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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: November 29th, 2023

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  • Dutch guy here. I definitely knew he was a terrible clown when it came to business, well before he ever ran for office.

    I mean… he’s so bad at running a business, he had several casinos go bankrupt. And those are pretty much a license to print money if you run them halfway decent. He also failed at stuff like running his own airline and a host of other ventures. I also knew he was at one time involved with the WWE, I knew about The Apprentice, Home Alone…

    Basically, if you were alive in the 90’s, you had plenty of opportunity to know about this clown of a ‘businessman’. When he ran, I figured it was a joke - a publicity stunt. Imagine my surprise when Americans actually voted for him!



  • Look at history. The 2003 Iraq war and subsequent occupation resulted in at least 150.000 deaths, at the absolute lowest estimate. The biggest estimate is over a million.

    Afghanistan? 176.000

    Gulf War? 50.000

    Yugoslav war? 130.000

    Vietnam War? 970.000 to 3 million.

    And those are conflicts that the US was directly involved in with boots on the ground. Few people lost sleep over any of those civilian casualties. Could you even point to Kosovo on a map?

    What’s another 50.000 dead Palestinians you ask? A rounding error on a footnote of history. It’s a statistic. And that’s ignoring the fact that this is happening in another country with only indirect US support.

    People SHOULD care about the Palestinians. But it’s just not relevant to the day to day lives of average Americans.





  • Ugh, can relate. I love to read; I used to go through two books per week as a kid during middle school and high school. Not even just fiction, but non-fiction about topics that interested me like space and aviation. I even read books on my Palm Pilot PDA, well before e-readers were a thing.

    So as you can imagine, I had an exceptional vocabulary compared to classmates. This had some annoying effects as well. Whenever I did written assignments for a new class with a different teacher, they’d always accuse me of either cheating or plagiarism. Because I was using way more ‘difficult words’ than classmates. A two minute conversation usually cleared it up; they quickly found out that I did in fact do the work and understood the assignment.

    I don’t envy teachers today. Reading comprehension has declined sharply, and kids just don’t like to read as much as they did when I was young. Despite the fact that books are now way more accessible to them. I fear it’s going to result in an illiterate generation…




  • I get it; the entire system sucks. Even here in the Netherlands with a dozen political parties, you rarely get the government you want. But there’s still things you can do even if you really don’t want to vote in this particular election.

    You can support groups that promote voting reform, like ranked choice voting. You can and should vote in all local elections. You can even RUN in many local elections, since candidates frequently run unopposed. You can help inform others about the voting process and get poorly represented groups to vote. If all else fails, there’s always the option of shooting your least favorite politician or doing an Oklahoma City. But try those other things first, OK?


  • FinishingDutch@lemmy.worldtoPolitical Memes@lemmy.worldDemocrats Vote
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    27 days ago

    Decisions are made by those who show up, it’s as simple as that.

    You may hate it, but the Republicans are definitely better at getting people in line, both literally and figuratively. They turn up and vote even if they don’t like the candidate because… that’s their party. And it’s the only one that they feel represents them.

    Meanwhile a lot of Democrats stay home because the candidate isn’t the one they wanted, doesn’t support everything they want, is too old/young, etc. There’s this attitude of ‘if I can’t have my perfect candidate, I’m staying home out of protest.’

    I get it. Every voter wants a perfect candidate. But perfect is the enemy of good, as the saying goes.

    I always look at it like this: if I vote, I might not always get the outcome that I want, but at the very least I’m nullifying the vote of a person on the other side.

    If the other guy shows up and you don’t? That’s how you lose rights.

    Be someone who shows the fuck up.



  • I recently purchased a new computer monitor; an LG Ultragear OLED. It’s as dumb as a bag of rocks - which is why I bought it.

    And let me tell you: it’s quite the search to find a monitor that DOESN’T have smart bullshit features built in. Most of them are now set up as if they were a TV first instead of a monitor - as in, you need to go deep into menus to find actual monitor settings.

    I’m glad I was able to find a dumb monitor, but I fear it might not be possible anymore when this needs replacement…


  • Yep. Same here. I’ve got a visual disability, which means I just can’t do things like ball sports. Which was all the PE teacher was really interested in doing. That and the cooper test. I also just don’t like sports in general. The teacher clearly wasn’t interested in trying to find something that worked with my disability.

    Year one in high school, I stopped going three months in. Because it obviously wasn’t going to improve.

    I basically took that hour to do homework, which was a much more productive use of my time.

    Three years later we got a halfway decent PE teacher who was actually willing to at least TRY and accommodate my disability. Hand painted ping pong balls with a bright yellow marker to get me to try that, bought some new colored balls, etc. While it still wasn’t my thing, I was at least willing to try it since he put in the effort. We got along fine because of it.

    As an adult though: I don’t do sports and it doesn’t interest me in the slightest.



  • I will definitely second that recommendation. They turn basically every shoe into a slipper.

    I was skeptical when I read about them, but gave them a go. Reason being: my feet swell during the day, which means I was constantly loosening my laces throughout the day. Which isn’t ideal.

    The Lock Laces help in that they’re always perfect: they flex with my feet and always have just the right tension.

    They are popular with a wide range of people. Triathletes like them for fast transitions since you don’t need to retie your shoes. Marathon runners also love them since it means no more laces getting undone. And yes, they’re obviously great for old folks and people with disabilities.

    I like them so much, I now put them on every new pair of shoes that I buy.



  • I still have PTSD from the era of the ‘polyphonic ringtone’ hype. Those were the ‘fancier’ ringtones that weren’t just your usual beep or bell.

    Usually you’d buy them by sending a text message to some expensive number and it would be sent to your phone. If you were dumb, you could get basically scammed into a ‘subscription’ so you’d get sent these expensive ringtones frequently. Many a teen got yelled at for that mistake in the late 90’s.

    If you were a tech savvy lad, you could hook your phone up to your Windows PC and upload shitty ringtones yourself as well as wallpapers and such.

    These days, who gives a shit? My iPhone ringtone is still the default ring. I honestly don’t care what it is, as it’s usually just annoying anyway.