Quick! Someone remind them to have a warrior mentality!

It was beautiful in the movie, but as someone who lived through that time, it feels pretty dated these days.

The new look is boring, sterile, and reeks of faux-minimalist wallet flexing. Not my thing either.

There’s got to be a happy medium between everything has extra detail and patterns and bad sci-fi set.

Don’t I know it.

My hairline is receding because my hair is marching down the back of my neck towards my ass crack.

Does your partner make you happy?

That’s all that really matters. Define it in whatever way you’re comfortable with. Or don’t define it. You don’t owe the world an explanation.

If you’re worried about someone else questioning your relationship, you can always just reply: “I’m with [my partner] because I love them.”

Anyone who can’t accept that isn’t worth engaging in conversation on the subject anyway.

I think it’s just gotten to the point that US culture has become so commodified and saturated by business that for some people, the brands they consume just become part of their identity like that, and businesses encourage it.

They advertise and merchandise as if your whole life should revolve around the car you drive, the soap you use, or the kind of overpriced cooler you prefer. Product placement saturates TV and movies, sometimes subtly and sometimes blatantly, advertising saturates every other form of media, and if you have no other exposure to culture beyond ad riddled media and the required reading from a public school system focused on standardized test scores, why wouldn’t what you consume become part of who you are?

I don’t think this necessarily reflects badly on them as human beings, it’s just part of the environment around them, and they’re adapting to what is. Couple that with a decline in third spaces, it kinda seems inevitable that some people would try and differentiate themselves from others via their grocery list.

EDIT: While I won’t condemn individuals over just this, I generally think it’s a shitty cultural trend and we’ll be far worse off if it continues. I’m rather anti-advertising in general, and I view the ad industry as utterly dishonest, morally bankrupt, and partially responsible for just about everything that’s wrong with the US these days.

Honestly. If the guy had dressed a few mildly progressive policies up in MAGA hats and did some good for people he could have been a legend for doing basically the bare minimum of what a first world government should do, he still could have talked shit about Obama and Biden while he did it, and he probably wouldn’t have gotten half the grief, hate, and rage he has thus far.

People’s expectations have dropped so low that any consideration for the common man would look like a shining example of altruism in comparison to what we’ve learned we’ll get out of him.

He’s just pathologically incapable of it though. It’ll never fucking happen.

Same.

If I’m going faster than other traffic and already over the limit by a decent amount, I’ll move over once the middle lane is clear, but I’m not speeding up just because you’re impatient.

In fact, I’ll slow down just a wee bit.

I give no fucks.

But, the caveat to that is that I don’t loiter in the passing lane at ten under the limit. It’s the passing lane. I’m there because, you know, I’m passing people and not because I think I need to do 95 mph in a lifted truck just to assert my dominance over the morning commute.

I’m a cis man, so maybe take this with a grain of salt, but if I get encourement from a random person like this, I absolutely kick my effort up a notch and remember it for months-years.

I’d like think people might be able to tell the difference between “keep it up” or “you’re doing great” and a full on catcall, but I’ve never been catcalled so… ¯\(ツ)/¯

I believe this is what the c-suite types are referring to as “innovation”.

Sounds like exactly what I’m looking for.

Neil Postman was right.

Our educational models and methods are changing for the worse.

TV and the internet are terrible mediums for public or political discourse and this has exacerbated many of our existing issues.

Our culture has become more shallow and has started to lack something profound because of how we utilize technology for education, business, and entertainment.

Things will not improve until we change our relationship with these technologies.

EDIT: several words.

They sell travel sized rolls of that gorilla tape.

It sticks to just about anything, pretty much forever, and is totally opaque.

Should work like a charm.

Locksmithing/access control is an industry that is sorely lacking new people…

Interesting. I was considering locksmithing as a way to get some supplemental income later in life. I’ve done skilled labor and light IT work most of my life and it seemed like a good fit for my skill set. I’ll have to move that to the top of the pile of possibilities.

Was there ever any doubt? They’ve been trying to tie devices to identities for years now. This is just the end game.

The funny thing is, it’s kinda hard to prove that surveillance based ads actually work. Ad platforms like to throw numbers of how may people see ads around, but it’s hard to actually tie those numbers to sales. What’s worse is that the way these ads are bought, sold, and how ad placement is commodified means that everything remains intentionally vague to the people buying ads. In most cases, all they know is that “everyone is doing it” and “making lots of money” and if they don’t they’ll be left out of the revenue party.

Right now, enough people are still drinking the kool-aid that it’ll remain a safe revenue stream for companies like Meta unless something happens that hurts the cash flow of their customers. But, it kinda makes you wonder, if the vagueries of the online add ecosystem caused companies to reconsider the investment during an economic crisis, how would these ad platforms that have recently gotten very cozy with fascists make money?

Algorithm-based, ad supported social media is a public health crisis and damages people of all ages. It should be destroyed. At that point we don’t have to worry about it’s effect on kids or them using VPNs to circumvent age restrictions.

Seems like a more effective solution to me.

Helps if your world view is shaped by people who are continually telling you that he’s a figure of manliness, while constantly playing off your fear and insecurity for profit and political gain.

Fear.

They rally around figures who look strong because they’re afraid of losing social status, or feeling xenophobia due to racism, or insecure over economic concerns. As always, everything is projection with these dipshits. They let fear drive them into the sort of groupthink mob they accuse liberals of being.

People are dicks sometimes.

Tulsa. Bell’s Amusement Park.

We used to have a small, locally owned amusement park.

This exact thing happened. The little bungalow homes in the neighborhood around it became trendy. People moved in, complained about the noise from the park’s main attraction, a classic wooden rollercoaster that had been an area landmark for DECADES, and badgered the city council about it until they limited the place’s operating hours and it went out of business.

I still get absolutely livid if I talk about it for too long.