“Why make a good product if you can put your effort into making it just seem like your product is good? This way you can pivot around more flexibly. Instead of having to possess a wide array of hard-earned skills you can make specific content about, you can simply learn the skills of marketing, branding and style, and now you can bullshit your way through anything you want.”

-many modern business practices

Bah. Who needs NATO when you have the world’s best pikemen?

Subterranean lizardmen, of course.

like diabetes and obesity

With obesity in particular, that’s not exactly the most complicated illness in the world.

Uh huh. Sure thing boss.

Yeah, pretty much. Collaborative storytelling is the most apt description I’ve heard. Could probably add “rng aided” and you’ve captured pretty much everything about it. It’s definitely one of those “all about the journey, not the destination” sort of things, sort of like a road trip. Also like a road trip, can be anywhere from meticulously planned to basically being railroaded on down to “uh, how about that way?” or anything in between.

I don’t know about “loving” NATO, military alliances aren’t the most loveable things. They’re necessities for protecting from our thousands of years of conquering each other very, very frequently, unless you’re a believer in that neo-lib idea of free trade preventing war.

Understanding NATOs importance is the more important thing imo.

edit: Loving NATO is like loving your car insurance. Do you love it? No, probably not. Should you just get rid of it? No, probably not, unless you just never drive.

Fair point, that is logical.

Since you’re in an unusual situation, it may help set your mind at ease if you simply open up with a very short, but earnest chat about setting expectations.

Just something like “hey, I just wanted to get this off my chest, but I’m not really good at stuff like this, and I kinda just want to hang out and see how things go. i don’t know how I feel about physical affection, but I know it takes me a long time to warm up to people, and i want to give you a chance but don’t want to get your hopes up or anything. that okay with you?”

That last line is pretty key, as it gives the other person an early opt out chance. It’s like “click here to accept the terms and conditions” basically. Then once the pressure is off, just hang out and see if you get along.

Kissing isn’t hard btw, a single kiss is pretty much impossible to fuck up unless you’re massively overthinking it and going a little crazy. A make out session can be judged, but a single kiss doesn’t really last long enough to be able to really fuck it up in any even semi-reasonable way. It’s sort of like a handshake, even going way, way too hard or soft is just “whatever” since its so brief.

Any significant injury that results in paralysis would be a potential candidate. These become possible as soon as you become old enough to climb things like trees.

The 2024 presidential election saw record-high turnout

nearing 2020 levels

Is it just me or do these two statements directly contradict each other?

Ooh, they should train the next chatbot on 4chan.

Doesn’t his Sec of Defense nominee have a Deus Vult tattoo? Yeah, that doesn’t bode well…

Excellent. I wonder if we’ll finally hit a critical mass over there.

Was wondering how long it would take to roll something like this out. Bout time.

most Americans voted for a man they have every reason to believe is a rapist.

Minor quibble, but Trump won ~75 million votes by current count. Out of our population of 330 million people (including ineligible voters) that is 22.7%.

So no, most Americans did not vote for him.

I don’t fully agree with this, but I agree with enough of it that it doesn’t really matter. To add to it, now is the ideal time to push for reform in party leadership, after a major loss.

People like to focus on economic factors because they’re easily quantifiable. More vague factors disassociated from economic lifestyle are difficult to quantify, so harder to study and talk about. By way of example, though, when someone really hates black people, that’s not economic, it’s personal. It’s something else entirely. Men wanting power over women isn’t economic. Even immigration complaints aren’t really economic, that’s just an excuse to cover up much less defensible reasoning.

It’s partly a coping mechanism. I agree its no longer politically advantageous, but in the free world people can say what is on their mind, and this is apparently it. If consequences stem from that, then that is also part of freedom.

Is what it is.

They believed some of Trump’s bullshit. I suspect this was because they were exposed to more of that bullshit than any counter-messaging. This could be due to isolation from traditional sources of information.

Ultimately, I have to pin that on the Harris campaign. I wanted the prosecutor to prosecute the case against the criminal. But to do that you have to show up to the courtroom. Where is the courtroom these days? It’s not on CNN or 60 Minutes, it’s wherever the jury is hanging out. That’s online. Trump showed up there a lot more than she did.