Even the dumbest MAGA fool who can barely read and write knows that in general, they are becoming increasingly worse off. And they’re not wrong. They just don’t understand the “why” or “how”.

Instead of looking into it, they tend to cling to their nostalgic perception of whenever they think times were better. Mistakenly conflating their memories of the “good ol’ days” – which are heavily condensed because that’s just how the human brain works – with the ideal picture of life and society.

People like Trump are able to tap into that, promising to effectively turn back the clock, even though that’s impossible and complete bullshit. But, it resonates with those nostalgic desires and that creates a powerful bond, for better or worse.

If the Democrats want to stage a serious comeback, they’re going to have to take some pages from the playbooks of people like FDR and LBJ.

For instance, shore up Social Security and Medicare. Remove the income tax cap from Social Security. Give all the old Boomers a decent raise. Unprivatize all of Medicare and put it to work making sure that senior citizens get the best quality healthcare possible.

Do whatever it takes to ram that legislation through. Worst case, Republicans oppose it (which they will) and you can drag each and every one of them through the mud.

The Democratic party, as it currently stands, isn’t going to do that because they don’t have the balls. Until they grow some, were going to continue this death spiral into fascism led by charlatans making false promises about returning to some utopia that never truly existed.

Vietnam is one of the reasons I have hope for Ukraine. The North Vietnamese were overwhelmingly outgunned and outmanned. But they had a “win or die” mentality and spent the better part of two decades forcing the enemy to play whack-a-mole until everybody got bored and went home.

Not nearly as much as I once did. I quit dipping about 15 years ago and started drinking a lot less after getting diagnosed and medicated for ADHD.

I do enjoy a good cigar and a glass of Macallan occasionally but that’s too expensive to be a regular habit.

Door bell rings

“Goddammit. What now!?”

The 60’s were a rough time for the US. A few really good things happened domestically (Civil Rights Act, creation of Medicare) but those were sandwiched in between a whole lot of other bad shit.

LBJ sacrificed the Democratic party on the alter of principal above politics – which he should have – to get the Civil Rights Act passed and then quickly squandered whatever political capital he still had on Vietnam.

Nixon’s campaign was fueled mostly by frustrations over Vietnam and racist southern Democrats who had an axe to grind over the Civil Rights Act.

Strangely enough, The Johnson administration knew, prior to 1968, that Nixon was backdooring the NVC in an attempt to stall any negotiations until after he [presumably] won the election. That becoming public probably would have ended Nixon’s campaign right then and there but for whatever reason they sat on the intel and did nothing with it.

Lol that was not the Amazon guy. That was probably a cat that decided your planters were as good a port-a-potty as they were going to get in the moment.

Your neighbors would probably prefer that you didgeridon’t.

Yep. God help you if you need a specialist because he’s likely to respond faster.

That’s going to be the strategy with our next two.

Some of us do teach our kids and they just don’t care, I guess. My oldest (17) has had a smartphone for a few years. She knows what not to do on social media. Does it anyway. That pretty well tracks with the rest of her (mostly) poor decisions. What can I say? She’s …Consistent. 🤷‍♂️

I use Outlook for work and personal. I’ve gotten used to it and old habits die hard I guess.

They do offer their T-Satellite service which uses Starlink. It only works with supported mobile devices (not home Internet) and is additional to your regular plan.

T-Mobile is honestly one of the easiest cell operators to deal with in my experience. I would take them over AT&T any day.

Recently talked my MIL into switching to T-Mobile home Internet instead of StarLink. I even volunteered to mount an external cell antenna on her roof if the signal wasn’t good enough.

Elmo and his shitty satellite company can kiss my ass.

I find it difficult to be the code mill I’m expected to be, especially when getting work done quickly is prioritized over getting it done correctly.

Same. Half the time the code base is an indicipherable, spaghetti filled dumpster fire. More often than that, the business plan is either non existent or just plain idiotic. Management can’t even answer basic questions like, “who is going to pay for this?” The last three projects I worked on were DOA because there was no clear path to profitability. This was at large, well established corporations.

I’m still trying to figure out how it’s possible to graduate with an MBA without understanding the inherent need for revenue to exceed expenses.

The overall state of technology is actually pretty great. There’s just a few really shitty organizations that tend to dominate the headlines with their pump and dump schemes.

I think the decline of organized religion and things like fraternal orders (Elks, Moose, Shriners, etc.) have probably contributed a lot to the loneliness epidemic. There are a lot of other extenuating factors but those two things were once foundational to social circles in the US.

People with hip replacements can walk again for years afterwards. This is not normal.

They can also bite surprisingly hard. Handling a bat with your bare hands to get a good look at its ass cheeks …or whatever other reasons you might have… Is ill advised.

Seeing “Sue” the tyrannasaur’s skeleton at the Chicago Field Museum is pretty impressive. Last time I was there, she was still in the main hall. You walk in and this thing is towering over you, making you just a little glad you didn’t exist 67 million years ago because you are a perfectly sized snack for a 12 meter long T-Rex.