Spice is life

Yeah, the problem with Idiocracy is that it over plays the role of genetics and doesn’t differentiate between ignorance and stupidity.

Sure, genetics plays some role, but I’ve seen some very smart people that came from average parents and some very dumb people who came from smart parents.

Education plays a much bigger role than people give it credit for.

I feel like there are probably some very smart people out there who we don’t know about because of their lack of educational opportunities.

Pretty much my whole life (I’m 51) Americans have been talking about how bad our education system is compared to much of the world, yet nothing substantial was done about it. I think the current state of affairs is a reflection of that fact.

Before I read the last part of the sentence, I thought you were saying 6th graders couldn’t pick up on the nuances and biases on a package of Ramen, and I started to wonder what I had missed.

Anxiety is a hell of a thing.

Real humanitarians who will deliver the aid via sniper bullets to the forehead.

I think the bigger lie is you can live in New York City and almost never interact with a person of color, but ok.

No one tell them about livable minimum wages, strong unions, and ‘socialist’ policies. They would rather change their goals than to implement anything that might actually work.

They are only against federal control when it’s them who are being controlled. They are fine with it happening to other people. It’s how they can claim to be pro freedom out of one side of their mouth and anti-freedom with the other. Laws for thee, none for me.

I’m on book 4, love the series!

My uncle’s name is Cody, he is 39. Unfortunately no one has strangled him yet. 🤞

I appreciate the recommendation, I’ll look into it thanks.

There are a few channels like that I watch, one is “History to fall asleep to” or something like that.

I just downloaded NewPipe, and on there you can turn off the screen and just have the audio playing, so that’s awesome.

It’s tricky for me, because if the show is too boring, my mind will wander and I’ll start to get anxious, thinking about things I shouldn’t. Conversely if it’s too exciting, I’ll get too into it and it’ll wake me back up lol

I know, I’m kind of a mess.

To make matters worse most sleeping medicine doesn’t work at all for me, and the only one I’ve found that does gives me dry mouth to the point it gags me.

It’s both a stereotypical sounding “name” and a slur in the way 4chan uses it. They don’t mean a specific type of Indian person, they mean an Indian person. It’s not used like how some Brits use ‘Barry’ to mean a foolish person or Americans use ‘Karen’ to mean an entitled person.

I’m pretty sure it isn’t even actually a real name, it just sounds like it should be to racists.

I tried flagging it as such when I asked them to stop showing me the ad. Either they are fine with it or the advertiser found some loophole to get around the TOS. It’s possible they edited the ad copy so that the SA is only implied now, I don’t really pay attention anymore.

I also didn’t even mention the bullies SA the protagonist as well, at least they heavily imply it and mention the blood in his underwear. Gross.

By came from I mean it originated from there.

The next option is to have Trump become vice presidet (the presidential term limit doesn’t seem to apply to VP), then have the president resign and make Trump president instead, claiming that the 22nd only limits being elected twice…

That might have worked, if not for the 12th Amendment, which has this clause “But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”

which might be ok with the letter of the law, but only an idiot or a tyrant would interpret it that way.

That may end up being where we run into issues. I have seen no evidence that the majority in the SCOTUS has a problem being either. And since they have lifetime appointments they are under no pressure whatsoever to do a good job. One of the main problems with our constitution.

The third option would be to have the president use the appointment clause, which is very vague about to what exact offices the president can appoint someone. It doesn’t explicitly state that the president can’t appoint someone else to the office of president.

It does actually, the Appointments Clause appears at Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution and states:

“… and [the President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law”

“Herein” in this case refers to the Constitution itself, and it definitely does ‘provide’ for the “appointment” of the President.

I’m not at all surprised that their evil plot revolves around them not understanding the constitution, many Republicans like to pretend they love the constitution when in reality most don’t understand it, and the ones that do think they can simply ignore or change the parts that they don’t like.

Basically Trump only really has 2 options if he wants to remain in power. Have the constitution amended to remove the term limits established by the 22nd (which again isn’t likely) or do something illegal and have the SCOTUS back him up, which is sadly a little more likely.

I almost hope he tries something like that and that there are enough decent people in the Military who would actually uphold their oaths to the constitution to make such a coup impossible to sustain. That might wake people up enough to realize how they came to installing a dictator, and maybe move enough people Left that we can actually do some things to fix our broken system. It would be great if we would get rid of the Republican and Democratic parties and/or at the very least get rid of our atrocious “First past the post” voting system (along with the Electoral College) which is where a lot of the problems in our country can be traced back to.

Better yet I wouldn’t mind if we scrapped the whole “Liberal Democracy” idea altogether and wrote a new Constitution that treats all people as if they are equals and not slaves to the rich and powerful, but I wont hold my breath hoping for that one, we need to educate people first. We have been the victims of hundreds of years of propaganda (which really ramped up in the 20th century), and you can’t reverse that damage overnight.

Awesome, thank you. I just installed it and it seems to be working great.

Also signing up for PeerTube as well. 👍

I swear, YouTube uses the camera on my phone/tablet to detect if I am facing the screen or not. It doesn’t have ‘permission’ to access the camera, but the behavior is too consistent to be a coincidence.

I can’t fall asleep to silence. I have to have something playing to keep me from being alone with my thoughts, or I will literally never sleep. So I watch YouTube videos while Im tying to fall asleep. I skip every ad as soon as it will let me when facing the screen. Every time, and I mean literally every time I turn over so my back is to the screen, YouTube will start playing one of those long ass ads, ones that will go on for 1/2 hr or more if I don’t turn back over and hit ‘skip’. It’s just too consistent to be random.

The best is when it’s the ad for the stupid ass ‘superhero’ audiobook where the main character is the only person who doesn’t have a superpower and gets picked on, and by picked on I mean they force him to watch as they SA his girlfriend. I have done the thing where you can request they don’t show you that particular ad at least a dozen times now and it never helps.

I already know that guy will get his superpower eventually. I already know that he will get his revenge on his bullies. Its about the most obvious, 5th grade level writing you could imagine. Nothing about it appeals to me, I hate that fucking ad with a passion.

It’s a little of column A, a little of column B

Yes, it’s true that some dog breeds have been bred to be more aggressive- but aggressive can mean many things.

I was roommates with a guy who had a Pit bull. Awesome dog, great with the kids. Never seen her so much as growl at a person. Animals though she did not fuck around with. And that makes sense, they were bred to fight other animals. So while they are aggressive, they aren’t (naturally) aggressive towards humans, though obviously you can train them to be.

I had a different roommate who had a Chihuahua, Chihuahua’s were bred for two things, to be fearless rat hunters and to be burglar alarms. They also have a personality quirk where they typically only bond with very few people, and even then it can take a little while for them to gain your trust. For about the first month after he brought her home she would bark at me every time I entered the room she was in. After she got used to me, she was the sweetest little pup you could imagine. If anyone else came by she just couldn’t handle it. If I picked her up and held her while talking the other person she would eventually calm down some, but she still didn’t like it. You usually just had to put her in a different room. She didn’t nip at them or anything, but if they had tried to pick her up it probably would have been a different story.

Not all Chihuahua’s behave like that, but it’s typical.

I’ve lived with a Doberman who was a total coward (and neurotic the poor thing), and a Rottweiler who was perfectly fine with me, until her owner was out of sight, and then she acted like she had no idea who I was. As a kid we had a German Sheppard who was a total sweetie (the kitten thing was an accident), and I used to own a Chow/Lab mix who literally loved everyone and everything.

The breed plays a big role in their behavior, but so does training/ socialization. People who blame it solely on one thing or the other are just wrong imo. Some dogs will never be perfectly chill, but you can train them not to be assholes.

Perhaps even less surprising, this particular racial slur apparently came from 4chan.

Well I’m not sure what your point is then. Just keep voting the lesser evil until one day you find yourself in the voting booth gleefully voting for Hitler 3.0 because at least they are marginally better than Hitler 4.0?

Just hang your head and cry about it and do the bare minimum you can do to mitigate the damage?

I’d rather at least try to fight for something better. Even if it doesn’t work out it’s better than just capitulating and being all but complicit in the system that is actively making our lives worse.

Fortunately, that doesn’t work either, there are several issues with that logic.

We are still (nominally) a type of Democracy. That means our ‘leaders’ must be elected. The 22nd only addresses term limits, the constitution itself spells out how the President comes into power in the first place, and that is by being elected. Nowhere is the President granted the power to appoint someone else to the office. The 25th amendment lays out who is to be president in the event that the current one is unwilling/unable to perform their duties.

Still, we are talking about if he at least wants to have the appearance of legitimacy. He’s certainly argued that he can ‘creatively interpret’ the constitution to suit his agenda. For example, despite the 14th amendment stating that “…all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” the Trump administration has tried to claim that ‘all people’ do not include people who’s parents were ‘illegal immigrants’, despite the Supreme Court precedent that it most certainly does include them.

I do have some faith that Americans would not stand for that though. That would be the final straw for many of us. If I am still around and something like that happens, I know it will be the final straw for me. I was born in a ‘free’ country, and I have no issues dying to help ensure it remains that way.

That being said there is nothing really stopping him from being the ‘de facto’ president in the case one of his lackeys gets elected and is willing to let him do so. For example if Vance were elected he could allow Trump to attend meetings and press conferences and speak on his behalf. He could be appointed an ‘advisor’ and Vance could follow his ‘advice’ every time. Hell he could allow Trump to sleep in his bed and use his toothbrush if he wanted.

Hopefully the DNC will pull it’s fucking corporate boot licking head out of its ass and put up a candidate that’s actually worth a damn for the next election, but that’s about as likely as Trump stepping down gracefully.

It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. I wish I believed in God, I would ask you to pray for us.