Republicans don't want small government, they want a fascist police state and a corrupt military industrial complex to oppress people around the world to steal their shit while funding profitable wars for their contractors.

I think the last 2 people who wanted small government and balanced budgets were like John McCain (dead) and John Kasich (retired, but endorsed Joe Biden in 2020) and they're no longer relevant.

Honestly, as a party, they need to go. I want an opposition party to the Democrats, but they're not it. Hell, America really needs ranked choice voting and more open primaries, and probably 4 major political parties.

Sad news, but isn't the Doge in the picture Kabosu rather than Balltze?

Au contraire, I think more rich people should take risks like this. It shows how macho and ahead of the curve and disruptive they are. All those other rich people that aren't willing to get into an experimental vehicle with risk of catastrophic failure and even death are just crybaby namby pamby cucks who aren't living their best lives!

Just buy ride it! If you were on your deathbead, and you looked back, wouldn't you regret not having tried it while you still could've?

/S

Good advice from 1901. Especially the bit about not marrying women older, taller, or wealthier than you. Especially all 3. Even if she's like 1 day older, 1 inch taller, or $1 wealthier than you. You gotta man up and not tie that knot!

/S

Thanks for sharing that, even despite the uncontrollable facepalm that resulted. What's terrible is that despite the fact that this artist is so crazy and racist, his art is actually pretty good.

Honestly, probably the only way to save the Environment and Democracy. Too much power in the hands of the few leads to perpetual effective monarchy. It's why the Founding Fathers were against large amounts of inherited wealth, particularly inherited wealth that creates dynasties in perpetuity.

I know people don't like the Founding Fathers that much lately, and I see why, but conservatives really don't understand them, and deliberately misrepresent them, because not doing so would undercut all conservative "policies".

World's a mess because of inequality and the concentration of almost all wealth and power into the hands of a small amount of sociopaths. I honestly think the only way to solve this permanently is to cap the amount of wealth and power any individual or family can have.

This is why I use Firefox. I honestly don't think that a browser engine monopoly is good for the world. Single point of failure for everyone with no alternatives is very bad if something nasty happens.

I think the creators of WINE said something similar about one of their reasons for creating WINE. Wish more browsers would use Gecko.

Honestly, while I don't like what these guys do. I definitely think they have some mental illness issues that should be treated, and some of them may be neurodivergent or have some physical issues with their brains or bodies that might make them unhinged that could be possibly treated with medication.

Dead serious here. People this bad generally have been abused / brainwashed when they were young, and some of them seem to have certain disabilities. Not saying they don't act like total trash, just that there's probably reasons behind it for at least some of these people. Plus, nowadays there are online cults waiting to pick them up and brainwash them when they're vulnerable. Used to be you had to go in person to a cult in the past.

I was like that when I was young. Now all my plans involve me forcing myself to do 1 or 2 productive things a day besides the stuff I have to do, and then just calling it a day and pushing aside the rest of the stuff I probably should do till tomorrow. Or more realistically, the next weekend or holiday.

I don't lie to myself anymore, I just admit that if it's not 100% vital, it won't get done quick, if at all.

Isn't the government being in charge of gas and egg prices socialism, which I thought Republicans were "against". (Unless it's giving free money to the already rich for no reason, in which case it's somehow not socialism)

Maybe for now, but as soon as more people switch to Windows 11 or Microsoft apps that constantly show you ads and are basically spam / adware themselves, Linux will get more appealing.

Microsoft is unfortunately learning from social media companies. Not only do you PAY for the product, you are also the product, and get your personal info stolen and get served ads even while you pay.

It's getting to the point where I'm seriously eyeballing Mint again, or Kubuntu. And I'm the kind of person that's generally too lazy to even dual boot anymore.

Not that I disagree with this at all, but I think that The Road to El Dorado is technically Dreamworks.

I remember reading about how Kodak tried to block digital cameras (even its own) so as not to compromise their own film business, only to be caught unprepared later on when the digital camera revolution came anyway and then took massive losses.

It's funny how they build the first.

It's true. Kevin Feige (of the Marvel movies) once said something like, "People love chocolate ice cream, but if that's all you offer them every day, they'll start to hate it." and for a time, it seemed like he and Disney / Marvel understood that, which lead to such a wide range of movie genres for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the breakout successes... but now I feel like they've forgotten that, and now we get the formulaic "Marvel Movie" template shoveled out, and now they're slowly starting to fail.

And for good reason. People need variety, and it's because entertainment producers don't understand this need that so many major studios are flailing. Hence the recent purge at Pixar for example, and why Ubisoft is struggling lately, etc. It's not just game publishers that have this issue, it's movies, tv, and comics too. Like the recent "Death" of Ms. Marvel which is eerily similar to all the extremely temporary crap that happened to Peter Parker's Spiderman in the past, like the "death" of his aunt, or his "marriage" to Mary Jane.

Nobody really expects RPG's to be as big and deep as BG3, they just want a complete game that works without shitty microtransactions everywhere and always online for no reason. Plus, having interesting characters and storylines, quests that can be solved in more than one way, and gameplay that's actually formed by taking player feedback and listening to it is what people reacted well to, among other things. Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't even have Denuvo!

If there's one thing that I hope competitors learn from Larian and BG3, it's that respecting your players and giving them what they want leads to success. Similar to Elden Ring and from software, like that video mentioned. Now compare BG3 to Diablo 4 and Immortal, or the upcoming Starfield and you'll see why people love it. It's not about specs or scope, it's about designing a game to be actually FUN.

I'd like to have a "debate" about whether Joe Rogan is an alien pedophile zombie. Is he? Has anyone shown any real evidence contradicting this? Who knows what he's doing behind closed doors? I don't, can you really say for sure that you do either?

I'm not accusing him of anything, I'm just asking questions. I'm just tryin to have a conversation here.

Also: we're still not going to pay you, but treat you worse. And if you quit, and the people after you keep quitting... we're going to have to replace you with PAID moderators... and if you play your cards right and we forget who you are, you might be one of those paid mods, so uh... shut up and get back to work for free!

They warned us even back in the 70's that it was bad, then it'd suddenly get worse all of a sudden with little to no warning as things snowballed, but of course the oil execs just tried to shut up their own scientists and block them from influencing congress instead of listening. Even though they were warned that the threat was "Existential".

GOP's good at brainwashing stupid and / or dysfunctional people. It's also good at attracting one issue voters who only care about guns, abortion, immigration, low taxes, etc.

Many people (if not most) are not that smart or caring. If you give them the one thing they want, they'll support you. Many people (if not most) are also bigots, and hate one group or another and you won't get them to change their minds by any means.

Republicans know this (they have psychological and media experts on their team who are smart, unlike their voting base) and use their knowledge to manipulate people with lies, and it works, just due to how human nature is.

Democrats also know this, which is why they don't seriously fight Republicans by compromising on some of their principles or also pandering just enough to get elected in purple / weak red areas. It's honestly just a power sharing agreement to keep things split 50 / 50 so the corpo donors can get what they want done while the average person gets distracted by the very public binary fight these 2 "parties" are always engaging in.

The only real answer is ranked choice voting and the formation of 2 additional parties. One that's fiscally and environmentally liberal and socially conservative, and another that's socially liberal, but fiscally liberal, and hopefully environmentally at least moderate.

People forget that most places on the internet are left-leaning or flat out liberal bubbles. Especially FOSS communities like Lemmy / Kbin. If you go out and engage people in real life, it's easy to quickly realize that people will keep voting in climate denying, polluting jackasses so they can keep their guns, or make sure abortion's illegal, etc.

Our best hope is young GOP voters who believe in climate change and want to do something about it, because they're growing up in this world, and will have to live in it too. Hopefully that Hawaii fire made even the rich realize that shit like that could happen to them during their vacation, and it'll make them give a shit. Anyhow, our best bet is to try to make deals with the next generation of Republicans, and also introduce ranked choice voting which can create parties and coalitions built around compromise and getting things done as opposed to ideological purity tests, which keep losing us the house and / or senate, even if we win the presidency.

It's not unintelligent. People are extremely adept at reading facial expressions and microexpressions. Years of evolution / survival instinct development have made us extremely skillful at knowing a lot about a person based on their face / eyes. Our lives depended on it, you see.

Your survival instincts (which are smart) are telling you she's an untrustworthy, toxic individual that you probably shouldn't keep around in your community, and in this case they're right. Everything else she says and does backs up your instincts too, so this isn't just a one-off thing.