It’s really mostly about doing something sustainable. I tried keto once and lost 20lbs only to regain it immediately after. Portion control seems to be working better for me since I will still eat whatever I want during the day (helps that my diet is mostly normal food I cook and not processed)

Depressing, but having seen my Missouri friend eat in not surprised. I’m glad he’s taking ozempic now cause I swear the Midwestern diet it inherently an eating disorder. (Also thinking of a Texan friend who drinks coke like it’s water, oooof).

It’s never too late, I managed to lose 20lbs simply not going after seconds on my tasty pasta dinners. Took like 6 months but my stomach got used to it. Granted, this last week has been hella tempting to stress eat, but just seeing progress is enough to keep me going. Just get the ball rolling and be happy with really subtle losses. Like, impossible to notice day to day loses.

We’ll see. The guy practically steals political capital so it is unpredictable; traditional candidates usually have to cut deals with folks in house and Senate when a policy would cost that person votes, but he doesn’t play by that because he can just make shit up. Gaetz will be a good test to see if he’s still able to force bad choices on people.

The only upside is he’s also an idiot who doesn’t trust people around him. 2016-2020 was bad, but man it could have been a lot worse if he wasn’t inept.

Yes, I know. Well actually, technically No Child Left Behind was a bipartisan attempt to improve education under Bush but was designed by people with conservative values (hence being a shit show designed to improve public education by punishing it).

But yes, on average, they’ve mostly pushed privatization of education and in more recent years, homeschooling for religious values. Dumbing down of society is probably a welcome side effect of stealing money from kids to fund tax breaks for the rich, though.

Half of voters, and still 47% voted Harris last I checked. And turnout was especially bad, too, hence it technically only being a fraction of Americans. That’s not to say it’s not terrible, but even when Trump didn’t get a majority last two times it was alarmingly high.

But my expertise is in education, I can say definitively that Americans fail at civics and we haven’t done much to fix that in close to half a century. But failing civics doesn’t mean you deserve persecution or deportation or skyrocketing costs or nuclear death-- especially when people can legally lie to you to sway your vote. Systems fucked, but I wouldn’t place the blame on that slight majority of subset of the population.

Well, twenty something percent of citizens voted for him but yes. I don’t think it’ll be quite as bad as he said since there guard rails, but we apparent voted for a full Congress for him too and hoping “sane” Republicans will save us is a fools errend.

But if 2016 is any indication, it’s probably not as bad as brexit, lol. I think we need to leave NATO or something to be that bad. (But, Brits didn’t deserve that, either, nor their crappy Tory leadership. They have my sympathy, as anyone conned by evil people should).

My favorite part is how they plan on spending the extra money. Really need to help those at-risk dictatorships!

Real Cave Johnson energy.

Those assholes even took the OK hand gesture. Let’s not let them have this, too!

Oh yeah, that multiple organizations things absolutely fuuuucks me since I’m adjunct at multiple universities/colleges. It keeps trying to default me to a place I don’t even work at anymore and somehow still refuses to let me leave it without reinstalling Windows (which I won’t do as I’ll be moving to Linux full time once I do).

What blows my mind is MS fucking bought Skype and somehow Teams still can’t handle video calls correctly. The actual fuck did they do with that acquisition?

I would assume Trump knows very little about the different offices, so that tracks. That said, Musks thing probably has very little to do with accountability, lol. They’ll fire competent people and break stuff, just like with X— no need to look at what good they do!

You know, the sad thing is that it’s probably a good idea to trim some programs-- just not put two of the dumbest rich guys in charge.

Before election season even started, I recall a discussion on NPR mentioning that to balance the budget and bring down the deficit, something politically toxic would be required, be it cutting social security or military or dramatically raising taxes.

Too bad this version is probably cutting good stuff to pay for tax cuts for rich (and failing that, passing those cuts anyway)

I approve of offshore giant bouncy castles.

Well that was a depressing read while holding my 9 month old.

I mean, it’s the whole point of the “states rights” things. Republicans use that hypocritically, but there’s truth to it. But you’re right in that it’s been eroded for a long time; that and the executive branch has gained more and more power too. Constitutionalists should be up in arms but again, hypocrites every last one of them.

He wasn’t able to do it in 2016 for the same reason this time around— probably, anyway. My guess is it’s mostly not a priority compared to enriching billionaires, but also some Republicans probably aren’t that interested in overthrowing State governments (especially Californian house members lol). You also have the issue of compliance, as the military and FBI aren’t exactly Hitler’s generals. Yet, anyway.

You know, at least there’s some solace in knowing Trump 100% didn’t and can’t read Project 2025. He’s still going to bull-in-the-china-shop his way though this but I don’t think he’s going to follow the script exactly.

I just can’t sacrifice entire weekends to reading webcomics like I used to…