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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • Bernie is a social media merchant. Dude is an expert at looking like he’s challenging the status quo, while never doing anything that could truly piss them off. Dude straight up ended an interview when the interviewer started suggesting Schumer face a primary challenge.

    Trump is awful, but his election is in its own way proof that the American people are willing to reject the status quo and embrace change.

    Democrats don’t need their own Trump, but they do need someone who is results oriented and willing to abandon a lot of longstanding assumptions.





  • The current senator minority leader is Chuck Schumer. He’s incapable of being an effective opposition leader. The dude is addicted to the status quo, terrified of rocking the boat, completely disconnected with the American people, and overall stuck in the mindset of a 20th century politician.

    There is a lot of frustration with him among democratic voters, but he’s maintained his power among the donors and other senators.

    A huge part of his argument is that there’s nobody else that can replace him. At the moment, he’s not wrong. His rivals in the Senate are either cut from the same cloth as him, or are in their own way content with the status quo. I know people on Lemmy love Bernie, but the man was elected to the Senate the same year Pokemon Diamond and Pearl hit the shelves and is no closer to the revolution he promised.

    While this filibuster doesn’t accomplish anything itself, it’s part of a larger effort Booker is making to raise his national profile and position himself so he can replace Schumer. In that context, it’s an important and smart strategic move.

    Ironically this filibuster was probably less physically and emotionally exhausting than trying to teach all of his Senate colleagues how to effectively use TikTok.






  • A danish news organization will have articles about what Danes think of tariffs. The same with a Canadian news organization, a German one, etc. Yet for some reason almost all of what American sources talk about is what citizens of other countries think.

    I think the fact that American establishment publications put out more articles about what citizens of other countries think of tariffs than what Americans think of tariffs is part of the reason why Trump won.

    The upper 10 percent of liberal America seems to think of themselves as citizens of the world, and seems to spend more time caring about anything other than Americans outside their hyper-specific socioeconomic niche.

    The end result of this mentality is that Trump was able to make huge inroads with groups that were historically democrat’s bread and butter in 2024. Even if he was lying through his teeth, he and his team made real efforts to appeal to issues that were important for demographics.

    I’m willing to bet you could find people from Hawaii to Mississippi altering their spending habits in fear of Trump’s tarrifs. Maybe the press should spend more time reporting on them.

    Obviously, neither Trump nor MAGA is the answer. However there needs to be a way to talk with how out of touch so much of our establishment is without sounding like a Trump supporter.


  • This article almost feels like gaslighting.

    Disney has put out a ton of content that follows the same power. It generally can be summarized as "put out overpriced mediocre garbage, hamfist some culture war stuff in there, and then imply anyone who doesn’t like it is some sort of deplorable.

    This movie:

    • Had a budget of at least 270 million, meaning that it would have to make like 700 million to be considered a success
    • Looks mediocre as all hell regardless
    • The Dwarves are CGI monstrosities that feel more at home in a horror movie. This is because Disney kept pivoting to dumber decisions based off petty internet drama.
    • The decision to cast a Latina in a movie where the actress is explicitly white is on some level a deliberate decision to start culture war drama. Disney has had multiple WoC as princesses for over twenty years now, so it’s not like they didn’t have other movies they could have adapted
    • They made Zegler look a lot less attractive than she is IRL via poor wardrobe choices, while managing to capture Gadot’s beauty.
    • Israel aside, I have zero idea why Gadot is cast in this. She’s like the female version of the rock in that she’s only really good in stupid action movies that take absolutely minimal acting abilities
    • I understand Lemmy is super pro-Palestinian. However the general viewing public is a lot more divided, and many people simply don’t want modern politics in a movie they take their small children too. This is the kind of shit you say at a premier of a small budget film, not something that has to gross hundreds of millions of dollars
    • Zegler also harassed Gadot on set, despite the fact that she was trying very hard to not bring politics into the workplace. Again I understand Lemmy might think that’s amazing, but most working people recognize that as the kind of shit they put in an HR training video
    • Zegler also seemed to go out of her way to insult hardcore fans of the show. This is especially egregious because hardcore fans are the type of people to see an IP no matter how bad this is.
    • Unlike Joker where you can just dodge criticism by calling fans of the original incels, hardcore fans of Snow White tend to be gay men and white women. The end result was a lot of the outrage came in the form of gossip influencers throwing shade, which the Disney PR machine was not prepared to counter.

    The most ridiculous part of this is the trailer for Lilo and Stich, a movie that is a million times more minority forward than the Snow White remake, dropped to largely positive reception. 2024 is going to be simultaneous “Snow White failed because of bigotry” and a movie centered around two woman of color, and unconventional definition of family, and Hawaiian culture prints money hand over fist.





  • I feel like they need to break this down by age a lot more than they do.

    In today’s day and age, it’s perfectly normal for a parent to offer significant financial support to their 20 year old child. While adulthood technically begins at 18, society is structured in a way that encourages some form of education/training through the rest of our teens and early twenties. A lot of this time adults in that situation will be setting themselves up for success, but not in a position where they currently have meaningful income. Parents helping out enables them to lay the groundwork for being independent later on in life.

    On the flipside a 30 year old receiving relying on their parents is a wtf moment 9/10.

    Another consideration is independent adults moving in with their parents for the purpose of acting as a caregiver. While that’s a problem for society, it’s a completely different problem than adults needing parental contributions to survive.






  • The difference between actual diversity revolves around tokenization, flanderization, homogenization, and of course gaslighting.

    “culture war” minority characters are often inserted into narratives where they don’t quite fit, are often one dimensional characters, and often all act in a certain way based off their race/gender/sexuality combo, and are often inserted to gaslight anyone who has an issue with the low quality of the underlying product into thinking all criticism is bigoted.

    It’s the last point that both you and Ubisoft are leveraging right now. If they replaced Yasuke with some burly Japanese dude, the entire discourse would be centered around how this game is a mid-at-best title for way too much money.

    Instead asshole stans like you come out of the woodwork to push a narrative that most negative criticism centered around bigotry.

    There are plenty of IPs with minority characters that don’t get shit on, because both the IP and the characters are actually good.

    Enjoy your $70 mid-fest.