It wasn’t that long ago we had phones that couldn’t leave the house. This choice does still exist for us.

I think that the health insurance industry is profoundly immoral.

When it comes to strategy, however, morality doesn’t even factor in.

This smells like the second amendment argument about defending against a tyrannical government. Please, take inventory of materiel and finances before you go down that road.

I would argue there’s another deep hypocrisy lying with people who insist such figureheads should be killed, but the only action they take is blathering about it on public forums.

Be the change you seek, go set an example if you think you know what’s right.

But pitting us against the ruling class in this way isn’t going to be a winning proposition. The best you’ll get is a massive and severe security clampdown.

Now do factory farmers

Oh ok cool, let’s get right on that then.

And that answers OPs question.

I think most of who you’re hearing are Americans. I might hate Putin with all my heart, but he leads a different country. There isn’t “chain of command” between me and him.

Edit/more blathering:

I try to avoid the virulent speech (not always successfully I admit) about Americans’ choice in leadership. And to a large degree, at home, even that is outside my “sphere of influence”, but I at least have an opportunity to be heard by other parts of the electorate here.

And by the way, I think supporting Trump is supporting Putin. I hope I’m wrong, but I do believe that.

We can piss and moan about Putin (and we do, I’m not sure what you’re missing TBH), but investing time and emotional energy, it makes sense to start at home, where we at least should have some influence on self-determination.

Every minute is a death and a rebirth.

You play the hand you have.

Depending on your personal attachment to that car, your personal interest in a different car, your financial capacity, the ability to extend your lease is just another card you can play.

What is a “good deal” anyway? What are you seeking? Something pragmatic like equivalent reliability to your current car but for equal or less cost of ownership?

GOP sure loves to sexualize pissing and shitting.

Absolutely. I worked somewhere where we routinely had alarms go off due to botnets swarming us with weird (and obnoxious) massive download tactics (of publicly available user generated content, that is).

If it can be gotten by anyone, it will be gotten by LLM trainers.

It’s open to the public. So, many other orgs are certainly doing it anyway.

May as well it’s not like they’ll be paying for many impressions.

On the Harris🤎Cheney issue, I think it’s notable that the Harris turnout was actually quite large in many places, but the trump turnout was larger.

I can’t remember what media I was doomfully consuming, but someone basically said Dems should not try to court Republicans to vote… because even if it works, they’ll arrive at the polls and vote Republican.

I’m not aligned with Kinzinger but I don’t really see the kissass vibes. I think he remains as principled as ever but he is acknowledging the new conditions of the game.

I think I’ve heard about enough of experts predicting the future lately.

He won’t stay in power. His appointment of incompetent sycophants will dismantle 250 years of American prosperity (maliciously or negligently, it doesn’t matter) and it will be sold for parts to billionaires and foreign states.

I signed up, out of curiosity but I don’t have any friends there that I know about. Kinda like Lemmy, but Lemmy but works great for not having friends.

It’s the extreme leaps to wild conjecture that you’re asserting here that makes it so difficult to take you seriously. It’s hard for me to conclude you aren’t a troll. It’s simply not normal or healthy to make assessments of the intentions of people who barely said anything. Not one of us is an oracle like that. In the off chance that you are intending to be a serious person who just happens to have a bad attitude and chip on your shoulder, I sincerely hope you have lovely and supportive people around you. You deserve the best.

I have been downvoted and it caused me to introspect.

It doesn’t necessarily change my values or even my position but it is a signal for me to think about the way I’m thinking about stuff. It means I’m clearly missing a perspective.

In the case of you, I think there are enough people trying to reply with reasoning that the up votes and downvotes are just other people supporting positions and expressing their rejection of a position which is already being refuted. They’re adding signal without noise.