations? Funny that the very things that have damaged society’s faith in the future might end up mitigating conflicts in the future.

When manpower can no longer be replenished, then wasting it trying to pull off landgrabs can only be sustained for so long. Not just physically, but politically.

“Political endorsement can backfire”

You think she doesn’t know this? Girl stayed as neutral as she possibly could for YEARS.

Her hand was forced; Trump put her in a position where if she didn’t pick a side, then that would be an implicit but very clear endorsement of him. And as she definitely didn’t want to endorse him… well, the rest is history.