All True. But the severity of consequences, who feels them and how do we fix or replace the systems are all soft problems. They all have solutions, and aren’t any harder than we want to make them.

“Was Trump oblivious to…”

Stop. No need to elaborate. The answer is yes.

Not to be rude, but who cares? Authoritarian governments could send a goon squad and shoot you in the face extrajudicially. Seeing they are already doing that for such severe threats to authority as being in a public space, they have no threats left to make. Edit: not making guillotine jokes is not protection.

It’s worth delineating hard problems vs soft problems. A hard problem are things like climate change. Fundamental, unavoidable issues with systemic consequences for everyone.

Then there are soft problems. where man made systems abused by man made corruption become unstable. They really boil down to who is holding left holding the bag. The rich wants to bail themselves out and leave the poor to suffer the consequences. The poor think the rich who shit the bed can lie in it.

Debt bombs are a soft problem. Nothing to get worked up over. Just be ready to practice what you preach when the soft problems come.

Everyone makes good and bad decisions, including your mom.

After the headline, but before the article I thought - Define “center” or Ellison’s, The Guardian’s and the public polls are less than dogshit.

My second thought was here is another public figure trying to influence a public conversation whose only qualification is being rich.

Let’s not pretend we didn’t call it during his first election. Then he proved us right. We elected him again so it became his democratic mandate.

Vote for Biff Tannen, get his corrupt distopia.

Two thoughts to consider. First is that the author might be abusing language in a way that deliberately obscures meaning, to pursue another goal. I.e. appearing intellectual or appealing to a reader who wants to fit this aesthetic.

The second is that LLMs do this as well. As they adapt to the language in your questions and subject material, they can diverge from the ideal path of bridge building between the reader and subject matter and either dumb it down so as to lose meaning (not explain in laymen’s terms), or further obscure meaning by hallucination, misinterpretation, abuse of language in trying to appear to be something.

It may help. It may hurt. They aren’t reliable enough yet to know which is which especially when you are unfamiliar enough with the material and trusting the system is all you got. The better method is joining a book club or perhaps a discussion forum for the fans of the book if available. Maybe a forum on the general topic were you might encounter other readers where you can discuss the topic.

How do we post this as a sticky across most of the socio-political-economic subs.

Can anyone translate this into old people? I think he’s asking for dickpics and some sort of cumshot distance competition.

Subtitle: How the NYT can eat a bag of fascist dicks.

A trade partner of second last resort.

This is just the most immediate face of their food problem. 1 Billion people + rapidly depleting groundwater + rapidly depleting glacial water + climate change = famine. Everyone is vulnerable but few moreso than india.

Have you considered doing the right thing for once? Then as the real alpha move, stick with doing the right thing.

…twwwooo weeeeks…

You’re all wrong! Fools!

Everyone knows it’s a Kirk era tricorder.

You dropped an x. <–Take this and put it back where it belongs.

Nothing that corrupt was meant to last.

They knew.

My dog sleeps right in between me and my wife. She likes to be the big spoon and the little spoon.