Democratic voters just aren’t dependable, or the causes that Democrats tend to champion don’t provide them any benefits. Yes, it’s often the right thing to do to champion their rights or causes, but when the time comes and their help is needed, they’re seemingly nowhere to be found because things apparently weren’t interesting enough.

As an American, I expected most Americans to be at least semi-rational and to recognize what a threat to democracy and our way of life that Trump is. I expected most Republicans to just vote for him out of reflex, but otherwise the rest of America would rise up in our hour of need to vote against this and save us all from this idiocy.

Nope. There was just more people lined up to vote for more idiocy. We failed the world. I’d say I’m sorry, but I don’t think that’ll help. This is America.

I’m sorry about whatever you’re going/have gone through. I don’t mean to dismiss what you’re going through, but from my point of view as a guy, women hold much more power than men in our society. Some of the things you talk about are traditional social stigmas and such, things that only matter if you care what other people think or about “traditional values”, but they’re essentially meaningless outside of that and likely aren’t as big an issue as what you’re making them out to be. You’re also generalizing alot of things about what men do, say, or think, things that probably only apply to a fraction of men, and likely to men that even other guys don’t particularly like either. And in many other cases, the people who are shaming women for their behavior aren’t men, it’s other women that are stigmatizing women’s behavior or putting pressure on what their expectations are.

In the dating world, women hold all the cards and basically have their pick of mates, whereas men are just happy to get any attention at all. In the court of law, where things hold much more weight, women hold much more advantages over men in issues related to divorce, child custody, child support, and are often given privileges by virtue of the fact that they’re women. Women can take half a man’s net worth just based on having been in a marriage contract with them, it doesn’t matter what kind of spouse they were.

Men are generally ignored for large periods of our lives by everybody and are more or less expendable, we just don’t matter at all. Men are seen as pieces of meat, just in a different light, we’re donkeys or pack mules in many cases. Our feelings are often ignored, depression or any other emotions are brushed aside and made fun of as often by women as by men. We’re seen as simple-minded and only concerned with sex, we’re degenerate pigs who will always be guilty of any depravity we’re accused of.

That’s what they’ve done for like 8 years now, it’s the foundation of Whataboutism. No matter what you pin on Trump, they’ll jump on some other real or imagined wrong, no matter what it has to do with the conversation, and use that as justification for anything that Trump has done or will do. It’s just a way to sidestep or confuse the issue.

• “Trump is literally talking about becoming a fascist dictator.”
• “Yeah, but in the 12th century, Genghis Khan killed like 20–40 million people, that’s what we’re facing from Chi-na, they’re going to slaughter everyone if we don’t do anything about them and their takeover of China-store Kamala, she’s bought and paid for!”
• “WTF is wrong with you?”

I mean, Biden has the power to do whatever he wants now and could potentially overturn the results in the interests of national security or whatever. He won’t, but it’s nice to think that he could do something to avert a fascist takeover. Democrats will take the high-road into letting democracy die.

The end times are approaching, time to start making peace with whichever gods you hold dear.

I’ve warmed up to her and think she’ll make a good president, but I honestly haven’t liked Kamala for the past 4 or so years. I had actually hoped she would’ve disappeared off the face of the earth when she lost the democratic primaries, then Biden picked her up as VP and she’s been one of the most inconsequential VPs in modern US history. Considering how important/influential the VP has been since Dick Cheney seemingly redefined the role, Harris just hasn’t brought much, which is in keeping with how the role has been traditionally seen. I dreaded her stepping up for president, but she seems to have exceeded my expectations and I’ve come around to her.

As for Harris’ qualifications/positions, they seem like average middle of the road Democrat positions, nothing too exciting, but it would be nice to get a younger face in there who had some understanding of some modern technology.

No, we’re seeing the same thing on the inside too. The fact that Trump actually has another chance in hell, or that he likely would’ve beat Biden, is a sign of how far gone this country already is. Do people not remember the absolute shitshow that was Trump’s 1st term?

Weekly, sometimes daily, WTF moments where I was just wondering where any of the adults were. Constant, blatant corruption and incompetence on full display. And we had to hear everything he fucking said over and over because everybody had to repeat the same news over and over again.

It’s been relatively good during Biden’s tenure, I would hear/read about him about as much as a normal president. Like, the president is the president, but I don’t want to hear everything going on with the president unless it’s important. So for us to go from that absolute shit show to relative peace (as peaceful as all this can be considered), I don’t understand how anybody would want to go back.

I was literally just wondering this same thing earlier today.

Plenty of time to put off thinking about it until the last possible minute.

SSN’s are also given out to immigrants as well though, so that’s a whole other population of people outside of just natural born citizens to account for. The US awards around one million green cards annually, though I don’t know what the historical numbers are.

Yeah, in my mind, Sci-fi is more than just space ships or aliens or futuristic tech (though those are loosely part of it), it’s more about exploring different questions, under the guise of some sort of new technology. “Hey, we invented this thing that can remove racism from people’s brains, but it also makes people love-obsessed and creates dependency issues in people. Should we use this on the population?” It raises moral/ethical questions about what we could or should do given the chance.

Star Wars is straight-up fantasy with high-tech aesthetics, but it has more in common with Lord of the Rings than it does with anything sci-fi. It’s about a hero’s journey and good vs evil.

I wonder if you couldn’t do a reverse Fantasy/Sci-fi story? Basically a sci-fi sort of story with fantasy trappings. Like a fantasy story that looks at some new magic development and what the implications for humanity are of that new magic process. “We perfected an alchemical process to turn poop into gold! Should we flood the market with poo-gold and crash the medieval economy?”

I just saw a video on the show on the youtube channel Secret Galaxy, pretty interesting, as I remembered the show, but never knew what happened to it:

https://youtu.be/YEQP40VJLEY?si=T_PAmH8ONZKgHR3f

I think he could make a compelling argument justifying it if Trump were to win the election, a sort of Julius Caesar part deux. I think you could make the case that American democracy as we know it would end if Trump were elected president and that in order to protect democracy, his assassination was needed. However, in doing so, American democracy as we know it would still end because Biden would be opening the door to domestic political assassination being in a president’s tool belt, so it’s kind of a catch-22. We’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t. So really, the only thing that will “save” democracy is if people vote for Harris, that’s where we’re at as a country. I’d love to vote third party, I actually didn’t care much for Harris before Biden dropped out, but the stakes are really too high this election to consider anything else.

That the person probably won’t stick around for long. I’d still give them a fair chance, but if they up and quit one day out of nowhere I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m not in charge of the hiring though, so I just work with whoever I’m told to work with.

It’s basic, but you can use something like Plex or Jellyfin to stream music and/or movies over your local network, that’s a pretty easy one to setup (you may already use one of these services). So depending on the devices you have, you can listen/watch whatever you want, wherever you want around the house (TV, iPad, whatever).

I think choice and/or the illusion of choice needs to be there for either side’s fringe elements to have a safe outlet for their frustrations. There needs to be a viable left-leaning party to control potential socialist or communist agitators. If they just completely shut down the Democratic party, then there’s the potential that somebody outside of the control of the aristocratic classes comes to power. Having the Democratic party around gives them a chance to funnel those people through the system and subtly bend them and make them more agreeable to the system. So maybe somebody would’ve been a bomb-throwing anarchist advocating for blowing up the status quo and beheading all the billionaires, but when processed through the Democratic party, maybe they turn into somebody like AOC or Bernie Sanders or something, still willing to work within the system and less likely to advocate revolution.

I’m still not sure about Trump, he still seems like an abnormality or a glitch in the system. I don’t know if he went AWOL and the aristocracy doesn’t want to move against their own, or if he’s just part of “the plan” to move the country to the Right and having a crazy man-child as president gives them cover to push through all their extreme right-wing policies while everyone else fixates on the latest dumb thing that Trump tweeted. Or maybe it’s all just anarchy and there is no conspiracy of the aristocracy, I don’t know. Trump’s existence just seems like one of those things the TVA would’ve come in and destroyed this whole timeline over.

Ridiculously enough, it’s still a neck & neck race and Trump still very much has a good chance of winning. And he really has no incentive to drop out, he absolutely needs to get back into power in order to quash all these lawsuits against him, because at the end of the day, that’s the only thing that matters to him. Biden had the humility to drop out for the good of both the Democratic party and for the Country, Trump has no humility whatsoever and doesn’t care if he tanks the Republican party or plunges the Country into some sort of Civil War 2.0 (not likely, but it’s a possibility), none of that is a priority to him.

This is kind of similar to the Roman Republic in some ways. Holding on to power made some Roman officials immune to being summoned to court while they were in office, and our own Supreme Court has almost brought that practice back (give them a few more years for the rest). So the incentive for shitty office holders is to just keep holding on to office so that none of their illegal shit they do comes back to haunt them. That November sentencing will mean nothing to him if he becomes President again.

I think playing tabletop games in general can probably help, anything that’s a sort of structured social interaction with relatively easy rules to follow. “Normal” group social interactions are usually chaotic, freeform, and can vary depending on the people involved, while gaming social interactions dictate some kind of turn order and there’s mostly clear expectations as far as what you’re allowed to say or do on your turn. It’s just easier to socialize when there’s well-defined rules to fall back on.

Not a doctor and just talking out my ass, but I’m assuming part of it has to do with patient workloads and dealing with insurance companies, they’re just not incentivized to really take any time with patients, just get 'em through the visit, check whatever boxes they need to, and move on.

But yeah, I very much have had the same experience for the past 10 years or so with my same doctor, it just feels absolutely useless going to them for anything. It takes alot for me to go to the doctor for anything or to bring anything up even with the doctor if it’s not life-threatening. I’m not a hypochondriac by any stretch, I just try to keep an eye out on my health and if I notice my body doing something out of the ordinary, I just ask about it to see if it means anything.

Before my regular check-up though I’ll kind of bank up whatever questions or oddities that I’ve noticed, things that I figure I can bring up and see if maybe it’s a sign of one thing or another. Most of the time when I mention anything though, it just feels like the doctor is blowing me off, or he’ll just give a guess, maybe google it and show some pictures. At best he might tell me something like, “Hmmm, well it’s probably not cancer.” and then just sort of shrug and move on. I’m a guy, so I’m used to no one caring about my health or well-being at all, but I think I had a different image in my head when I was a kid about what it was doctors actually did.

The one regular benefit I see from going to the doctor is getting my blood drawn and being able to track health numbers from that, my job does the same thing too, so I get two sets of numbers from my blood work every year and I track it to see overall condition of my health, which I kind of wish was something my doctor did. He’ll mostly just comment the most obvious thing possible when the test results come in, but there’s never a look at health numbers over time, which is why I started just tracking it on my own.