I believe ACAB, and my cousin is actively trying to become a state trooper.

Doesn’t mean I walk up and spit in his face at every family gathering. We talk, we grew up together, we shoot the shit and have a good time.

But if he asked me to condone or celebrate his job? Nah, he knows how I feel about the police and their profession, as long as he’s safe and not drinking the Kool aid (he will) that’s all I can hope. And that maybe he’ll open his eyes someday. 🤷‍♀️

As a hard rule, though, I won’t date cops or mess around with them. One reached out on a dating app recently and I just politely responded with “I’m not interested in law enforcement, sorry” to which I got “Uh, I’m actually a correctional officer.”

Cool, so you abuse people after the police have finished abusing them, that’s not the brag you think it is.

Damn, you’re right, I misremembered!

Welp, I still think it deserved one more, haha.

Galavant, it was a show that only lasted a season, two seasons, but was just kind of a medieval-era musical drama/comedy that didn’t take itself too seriously.

The songs were catchy, the characters were a little corny but grew on you, and the actors could sing fairly well. But, it only got one season and ended on a cliffhanger, so we’ll never know what could have been I think it deserved one more season to bring some closure to some things. :/

🎶Way back in days of old, there was a legend told, about a hero known as Galavant🎶

Edit: another user pointed out a few things I was wrong about, edited to correct.

To win an election, you have to convince the conservatives that it is in their best interest to vote for the progressive candidate.

I disagree with you, to win an election, you need to convince voters to vote for you. That’s it. Democrats have tried to win over conservatives in at least 2024 and the start of the 2020 campaign (before Biden worked with Bernie’s campaign to run on more progressive stuff).

And they keep losing. If what everyone on Lemmy keeps saying is true, roughly 1/3rd of the country voted Dem, 1/3rd voted Rep, and 1/3rd didn’t vote. And if we’re to believe people who say “both parties” genuinely feel that way, and those people are likely to belong to the 1/3rd who don’t vote…

Why are Dems trying to win over the conservatives at all? Show the 1/3rd of the populace who doesn’t vote that you’re not both the same. No, you’re never going to get 100% voter turnout, but if 77 million (Trump’s popular vote count) is 1/3rd, that means there’s roughly 77 million people that can be won over to vote.

So the Dems need to go after them, and they need to start running on actual progressive policy and positive change for the average American. They need to stop letting Republicans control the narrative for them on their ideas and policies. Obama won on the message of Hope, Biden won on the back of Bernie’s progressive policies, and Trump has won twice now on change.

The common denominator is change, the current system isn’t working for the average American, and people aren’t going to support the status quo. We can sit here and insult Magas and conservatives and comment on how empty their brains are or how selfish they may be or ignorant or incestual or whatever. I get it, I’ve done it, but I bet you at their core, they want something in this country to change for the better.

So they gambled on Trump in 2016, and regardless of your opinion on it, Trump spent four years showing people that you can change things, you can get things done, you just have to break all the rules and norms to do it. Biden gave people hope in 2020 (plus the COVID handling by Trump) so they rebuked Trump.

After four years of the average American seeing no material improvement to their lives (that’s all I’m arguing here, not whether or not Biden actually got anything done), and the Dem candidate running on “I’m going to maintain the course,” people stayed home. They showed the Dems in 2020 that progressive policies win, and yet the Dems still tried to win over voters from the other side as opposed to winning over the roughly 77 million who stay home.

It almost feels like willful ignorance on the behalf of these so-called liberal elite. The simpler explanation, though, is probably money, and that’s why people say “both sides are the same.” It’s because money: both sides of the aisle still insider trade despite it’s unpopularity with Americans, both sides of the aisle still hold expensive campaign dinners with the wealthy elite, and both sides still accept billions of dollars in campaign funds from the oligarchs. My cousin supports Bernie with his heart of hearts, but will not vote because “both sides are the same, I want actual change.”

Progressives need to take the helm from the liberals of the DNC and get PAC and oligarch money out of their organization (which will never happen). They need to show the American people that they not only believe in change, they will get it done, and it will benefit the people. They need to ditch this air of superiority and moral enlightenment and just get things done, stop condescending to your voting base, and make your constituency feel like you hear them.

Anecdotally, my dad and I were talking the other day about the election. He supported Trump in 2016 with some enthusiasm (just because Trump wasn’t a politician and “I make more when Repubs are in office”). Him and I stopped talking for almost 2 years after the election. But the other day, he kinda surprised me by saying, “Y’know, I don’t like Trump, I think he’s an asshole, I didn’t want to vote for him… But I just can’t vote for those pompous Democrats.”

I told him how disappointed I was in the DNC, and he said he liked Kamala, but didn’t trust the Dems (I know, the irony is not lost on me). I asked him how he felt about Bernie, and surprisingly, he made a joke about how we’d all have to learn to talk with our hands if he won. But talking policy ideas, my dad supports all of Bernie’s stuff, he just thinks the Dems are out of touch with blue collar folks like himself.

He doesn’t care that you’ve written a letter condoning the breaking of precedent to the Parliamentarian, and through the process of Habeas Corpus and Secretariat, after 12 years maybe they’ll acknowledge they did wrong. Doesn’t make sense to you, right?

Well, that’s because it’s nonsense, which is basically what the average American hears whenever the Dems get on their pulpit and start finger pointing and blaming everyone but themselves about why they couldn’t get things done. The average American living paycheck to paycheck, who doesn’t have a college degree, and likely hasn’t taken a civics class since high school, doesn’t care about all of these little caveats and the intricacies of an arbitrary system of rules and norms that they created. They aren’t going to sit down and research various political theories and then do a deep dive on the various roles and powers each different tiny figurehead amongst the federal government has and does not have, rounding out the night with a hefty portion of the history and precedent surrounding constitutional law.

They’re just not, and we need to stop pretending they will, or that people will even do the bare minimum of understanding how a bill becomes a law. So run on things they understand, and then actually get them done.

But lying? Nah, look at the division Biden pardoning his son has caused on Lemmy, lying isn’t the answer. They need to run on actual, positive change, and then work to actually make it happen, not these half-assed attempts we keep getting like the ACA.

This turned into a book, but I liked your write up.

it should be “Trump returns to White House despite the 14th Amendment saying he can’t.”

I agree, if only there had been someone in charge of a government agency with the mandate to go after people like that, using a system of laws and justice, administered in some kind of court… Ideally someone the offender didn’t appoint themselves, with a time period of roughly, idk, 4 years to get it done?

USPS will never text you unless you have your account set up that way. My mom sends me these texts asking if they’re legit, and I always ask, “Did you order something?” No. “Well, then why would you have a delayed package?”

Again, USPS will not text you like this, and they use a .gov domain.

Correct: I have had two jobs where I only worked 32 hours/week, but was considered a full time employee with benefits and all that.

However, just because your employer considers you full-time doesn’t mean other organizations will. When I was getting my mortgage, it was with one of those 32 hr/week jobs, and my loan company would not sign off on an approval until I could show a paystub with 40 hours/week.

I told them I’m considered full time at my company at 32 hours, and they basically said that’s great, but their policy is 40.

Ah, I misread that, fair point. 👍

In Wagner’s estimation, it takes 13 milliseconds for the brain to process information from the eye, a hundred milliseconds to feel pain. But 13 milliseconds into the implosion, there is nothing left intact of the cylindrical section of the Titan.

“They would have been dead ten milliseconds ago,” says Wagner. “They wouldn’t really feel anything or see anything coming. They would just be instantly dead

Source

I used to be a mail carrier, so I’ve got a few stories I could share.

There was the 95 year old retired Army vet who would give me a bottle of wine as a tip at Christmas. The first time I met him, he was writing his name on the top of his mailbox in sharpie, and when I asked why, he said, “Because the doofus you have delivering our mail keeps mixing up the boxes,” to which I responded, “Well, as that doofus, I apologize, I just started” and he started laughing and apologizing. He’d greet me from the porch every day with his mug of wine and a hearty “Oh boy, here comes trouble!”

There was the house that refused to empty their mailbox of mail, they’d only take packages. I took all their mail from their full box like 3 times over the course of six months, making them come pick it all up, and they kept doing it. So, one day, I had two small packages, and their mailbox was 3/4 full. I knew if I just threw the packages in there, the packages would be grabbed and the box would be full of mail the following week.

So, I pulled all the mail out, put the packages in the very back, and put all the mail back on top of it. She called the supervisor at the post office saying they weren’t on her back porch, he told her the packages were scanned delivered and they should be there, check the mailbox. She called him back and said the mailbox was empty. He told her he’d contact me and figure out what happened.

He called me, and asked where the woman’s packages were. I told him this was the house that wouldn’t empty their mailbox, so, I put them under all of her mail to try to force them to take their mail. He laughed and told me when I got back later that she had called back and said she still couldn’t find them despite “looking in the mailbox,” and he simply told her to empty it and she’d likely find them.

Had a house that kept leaving their dog off leash, and it would run up and bark at me while I was walking around their neighborhood. Per USPS policy, if a dog is outside and loose without any kind of fence/leash/etc, then the neighborhood doesn’t get mail that day. I told the kids they needed to keep the dog inside, I told the mother, I told their neighbors, and I was working the issue with my postmaster. The PM called them twice and sent them a letter telling them the dog is either inside when I pull up, or we’re not delivering anymore.

Well, I got one house past the dog’s house, and it came sprinting out the front door, barking and running for me. I’d had enough, and I snapped. I stomped, stood my ground, and shouted at this dog and it just stopped and started running back. Their son was in the yard, and (I feel bad in hindsight about it) I kinda yelled at the kid, telling him that damn dog was supposed to be in the house, their parents knew this, and they were lucky I didn’t dog-spray the little shit (the dog, not the kid). Whole time the kid is frozen, a yard away, just staring at me.

I continue walking my loop, still irate, when I see this guy starting to walk towards me, asking me why I was yelling at his son. I turned and asked why, after all of the warnings and requests they’d gotten, they couldn’t keep their fucking dog inside for 15 minutes a day when I’m here. He followed me on my loop, kept asking me to stop and talk to him, as we’re shouting at each other all across his neighbor’s lawns. I just kept telling him I had nothing to discuss with him since him and his family clearly couldn’t listen, and I strongly encouraged him to call the post office.

So he asked for my name, and I told him “Dave, no need to write it down, I’ll be letting my postmaster know you and I spoke,” and left. When I got back to the office at the end of the day, I was pulled into the office and handed a stack of letters from my postmaster. “You’re to deliver all of these to that neighborhood tomorrow, this is the 4th instance of that dog being loose, the whole neighborhood is going to the curb.” (This means moving the mailboxes from the house to the road) Well, the neighbors absolutely lost their shit that they were being forced to move their mailboxes because of their irresponsible neighbor, even asking me about it as I would go through the neighborhood.

To end on a slightly lighter note: the reason I told the guy my name was “Dave” was because it was the unofficial response for our office. We had a carrier named Dave that was kinda the office punching bag (he took it well and gave it right back). The old timers told me that years ago, one of the carriers Scott (I think) got into with a woman on his route. Like, in each other’s faces, shouting, cussing, etc, it was heated. Well, when the woman asked for Scott’s name, he said, “Dave!”

Dave got back to the office that day, and the PM is laying into him about how he was speaking to this customer. He’s shouting back at her that he has no idea what she’s talking about, and she keeps insisting the woman said the carrier’s name was Dave. She checked the address, and it wasn’t on Dave’s route, so then she started yelling at him about why he was so far from his route (this was before the GPS-enabled scanners). All the while, Scott is laughing his ass off in the break room listening to all of it until they realized and started yelling at him, haha.

Last one (again, not my story, but another from an old timer): Back in the 80s/90s, the post office was a different beast: no GPS tracking, no cell phones, if management wanted to observe you work outside the office, they had to either find you or ride along with you. Because of that, carriers used to do all kinds of stuff back in the day that you can’t now (like everyone finishing their routes by 11 am, and then all going to the bar until 3 before heading back to the office).

Well, this one carrier had one of the “rough” routes in his city, but he was always treated well because he brought the government checks every month. Well, his customers knew when their checks arrived every month, so on that day, he’d park at a bar at the end of this long street, and just drink his beer while the customers came through and got their checks. When everyone from that end of the road had come through, he’d drive to the bar at the opposite end of the road and repeat, since everyone had just watched him drive by. And they’d all cycle through, all while he sat on a stool, drinking his beer, and making his bread for the day.

So is it fair to the family not to mourn?

How many families of Holocaust victims were given the privilege and closure of mourning and burying their loves ones?

I agree that no person is at fault for the actions of their family or their ancestors, but, their family’s actions do no negate the consequences of those actions. Seeing what people like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini did to their own people, nevermind what they did to those of other countries… Do their families have more right to mourn their loss than the people do who suffered at their authoritarian hands?

I would argue no, because life isn’t fair, but also because the amount of suffering enacted should not be met with honor or remembrance or respect. The family of authoritarians can mourn in their heads, if they do choose, but I would argue they should choose not to. There’s no “separating the art from the artist” when it comes to authoritarian genociders. Mourning their life isn’t just mourning the loss of them, but the loss of everything they did in their life as well.

If you’ve lived the kind of life where people are debating the morality around whether or not you deserve a funeral, I’d say you don’t deserve one.

Hell, they’ll probably make us pay back the economic impact payments we got during the last pandemic.

The G looks completely unrelated to any of the other letters.

I see this, since half of the letters appear to be uppercase, and the other half lowercase:

JaGUar

So… Explain to me how continuing to support the genocide of 3 million West Bank Palestinian lives is caring about the lives of 3 million West Bank Palestinians? And remind me… What support were the Dems showing when, the day after the election, two congressional Democrats came out and said the DNC was too woke on trans issues.

So… Explain to me how the DNC immediately scapegoating the trans community after their abysmal loss due to their own failed campaign… Is showing that they care about American trans lives? Where in her, or any Democrats campaign, was their platform for enshrining LGBTQ+ equality into law? Huh, funnily enough, drag, none of them had one.

And then… Explain to me how the DNC and Biden refusing to let Ukraine use long-range American weapons inside of Russian territory for well over two years is showing care and concern for Ukrainian people? Or, why does Ukraine, who are fighting off a foreign invader, why do they have stipulations on how they can use American weapons, but Israel can just level hospital after hospital in Gaza and that’s completely morally justified? At least Ukraine aims for strategic resource infrastructure and not apartment blocks and schools like Israel (who still is receiving Biden, and then de facto because she doesn’t do anything against it, Harris, unconditional support from the Biden admin).

Lives you are so apathetic about, you can’t even see them as different from any other statistic.

So you’re completely fine with the 43,000 Palestinian civilians who have been killed at the hands of Biden and Harris administration, those are just a statistic that you’re completely fine with because… They’re worth losing because statistically there are more lives to save in your own country.

Wow, I had to look it up, but you’re right drag… Someone choosing not to support a genocide is completely apathetic, but you, the one willing to trade Palestinian lives for American trans lives, you’re the most empathetic person I’ve ever met. Literally the definition of empathy right here, folks!!! The embodiment of the fucking Buddha right here, kill as many Palestinians as needed, they’re just collateral compared to Americans trans lives.

Again, the same lives the DNC threw under the bus the day after the election.

Good to see you’re continuing to double down on your absurdity, drag, still can’t find anyone to point the finger at besides non-voters? How many letters and phone calls have you made to your Democratic elected officials demanding they take more action against your morally just causes? I imagine none, since you seem more concerned with alienating and disenfranchising non-voters than you are actually fixing liberalism and the DNC as a whole.

You’re wasting your breath, drag is Lemmy’s morally enlightened philosopher who somehow thinks non-voters are to blame for not choosing to support a genocide, but the DNC is completely blameless in their unconditional support of a fascist committing a genocide because Trump would commit it worse.

Drag’ll likely respond and start insulting your intelligence, will probably call you a nazi fascist who wants drag and all of drag’s friends dead, and then try to explain why not supporting genocide is significantly worse than supporting it.

All while acting like drag’s the ooooooooonly one who understands how the world works, how morality works, how individual understandings of the world may vary from person to person to culture.

And if you write more than 4 sentences, drag will complain that you’re long-winded and taking too many words to “be wrong.” And that you’re writing as much as you are because you “fail to understand what drag is saying.”

In other words, drag let drag’s fleeting popularity due to a post regarding drag’s preferred pronouns give drag the impression that drag is morally and intellectually superior to those around drag.

Aka, drag is a joke, don’t waste your breath arguing with Lemmy’s most enlightened fascism supporting liberal cOmMuNiSt. 🙄

Three Mile Island, and they want to do it to power their AI development. Not move their current servers and infrastructure to the nuclear power grid.

And the owner of Three Mile Island, who’s working with Microsoft, is trying to get the fed to give him the money needed to get the plant running again. Taxpayer money for Microsoft’s AI project that they’ll reap all the reward from.

Why’d the cookie go to the hospital?

He was feeling crummy!

What’d the envelope say to the stamp?

Stick with me, kid, we’ll go places.

Only thing I’ll disagree with you here is the machinist comment. My dad’s been a machinist for like 45 years now, same industry, same building.

He is constantly complaining to me that they can’t find machinists, or even people who are willing to learn. I have zero machining experience, and he was trying to get me hired at one point, that’s how desperate they were getting.

And it’s not a bad company, to be clear, they’re a government contractor, have very good benefits, competitive pay (he’s even complained they’ve given guys with a year’s experience multi-dollar raises to keep them), etc.

According to him, if you have mechanical aptitude and are willing to learn all of the intricacies of machining, you can and will make a decent salary for the rest of your life so long as you’re willing to work.

My dog has to smell my breath after I eat/drink something. If I’m eating a sandwich, he’ll watch the whole time, and when I’m done, he’ll hop up and start sniffing/licking for crumbs.

Then he’ll stand on my lap, and put his nose up to my face, sniffing and kinda wagging his tail. I’ll open my mouth wide, and start exhaling, and he’ll eagerly start sniffing riiiiiiiiiight up against my mouth, wagging and kinda shifting his weight on his front legs. And if you don’t listen closely enough to his sniffing…

… He’ll sneeze in your mouth. 😂 He makes my friends do it too, and I do warn them about keeping their mouth open too long.

Beyond that, the only other weird thing he does (besides his crazy yoga poses he does in blankets on the couch) is lick the floor. If I’m cooking, he’s standing by the stove, ready to lunge at anything that falls to the floor. But when I’m done cooking, he’ll basically walk the entire kitchen floor, focusing primarily by the sink and stove, licking every speck of oil and crumb he can find. You’d think I never feed him based on how he acts towards food, but here we are. 😂

He nabbed some chili seeds off the floor one night before I could get them, and I asked him how they tasted while he’s walking around the kitchen, licking his chops over and over. Moved to his water bowl, drank a good chunk of that, moved to the living room, laid down there for a bit… All the while, licking his chops, trying to get the spicy to go away. And then he came back for more 😂

I attempted to deliver cremated remains once while I was a carrier for USPS. I say “attempted” because you have to have the recipient sign for cremated remains, but they weren’t home…

I’m not sure how I’d describe it, but it’s an odd feeling leaving a “Sorry We Missed You” pink slip for a person versus a package.