Prelude to the Apocalypse

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

I don't mind paying taxes as long as it's not eaten up primarily by bureaucrats. We even have people employed by the state (tax money) checking beer labels for signs of depiction of people overly enjoying alcohol so these brands can be banned from sale, because our state forces us to buy alcohol from one state-run store and nowhere else. And only between 10-6 on weekdays and 10-3 on Saturdays. This is a country that does not treat adults as adults, and this is why free speech has been under attack for such a long time here.

There is a consensus in addiction research by the experts that educating people on the harmful effects of drugs (and alcohol is without a doubt one of the most harmful drugs there is) has only a small effect on how many people become addicted (unfortunately - I've mentioned that I'm a teacher by trade, and my first impulse is to recommend measures which improve education). What undoubtedly works very well, though, is restricting the sale of alcohol to special shops/ liquor stores, which have limited opening times, and making alcohol very expensive. From the perspective of a politician, the decision is rather simple: Would you rather allow one of the deadliest drugs to be freely available and have tens of thousands of people become addicted and die, or would you (slightly) restrict the freedom of the population (you can still buy alcohol, can't you?) with huge effects on public health?
Then again, it has been shown that the alcohol lobby is very influential in Germany, which is why you can still buy dirt cheap alcohol here around the clock. Which is one of the reasons for why so many Germans (at least 70,000) die each year as a result of their alcohol consumption. Same goes for tobacco, which kills at least 120,000 Germans a year. I just don't see how these results outweigh the minimal restrictions on freedom that will lead to so much less suffering, deaths, and costs carried by the public health system.

[lovecraft]

He's a phenomenally poor speaker. Kamala is no MLK, but she is coherent. The way you carry yourself goes a very long way.

Kamala's problem is she didn't understand that the majority of Americans were waiting to hear about...Americans and their country's interests. Kamala made a completely different choice: she mainly talked to communities and minorities about...communities and minorities. That was the interesting contrast between two political visions.
In France, it's the same thing: there is a part of the political class that only talks about the rights of communities or minorities and their victimization 24hours/day, forgetting at the same time the French people. Because that part of the political class, embodied in particular by Jean-Luc Melenchon, uses communities to obtain what is called the "community vote". People don't want a society that looks like a conglomeration of communities with their own demands, because they know that this type of society always ends badly in separatism and violent clashes. The polls show that 3/4 of the French are fed up with people only talking about communities and minorities. People want a return to universalism and don't care about skin color, sex, gender, or religious beliefs, people want the same rights and duties for absolutely everyone no exception, not more not less.

[Sima Tuna]

Voters were sick of walking in a grocery store, picking up an item on their shopping list, looking at the price tag, doing a double take and deciding they couldn't afford what they wanted to buy. People are tired of treating the essentials of life as luxury purchases and paying a luxury price for them.

Biden and Kamala represent the administration that happened under and Kamala herself came across like a champagne socialist, whether or not she is one. A threat to democracy is an ideological issue floating off in the clouds of some future date. The threat of "I can't afford the basics of clean food, clean water and shelter" is a material problem and it's one that unites all the races.

I know so many people personally who right now would not be able to afford housing if they hadn't purchased before the price increases. We're going back to multi-generational housing as a matter of necessity.

This is also why Trump, aside from black voters, either carried or split roughly 50/50 on every racial group. I looked at the breakdown by race and aside from black voters, every other group was either for Trump or a split with a slight edge to Kamala. Which is crazy to me. Latino men went to Trump. Asians were split with a slight edge to Kamala. Dems can't win on those kind of statistics, because white voters were overwhelmingly for Trump. So Dems didn't win minorities and they also didn't win whites. The only group they had was black voters, which... No shit, Kamala was a black candidate. It would have been beyond shocking if black women voted for Trump.

I'm not saying Trump is going to fix economic issues or that his solutions are the right ones. I'm just talking about how voters feel. The economic impact of the pandemic on this country was awful and it hit the most vulnerable. After pandemic aid programs ended, the full force of hardship hit like a ton of bricks. The Biden administration opted for an austerity approach and that didn't pay off. Maybe they didn't expect megacorporations to hike prices for household essentials as much as they did, but those grocery store price caps? That would have been something to push through before the election. Prove you actually can deliver. Build some trust. Biden promised student loan debt forgiveness and he has not delivered for most Americans. I'm not saying that's entirely his fault. I'm just talking about the result. Results are what matters, and then also how well you can sell your results to the voters.

[emphatic]

Oh no! The liquor store isn't open 24 hours? My goodness, that is a mighty pickle! Free speech is definitely under attack! I didn't realize the liquor store wasn't open all the time. That's some serious free speech trouble...

Trump supports guns everywhere and no health care, but he doesn't talk like a politician--so it's all good. Gotcha. He also says Hitler had some good ideas. That's some great "not politician" talk.

Ha.

Really great comeback, really snappy. So you can't just admit you had me confused with someone else? Gotcha. Your reading skill is impressively poor as well.

[emphatic]

this fact (from Wikipedia article on Sveriges Television AB):

"A survey in 1999 claimed that 33 percent of the journalists working for SVT and SR supported the Left Party, which was about the same proportion as among journalists employed in commercial broadcasting and the print media, but significantly higher than among the general public, only 15 percent of whom supported the Left Party."

In Sweden, Wikipedia is considered disinformation (according to SVT and most of the Left wing press), just so you know. Be mindful of your sources!
For the rest of your post, let's agree to disagree, as it's all lies subjective at best.

[emphatic]

I don't mind paying taxes as long as it's not eaten up primarily by bureaucrats. We even have people employed by the state (tax money) checking beer labels for signs of depiction of people overly enjoying alcohol so these brands can be banned from sale, because our state forces us to buy alcohol from one state-run store and nowhere else. And only between 10-6 on weekdays and 10-3 on Saturdays. This is a country that does not treat adults as adults, and this is why free speech has been under attack for such a long time here.

There is a consensus in addiction research by the experts that educating people on the harmful effects of drugs (and alcohol is without a doubt one of the most harmful drugs there is) has only a small effect on how many people become addicted (unfortunately - I've mentioned that I'm a teacher by trade, and my first impulse is to recommend measures which improve education). What undoubtedly works very well, though, is restricting the sale of alcohol to special shops/ liquor stores, which have limited opening times, and making alcohol very expensive. From the perspective of a politician, the decision is rather simple: Would you rather allow one of the deadliest drugs to be freely available and have tens of thousands of people become addicted and die, or would you (slightly) restrict the freedom of the population (you can still buy alcohol, can't you?) with huge effects on public health?
Then again, it has been shown that the alcohol lobby is very influential in Germany, which is why you can still buy dirt cheap alcohol here around the clock. Which is one of the reasons for why so many Germans (at least 70,000) die each year as a result of their alcohol consumption. Same goes for tobacco, which kills at least 120,000 Germans a year. I just don't see how these results outweigh the minimal restrictions on freedom that will lead to so much less suffering, deaths, and costs carried by the public health system.

My point was that the state employs people looking at stickers on bottles while earning more money than the working class that through their steep taxes pay their salaries, based on the ideology that grown ups can't not buy "too much" alcohol because the packaging is fun looking. Also, going to a dinner you've been invited to, and not being able to just buy a nice bottle of wine on a whim, to gift to the host because it's closed is annoying. If people want to drink more than they should, they can always stack up on booze during the week. In Denmark, you can buy hard liquor anytime you want and yet, they don't have the same problem with alcoholics as we do in Sweden. So there's no causation.

[orange808]

FEMA worker fired this week for advising workers to avoid helping homes with Trump signs in front.

Free speech didn't matter this time.

That's protected speech, r-iiiiight?

I know better, of course. Only right wing fucks would consider discrimination and dereliction of duty free speech. It might have been illegal as well. Of course, these things get cleaned up immediately and set aside afterwards. This person won't become a celebrity. That's because people like me aren't fucking stupid.

[Rob]

I'm just done with Karens in pantsuits lecturing me on shit.

Karen needs to shut the fuck up. Also, you're not a feminist, Karen. You're an asshole. You're just a white lady--and your kind chose Trump three times in a row.

Karen needs to shut the fuck up.

If Ruth Bader Karen had stepped down, that also would have helped. I see Karen Pelosi is busy playing her big bad man card on Biden right now.

Shut up, Karen. Stop telling me your kind is going to save us, Karen. Stop telling me it's not your fault and you're a victim, asshole. You are part of the problem. You wanted a voice, you got one. That comes with responsibility and accountability, Karen. Yeah, the other white people voted for him, too.. Doesn't change what you did, Karen.

There is no great white sisterhood, Karen. White women are just ordinary white people doing white people things.

Turns out demonizing the largest group of voters in an openly insane way (in addition to running the country poorly) has surprising electoral consequences.

I'll continue to avoid telling you about Sweden when I'm not in country and you can do the same for America.

Emphatic has a far better grasp of what's happening in America than some Americans here.

[Mortificator]

I only recalled historical facts.

"Truly, I say to you, those who name themselves after racists scared of air conditioners love sitting on dildos." ~ John 3:69, a Bible verse definitely as real as your Quran verse

I could go into how the Quran exclusively mentions stoning as a wicked thing to do, but to believe this is an Islam vs. Judaism thing is to be controlled by the stupidest propaganda. Israel is not a religious state and Zionism is not a religion; they are a secular apartheid state and a white supremacist philosophy. The biggest problem people in the Middle East have is that European colonial entities keep murdering them, taking their homes, and stealing their resources.

Things went wrong in 1979 if you were an oligarch living off looted wealth. They went wrong in 1953 if you were an Iranian citizen. That's when their elected government got couped by the CIA and SIS, replaced with a puppet monarchy, because the US and Britain wanted their oil.

[lovecraft]

I only recalled historical facts.

"Truly, I say to you, those who name themselves after racists scared of air conditioners love sitting on dildos." ~ John 3:69, a Bible verse definitely as real as your Quran verse

I could go into how the Quran exclusively mentions stoning as a wicked thing to do, but to believe this is an Islam vs. Judaism thing is to be controlled by the stupidest propaganda. Israel is not a religious state and Zionism is not a religion; they are a secular apartheid state and a white supremacist philosophy. The biggest problem people in the Middle East have is that European colonial entities keep murdering them, taking their homes, and stealing their resources.

Things went wrong in 1979 if you were an oligarch living off looted wealth. They went wrong in 1953 if you were an Iranian citizen. That's when their elected government got couped by the CIA and SIS, replaced with a puppet monarchy, because the US and Britain wanted their oil.

Dude, the compulsive accusation of "racist" is the preferred method of hateful scum to prevent any debate.
Forget race, religion is not a race
It's funny that you accuse me of being controlled by propaganda, because you are holding exactly the formatted speech of the anti-Semitic shit that we hear yelling on the far left wing, and who implicitly support the attacks against Jews.. Anti-Zionism is the favorite concept of the anti-Semites who hide behind this word.
Israel is not an "Apartheid state". You don't know what Apartheid is and what it means. Have you ever been to Israel in your life to talk such bullshit ? Either you are a complete idiot or you don't know the meaning and history of the word apartheid. You should not distort such a word out of respect for the memory of the real victims of Apartheid in South Africa.
Just stop talking shit.

Truth is that your friends from Hamas are ISIS, they are jihadist terrorists who hide in hundreds of kilometers of underground tunnels and use their own population as human shields, which then serves them to manipulate international opinion. They have built hundreds of kilometers of complex tunnels, but have not built one single air raid shelter nor bunker for their population. Why ?
Their one and only motivation is to kill Jews in the name of Jihad.
Apparently you are not aware that in the Hamas charter, there is one precise hadith which they relate to the words of the Prophet and which has always been found in the Koran, it is the hadith of “stones and trees", that hadith says:
"The Day of Judgment will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jews hide behind the rocks and trees. The rocks and trees will say: "O son of the Prophet, O servant of God, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him".

The problem is not Islam, the problem is the powerful fanatics who have this reading of Islam and have taken the reins of power in Iran and in a major part of the Middle East from the end of the 1960s. They completely transformed the living environment of these countries which formerly lived much more freely than today, in particular women of Tehran who were much more emancipated in the 1960s than they are Today.
Everything that is happening today, in particular the Islamist attacks which have multiplied over the past 20 years in Europe, are the consequence of that Islamism.

[Sima Tuna]

The rocks and trees will say: "O son of the Prophet, O servant of God, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him".

Those rocks and trees sound like bitch-ass narcs.

[lovecraft]

European colonial entities

We know this far-left rhetoric by heart.

Talking about colony, look at that map below. The red dot is the state of Israel, Jews were living on these lands 3000 years ago. All the countries in green around were colonized and subjected to Islam by Saudi Arabia where Islam was born in the 7th century AD

It is the history of humanity which is like that. You may try rewriting it as many times as you want so that it serves your political ideas, it will not change any thing in the true history of humanity as it took place.

[BryanM]

For those still unconvinced Democrats are paid to lose versus well-meaning bumbling Barney Fife types, their internal polling said it was a very very bad idea to campaign with Liz Cheney. So they had objective proof that holding hands with the devil was a losing move.

Hasan's comment of people only engaging with media that tells them what they want to hear is so true. Lots of people guzzled down the positive content while avoiding things that make them feel bad.

Even I did; even if I wasn't nearly as far into the hopium as those like Strider were, I still thought it was slightly better than a coinflip.

The reason why is obvious: I was choosing to feel good this year. So I avoided all of the content I had no interest in. Which was almost all of the TV stuff that the normos were exposed to.

Her acceptance speech where she bragged about having the most lethal military on the planet and that we're gonna murder the shit out of lots of fucks? I had no idea she said that. I didn't need to - Kamala is a cop. I've heard a million democrat acceptance speeches before. Listening to it would have taught me nothing new, and only would have served to make me feel angry and impotent. Hijack my brain from more important things.

I'm already enough of an old man yelling at clouds as it is.

Why would I want to listen to Kamala talk platitudes and clichés at a podium, when I could watch Tim Walz hang out with doggos? Or play Crazy Taxi (badly lol, the poor man's wife won't let him have any fun) on a stream with AOC?


The echo chamber is true of our fascist friends too, of course. If Trump had lost, they wouldn't be here right now making themselves feel strong, righteous, and intelligent about winning another coin flip election.

I guess their default state is angry impotence, too. Some real empathy on that aspect at least - in the end we're all pathetic internet people together, after all.

Maybe they didn't expect megacorporations to hike prices for household essentials as much as they did, but those grocery store price caps? That would have been something to push through before the election. Prove you actually can deliver. Build some trust.

I'm embarrassed to admit I never realized this is something the democrats could do. It's something that actually works sometimes. The last time the minimum wage was increased was when they bullied W to do it, this is something well within the physical realm of possibility.

I'm just so used to democrats choosing to intentionally lose and know their donors would never allow such a thing, it had never once passed my mind. 'Force Republicans to be the party of price gouging, or give us a political win.' Such an easy winning move.

God damn, they're the worst.

What undoubtedly works very well, though, is restricting the sale of alcohol to special shops/ liquor stores, which have limited opening times, and making alcohol very expensive.

The existence of Mountain Dew beer at Wal-Mart sure is a thing that exists, now.

There is a consensus in addiction research by the experts that educating people on the harmful effects of drugs (and alcohol is without a doubt one of the most harmful drugs there is)

Oh god, I had some romantic notions of being an alcoholic as a youth. Just like spelunking, it's one of those things shitty reality disabused me of real fast.

I kept thinking it might be a way to shut out distractions and be a productive cool guy, like Stephen King was. Yet every single alcoholic I met from my extended family later on in life was the saddest sack I'd ever seen, just content to sit on a porch and drink the day away.

Then this year one of my cousins, someone who was more like a big brother to me than my actual brother, died.

The mental image of him seizing in his bed, helpless.. yeah.

[GaijinPunch]

This is a country that does not treat adults as adults, and this is why free speech has been under attack for such a long time here.

This is what conservatives say about California, and have for ages.

Have you considered moving from California to a state not run by Democrats?

I spent the first 22 years of my life in one of the reddest... and the one where at least 2 women have died from the abortion ban (which has no exceptions). California has it's problems, but ignoring data is ridiculous. Also, none of the red states really have much to offer that I want.

[orange808]

Emphatic has a far better grasp of what's happening in America than some Americans here.

Like the way liquor store hours are a free speech issue?

Right wingers can't even identify the difference between Pelosi and AOC in country, much less from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. I understand what's happening just fine, thank you very much.

[Sengoku Strider]

Even I did; even if I wasn't nearly as far into the hopium as those like Strider were

In my defence, I really want you to show me who had "Trump wins latino men and less women show up for Kamala than Biden post RvW overturn" on their bingo card. As near as anybody can tell half the country was lying to pollsters, nobody knew what was really going to happen ahead of time. But yeah, it doesn't matter, I see so much finger pointing and rationalizing but at this point everybody knows what he is, and America voted with its id because it wanted to.

[Sima Tuna]

I had guessed the election would be a coin flip, which was also extremely wrong.

[Mortificator]

"They came to him saying 'Rabbi, a moron is making up fake Quran verses again. Doesn't he realize the whole thing is online now? Has he used up all his data watching cuck porn?'

Jesus answered, 'Probably. But the fool's purpose is not to learn or spread knowledge, for he has clearly never read the book, it is to spit up his rulers' propaganda. Listen! Why was I, who learned every word of the law, called an enemy of Jews? The Sanhedrin will say anything to cause divisions and make those they exploit cast eyes upon each other. Whosoever becomes AIPAC's bitch makes themself the subject of their own enemy, one who is also, as schemer of apartheid, enemy of all mankind.'" ~ Mark 1E7:2-5

[To Far Away Times]

Surprise, surprise. Trump will be appointing Steven "Great Value Goebbels" Miller to a cabinet position to advise on racial issues and immigration.

A bit like appointing David Duke to head an immigration department. Same energy.

[BryanM]

I had guessed the election would be a coin flip, which was also extremely wrong.

It wasn't wrong, the only election that the coin ever lands on its side is Bush v Gore. Otherwise it does turn up heads or tails, which this election was. It was winnable, but as you know... democrats exist to lose. Jeff needs another tax cut, the poor man is still a little ways away from being the first Trillionaire.

Trump got around 5% more votes than the other guy. Those are Hillary Clinton numbers. The hard binary nature of the electoral college makes it feel less close due to the extreme differences between heads or tails.

As the world burns and the machines process us into fertilizer, take solace in the fact that it takes all of this work to keep the see-saw between libs and the fash going on indefinitely. Humanity is awful, but it could have been a lot worse. In our next reincarnation, let's hope we're a species that was descended from squirrels or their local squirrel-equivalent, eh?

In my defence, I really want you to show me who had "Trump wins latino men and less women show up for Kamala than Biden post RvW overturn" on their bingo card. As near as anybody can tell half the country was lying to pollsters, nobody knew what was really going to happen ahead of time.

Darn it, the whole year I told you the RCP no toss-up map said Trump would win. Every single person who took the two seconds of effort to look at this page any time this year had a good vibe for how the election would go. (If you think Kamala did bad, Biden was doing much much worse. According to one guy, the Biden team's internal polling showed Trump winning 400 electoral votes. I think he might be lying or exaggerating, but it was really bad.)

There is always an error margin in the trendline of 1 or 2 points in either direction, this edge decided on enthusiasm. Turns out hugging Biden, the Cheneys, and supporting genocide does not appeal to anti-fascists or people who want more money in their lives. Who knew. Who could know.

As for the 'latino men voted for Trump' story, that is manufactured bullshit. It's spin circulating off of one or another exit poll. Exit polls are among the shittiest and least accurate way to poll people. You never accept one poll as relevant data, its metholodogy or sample base could be contaminated. You use an aggregate of polls to get a sense of things.

There's a very good reason you've heard that story a hundred million times: The democrats have to move to the center and be more racist, you see. Don't swallow the propaganda.

(Didn't you note that early voting and mail-in voting heavily favored the democrats???! How do you perform an exit poll on a mail-in ballot??! Think Mark, think! They don't want you to think, so for the love of god, THINK!)

(Seriously though, even calling people at home to try to make up for that can't make up this accuracy gap. The normal procedure with phone surveys you have to keep calling the same person over and over and over if they don't answer the first five or ten times. They didn't do even that minimal quality assurance, considering the time frame they had to do the work. People who only own cell phones can not be reached at all. 50% of latino men did not suddenly decide to become completely different people.)

Please... stop..... stop listening to the TV or Youtube talking heads or newsrags for your poll data..... the data is right there..... the crosstabs, something you can look at with your eyes....

[lovecraft]

"They came to him saying 'Rabbi, a moron is making up fake Quran verses again.

What an ass I'm not Jewish, I'm atheist if that interests you.
Your indoctrination and ignorance make you a clown in the making, you really should consider starting a one-man show with your keffiyeh in front of your buddies the backward cutthroats of Hamas, I'm pretty sure you'd at least earn a sheep and a tube of Vaseline as a thank you.

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

There is a consensus in addiction research by the experts that educating people on the harmful effects of drugs (and alcohol is without a doubt one of the most harmful drugs there is)

Oh god, I had some romantic notions of being an alcoholic as a youth. Just like spelunking, it's one of those things shitty reality disabused me of real fast.

I kept thinking it might be a way to shut out distractions and be a productive cool guy, like Stephen King was. Yet every single alcoholic I met from my extended family later on in life was the saddest sack I'd ever seen, just content to sit on a porch and drink the day away.

Then this year one of my cousins, someone who was more like a big brother to me than my actual brother, died.

The mental image of him seizing in his bed, helpless.. yeah.

Jesus, I'm sorry to hear that. Do you have somebody to talk to about this shit?

[blackoak]

People want a return to universalism and don't care about skin color, sex, gender, or religious beliefs, people want the same rights and duties for absolutely everyone no exception, not more not less.

I think this is especially true for America. Perhaps the demographics of France may yet permit a return to bonafide ethnonationalism (I don't know the situation there), but that ship has long since sailed for America. For better or worse it's a diverse society now; the promise of Hart-Cellar realized. So either civic nationalism will be believed in once more, or America will continue its descent into internecine warfare between competing identity groups. It will require more than a mere repudiation of the tenets of idpol (ie that "white supremacy" == the cause of every ill)... some uncomfortable and unpopular explanations for divergences in outcomes between groups will have to be resurrected.

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

this fact (from Wikipedia article on Sveriges Television AB):

"A survey in 1999 claimed that 33 percent of the journalists working for SVT and SR supported the Left Party, which was about the same proportion as among journalists employed in commercial broadcasting and the print media, but significantly higher than among the general public, only 15 percent of whom supported the Left Party."

In Sweden, Wikipedia is considered disinformation (according to SVT and most of the Left wing press), just so you know. Be mindful of your sources!
For the rest of your post, let's agree to disagree, as it's all lies subjective at best.

So you don't like a source and it's suddenly, magically, not valid. The time I took to type out all that other shit I could have spent doing something more useful since you simply state it's all lies. Why should anybody take you seriously in the future if you simply ignore data and arguments you don't like? Same with the alcohol situation in Denmark: I googled "alcoholism in Denmark", and I immediately find this:

"In Denmark, approximately one in every five adult Danes consumes alcohol at a rate that is injurious to their health, and alcohol abuse and alcohol-related diseases result in approximately 4,000 deaths per year. At the same time, Danish adolescents hold the European record in getting drunk." (National Institute of Public Health Denmark)

and

"Denmark tops the list for alcohol consumption among the Nordic countries, even though Denmark’s alcohol consumption has decreased in the past 10-15 years. [...] It is clear that with its very liberal national alcohol policy, Denmark and its drinking culture stands out in relation to all other Nordic countries.
[...]
This article is written by
Associate professor Kristine Rømer Thomsen,
Associate professor Bagga Bjerge,
Assistant professor Lotte Vallentin-Holbech and
Professor emerita Kim Bloomfield
on the request of PopNAD"

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

And one more thing: having no restrictions on drug consumption disfavours poor people, ie the ones that right wing populists claim they care about:

"people with a lower level of education and socioeconomic status will then suffer the consequences more severely. Alcohol–related morbidity, as the diagnosis is called within the health services, is predominantly seen in less privileged socioeconomic groups,” says Sven Andréasson, Professor of Social Medicine at Karolinska Institutet’s Department of Public Health Sciences as well as Senior Consultant and Head of Operations at the alcohol treatment clinic at Riddargatan 1 in Stockholm."


Also,

going to a dinner you've been invited to, and not being able to just buy a nice bottle of wine on a whim, to gift to the host because it's closed is annoying.

... might be annoying (you also could, like people in Bavaria, where all stores have by and large the same opening hours as Systembolaget shops, buy your shit earlier in the day; it's not like you receive invitations an hour before dinner is served), but really it's a non-problem, and if you seriously think it's nanny state propaganda and or an expression of left wing authoritarianism, I don't know what to say. Maybe read a book on a real Socialist dictatorship, like Romania used to be under Ceaușescu - boy, could my mother in law tell you exciting stories about what life was like in an authoritarian system... or my friends who grew up in the German "Democratic" Republic. There's a place in Berlin called Hohenschönhausen where they interred dissidents; you can book a tour where the guides are ex-inmates. I highly doubt they'd agree with you on what constitutes an authoritarian system.

[Sengoku Strider]

People who had 2025 in the thread poll, your ship is coming in:

Late Monday night, incoming Defense Minister Israel Katz said that the diplomatic, operational, and tactical situation for attacking Iran's nuclear program has never been as doable, realistic, and likely as it is now.

Katz noted how two previous Israeli strikes on Iran this year - which were actually counter-attacks following massive attacks by Tehran on the Jewish state on April 13-14 and October 1 - have made it clear how superior the Israeli Air Force is to even the most advanced aspects of the Islamic Republic's air defense systems.

"There is an opportunity to achieve the most important goal - to thwart and remove the threat of destruction hanging over the State of Israel...Today, there is a broad national and defense establishment consensus that we need to thwart the Iranian nuclear program, and there is an understanding that this is doable - not only on the security front, but also on the diplomatic front," said Katz.

[emphatic]

In Sweden, Wikipedia is considered disinformation (according to SVT and most of the Left wing press), just so you know. Be mindful of your sources!
For the rest of your post, let's agree to disagree, as it's all lies subjective at best.

So you don't like a source and it's suddenly, magically, not valid.

I like and use Wikipedia all the time, if something seem to not line up with reality, I go for more sources. I merely pointed out that in Sweden, Swedish Television along with many leftist media outlets consider Wikipedia to be biased/disinformation, which is ironic, as the article about Swedish Television being unbiased came from that very site. There's also an ongoing debate about SVT's bias and why it's being financed by tax money in Sweden that's hard to find out about when Googling it from say, Germany. One source is hardly definitive.

The time I took to type out all that other shit I could have spent doing something more useful since you simply state it's all lies. Why should anybody take you seriously in the future if you simply ignore data and arguments you don't like?

I'm so used to not being "taken seriously", as that's a very convenient way to say I'm a stupid bigot without actually saying that as to, you know, save face. Just because you "took time" doesn't mean I owe you my time in return. I have better things to do with my time than to try and convince you that you're wrong. I will likely fail, no matter what articles I dig up. Something that I have experienced many times, and it's a waste of my time. And yours.

I googled "alcoholism in Denmark"

[...]

This article is written by
Associate professor Kristine Rømer Thomsen,
Associate professor Bagga Bjerge,
Assistant professor Lotte Vallentin-Holbech and
Professor emerita Kim Bloomfield
on the request of PopNAD"

Did you take a gander at what kind of organization PopNAD is? Because it's not particularly unbiased towards recreational use of alcohol, tobacco or gambling. They are a lobbyist organisation.

[Hoagtech]

Just a pro tip on the danger of team politics.

Hopefully all of the Musk haters out there didn’t let that affect their crypto purchasing.

Since the election my crypto alone has had over an $850,000 profit

I haven’t checked my S&P yet, but Im pretty sure my increase is over $1,000,000 in just a week.

My Chief of Operations is a strong liberal that heavily invested in crypto and we are both laughing our heads off at this crazy week of gains.

[BryanM]

Something timely, today is when the first view of some of the crosstabs from the 2024 American Electorate Voter Poll regarding the latino vote is available. A post-election poll done to get a better probe of the electorate than exit polls.

(Polling takes work, people. You can't perform a poll in a day. Just like you can't make a good music album in a day. Spit on the exit polls.)

Because they're perverts, instead of just releasing the PDF immediately and getting done with it, this first look is in the form of a youtube video. Yaaay.

It's not so bad if you skip forward to the actual pages of charts. You can pretend it's almost a real PDF file, that way.

Results were... not surprising. Depressed turnout for democrats. Cubans continue to be the only immigrant group pretty much that hates their homeland and wishes for it to sink into the sea. They (aka, Florida) do a good job of warping national results when included.

Young men nationally were 50-50. Middle aged and over were the standard 60-36ish. Not especially shocking, the depressed turnout had to come from somewhere.

People who had 2025 in the thread poll, your ship is coming in

Yaaaay I'm so happy Trump won.

Now that Jon Stewart is back at the Daily Show, young people today will get to re-live my young adulthood. Just like they gotta watch shitty Star Wars movies, they get to re-live Bush and the Iraq War but on turbo jumbo-size this time.

Are you excited for the Obama-type figure that's gonna win in a landslide in 2028 or 2032?! He's gonna sound like an FDR communist, and then he's gonna bail out the banks when they melt everything again, and be another Ronald Reagan, destroying faith in the democratic party for another generation!

The entire time I'll be making nerd-posts here going 'uh, opensecrets says this guy is an employee of the banks like 2007 Obama was. He's not FDR' but nobody will pat me on the head for being a know-it-all that bothers to look things up.

Isn't this fuckin' fun?!!!!!!!!!!!!!?!?!!!!!!!


I've seen a lasagna cat skit on this topic.

So you don't like a source and it's suddenly, magically, not valid. The time I took to type out all that other shit I could have spent doing something more useful since you simply state it's all lies. Why should anybody take you seriously in the future if you simply ignore data and arguments you don't like?

You can't use logic and math to convince someone who doesn't have the wiring in their brains to perform such operations.

Someone cosplaying as an imaginary crypto millionaire on the internet has deeper more fundamental issues going on than whether or not the chemicals in the water are making the frogs gay. Like I always say, ignore the distractions they use to protect their core terminal values.

George Carlin always said bullshit is the glue that holds society together. Cults are just society at a smaller scale.

Jesus, I'm sorry to hear that. Do you have somebody to talk to about this shit?

I'm alright, we've had multiple states between us for decades.

Any notion I could have got him to quit drinking when his wife, his kids, his doctor, and our uncle couldn't... it's a fantasy.

Speaking of that uncle, he's going in for knee surgery soon. I suppose his weight ground out the cartilage in there... just so much self-harm. It's not that I don't understand it, they're both very different people than me, but when being irrational gains so little and costs so much...

[Hoagtech]

“Someone cosplaying as an imaginary crypto millionaire on the internet has deeper more fundamental issues going on than whether or not the chemicals in the water are making the frogs gay. Like I always say, ignore the distractions they use to protect their core terminal values.”


You could have at least been courteous enough to quote me. I almost missed the reference from the tldr

Last time you guys questioned my stance on benefits of capitalism towards small business. I had to show my marketwatch article from my company acquisition.

What do you think happens next? You pool your wealth into growth and either plant it into a CD account at 4% APR or invest in traditional portfolio. I did mostly portfolio with 1031 real estate exchanges, and left over crypto from 2021.

It sounds like you’re not enjoying the fruits of the crypto spike (again) due to your team politics of musk hate and any investment advice of his that you want to fail so bad, but instead everybody’s rich around you.

Have you not seen the insane spikes in the last three days? Double doge and near 30% bitcoin.