Reminder that in March 2016 Trump insulted Ted Cruz’s wife, and by October Cruz was answering phones for the Trump campaign because he’s a spineless piece of shit who would stick his head all the way up the FCC chairman’s asshole tomorrow if Trump so much as frowned at him.
Canada here. Maybe if the US didn’t threaten to invade us, then later call us terrorists and say they were disappointed we weren’t coming to visit on the same day then the tourism numbers would be up?
Also, the word doublespeak isn’t from Orwell. In Nineteen Eighty-Four he used the term Newspeak, meaning a sort of clipped form of language designed to limit expression of thought, and doublethink, the practice of holding two contradictory thoughts at the same time and believing both to be true, but he never used the word doublespeak.
Interestingly though, it actually predates Nineteen Eighty-Four, but nobody really knows who coined it exactly.
Damn, that sucks. I’m sick of the US being ruled by a cabal of demented fascists and listening to the spineless traitors who are enabling them complaining about being expected to do the bare minimum of their fucking jobs, maybe there’s a common solution to all this?
Yeah I have two without noses now, but I finally got Flesh Shaping unlocked so soon I can start pumping out replacements. Also the leader got a bionic spine, then immediately got both legs blown off in the next fight. She is costing me a lot in advanced components lol.
I’m very deep into a full Rimworld playthrough with the new DLC. Being able to build a grav ship and hop around the world has opened it up so much that I’ll probably be on this for a while yet.
Obligatory weird Rimworld storytime: I’m currently super invested in this one character who was a dirt mole kid that some colony guests just left behind. We took her in because why not, and she turned out to be a pretty good melee scrapper with a penchant for losing body parts. No worries, we have bionics, we can rebuild her. So a bionic eye, an arm and a couple of new legs later, she gets her nose shot off by a turret. At the same moment some vampires arrive and want to have a meeting in our spaceship, and offer to make someone a vampire in return. So now I’m pretty sure immortal noseless cyborg vampire girl is going to end up leading the whole colony but I really want to see where this goes. The current leader is the last OG colonist still alive, but she’s currently ruling from hospital because a lancer blew the spine right out of her body so her effectiveness is limited until I can source a new spine.
Here’s the thing: I obviously would not go out of my way to directly harm John Bolton. But he helped create this fascist system, and if it were currently ruining my life he wouldn’t help or even give a shit about me in the slightest. So fuck him. He shit in his own bed, now he can sleep in it.
As a non-American, this is definitely something that’s been an annoyance for as long as I can remember. Whenever the US decides it wants a war, every other country in the world is expected to join in (the “Coalition of the Willing” springs to mind) or else be bullied at best (Freedom Fries) or labelled an enemy at worst just for not wanting to spend huge amounts of resources and hundreds/thousands of lives on a war that’s nothing to do with them.
But then when it comes to any sort of international agreement that would benefit everyone such as the Paris Climate Agreement, the Ottawa Treaty, the Rome Statute of the ICC, or the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, guess who doesn’t step up?
The US seems to want all the power of being the World Police, without any responsibility towards the stewardship of the planet. They could pretty much get away with it so far IMO because they were so powerful, but now that the political system there seems to be falling apart, who knows? I am certain though that if things continue to get worse and the US faces a serious crisis like another civil war or something, they’ll find a way to make it everybody else’s problem as well.
It’s actually been quite nice here in Canada lately, in the last few years we’ve been quite politically divided but once Trump started talking about annexing Canada it seemed like everyone I know came together to be like he can fuck right off lol.
Our household is still refusing to buy anything American or go anywhere near the place until (at the very least) Trump is gone and the US can demonstrate that something like this won’t happen again.
I see AI art as essentially like a commission. As in, before AI if you couldn’t draw something, you’d commission someone who could draw it to make it for you. Then you’d own that piece of art, but you didn’t create it. You described what you wanted to someone else and they created it. Same deal with AI except instead of a person it’s, as I heard someone describe it recently, a magic 8-ball with infinite answers and some math to nudge it in the right direction lol.
The other thing I’ve noticed with Democrats (actually pretty much any group left of the Republicans) is that they’ll splinter off into a dozen different groups at the drop of a hat and all infight with each other harder than they’ll fight their actual opponents.
The hard right is so effective IMO because they’ll glom together with people they don’t 100% agree with to push things in the general direction they want before they start arguing about the details.
Yeah I live in Canada so -9C is no big deal at all lol. and +9C is basically summer so
I had a phone that did that! The feature was called ‘IR Blaster’ IIRC, and there was an app that had all the frequencies for different brands of TV on it. I don’t think they put those in smart phones anymore lol
I wonder if consent ends with the sale of the house? And if so, could you banish an already-invited vampire by selling the house to someone else for like $1 and then immediately buying it back off them?
Also if a vampire owns an apartment building, can they go into tenant’s suites without permission? Would buzzing a vampire in at the lobby allow them to go where they want, or only a specific suite?
I would say:
The Force Awakens: Not bad, basically a knock-off of A New Hope story-wise but it feels like Star Wars and is pretty harmless fun.
Rogue One: Probably the best of the Disney Star Wars movies IMO, although it does have a couple of dodgy “bringing back an old actor as CGI” scenes.
The Last Jedi: Lots of people hate this one, I’m slightly more forgiving. I think it tried to do something a bit weird and different, and it didn’t really work. But I do appreciate the effort of not just playing it safe.
Solo: A Star Wars Story: Another one that seems to get a lot of heat, but I thought it was pretty inoffensive. Although my brain did kind of delete most of it as soon as it was over lol.
The Rise of Skywalker: Legitimately one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I can’t even call it a bad movie, because it’s essentially just a random series of Star Wars-themed sounds and images that batter you for what feels to be about a year and a half before it mercifully ends, taking with it any good will towards the franchise you might have had left.
Back when the Queen was still alive, Stephen Fry described her role as being “as if Uncle Sam was a real person.” Meaning, being a sort of personification of the country without actually holding any real power over it. I’m not a huge fan of the British monarchy, but if we have to have one I’m at least glad it’s limited to being essentially a powerless tourist attraction.
My first thought was to set up a bunch of long-term investments, since you can reasonably assume that you’ll live a long life. But then also, being rich might increase the odds of you being kidnapped or killed, so it might just tank whatever you choose to invest in.
Maybe you could somehow get a job testing roller coasters. Once you’re in there you have no power to decide anything, so perhaps the universe will make the builders construct the safest possible roller coaster. OR, you could be a food taster for someone rich and powerful. The universe wouldn’t let you eat anything that’s poisoned, or it would just ensure that no food gets poisoned in the first place!
Here in Canada, the general sentiment among people I’ve talked to is definitely that the US has fucked up it’s relationship with us in a very long-term way, if not permanently. Even if the tariffs went away tomorrow, there’s still the issue that Trump threatened Canada’s sovereignty, which people here are not taking lightly at all.
I’ve heard people say that even if Trump went away, there’s no guarantee some other dickhead won’t take over and start the same nonsense, or we’ll just be back here again in 4 years. Even the new Prime Minister said that the relationship we used to have with the US is over now.
I used to have a not well known webcomic and would get death threats/“kill yourself” messages pretty regularly, so yeah for drawing a cartoon would be mine I guess! They never used to bother me especially though, I thought they were funny. I used to have a page up where I’d post the dumbest ones lol.