I’m at one of the biggest airports in the world in the middle of a very red state today. The mood is somber. I have never seen this airport this quiet. There is no sense of pride or celebration here, and I know the majority of people around me voted for Trump.

If I were to speculate, I see scared faces and other faces too guilty to look anyone in the eye. Eye contact among strangers in an expectation here under normal circumstances, but not today. Everyone is aware on some level that this is a bad thing.

When Microsoft hears " how can Microsoft get any worse?" they have always taken that as a challenge.

This is after they decided to be one of the most public facing corporate sponsors of the genocide in Gaza.

Capitalists will say that it’s fine for an economy to have a few capitalists own all capital and all physical and intellectual property while common people are only allowed to rent it from the capitalists at whatever rate the capitalist pleases. However, capitalists will also say that the evil of socialism is that you won’t be allowed to own property. That’s the most capitalist thing I’m aware of.

This is why I put this in politics instead of news. This is such a calculated position technically reversing on something they were seemingly committed to to an absurd degree. Until now the WH has been consistent that it was not willing to even entertain the suggestion that any limitations at all be placed on “Isreal’s right to defend itself.” Allowing humanitarian support to mitigate the problems of disease and famine on the gaza strip is the absolute least of what needs to be demanded of Israel.

Netanyahu is really doing everything he can to start as big a war as possible. The US should not be enabling this madman to terrorize an entire region.

There isn’t one atrocity committed by the US or its allies that the NYT wasn’t in full support of. The “paper of record” is essentially the main distribution channel for COINTELPRO style bullshit.

All my exes are from Side 3

The Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy series are probably what you’re looking for. Golden age Square JRPGS, especially Xenogears, are also generally great Jrpgs.

I just watched some videos by a 19-year-old kid who wanted to study psychology in college. The first video I saw wqs about an easy meal to make in difficult situations and a reminder that people were starving. He was murdered on August 28th from indiscriminate bombing.

Toad in the streets, Link in the sheets.

You know, I think that’s accurate.

Being born to narcissistic parents was extremely controversial in my childhood home. I was the selfish little ingrate in the house who kept asking for things even though they already provided a house and food most of the time, and that was very polarizing for my parents.

I don’t know, more conservatives have gone after Trump than anyone.

Ohio is such a weird state. It is notorious for being an unpleasant place to live and I have met dozens of Ohioans who are very pleased to live anywhere else. That being said I disproportionatly have enjoyed the company of the Ohio refugees I’ve met. It has a way of exporting some cool people

I have two main thoughts on this

1. LLMs are not at this time reliable sources of factual information. The user may be getting something that was skimmed from factual information, but the output can often be incorrect since the machine can’t “understand” the information it’s outputting.

2. This could potentially be an excellent way to do real research for people who were not provided research skills by their education. Conspiracy theorists often start off as curious but undisciplined before they fall into the identity aspects of the theories. If a machine using human-like language is able to report factual information quickly, reliably, and without judgement to those who wouldn’t be able to find that info on their own, this could actually be a very useful tool.

You’re onto a very important aspect of fascist rhetoric. The lies have to be absurd. They have to be obviously wrong. They need the kind of people who are looking to belong to something greater than themselves, not people who look for evidence. Lies like these are a great filter to end up with uncritically loyal followers. Same as any cult.

Sartre wrote about the tendencies of anti-semites in 1944 who followed a similar model of “belief” to contemporary conservatives. Here’s a breakdown of that essay.

I think you’re making a similar mistake that I have made many times, which is to assume that others are putting more thought into their decisions and beliefs than they actually do.

Among the conservatives, there are a handful of bad actors who are aware of the grift and are deliberately lying to promote themselves and their scam enterprises. The rest of the conservatives are using the cultural practice derived from a religious and/or nationalistic upbringing to uncritically have “faith” in whatever the party line is. Regardless of intelligence, if someone is vulnerable to group dynamics like this (also existing in other cults), it is more important to conform and receive validation from the group than it is to pointlessly research whether or not the group’s belief is true and risk ostracisation.

It’s not really falling for conspiracies, it’s more like conforming to cult beliefs. Conservatives don’t really understand the things they say or why they believe what they do.

This I think is wishful thinking. If they already made the trade and profited, they’re not going to care about the people scooping according to what they did. If the followers-on like me overinflate or kill the asset depending on what the cheater did all it would do is damage the economy. If you are in a position of aristocratic privilege such that insider trading is possible for you, destroying the economy is an opportunity to acquire assets at a bargain.

Having to reliably listen to bigotry and nonsense that you are obligated by social conditioning to nod along with is not only draining but an attack on your own identity by yourself. Either you’re torturing yourself by continuing to put yourself in this uncomfortable situation or you will come to tolerate it and not be as bothered by it and corrupt yourself that way. It’s worth finding someone with some clippers that doesn’t give you an identity crisis on a regular basis.