Yeah, that’s my thought. People sign a petition and go ‘welp, I’ve done my part!’ when they’ve literally done nothing constructive whatsoever.

Is there any evidence that petitions are effective when they’re not legally binding and are coming from the opposition?

Americans do actually frequently use the metric system, though. We tend to use a mix, with many more precise measurements, such as medicine, being measured in metric. There’s some weirdness, to be sure; if you buy weed in the US you’ll see it being measured in both ounces and grams. Millimeters for small things are pretty common, even while still using feet or miles.

Basically, we do whatever is convenient at the moment.

Nowhere near as confusing as disagreeing on what a million or a billion is.

It may be worth trying to get to a state that’ll be likely to try to fight this nonsense if you’re not already in one. I’m sure that’s something you’ve already thought about, but… this just makes it more dire.

I have to hold out hope that we can protect people to some degree at the state level.

Get rid of actual fascist imagery and references? Yes please. That shit is rampant.

Get rid of fucking Pepe? …Are you kidding? Way to make yourself and your argument seem fully out of touch. Yeah, sure, there was a point when Pepe was being coopted by right-wingers, but at this point? Like… have you been on discord once ever? Everybody uses Peepo. Moreover, half my trans friends use D&D emojis derived directly from Peepo.

People pointing fingers at Pepe are literally taking the bait and making themselves look less credible, which was presumably the point of it being adopted by assholes to begin with. That fight is over and we won and took it back. Yeesh.

So, step 1, substantially reduce agricultural migrant labor; step 2, create gulags for the neurodivergent to try to make up the difference? Lovely.

Amazon Graveyard sounds like a subscription service for apps that have been discontinued. Not like, a service that lets you keep using them, but you just get to have defunct apps that don’t work and pay Amazon for the pleasure.

Only $14.99 per month! One IP per subscription!

Sometimes it’s hard to know whether it’d be better, as a blueberry bush, to be relocated from harm’s way or to hold out hope that the path of destructive changes will be routed around the ground they grow in. Those making the changes to the soil probably won’t prioritize them, even if those who are stewards of their particular patch of soil do.

Transplanting can be a shock, and it’s hard to know what the situation is beneath the surface before it’s time to put down roots and see how they grow. It’s probably a good strategy for many of these plants, but it leaves uncertainty for each individual patch.

It’s definitely a lot to think about. For blueberries.

I mean, it looks more like a Jeep or a Bronco if you ask me.

Yeah, maybe. I hope so. I feel like they could just have rat races, throw it on youtube, and make a bit of money for more funding if they really wanted to. I’d watch.

Interesting article! A bit weird that they felt the need to plug the ugliest vehicle ever created, but the findings are certainly interesting! It’s hard not to read enthusiasm into that little rat scooting along in its rat car!

It’s disheartening to think that at the end of the experiment they’ll just kill the poor thing, though. Like, I get not wanting to use the same rats from study to study so that you have a proper control, but there has to be a less heartless way of doing that.

As much as I’d love for more progressive states to be able to bring our ideals and innovations to the rest of the country, at the end of the day I’d much rather we do our thing and they do theirs than they dictate to us that we have to move backward. I can think of much worse things than Massachusetts getting to be Massachusetts and Texas getting to be Texas. Maybe we could even stop giving so much money to red payee states that drag us down collectively with their authoritarian reactionary bullshit.

Good to hear! Thanks!

Good riddance. I hope they succeed.

Does this extend to not discussing plans, posting information about which states may be taking measures to protect their citizens or how effective those measures might be, or discussing things like resistance or mutual aid? Those seem like pretty important topics to be able to discuss.

Spam G in support.

Meow meow meow.

I literally changed my discord profile to a Tank Girl theme hours before Trump was elected when I was still pretty sure it’d be Harris. Yeesh.

I’ve been watching a lot of old 80s and 90s movies recently, and I noticed something starkly different from most of the movies I’ve seen coming out in the past decade or so, particularly the glut of superhero movies we had for a while there. With very few exceptions, all the protagonists were anti-establishment.

Star Wars, Ghostbusters, the Mario Movie, the Breakfast Club, the Princess Bride, it goes on and on and on. The heroes were all rebelling against some ignorant authority that either didn’t understand the damage it was able to do or didn’t care about hurting those who had no power. As a result, when I was coming up my generation felt very much against the established status quo. Even the kid-targeted stuff in the early 90s, it was all gross-out humor and struggling against adult authority in favor of personal autonomy. Nickelodeon takes over your school. As a teenager it was grunge and punk and everything being ‘extreme’.

The impression I get from a lot of the late 00s and 2010s fictional media, though, and much of what I’ve seen in the 20s so far, has been stories that are on-side with some big establishment. Even Peter Parker was turned into a suck-up for some billionaire. There are still instances of anti-authoritarianism, but it doesn’t seem to be the prevailing narrative the way it was. Instead it largely seems to be about going along with society and not bucking the system.

Maybe what we need, if we want to change things, is to instill that pushing against the establishment in the next generation again. That 70s and 80s era Muppets vibe. Turtles that live in the sewers because if they lived on the surface, the powers that be wouldn’t understand them. Otters living in poverty and being exploited by hoity-toity customers who decide not to pay them for their laundry services on Christmas in the first five minutes of the movie.

Did Chris Pratt Mario get into a chase with Koopa cops while fighting a corrupt authoritarian government? No he did not. He was on the side of a social order that was being disrupted by an evil musician.

Artists need to change the narrative and be intentional about it.

I’m looking at moving to the Netherlands! I have somewhere to stay, I’ve been starting to learn Dutch, and I’m in the process of getting all my plans sorted out! I do have some friends in Germany that I want to come visit at some point once I’m settled in, though, so maybe we could meet up at some point! It definitely would be good to sort of build some community in Europe!

I spent this morning getting the paperwork ready to get my passport and learning what I need to do to get out. I’m going to need to figure out some financial stuff and either sell or ship my vehicle, but the more I look the more appealing it seems. This has been a wakeup call for me. Things in the US are really screwed up, even before a second Trump term, and I absolutely can go live a better life somewhere else.