It would need to be cloud-based, or otherwise require a lot of RAM

More registered voters didn’t vote in 2024 than voted for either candidate. Yeah, they could have made a difference.

And if there’s really an insignificant number of left wingers like you’re insinuating, then how do you expect to vote in anyone better than a milquetoast dem?

It’s funny how you assume I’m some die-hard Democrat supporter and not simply a pragmatist. I have plenty of frustrations with the direction and leadership of the Democratic Party. I’d love for them to get their shit together, or be replaced by progressives with a pulse on the real issues people face, or even be replaced by a progressive party (even though the american electoral system is not conducive to anything outside the two-party dichotomy).

But the fact is that the most important thing right now is stopping trump, and that can only happen if the opposition (read: democrats) take back the majorities in both chambers of Congress. In fact, in order to remove him, they need two-thirds of the Senate in addition to a non-sabotageable simple majority in the House of Representatives. And even then they’ll still have to work around a Supreme Court with a 6 to 3 conservative majority.

I don’t idolize the Democratic Party, but I’m also not hyperfixated on an immediately perfect solution, when the biggest problem we have to solve right now is getting rid of trump and removing republicans from having unchecked power in all three branches of government. We wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with if people could have gotten over themselves and simply voted for the least bad option, because that’s what the situation requires. If you don’t like it, me neither, but we can only change it from within and that’s never going to happen if people are unwilling to participate in the system due to its flaws. It’ll never be perfect, but that’s no excuse to hand the victory to the fascists.

Some people need to read up on realpolitik and learn to accept what they can’t change, and change what they can.

It’s hilarious how people like you won’t let go of blaming the democrats for genocide, when you allowed trump to win the election; but now that he gives $3.3 billion to the Israeli military, promises to bulldoze and gentrify gaza, and creates a new board for gaza oversight to which he invites Putin and Netanyahu, I hear crickets…

Gaza would be doing objectively better than it is now if Kamala Harris were president, but you really showed the corporate dems by letting trump get elected. Nice job…

He called it “a beautiful piece of property”

He’s literally viewing this as “I want to own that land so I can profit off of it.”

Viewing an inhabited territory as some potential capitalistic conquest/enterprise is psychopathic behavior, plain and simple.

It looks like he queried a genAI model “futuristic luxury coastal cityscape.”

This is SLOP and nothing else.

Do it for the trans bellydancers /s

That’s fucked.

It’s his fiduciary duty to lie to everyone.

That’s how capitalism works, and the fact that the people who have steeped their entire lives in that game don’t see through it is… sad, to say the least…

“Police can shoot civilians in the face without consequences, but they have no obligation to protect kids from school shooters” -the american judiciary

Fuck this country.

Fair.

People ironically promoting toxic masculinity by perpetuating the stigma that a man needs to get laid in order to be respectable and have self-worth.

What in this post indicates that?

That’s kind of an insane conclusion to draw from this, honestly. Do you think any guy who can’t get laid is a redpilled denizen of the manosphere?

They’re so used to telling people what to do and them doing it, it boggles their minds when someone tells them “no.”

Like, “You’re not paying my salary, fucker. Give me $100k per year plus healthcare and retirement benefits, PTO and sick leave, and then I’ll use your stupid LLMs five days a week. Otherwise, fuck off!”

A mortgage and a treasury bond are both types of loans, although they do function somewhat differently.

When you mortgage a home, the bank loans you money which you use to buy a house. The loan is then secured against the equity of the house, which still belongs to the lender until you pay it back. As long as the house remains as valuable or more valuable than the amount of principle you have left on the loan, the mortgage remains solvent.

When you buy a treasury bond, you loan the treasury money which is secured against the bond itself: a sheet of paper with no real value except that the treasury promises to pay it back, plus interest. Typically the treasury pays back the principle and interest on its bonds by issuing new bonds, creating a repeating cycle of ever-widening debt. A circular pattern of using new borrowing to pay off debt. It’s been an untenable situation for decades, stacking a jenga tower higher every year along the way, and the only reason it hasn’t collapsed is because people continue to buy new treasury bonds, often by automatically rolling over the ones that complete their term into new bonds, thus enabling the US to continue borrowing.

If countries cease to buy new bonds, or sell-off their existing bonds on the secondary market, those bonds lose value. The interest gained is fixed, of course, so no one would buy a bond for more than it’s worth at the completion of its cycle, but if the value dips below the rate it was purchased at then the seller is at a loss. If bonds are worth less then their original value, no one will buy new ones.

If the US treasury can’t issue new bonds, it can’t borrow new money to pay off the principle and interest on its older debts. It’s as if your house, which is securing your mortgage, lost value, and is no longer worth enough to pay off your remaining debts. It becomes insolvent, and if the debt is recalled, your only option is to default.

If the US can no longer afford the principle and interest on its debts, then US treasury bonds become worthless, because the promise that the US will pay them back becomes no good. Thus completing the cycle of the devaluation of US treasury bonds.

Even if the Federal Reserve tries to mitigate this by buying US treasury bonds, it’s not an infinite pool of money, and this circular lending “borrowing from yourself to pay your debts” is likewise untenable and only further complicates the house of cards without actually securing the flimsy foundations. Plus, the more money the Federal Reserve releases into circulation, the more watered-down the value of the USD becomes, driving the US economy further from credible stability and its place as the global reserve currency.

It is a highly complex situation, and the mortgage analogy is somewhat simplistic relatively speaking, but that’s the point of an analogy: to make a complex topic simpler, even at the expense of some accuracy, to make it easier to understand.

While selling off treasury bonds wouldn’t cause a collapse of the US economy overnight, it has the potential to precipitate a catastrophic collapse and thus even a small movement in that direction can gain a lot of leverage for other countries.

In short, the US is in no place to make claims on other nations’ sovereign territories, especially nations that are allied with its biggest collection of creditors. And that’s what this is all about.

Ohayo gozaimas

And yet people tell me to take off my tinfoil hat every time I talk about Russian psyops…

That’s where you’re wrong: right-wing americans don’t have historical knowledge.

They’re still getting the day they voted for, but let’s not pretend they’re intelligent…

How are they going to extract wealth from the working class if there are affordable options for higher education?

Whole grain is infinitely better.

The average american is conditioned from birth to prefer mediocre, bland, mass-produced food options with highly refined ingredients and/or highly processed foods with way too much sugar and artificial flavoring.

White bread is the lamest thing. Even “artisanal” bread in america is really just white bread in disguise, unless you know what to look for. I’ve even seen breads labeled as “with whole grains” that are actually just white bread with a few whole grains added in, just enough that they can put it on the label. I fucking hate the food industry here.

Oh, and fun fact: in Europe they call sliced bread “toast” because the only use they have for it is to toast it. Literally any other purpose and they choose a better bread.

I got in trouble once for pronouncing it correctly and people thought I was just being lewd 😭