I feel like a lot of postwar US cooking could be explained by the following facts:

• A Americans lived through the great depression
• All Americans lived through world war rationing
• A huge portion of Americans grew up in a world where things like refrigeration, grocery stores, etc didn’t exist.

The end result was the food equivalent of giving a thirteen year old from the 1990s a smartphone for the first time. Just pure disgusting excess with no real rhyme or reason.

Does anyone have the actual sales numbers for these things?

They are basically perpetually on sale at Aldi and other discount grocers. I feel like you don’t do that unless you’re hurting for sales.

So my post was explicitly about how I dismissed a lot of things I read on the internet as BS until I encountered them in real life. The part about “ethnical non monogamy” was something I didn’t truly believe until I saw it more than once, including some explicit details at a 4th of July party provided by a wife with a visibly uncomfortable husband.

What is your definition of “outside”?

Idk being more social after covid has made me more conservative. A lot of behavior that I assumed was exclusively online turned out to be surprisingly common in real life.

A lot of the sexism parts in particular were jarring. A significant minority of grown ass women basically used #metoo as leverage to behave in a sexist and immature manner. There’s also a culture where other women are extremely reluctant to call out that behavior, or else they might be accused of “internalizing their sexism” and not sufficiently supporting women. I dismissed the postings about that as incel-bait during the pandemic, but it turns out it’s extremely common.

I know “rich” means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but “paying for priority boarding” should not be included in a reasonable definition of the word.

If you reversed the gender on this you’d the comment section would be a combination of roasting the hypothetical dude and complaining how trashy the shirt is.

I don’t even think the double standard is related to sexism. I think you’re all horny degenerates who are emotionally stunted to the point where any woman implying anything sexual breaks your mind.

Honestly this is sort of ridiculous.

• Biden is a Washington insider now, but that’s because he had a lifetime to make something of himself. He grew up in the middle class
• I think we can all agree Obama was an outsider without any sort of elaboration
• Bill Clinton grew up dirt poor in a state that basically only makes the news when something stupid happens.

All three had to climb the ladder in a huge way, that simply wouldn’t have been possible in a lot of other countries.

I also feel like Trump embodies the whole “anyone can be president” in his own sort of fucked up way. Trump obviously was born into immense wealth and enjoyed tremendous status, but he was in no way ever considered leadership material by America’s political elite. His election was a complete “wtf” moment and wouldn’t have happened in most countries. In a more rigid system we’d probably have had something like a Hillary Clinton v Jeb Bush election, which strictly speaking would have been better than what we got but also let’s be real we would have all hated it.

I’m not saying America is some pure meritocracy. Bush was a third generation political dynasty member. His opponents were also pretty well connected. It’s just that he’s only one of several presidents to get elected in the past 30 years.

You guys aren’t gonna like to hear this, but being super wealthy and successful is always going to confer some degree of cool.

That being said it doesn’t sound like they are doing this because they think it’s fun/sexy. The users in this article all seem to frame their usage in the context of mental health. While the merits are questionable, it’s objectively better than some Wall Street exec doing coke or slamming booze. I feel like a better article would be questioning government policy that allows billionaires to experiment with psychedelics, but ensures that an actual FDA approved treatment that the average joe could access will never happen.

I can’t help but notice these authors all exclusively focus on tech, while giving other high compensation and influential industries a pass. It really feels like a ton of journalists have a personal vendetta against tech that goes beyond the substance of any of their actions.

How old are you?

Kamala Harris was already middle aged when the DOCX standard was released or the workflow of converting a word to pdf became common. All of that stuff really didn’t hit mainstream until the Obama administration. It would have probably even been longer for a legal office to adopt it.

I think it’s safe to say she knows how to use Microsoft Word (or something like Lotus Notes), print a document, and even scan something to a pdf. I bet you could also teach her how to use ether “print to PDF” function fairly quickly. However if you just plop her in front of a computer and tell her to go at it I think the most likely result is Kamala swearing at the ribbon interface…

Nurses also have a reputation of being former high school mean girls, for whatever that’s worth.

No but incels would love sexbot maids. Honestly it probably wouldn’t be the worst thing for society.

Guys Kamala is 60 and a career politician. I don’t think this is a given.

No you see they know it’s a cucumber because ancient Egyptian dildos had a compartment for bees so that users could experience a vibration effect.

Look honestly I don’t think this is that dystopian.

Smoke detectors existed in bathrooms forever. The main use in high school seems to be catching particularly dumb teenagers smoking cigarettes in the bathroom. When I was in high school they were tuned to be super sensitive to the point where water vapor could set one off. I remember one time where the entire school had to stand out in the rain after a fire alarm went off, in what was later determined to be just two teenagers smoking in the bathroom.

Teachers also have been trying to catch students smoking for like 50 years. Back in the 20th, there were assistant principals that basically roamed the halls looking for whiffs of cigarette smoke. Part of the reason memes about hanging out under the bleachers started is because it was the best place to smoke on account of being outside, out of the way, and old school gym teachers just not giving a fuck.

This dudes app just seems like a modern update on very old concepts. Instead of teenagers smoking cigarettes, they are vaping. Instead of a smoke detector, you have something designed specifically for vapes. Instead of some super anal assistant principal on patrol, you have some super anal assistant principal sprinting across the school. Who knows, maybe this is the thing that forces teenagers to touch grass because I’m willing to there aren’t vape detectors under the bleachers and gym teachers still don’t give a fuck.

The way they are doing it is needlessly vitriolic and cruel. I have a hard time seeing how anyone writing these comments can be a good person.

I’ve talked with my therapist a lot. The conclusion I’ve come to is while the level of upset I get is outsized, my emotions are valid.

The weird comment was just the last straw. Since 2018, I’ve seen so much toxic behavior justified by political coding. It started off online, but post covid it really hit the mainstream. A lot of this behavior is almost objectively unacceptable, and the talking through this kind of stuff with my therapist affirmed my gut feeling that the political coding was just an excuse. Here are some examples I’ve seen, from online and real life:

• During covid, there was a subreddit called HermanCainAward. It made fun of antivaxxers actively dying from covid via screenshots of their social media pages. While it was supposedly about awareness, the comments seemed absolutely giddy
• It’s pretty common for liberal social media personalities to insult conservative for being ugly and unable to succeed with woman. This is in direct contradiction to their claims that slit shaming is unacceptable and their messaging about body positivity
• I’ve met multiple women in “ethical” polyamaorous relationships. They weren’t ethical. The women in questions were in LTRs, wanted a harem, and the partner always ended up devasted. Every time it was justified by framing poly as a sexual identity and throwing shade in regards to gender roles and heteronormativity
• I’ve met a significant number of women who treat men as a whole in a toxic manner. I used to gently ask how they would feel if that was the way they were being treated, and I always got a liberally-coded lecture about historical oppression
• Democrats in my city proudly matched in support of Hamas, a totalitarian regime dedicated to the murder of Jews worldwide. They justified this by using oppressor/oppressed rhetoric
• I’ve seen people excommunicated from a friend group for problematic behavior, but that standard is never evenly applied. A single, not conventionally attractive, guy can be cut off on a single sentence. Meanwhile a conventionally attractive man or woman can say horrid things and they’ll be excused.
• My siblings will straight up try to trigger an autistic meltdown any time I see them. They’ll always justify it by saying I was doing something problematic, but their justification was super thin.
• The biggest assholes I know are super vocal about being liberal. Like they’ll be casually cruel to people, but then brag about going to drag brunches.
• A lot of TV shows and movies these days are straight up bad, but then use flimsy political coding to imply that anyone who doesn’t like said IP is just a deplorable

At this point I’ve seen this toxicity on a personal level, from democratic politicians, on social media, and in traditional media. It is very much a real part of liberal culture.

What therapy has also helped me realize is that, in the past, I felt a similar resentment towards conservative culture. My shift in anger corresponds to when I moved from a more conservative area of the county to a liberal area of the country. I think that there are a certain type of people who are just shitty and looking to excuse their behavior, and political coding is the way to do that in 2024.

I’ve also explored how I became the person I am today, specifically how I “beat” the bullying. The answer was ultimately that I disengaged. Senior year of high school I avoided anyone in my grade that I didn’t have an explicitly good relationship with, and successfully attempted to make friends outside of my school. In college, I chose a university that students from my high school almost never go to, and made it a point to attempt to form connections from people with a different background. After college, I made a commitment to not move anywhere close to my hometown.

I am actively applying these conclusions to my decision not to vote. My feelings that liberal culture is toxic are valid. The best way to deal with them is to disengage. At the same time, there are equivalent issues in conservative culture that I’m not having an emotional reaction to by virtue of lack of exposure. So, the best solution is not to vote, and to transition to being a more apolitical person as a whole. While that’s by no means a perfect solution, absolutely nothing will change if I continue taking the same approach towards politics that I have for a good decade at this point.

Stop trying to gaslight me. I’ve seen this for years at this point. People will hurl insults and accusations, and then plead ignorance based off the idea that implications, connotations, and subtext don’t exist.

I was equivocated with the guy in the article. The guy in the article was heavily implied to be a racist. Therefore, I was called a racist.

Also the democratic party loves sob stories. Everyone’s lived experience matters except mine apparently.

You think I’m the one who feels morally superior?

Yes because that’s what democrats want to bring to mind when they call Trump weird, government policy.

It’s not selfish to refuse to vote for a candidate that does not respect you or your struggles.