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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • Not that I’m suggesting that this was intentional or that he did right to wait, but there are a few upsides. Trump and the Republicans were fully prepared and frothing to take on that blubbering old man from that last debate, but now they’re actually going to make a case for Trump over a (hopefully) real contender. And many Democrat voters went from feeling defeated and apathetic, potentially enough to not even bother voting, to being charged with a second chance and a (again, hopefully) more exciting candidate to support. If Biden had declared his intention not to run again before the primaries, the Republicans would have had much longer to prepare and pick apart someone who wasn’t such an easy target, and Dems would have been infighting over the nuances of a dozen candidates and pissed off at each other. And, if Harris is the presumptive nomination, for better or worse, the knee jerk reaction from the Right will probably be to play up the racist and sexist angles, which should drive moderates away from the right, not away from Harris.

    It’s all conjecture, but I only see this as a net positive compared to where we were yesterday.



  • When a piece of software does a very limited set of tasks that cannot be meaningfully improved, and when minor mistakes can equate to millions in cash or even lives lost or ruined, the name of the game is maintain, maintain, maintain. It ain’t broke, leave it the hell alone, because updating, upgrading or porting your system will inevitably lead to some sort of mistake.




  • I can’t read the article myself due to the paywall. But presumably these quotes are by the same individual? Why would any Democrat campaign take the advice of someone who has spent decades helping to get Republican presidents elected? Why would he offer his advice to them at all? Certainly not in good faith. And why would he be an expert at what makes a good choice regarding nominees? His campaigns have presumably lost as many as they’ve won and their electorate is motivated by fundamentally different things. And never has there been a situation like this for either party during an election, a former president and convicted felon and current president circling the drain.

    I don’t necessarily disagree with the sentiment, but given the source I don’t give the slightest fuck what his view point is on matters of the Democratic Party.



  • First, an educated populous brings the entire economy up. It creates new markets, new fields and industries, and more opportunities for everyone. It also takes a large chuck of the workforce into offices, labs, and around the world instead of competing with you for your machining job at the factory, which would devalue your role and result in lowering your wage, if you got the job at all.

    Second, the only reason for the massive amounts of student debt is due to universities massively inflating the cost of an education to milk the government of their federal student loans. This doesn’t address that directly, but it applies pressure on the government to reign in these bloated tuition and book costs that universities are pushing.

    Third, if we’re so afraid Joe the Plumber and the rest of the Working Class might have to help his fellow man with 3 cents of his annual tax rate, then increase the tax on the wealthy controlling class to cover it instead. The same tax bill will mean waaaaay less to them.

    Edit: for clarification, that was a rebuttal to Graham’s comment, not yours, OP


  • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.worldtoNostalgia@lemmy.caSmallville
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    3 months ago

    The first season is rough. Largely an episodic ‘freak of the week’ conflict with a new empowered antagonist each episode, with some pretty mixed results in quality and some very hard to suspend disbelief over. But then they start having some more season archs at play that are much more interesting, with the occasional, usually way more fun, cameos, guests, or empowered enemies, even some returning freaks of the week. It is never perfect, and it has some noticeable lesser seasons, including, unfortunately, the last one. But I have a soft spot for it overall, and there are some episodes that hit real fucking hard for me as a life long superman fan. I haven’t gone back to watch it again in years, but I used to play the show’s DVD sets while I worked at my developer job in college back in the late 2000’s, along with another nostalgia hit, Reaper (RIP).


  • Socialism is inherently authoritarian? The ideology where power, ownership of production, and wealth is decentralized, removed from the oligarchs and capitalist elite and given back to those who generate it? That’s authoritarian?

    I think you, like many who have been subjected to decades of propaganda have equated “socialism” with the failed states that are “communist” in name only, where power and production was centralized to be redistributed to the people, but never followed through with the decentralized part. They’re certainly authoritarian, but they are not socialist.

    Also communism is a specific form of socialism. Socialism is not necessarily communism. Like how all dogs are mammals, but not all mammals are dogs.


  • You’re blaming Biden in particular for Thomas and Trump? He’s not blameless for confirming Clarence. Though, of course, he is one of many responsible there and a conservative judge like Clarence was a forgone conclusion under the Bush 1 administration. And I can’t imagine how you justify blaming Biden for Trump’s first presidency. Because he didn’t run for president in 2016? Because he was a part of the Obama administration that led to the Trump administration? Either way, his responsibility is so marginal as to be confusing to even consider him culpable.

    There’s plenty to be dissatisfied or angry about with Biden that are directly and primarily or solely his fault. So why are you singling him out for those two things that are barely his responsibility at all, if at all?



  • You know what’s really sad? How events like this are/were not taught in history classes. Or at least not properly. I had never heard about the Tulsa Massacre until I was an adult. And you know where I first heard about it? The fucking Watchmen TV series in 2019. I did research on it and was mystified that it was not only a real event, but that I had never so much as heard it mentioned before. I did finally learn about it through formal education, but only as an elective course in college about the history of American racial biases. Smh.

    And it’s history like this that is explicitly being filtered out by laws to protect white students from feeling uncomfortable. No student in Florida will ever learn about Tulsa now until those laws are repealed. For the record, I’m white. I think I should have learned about this in high school at minimum.


  • “Racial isolation” itself is not a harm;

    Yes. It is. Isolation inherently breeds tribalism, prejudice, and fear of the other. It is extremely harmful.

    only state-enforced segregation is.

    And what would you call racial Gerrymandering if not state-enforced segregation, Clarence? I mean, apart from voter manipulation and disenfranchisement, that is.

    After all, if separation itself is a harm, and if integration therefore is the only way that Blacks can receive a proper education, then there must be something inferior about Blacks.

    No, the idea that separation is harmful doesn’t presuppose the reason being that black people are inferior. It is harmful because black people are often treated as inferior and are not given equal treatment, resources, and opportunity. Black schools in the Jim Crow south weren’t worse because they were full of and run by black people. They were worse because they were fucking broke. Schools are largely funded by property taxes. And black home ownership has always been lower than white home ownership, and the value of those homes (and thus their property taxes) has always been lower on average. That means less money going to black schools per capita. Less money means fewer resources and opportunities. It’s pretty fucking simple, Clarence.

    I’m sure your next question is why black families owned fewer and cheaper homes. Well, the first and most obvious reason is that black families started with a handicap. They came from poor slaves who had nothing and had to start completely from scratch. White Americans had control of industry, agriculture, commerce, and government. Black Americans had to play catch up once freed.

    Then, when the GI benefits of the returning soldiers of WWII helped millions of white families buy their first homes, those benefit weren’t honored for black soldiers. When new valuable homes and nice schools were being built in the suburbs, those neighborhoods were red-lined, preventing black families from buying these valuable properties even when they had the finances to do so. When new highways and industrial works were being put in, things that bring pollution and drop property values, those things were intentionally built in and around black neighborhoods, robbing the existing black home owners of long term wealth. Do those things still happen now? Mostly no, and never explicitly racially biased. But this is not ancient history. This is in your life time, Clarence. It’s effects are still seen today and black people are still poorer, own fewer homes and less expensive homes as a result of generations of oppressive and unequal treatment. It’s absurd to equate acknowledging black poverty with deeming blacks inferior. This state was inflicted in them, not their fault.

    Under this theory, segregation injures Blacks because Blacks, when left on their own, cannot achieve. To my way of thinking, that conclusion is the result of a jurisprudence based on a theory of black inferiority,” he said in 2004.

    If black people had been left to their own, they wouldn’t have been slaves, wouldn’t have been screwed out of their benefits they earned fighting for this country that hated them, wouldn’t have been forbidden from moving into white neighborhoods, and wouldn’t have had their homes tainted against their will by industry and transport that enriched white people. Let’s also not discount the effects of unequal treatment under the law, unequal enforcement of the law, and unequal justice for crimes against them. Let’s also not forget that at the time the Brown decision was made, black people were still being FUCKING LYNCHED, CLARENCE. This fallacy of “separate but equal” has no legs to stand on. It never existed. Fuck all the way off, Clarence, you fucking sell out self-hating prick.