Ah. Then I’ll go back to my first comment.

Oh, negative morally.

How does it do that? These were Colombian citizens being moved unwillingly, not refugees.

Ironically, so does your comment. You mean actively and forcibly ejecting refugees.

The economic vs. refugee character of the people he ejected is unclear AFAIK, though.

There’s also “you forgot to save before you ran the compiler”, and yeah, whatever is on that line in the stored to disk version is garbage.

If we even thought about it, I assume Quebec would get really explody.

One of the main things I’ve learned from this whole episode is that none of those guys know WWII, at all. The ones who supported Trump as a counterbalance of some kind were basically doing the exact same thing as Hindenburg, and are about to find out like Hindenburg.

Another example: here in Canada, they brought out a guy, said “he fought Russia in Ukraine in WWII”, and our entire parliament did a standing ovation. The only concerned-looking person in the room was somebody’s wife, and yes, he was in the Nazi SS.

That’s true. At least there’d be a wave of people forced to discover better ways. It’d suck for things like YouTube videos that have too much overhead to be free, though.

Since I posted this, it also occurred to me that predatory lending could make it’s way in. That’s how a lot of other underclass-serving businesses work.

but polling proves that most Americans (hilariously, even most Republicans) don’t want cutthroat neoliberal everyone-for-themselves economic policies.

Yes, but what if you repackage austerity as “patriotic manly tax cuts”?

Look, sales so isn’t my department, but I’ve been far enough down this path to know bullshit dominates politics because bullshit works. And yeah, it’s fueled by apathy much more than actual stupidity, but comatose isn’t far off of what the average door knock feels like.

I think that Trump would love to install himself as a dictator, and maybe he will, but even dictators keep controlled elections going for the appearance of legitimacy. He’s already 78, and no other Republicans have managed to replicate his popularity among GOP voters. One way or another (unless the US government literally dissolves, which is my preference tbh) we’ll be dealing with a post-Trump US government sooner or later.

Yes, post-Trump will be “interesting” for sure. I’d be mildly surprised if everything went back to normal, though, because it was just so broken before, and there’s so many alternative trajectories available.

The stock market is not the economy. The economy on the ground has not been bullish. The US stock market doing well benefits the wealth-holders, not workers.

So what are you referring to, then? Inflation-adjusted wage growth? That was shit in the 90’s too. The tipping point was the 70’s or early 80’s based on what I’ve seen.

Voters see that they’re not actually moving Leftwards on economic policies that would help their own lives.

You’re ascribing way too much rationality to the average voter here. The politicians themselves don’t - if you’re inside a campaign one day, a rational defense of policies is not how the strategy ever works.

I am worried we’re in for several Presidential election losses before they all die out or get the message.

Bold of you to assume there’s more to come, in light of recent events.

That’s kind of my feeling too, although it’s dangerously close to “better back in my day” given my age.

The period after they shut down browser popups, but before they invented those virtual DOM-hacking popups was great, and that’s a measurable change.

It’s always a bit ironic when people post this on the internet.

It’s not wrong, per se, but much more specific instructions on how not to waste your life would be nice. There’s old people that have spent their whole life on the metaphorical grass and are still dumb as shit.

Rights are soooo gen X.

There’s a few things there. Young people have always had low turnout, it’s not anything the politicians are doing. We’ve actually had a bull market for a decade or so, with a pretty momentary pause for COVID. Apathy happens in other countries like mine too, so it’s not just the Democrats.

As per usual, people primarily care about their own life, and just aren’t motivated by big abstract concepts. Here people’s toys got broken, so they’re mad, simple as. All the discussion about climate change and gun violence or whatever is just a smokescreen for that. If it wasn’t they could have fixed those problems all along. That goes for the geezers too, BTW - they just found out in '83 or whatever that voting is easy and doesn’t require knowing what you’re voting for.

I feel this so hard. Ads and PtW are slowly becoming the only business model because we have stone-age-level impulse control. Hopefully, someone like the EU eventually unfucks it and we switch to micropayments to cover server costs.

The only way it could get worse is if they started banning anyone too poor to properly whale.

Man, if any of that youth passion had shown up at the polls we (yes, including us in the rest of the world) wouldn’t have this problem in the first place. Somehow, the fervour never translates away from from the soft keyboard, though - probably because it’s mostly fake. God, we’re a D-tier species.

That is an interesting phenomenon. I suspect it’s just out of spite, because people not understanding the technology is almost like a new law of the internet, and that it’ll blow over eventually.

If it doesn’t, WTF, basically. People are already getting kicked off of Xiaohongshu for being openly gay.

I don’t believe for a second people use TikTok because they have objections to the data collecting practices of Reels or whatever. They do it because it managed to be super addictive, and got the network effect going before others could catch up.

Ah yes, because “it was just a joke” would be too obvious.

A yes, like the freedom to buy a Windows licence to run basic software, or the freedom to have a TV that updates to include unremovable banner ads. The freedom to give all your freedom away, so essential for innovation. /s

You’re argument is basically that you should have the right to to ruin yourself. Look, that normally has merit, because people know what’s best for them. But, I think it’s pretty clear that when it comes to tech people don’t know what’s best for them.

Meanwhile, within TikTok, it’s pretty clear that censorship is openly endorsed. You can’t even say “gun” on TikTok, and god knows how much user information they have to “play around” with.

And you think Xiaohongshu is run by the Chinese workers? Lol no. This is idiots digging themselves deeper into an even more walled garden.

An actual FOSS platform like the one we’re on would get banned over there very quickly.