It also makes references to "the before time, in the long long ago" ala South Park / Star Trek a whole lot more relatable.

Going back a little further than "the inauguration," it just so happened that my kid was born in 2017 very close to the first inauguration that slowly built up the BS until Covid.

2016 and earlier feels like it could legitimately have been a previous life that I can still remember -- and my wife and I are living in the same house and drive the same two cars as the few years before that!

It is one of the worst parts of US culture and one of the greatest accomplishments of capitalists' propaganda that we generally see the rich as noble and admirable while the poor are evil and disgusting.

Not to be all US-centric about it, but that's where I live and I think this place's reputation speaks for itself.

I grew up in the 80s and 90s and I remember hearing a lot of references to "The Bicentennial."

Oh for sure. One nice part about my current job is feeling like being part of a functioning team.

Constant isolation isn't necessary or good. But for certain personal projects that I am designing and building from scratch, solo can be so nice.

It sounds like a lot of good thought and design went into it.

The biggest problem was/is always going to be consumers wary of trusting a tech company not to mess it up because of greed.

I keep thinking we need an overhaul where volunteering to be a public servant at a high enough level also means volunteering to surrender all your assets and be barred from owning anything significant for life. You get a stipend that you can spend on food, hobbies, travel, and entertainment, but that's it. You get housing and transportation paid for (or maybe you can own your residence and car) but no businesses, no stocks, etc. I guess you get a pension or salary for life or something.

People have demonstrated that they generally cannot be trusted to balance governmental power with conflicts of interest. Sure some people can, but ordinary voters picking from candidates filtered for "actively seeks power" have a crappy track record. Here's hoping politicians like Mamdani can teach the voters a re things and start to turn that around.

hearing was functional two hours after cardiac arrest.

Regardless of the accuracy of this finding, it sounds so horrifying on the surface but I could see it being a pleasant experience just based on stories of near death experiences and whatnot. I can't imagine you have any consciousness or self-awareness for almost all of that time though.

This comment resonates with me big time.

As far as doing things my own way, I have intentionally taken on some big projects in my hobbies over the past couple years, and I have intentionally avoided getting help on them even if it's offered freely, and even if that means it takes me 5x longer to get it done. The outcome is not only better, but more importantly the process itself is much more rewarding and therapeutic because I did it my way. I redid what I wanted to, I focused on what I wanted to, I took breaks and recharged according to my own body, and I have detailed first principles knowledge of how the entire thing came together.

I haven't really thought about the difficulty speaking and shortening it to single words, but the difficulty getting out those simple phrases sounds like some of my past experiences. Especially as somebody with a very verbose internal dialogue.

Same with sometimes just not wanting another person there while I'm getting shit done, even if they are a loved one with a friendly demeanor.

This is definitely one for me. My flavor of audio sensitivity seems to mean that aural stimulation satisfies some ADHD part of my AuDHD brain. I can be coding at work or doing some very chill tasks in my yard, being present in the moment and acting with intention and being all zen about it, but there is industrial or thrash metal blasting in my ears that nobody else can hear. (with the setting enabled to keep it below damaging decibel levels)

This shit is just so openly racist, xenophobic, and hateful because on paper it's against the country's interest. I'd suggest he's just another kompromised asset being leveraged to dismantle the US empire, but we've also known him to be a piece of shit for a long time.

Pretty much all developed nations are facing birth rates far below the maintenance level.

The United States is well below-average in population density. Many areas do have too many people, but anybody with experience in the midwest knows that we have a lot of usable land with very few people on it.

Even if these ghouls kept all of their irrational fears and hatred but were granted a few rational brain cells to plan for the future, they would see that these people they want to remove and keep away are valuable resources. I'm sure they have grand delusions about how they're gonna ban contraception and sex-ed and abortion while having a steady stream of fertile 14 year old girls wheeled into their compound to rape and create their future factory workers, but it ain't good work.

I'd say this is more like the middle of the end, with the beginning of the end being the Meta logo on them.