221–230 of 254 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you mean to take that course on human sarcasm? I can understand how a one or two sentence comment that is wholly sarcastic is readily misinterpreted, ala Poe's Law. But my context should have been pretty clear.
It didn't land well; and GPs quip was astute on how the tone and narrative of your comment is 5 years outdated, regardless.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depending on how you measure, not as bad as the one we had a few terms ago. There was a pandemic, which should have been a unifying event the president just had to straightforwardly lead us through while letting the domain experts at agencies handle the details. But instead he must have thought he was still campaigning or something, and staked out some edgelord position that we should just ignore the public health em…
Conversely, arresting people going paddleboarding and filling skate parks with sand was a totally sane reaction. Good thing we didn't overreact to Covid and completely fuck up the economy and the education progress of millions of children. Your "domain experts" are often chronically incorrect sociopaths. Let's not even get into the categorical and coordinated censorship campaign. Shocking that people even support the…
Note that only half of US states had any kind of "lockdown" (ie stay at home order with the force of law), and they were predominantly red states. I'd say that bigger crowd control problems caused larger overreactions. The state I was in merely had a firmly worded suggestion to stay home. I'd call that the sweet spot.
It certainly is interesting living in a declining empire.
This is a common refrain you hear a lot. I get why people say it, because it feels good to say when you feel bad. But the decline of the Roman empire took nearly 500 years. Even the bronze age collapse, which you might say happened fast, took more than 100. A thought I have every time someone parrots this is, "what is reasonable to expect?". Would you have heard people saying the same thing during the civil war? Duri…
I would argue it started with Reagan, with some ups and downs since.
Crazy how for a guy so obsessed with self image and legacy, Trump is leaving behind a world where he'll be known for making everything shit that it was before him. Amazing. How does this happen?
I'm still holding out for this being some 4d chess move that's way over my head. If he really is this foolish, then why did we all vote for him?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a nice idea, and if such devices aren't used to further concentrate wealth for their owners, that would work --- the problem is, LLMs and the robotics which they facilitate look to be the first major technological advance where the enlarging of the economy which they afford does not bring about a commensurate increase in the number of jobs.
There is theory and then there is practice of course. But at least if you are invested in the market as part of your retirement, you are technically an owner of some small share of it.
Apparently almost half of workers are not participating in such: https://pensionrights.org/resource/how-many-american-workers...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
this and people underestimate how many people in the country still think he's doing a great job.
> how many people in the country still think he's doing a great job. 'In the country' being 'in the USA'. Everybody else outside the boarders of the USA is thinking "how the mighty have fallen".
The nation that owns the majority of nukes is run by an actual idiot with dementia, and his corrupt picks.
The nation with the majority of aircraft carriers and submarines...
The nation with the largest GDP...
The nation that makes the tech most of the world runs on...
It is terrifying, the international implications that a collapse of my country would cause, but even that pales to the malicious damage it can cause.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A 401K is just an investment in indexes linked to your pension, there's nothing stopping everyone putting their own money into an index themselves. The question makes sense, how many people could the market support if everyone was investing and not spending.
> A 401K is just an investment in indexes linked to your pension, there's nothing stopping everyone putting their own money into an index themselves This is mostly incorrect. A 401k in the United States is a tax-advantaged investment account. You can buy shares of individual companies, you can purchase index funds, you can leave it there as cash, buy gold, or just about anything you want or you'd expect to be able to…
The only pure advantage is employer matching if you have it and stay employed long enough for it to vest.
So not exactly a necessity to build wealth.
I don't know why you are asking about pedophiles and sex trafficing - The Dow is over 50,000 right now, the S&P is at almost 7,000, and the Nasdaq is smashing records. Americans' 401(k) savings are booming, thats what we should be talking about.
it was 50k in February but 45k today, S&P down to 6300 from almost 7k in February and the latest 401(k) reports are from Q4 2025 so your numbers are based on months ago before the Iran war.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Try being in a relationship with someone who may become a target of the administration due to their status as a resident (but not citizen) of the USA and tell me the outcomes don't change. You're right. I need to calm down. It's all theater that doesn't impact real people. We can just go about our merry way because no one has been kidnapped by federal agents in defiance of judicial orders.
I wasn't trying to be a jerk. There was a massive protest in the US this past weekend. Millions of people standing in solidarity. This was the 3rd such protest, each larger than the last. What has changed? One of these days the US will realize that emoting together with costumes and posterboards, bitching online, and loudly talking about how "my team is right!" is not effective. So, in what ways is it effective to gi…
The people of Montgomery in the 60's boycotted a bus for a few weeks. What changed? They just got hosed down in the end.
If you're hoping for instantaneous change over a single event, you're not going to see that over a mass protest. The point of protests is to bring awareness and change sentiment.
>So, in what ways is it effective to give a fuck about national politics?
Kristi Noem didn't get fired because people "didn't give a flying fuck about politics". We aren't seeing dozens of republican representatives retire or not run for reelection because "people didn't give a shit about politics". The Epstien files, the push back against ICE, the pressure against the SAVE Act. I can go on all day.
If you feel powerless then feel free to stand by. But let's not pretend that absolutely nothing has changed just because you don't bother to read up on the news you admitted you "don't give a shit about"
Looking over the course of these past 15 months, it's clearly having some effect. I'm sorry if it's not fast enough for you, but not all problems are solved by bullets. Feel free to prove me wrong if you want.