Jesus, Trump thinks he’s Walter White. I mean, Trump is a malignant narcissist, egomaniac, who is simultaneously a pathetic loser and a dangerous, power hungry, psychopath, but at least Heisenberg knew chemistry. Mr. White was at least educated, and he could run a successful business. Does Trump even know what chemistry is?

Occidental says the captured carbon will be stored in rock deep underground, but its website also refers to the company’s use of captured carbon in a process called “enhanced oil recovery.” This involves pushing carbon into wells to force out the hard-to-reach remnants of oil — allowing fossil fuel companies to extract even more from aging oil fields.

Well, they have to sell the carbon they capture to make money. If you suck up carbon and put it underground, where’s your revenue stream? The ground ain’t paying you to stuff it full of carbon. These big vacuums ain’t free, they have to pay for them somehow.

"Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy

Taking shape? Like it’s new? Like it’s only now just emerging? Jesus Christ, Biden…

Fucking neoliberal trash.

I hope by now everyone understands that you don’t need to be especially intelligent to be a multi billionaire.

The biggest factor pushing up egg prices is a wave of avian flu, which began in early 2022 and led to the culling of millions of egg-laying hens. With demand remaining steady, the reduced supply has caused prices to rise.

Supply and demand, folks. Supply and demand. Demand high, supply low? Price goes up. Supply high, demand low, prices goes down.

While prices are expected to ease from late 2024 highs, they will likely stay above pre-outbreak levels through 2025.

Or indefinitely. Once people get used to paying a higher price for eggs, what’s to stop the stores from keeping the prices relatively high, even if the wholesale price goes down? If a store can increase their profit margins on eggs, why wouldn’t they? Especially if the store is a large corporation, always looking to maximize profit and return for shareholders.

Some people might say, “competition will bring the price down. Once one store lowers their price to gain a competitive edge, other stores will have to follow or risk losing customers.” To this I say: who the hell comparison shops for eggs? Look, I’m sure some people do, but, if most people are like me, they’re not going to multiple stores to see who has the lowest price for a dozen eggs. I go to one store, my favorite store, and I just get the same eggs I’m used to getting. Even if I did want to comparison shop, not all stores are going to sell my preferred eggs (I know a lot of people will say, eggs are eggs, but I like cage free eggs even though it’s probably bullshit I like to think my eggs aren’t coming from chickens who are stuffed into those little wire cages all day), so it would be hard to do an apples to apples comparison.

Plus, as more and more stores become consolidated into fewer and fewer major retailer chains, even the theoretical idea of price regulation through competition goes out the window.

I think this is very true, but how do we organize a society around science? Science can tell us many important things, but it can’t necessarily tell us what we should value or what is moral. There are very intelligent, educated people trying to develop moral and ethical frameworks, using critical thinking and reasoning, but how do we ensure those frameworks become the basis for society? Even in a democracy, the people can choose to adopt those moral and ethical frameworks (assuming the people are even aware they exist), but they can also choose not to. Of course that’s true of any ruler, so I’m not saying that’s unique to democracy, but I’m just saying that democracy doesn’t necessarily solve the problem of rulers ruling unethically.

There’s technocracy, but for a technocracy to function, wouldn’t the technocrats need to have a fairly significant amount of power? I don’t necessarily think that technocracy is completely antithetical to democracy, but the technocrats would need the authority to override the people, whenever the people would try to implement some policy that was unscientific, making the technocrats, not the people, the ultimate authority.

Probably jobs that didn’t need to exist in the first place. Unfortunately, people need the money, even if the jobs themselves aren’t necessary. It’s like in the Soviet Union where they would create superfluous jobs so that everyone could have a job, and an income.

His only comment on grocery prices was during his interview with Time magazine for his man of the year article in which he admitted that there isn’t much he can do to bring grocery prices back down to the levels of 2019. Economically, the only thing that will do that is a strong recession that no one wants.

This is what folks don’t seem to understand: prices only go back to where they were five or six years ago if there’s a recession, and a severe one at that. The Fed is trying to get inflation under control, but even if they’re successful, that doesn’t mean prices will come down, that only means prices won’t go up as quickly. Getting inflation under control means prices go up 2% per year instead of 2.5% or 3%. Trump can’t change any of this, and many of the policies he says he plans to implement would likely make it more difficult to get inflation down to the Fed’s 2% target.

TLDR, shit ain’t getting any less expensive unless there’s a pretty bad recession, and Trump can’t change that.

I suppose I’m happy for the economy. I mean, I’m glad it’s doing better than ever, I guess, but I’ve got my own issues. Sorry if that sounds selfish, but it’s just hard for me to get too excited for the economy when I’m stressed about my own situation.

Several U.S. states have enacted laws requiring pornography sites, such as PornHub, to implement age verification to prevent minors’ access

Doesn’t seem too unreasonable. When I buy alcohol I have to provide verification that I’m over 21.

The thing is, how do they enforce it? People in those states can still access pornhub through a VPN. Plus, what about all the other many, many porn sites?

I get what they’re trying to do, but I think there are some logistics that haven’t really been thought out.

I feel like the courts hands were tied here. How do you put a man who was just elected to be the next president in prison, or even on probation? Ultimately, the decision was made by the American voters.

That being said, even if Trump had lost this election, he still probably wouldn’t have done any time in prison, since he still would have been a former president, and that would have been a tricky enough situation.

I’ve felt for a while now that there is more than one kind of nationalism. One is supremacist, colonialist, and imperialist. This, I think, is the nationalism people think of when they think of nationalism. This is the nationalism of Nazi Germany, for instance. It’s the nationalism of people who believe strongly in hierarchies, especially ones that they believe are “natural.” They believe that some individuals are inherently superior to other individuals, and they believe that some groups are inherently superior to other groups. They seek to establish hierarchies of power within their nation, but also between nations.

In the context of today’s world, in which the US is the dominant global superpower, American “nationalists” believe that the US is inherently superior to all other nations, and, therefore, that the US global hegemony should not only be maintained, but expanded. They believe it is right and good and natural for the US to rule and dominate the globe, because, in their mind, we are just superior to all other nations.

I think there is another kind of nationalism, though, one of people who seek independence and autonomy for their group or nation, usually from an imperialist power. It’s one in which people who value their distinct culture and history want to see to it maintained and preserved. They don’t believe their culture is superior to all others, they just believe it should exist without interference from outside groups.

I understand and sympathize with the latter kind of nationalism, but I do not understand, and I in fact hate and despise, the former. I do not believe that any group of people is inherently superior to any other. I reject supremacism in its entirety. I believe that any nation has just as much right to exist peaceably as any other. I wholeheartedly reject colonialism, expansionism, imperialism, and supremacism, but I support the right of any nation to exist, on their piece of the Earth, with their distinct culture, independently and autonomously, so long as they can do so peacefully.

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The title of the article is: ‘Jimmy Carter Wasn’t a Liberal,’ yet here they say,

It would be wrong to call Carter himself a conservative. He was instead a Southern liberal, which meant that from a national perspective he was a somewhat conservative Democrat.

So, which is it? Is he a liberal or not? They can’t seem to make up their mind.

Also, the article says that Carter helped usher in the Reagan era, which is true, but the political paradigm that reached its zenith in the 80s under Reagan was neoliberalism.

We here in the US really need to stop using “liberal” to mean left wing. It’s stupid. Let’s join the rest of the world and start using words correctly, maybe open a book that covers a part of the world other than the US.

Liberalism is not necessarily left wing. In fact, I would argue that liberalism is generally center to center-right. Some liberal ideologies are further left than others, for instance social liberalism, but that’s only one kind of liberalism. The dominant form of liberalism over the past forty to fifty years is neoliberalism, and it is definitely a center-right ideology.

So, yes, Jimmy Carter was a liberal, he just wasn’t a social liberal, he was a neoliberal, which is center-right.

Their sustainability solution states that we don’t see any evidence of ETIs because rapid growth is not a sustainable development pattern. From this perspective, the Kardashev Scale is rendered futile. No civilization will ever use all available energy from its planet, star, or galaxy, because the growth required to reach that level of mastery is unsustainable.

I think that makes so much sense. I don’t think it makes sense to define “advanced” as a civilization that grows at a rapid and exponential rate, like a plague of locusts, depleting nonrenewable resources and causing irreparable damage to the only human habitable planet known to exist in the entire universe. Even if it can be considered advanced, it should also be considered extremely unwise.

The only democratic socialist in mainstream politics I still listen to is Bernie Sanders. Most every other demsoc doesn’t have anything to say that I find all that worth listening to. There are some demsocs in the media or online who I still listen to, but they are relatively few and far between.

Certain socialists, mostly.

Well, I’m not personally interested in listening to either.

I understand not listening to liberals. I try not to listen to them whenever possible, but Trump is obviously worse than them, in essentially every way.

It’s like people have this natural tendency to support whoever stands in opposition to the people they don’t like, regardless of whether or not they are any better. Like people think, “hmm, I don’t really like liberals, and this Trump fella says he doesn’t like liberals either, therefore he must be good.” You can’t do a little more critical thinking thank that?

I think you’re going to have a pretty sort of normal transfer, and I think we will respect the wishes of the American people …

Yeah, why fight it. We had an election and the outcome was very clear.