Rhaedas

“Gradually, then suddenly.”

And the sides. It’s typical.

Make America Gangrene Again

Remember when Obama was asked if he could run for a third, and he said he couldn’t because it’s not allowed. Imagine a President who respects the law, the Constitution, and the will of the people via Congress. Irony is that it was Republicans who put in place the term limits, so Trump is even against his party’s previous mandate.

The company does not have your best interest in mind, ever. I’m going to guess the supervisor she opened up to is going to get fired now for not reporting or something.

Wish Teddy would appear at the front door with his big stick and march right to the Oval Office. Any attempt to stop him would be futile, not only because he’s already dead, but he gave a speech after being shot, he’d laugh it off.

Evil people feed off of more than food, water, and air.

The problem is that invoking the term “civil war” for the US calls on a historical image of two clear sides, or perhaps the very vague handwaving history of the recent movie of the same name. There might finally be some sort of civil unrest against the government in some ways, but it won’t be a Blue vs. Grey organized movement. More a fall into chaos where some places will go on as usual, while others might be a war zone type scenario caused by official lashing out at public actions. It’s unprecedented, like most of recent events, and unusual because of the size and makeup of the US itself. It won’t be like any other civil war.

That only old and/or rich people get to decide on.

No one is surprised at this point. The only variation is the level of acceptance. There’s a large percentage that is totally okay with this, and another large percentage that is “what can be done?” apathetic. That’s why it continues and grows.

The reporting has changed because there’s a political connection. Looking up yearly statistics or individual cases there’s no correlation yet to say that there’s a huge uptick. This isn’t to say that actions taken haven’t increases some risks, so I suppose it’s still early to say either way for this year.

Being 50+ is realizing it was a grind fest the whole time designed for someone else’s profit, and even the fun times weren’t as great as advertised.

But you play it a bit more, because maybe this time it will be different.

Back when TED Talks were all decent and not a money grab, I saw one presenter talk about the coming automation and the need for economic safety nets, and he brought up a good point. Man has tried to minimize work ever since the beginning, but just as we get to a point where most people could eliminate it altogether, we want to hold onto that last little bit. Some good reasons, but most are centered around the need for income and the need for identity, which aren’t great ones. He mentioned the phrase “working for a living”, which can also be termed “having to work to be alive”, both in the necessity of income and in the Puritan way of seeing people that don’t have to work hard as worthless.

People should be able to work on things for pleasure or creation or even some other type of fulfillment, but not because without that work they aren’t people. Yet that’s how society views work. “What do you do” is a much more common casual intro than “what are you interested in”. And there are arguments about how we can even get to a point like that, if such a utopia is just that, a fantasy. But we sure aren’t trying hard to put systems in place to help us get there, at least not the ones that help the people who are hurt by things like automation (which is its own debate, of course).

To further the spirit of the topic:

picture: An individual painting, drawing, or other representation on a surface, of an object or objects; esp. such a representation as a work of art. (Now the prevailing sense.)

image: An optical appearance or counterpart of an object, such as is produced by rays of light either reflected as from a mirror, refracted as through a lens, or falling on a surface after passing through a small aperture. Such an appearance may also be a mere subjective impression on the sense of sight, as an after-image (q.v.), and the negative image or accidental image seen after looking intently at a bright-coloured object, and having a colour complementary to that of the object. An image produced by reflexion or refraction is called in Optics a real image when the rays from each point of the object actually meet at a point, a virtual image when they diverge as if from a point beyond the reflecting or refracting body.

Source: the interweb. Fight me.

“People don’t want to work anymore [under these conditions and for this pay]”

Children though have less of an insight they’re being screwed over, and if the laws and parents match up, they have no say anyway.

We tried that in the US initially, but it grew out of favor. Cult of personality won.

Comedy is a good trainer for dealing with people of all types, and for thinking on your feet. Maybe it should be a requirement for leaders.

I’m partial to “meh.”

They should have used something more secure, like an AOL chatroom. Or public IRC.

“Hey Mr. @BigBrain, can I have an @ on my user name too?”

@BigBrain “Sure!”

Doing the opposite of sharing the load over a larger capacity is always a bad idea. “But socialism” is the rally cry of idiots. The biggest things can only be done together as a nation.