This story is the most Ohio thing that ever Ohio’d.

Yes, and they do.

So, we’re not doing Section 230 anymore ?

That’s a part of a US law, and as such doesn’t throw a shrimp on the bar-b in Australia, mate.

I remember the summer of 2016, when I was playing Pokemon Go in the parks and people I had never talked to and that lived nearby were playing it next to me. We were all celebrating when we caught a pokemon when we were after, and comparing which ones we’d caught with each other.

At the time I thought…who would buy Trump’s conman routine? Who actually thinks that the country is in a terrible enough place that we need to elect this person who seems to actively hate the country and seemed to want to set the entire thing on fire?

I left my Californian home and went back to my original state to visit my family. We went to several different areas of the state in fall of 2016 because my wife was from a rural area and I originally grew up in a slightly more suburban area. I saw the signs in the yards, I saw the discontent, and I saw how people did not seem to be reacting the same way to his craziness. I saw how casually they would put on his rants in the background while talking about other issues. I saw how some of them were amused by his antics. It had been a couple of years since I had last been back and it once again struck me how much worse the area appeared to be from the last time I was there. I was in a rural area when the “Access Hollywood” tape dropped. People seemed to visibly shrink at even the mention of the news. I thought he was done for, and that this was a bridge too far for his supporters to cross. That people would vote third party, or not vote at all. I did not get the sense that my thoughts were shared by those around me.

When I came back to California, people were talking about the debates. It was sunny and nice out, and people would talk about the projects they had going on in their houses, or they’d talk about work related affairs. People were sometimes amused by Trump’s antics, but everyone uniformly thought it was impossible for him to win the election. Having seen what I had seen in the weeks prior, I was no longer one of these people. “They’ll never let him win”, one of my co-workers said. I was stunned…who are “they”? Does the rest of the country actually believe this?

It turns out quite a few of them did. Many people thought there was just simply no way that Trump would win, because either the system was already rigged against him and would not allow him to win, or because the country was just not in dire enough straits to elect such a madman (as I once thought).

Hindsight is 20/20 but when I thought it was bizarre that he was even a viable candidate at one point in 2016, and I saw the decaying state where I grew up, I thought “if he wins the election, then we are in a much worse state as a country than I thought”. And we undoubtedly are.

Of course he won, but the reason that I have this somewhat rambling response to this question is that the answer to “why is he still in the race?” ultimately comes down to the overall state of this country.

He is in this race because this is where we are as a country: barely able to imagine a possible future that is brighter than the present, because we are still caught up in degenerative non-sense that keeps us thinking that our broken down towns, and our poor social bonds are caused by some horde of “others” instead of their true causes: our ever-widening wealth inequality, our ever-decaying moral responsibilities to each other, and our national instinct to absolve ourselves of our responsibilities by claiming that not only is it correct to be forever self-serving, but that even the idea of altruism is a lie.

I also sub to a few channels on Odyssee, and a couple on Rumble. If you’re good at searching for stuff, PeerTube can also work, but I personally haven’t found anything I really like there.

Good on you because the goal of getting off of google is definitely good but…these names sound like things that a writer would come up with as fictional social media platforms on a comedy show.

That’s the kind of shit high schoolers think adults care about.

Most adults care deeply about being embarrassed…some even more so than children. A very common phobia is that of public speaking.

I thought the Cybertruck would be his wake up call, but somehow that is the best selling EV pickup in all of North America.

If we’re looking for business failures, Twitter has cratered in value.

But again I don’t think it’s possible for people like Leon and Trump to look at failures or accomplishments with anything remotely resembling an objective view. They view things other people would view as failures as being someone else’s fault, or fake, or not as big of a deal as someone’s making it, etc.

If your entire worldview and personality is predicated on you always being right, and everyone that tells you “no” always being wrong, you cannot reflect on your failures without changing your entire worldview and personality.

Him being booed onstage at the Dave Chappelle show, or him being widely regarded as a terrible SNL host would’ve taken non-weirdos with some ability to self-reflect down a peg. For weirdos like him and Trump I’m not sure there is any “taking them down a peg”. They’re so enamored with themselves that they’ll never believe they did anything wrong or are incapable of anything.

You’ll get all the Logan act violations you seek if you act now!

It was obvious as hell that he wants Russia to win.

They like to push the blame on:

1. “Torts” because why allow people killed or very injured by crappy medical practice to sue? /s
2. “Government regulation” because we all know that the US government is just out of hand when it comes to regulatory assistance to the public /s (Seriously though the fact that the government got involved proves that people were bleeding out of the ass for decades after being fucked so hard by the healthcare and health insurance industries)
3. Greedy healthcare facilities …now these sometimes could carry maybe 0.5% of the blame, but (a) they’re actually providing a service, and (b) it’s not always the case that they’re trying to rake you over the coals…sometimes they’re just trying to keep the lights on

Yeah the actual health care providers get the screwjob on a regular basis. Meanwhile there’s some insurance fatcat going door to door doing sales to employers.

I shit you not I once watched an insurance middleman asshole come into the office and be like “the problem with health care costs is definitely not the insurance companies”. Like yeah, it’s totally not the fact that you have a job going around to the offices in the area accomplishing nothing, Mr. Combover, it’s totally the health care workers that actually provide service that are the problem.

I just thought of a funny concept which is that when you’re born in the country you’re automatically given life insurance. Then when a doctor says “you need this operation” and the health insurance company is like “your doctor is wrong” your life insurance company can come in and be like “you can’t kill my guy, because he’d be owed a gigantic payout!” and then go to war with each other.

It would never work in reality, but I find the idea funny.

You’re welcome

I bought this: Duxtop Portable Induction Cooktop Burner, Induction Hot Plate with LCD Sensor Touch 1800 Watts, Silver 9600LS/BT-200DZ https://a.co/d/6il1y8f

(My apologies for the Amazon link)

I’m not trying to flambe in my kitchen. I don’t need what gas provides.

I have a gas stove right now. It sucks. It likely helped give my wife asthma, and the temperature control is for shit. I bought an induction plate to play around with and it lets you set the temperature in the pan in terms of degrees in 10 degree increments. It detects when the pan has been removed from the cook top for a while and automatically shuts off. It’s cool to the touch a minute or so after it shuts off.

Induction is like cooking in the future, gas is like cooking in the Fred Flintstone past (using dinosaur farts).

I have a gas grill, and it’s good for its use as well (yabba dabba do), but if I want control over the heating element it’s induction all the way.

Disagree…induction is far better to cook on. It has much better temperature control, heats up faster, and when you’re done it’s easier to clean.

And it doesn’t do as much to heat up the kitchen because the heat stays concentrated in the pan.

I wish they’d installed an electric stove in my current place…now I have to get an electrician to come upgrade the circuit. 🙄

I hate that I even know who this disgusting asshole is.

This is the self checkout of learning. Requires the same amount of employees with the same skills as before, but wait, now it’s also worse!

Yeah, a streaming service with the hit songs like “Zyme Bedewing” from everyone’s favorite artist “Calorie Event”.

Finally a use case for AI.