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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 22nd, 2023

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  • China needs us economically as much as we need them for manufacturing. Sure, we’re trying to be more independent and make more domestically, and they are trying to be more independent economically through BRICS. Neither country is doing a very good job of attaining their goals of independence, but to keep up appearances both countries like to simultaneously pretend there’s not a relationship and also that they are the top in the relationship.

    The reality is both countries have some wealthy “oligarchs” who exploit workers and governments that mostly only work to benefit themselves and their oligarch friends. China will take out an oligarch here and there when they decide they’re getting too powerful, and Americans get to elect some of our leaders, other than that we’re not very different. Deep down both governments understand it would be political suicide to antagonize the other to the point meaningfully harming them. At least both current governments that is, Trump is probably too dumb to realize we need each other, so that’s a potential wild card, but North Korea is almost certainly a bigger threat to both the US and China than we will to each other for decades.


  • I still use DDG as my “daily driver” (I know there are better options for privacy and avoiding big tech, but I haven’t yet found anything independent that is good enough for me to switch to full time yet). I bookmarked Stract a while back, and it proved useful a few months back when Microsoft had an outage that took down Bing and by extension, Duck Duck Go. I do like Stract, their index seems to be enough larger than MoJeek (another independent search with their own index) that it gives me better results.

    Stract might not be as open as I’d like, but it’s nice to have as an option, and I’m never going to complain about having more search providers with independent indexes.


  • And then once your person wins, shout at them every day about the things that are important to you. Pester and annoy them so much that they are both motivated to do what you want just to get you to leave them alone, and also so they have support they can point to to convince their colleagues to join the cause. We’d be in a very different place if we had demanded getting rid of the Electoral College even 10 years ago, and a vastly different place if we had gotten that changed 25 years ago.

    I know it’s a lot of work to stay loud about political issues all the time, but if you don’t use your voice, someone will take your silence as contentment and nothing will change.


  • As someone who grew up in Christian-Nationalist churches and circles, just dress like a Jehovah’s Witness or like a young Ben Shapiro. Even if someone does call to complain, they will describe 70% of the people there and they’ll probably address it as a gentle reminder to all the canvassers in a meeting rather than one on one. At which point someone more right-wing will stand up for everything because they actually believe every one of the policies are good things, and everyone will think they were the problem, not you.








  • I want to like this, but some of that mocap animation looks really off. Especially in those scenes with the idol and where indie is slamming down that stone. Looks like the mocap actor was holding back and that the idol weighs less than it should. It’s probably going to be okay, but after the excellent mocap work in games like God of War, where the animation really conveys a sense of weight, and in comparison to the Indiana Jones films this looks a bit floaty and like Indie is pulling his punches.


  • I’m hoping she’s mostly just playing soft on Israel for now is to avoid more criticism of being antisemitic. When Israel started their attempted genocide, most of the Biden administration was silent on it, and we didn’t hear or see anything from Harris, when she did eventually have a public appearance about a month later, she was pretty much the first person in the administration to say anything remotely pro-peace.

    I’m probably just huffing copium but I hope she’s just taking AIPAC’s money (not sure if they are giving her any, but better in her hands than theirs) and getting through the election, and then going to go full prosecutor on Israel/Netanyahu.






  • I’d also add to this that a whole bunch of us have at least a few extended family members that we heard spouting similarly insane takes for as long as we can remember. But because they were the patriarchs or were unhinged enough that they’d ruin the family reunion or Thanksgiving for everyone, we all learned it was in our own best interest to never challenge them.

    We were conditioned from a early age to ignore it at go on with our lives, and they were conditioned that they could say more and more unhinged things and really never be challenged on it.