Ray breaks it down: Project 2025: As Bad for Cities as You Think It Is (Or watch on Nebula)

Just to pick one: Public transit == Uber (or Leon’s self-driving taxis)

I’m doing my part!

I had major depression when I was younger. I couldn’t get individual insurance because it was a pre-existing condition. I couldn’t afford it, anyway, because getting and keeping a job was very difficult because, uh, depression? So, getting a job with a group plan was also out of reach. I had to research it and treat it myself, which, goddamn right I’m proud I managed.

But now I’m middle-aged, single, and probably will never have the savings to retire. Eat a Grand Canyon full of Godzilla dicks, U.S. healthcrime system.

Decades ago, a group calling itself The New Party tried to eliminate the spoiler effect of third parties through the practice of electoral fusion, that is, allowing the same candidate to run and appear on the ballot under more than one political party. That way, they’d know where their support came from. But the Democratic Farm Labor Party (Minnesota’s Democratic Party organization) went to court to shut it down, offering the specious argument that it would confuse voters.

Would the corporatist, establishment Democrats allow an upstart progressive movement into its primaries?

Waiting times are atrocious here in the U.S. The earliest in-person appointment that I can get with my GP is about 6 months out. Non-urgent surgeries are sometimes take close to a year. A friend recently had to keep a bladder drain in after surgery for an extra week because there were no doctors who could do the 5-minute removal available.

Anybody who says that long wait times are unique to public health systems is lying.

The song is “No Mercy in June” by a band called Hot D.A.M. I’m pretty sure that I got the song by piecing together a multi-part, MIME-encoded Usenet posting. Somehow, I have a whole album by the band in my collection that I found somewhere on the seven seas years ago. I don’t recall when or where now. The best information that I could find back when was that Hot D.A.M. was one of those local bands that stayed local, perhaps one of the many that bubble up out of the musical quantum foam, and disappear just as quickly.

Samesies. I remember back in college powering through a writing assignment with a 2L bottle of Coke and a 1lb. bag of M&Ms. Totally not healthy, but I learned later that it has to do with the relationship between insulin and neurotransmitters, like dopamine.

I think I need to read up on that link more.

Along those lines, monarchist is bad, too. The wealthy in the U.S. are notoriously touchy about being called aristocracy, and I maintain that it’s because nobility not only punctures the meritocracy myth, but also carries with it the idea of noblesse oblige. They don’t want any obligations to the peasants. (Won’t be lauded as a great philanthropist for the dribs and drabs they give to charity, if it’s expected!)

I can’t consciously change my body temperature, but I do find that my thoughts and attitude about the heat or cold do affect it quite a bit.

You’re not the only one! I think it’s worth noting that back then, “social media” was a new model in which the viewers provided the content, a democratizing force which broke the hold of a small priesthood of editors, producers, and owners over the message we hear.

Now, so-called social media is synonymous with The Algorithm. That is, the powerful and connected have figured out how to tame it and gatekeep information again, this time in a far more insidious way. It still has the veneer of populism, but scratch the surface, and the owners largely control what you see.

It’s darkly hilarious to read discussions on here in which people deny that Lemmy is social media at all, rather than an example of the ur-social media, the good kind.

The biggest shock for me was Vera Lynn. She recorded her biggest hit song in 1939, and I was most familiar with it from the ending of Dr. Strangelove from 1964, and the Pink Floyd song, “Vera”, from 1982. I guess people in the UK would’ve known better, but the song implied a long-bygone time, so of course she had to be dead by the '90s, right?

Imagine my shock when she released a new compilation album in 2014, while still very much kicking.

And Joe pardoned Hunter for whatever they “find” next on that laptop, so, y’know, both sides.

/s

Liberals (which I’m taking to mean Democrats) didn’t “fix” gay marriage. Right up until the Iowa Supreme Court decision, in the early 2000’s, the argument in Democratic circles was that gay-rights organizations should pipe down, settle for civil unions, and stop making gay marriage an issue. They were afraid of handing the Republicans a weapon. It was the gay-rights organizations that pushed it through the courts, and prominent Democratic politicians like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden “evolved” their positions to support it. I mean no criticism by the use of quotes. Kudos to them for changing their minds, but it wasn’t liberals that made it happen.

First thing that came to mind is a song by a band that I can’t even find online. I have the song as an .mp2 file. How’s that for obscure?

Here’s one that is online: Technical Jelly (Live) - Honor Among Thieves