Agreed on economic issues, but I disagree that liberalism is conservative on social issues the way that Australia’s Liberals are. I think classical liberalism in an American context would be most closely associated with American libertarianism. Liberalism has a huge hard-on for laissez faire economics, but it also should ostensibly emphasize individual freedom more than anything else when it comes to social issues. Both Republicans in the US and Liberals in Australia might speak platitudes about their desire for free speech, but if you challenge that even a little you’ll quickly find that they’re just hard right wing conservatives hiding behind the moderated mask of liberalism.

The problem with SOCIETY is that they NEVER give the yellow guy a CHANCE to make his CASE. The LIBERAL MEDIA owns our INFORMATION.

Edit: Wasn’t sure if it needed to be said, but /s

NaNaNaNaNaNaN…

Hey Hey Hey Goodbye

Smartphones (and the Internet more generally) have led to a major decline in reading books among the American public. I think this plays such a huge role in the absolutely batshit crazy cultural shift we’ve seen.

I think populism is more accurately defined in its rhetoric against a “group of elites” that must be fought. Sometimes that’s based in reality, sometimes it isn’t. Trump’s brand of populism, for example, pushes this idea of a group of out of touch pedophilic liberal elites who want open borders and who want to redefine traditional gender and sexual roles. The Bernie Sanders style leftist populism defines the group of elites as the billionaire business class controlling the economic system of America such that they avoid taxes and write laws through legalized bribery. I would argue that Bernie’s populism is based in reality and Trump’s is based in exaggeration and fear mongering. But that’s my take as someone who leans left.

In both cases the populism itself is appealing to the masses, yes, but it’s specifically appealing to them by drawing clear lines around an enemy that needs to be fought. Trump’s exaggeration of this enemy is where populism becomes dangerous. As someone who has recently been studying the French revolution, I can also point to that as a great example of populism that started with an accurately defined enemy (monarchy) and over time morphed into something that was really just vague calls of “treason” aimed at anyone and everyone who could be made the subject of ill defined conspiracy theories. Populism can be a powerful force for good when the enemy is real and the ideology is clear, but it can be just as powerful a force for evil when the lines are obscured or invented whole cloth.

So the question in this case is who the enemy is. Who would a populist replacement for Trudeau be fighting and how would they define their ideology?

Step 1) Find a list of every US citizen

Step 2) Copy

Step 3) Paste

I’d love it if we could vote better people into government, but the billionaires have been putting their fingers on the scale. If anyone is responsible for the resentment aimed at them, it’s them.

Most of the world actually has legal marriage between first cousins. In many places it’s not even taboo. And on top of that, the chances of genetic issues with it are actually pretty small. It’s multiple generations of first cousins having kids where it becomes a problem.

Fuck Intuit and H&R Block, all my homies use FreeTaxUSA.

From what I understand, some degree of nuclear power is always going to be necessary. This is because while we tend to think of excess power in the energy grid as being stored away, this in fact is not the case and we only use power as it’s actively available. Excess power is wasted. The major downside of renewables is that they’re circumstancial. Solar energy is only available during clear days, wind power is only available on windy days, etc. Until we massively improve our energy storage capabilities we’re going to need some kind of constant supply of power backing the other ones when they aren’t available. Without adequate nuclear energy available, that’s going to be fossil fuels. And when compared to coal, oil, and natural gas, nuclear energy is unbelievably better for the environment. The only byproduct is the spent fuel which is dangerous, but we have control over where it ends up which is more than can be said for fossil fuels.

My wife went to school for English lit and is a professional writer. I cannot get a plot twist past her notice. It sucks so much. There was a video game that featured a serial killer (no spoilers, so no title) and I NEVER would have guessed who it was. I played it and I was shocked at the twist. Then I had my wife play it and in the first five minutes of the game she was like “That man is evil and I don’t trust him” and I was like WTF!!! He’s like nice and friendly and stuff. How the fuck does she do it. I spent hours having to gaslight her about how correct her prediction was. She also always knows when someone is going to die. I have to tell her not to comment predictions about movies because she’s correct at least 70% of the time.

This isn’t necessarily always true. PCSX2, the main PS2 emulator, for example needs a BIOS file that can only be obtained from an actual PS2 (or “illegally”). I’m not sure why that emulator requires it when others don’t. The closest thing to an explanation I could find online just said “legal issues”, but didn’t go into details. That makes me suspect that there was pushback from Sony about the emulator. So if such emulation laws were to be written they absolutely should protect in stone the right to create and use emulators. If a company can find a loophole to block you, they will.

This is very true in my experience. My college expenses were slashed in half when I moved out of the dorm and into a tiny studio apartment across the city from my campus. It also really hurt my ability to study when I was so far from campus. It hurt my studies even moreso when I needed to take on a part time job to try mitigating the costs of my rent. It’s a really toxic system, because the parts of cities with universties tend to be the expensive parts of cities.