Single-issue voters are ignorant to begin with, but failing to help stop another Trump presidency isn’t the moral high ground. If you’re in that group there’s no point polishing your halo, because you are shitting on it.

Correctamundo! Intellectual property law is yet another thing that needs reform. I don’t even like the term “intellectual property”. It’s a modern invention. For thousands of years everybody just repeated what they saw other people do, in a process called “the spread of civilization.” It worked great until inventions like the printing press created opportunities for business people who didn’t create anything to get rich by getting exclusive rights to other people’s ideas. But even then, copyright was always something you held not something you “owned”. The modern IP industry has done a very effective job at converting everybody to think of rights as property and infringement as theft. We need to return to the original concept that creators, who used to be freely imitated, can temporarily have exclusive rights to what they create because the public lets them. There’s nothing evil about this, it’s just a return to sanity.

That’s a legit worry, but since we don’t know where that tipping point is we don’t know if we’ve passed it or not. I think it’s just as legitimate to maintain hope, and here’s why. The repeating pattern we’ve seen is that when progressives start to institute policies to improve people’s lives, there’s always a lag before any tangible results. During the wait the pendulum shifts back to regressivism, Republicans get in control, and then proceed to take credit as things improve. They use this momentum for more elitist policies that reverse the gains, but the harm to the general public also has a lag and doesn’t become apparent until the pendulum has shifted back to progressives, who inherit a pile of shit to contend with.

But MAGA has fragmented the Republican party so hard, after he loses the election it will take the party years to recover, as the rats claw each other to pieces trying to get on top. Instead of the usual 4-8 years it could take 12-16 for conservatives to regroup. This will provide enough time for progressive policies to take root and bear fruit, and for progressives to actually get credit and build on them. It will be impossible for Republicans to convince even their own that things are bad enough to go back to retro policies. They’ll have to think of a new playbook.

I just think this whole period of time is going to move the goalposts to the left, America will still have a chance to resemble something like the ideal we were taught to expect.

Yeah we have to outgrow the POV that says putting limits on wealth equals communism, or means no freedom. Democracy loses its meaning if kings can live inside it - which is what we get if wealth gives individuals more power than the rest of society. We’re on course back to the age of aristocrat landowners and tenant farmers. That’s not human progress, that’s degeneration. To me the slogan, “We won’t go back!” means a lot more than avoiding another Trump administration. It means recharting the course of our society away from a nobles vs peasants world and toward a world of true equality. It will take changes that are much more fundamental than imposing taxes on wealth. We have to de-legitimize extreme wealth and disable the huge leverage it gives a few people over the rest of us.

In a way he’s doing the country a favor by shining a spotlight on how the power created by wealth can be blatantly abused. This should make us rethink freedom of the press and corporate control of media. News publishing is probably the most important area where antitrust laws should be applied and strengthened. In general, wealthy individuals and corporate boards have gone way past a reasonable point of simply buying controlling interests in something to acquire more power and influence than the public has through government. Democracy means nothing if kings and queens can sprout up inside of it. And that’s not “communism” talking, it’s commonsense-ism.

Well she’s not a competent con artist, but that’s not what it’s supposed to be about.

Chalk it up to Citizens United and corporate media - the partnership to end democracy.

You can also just talk normally to your kids without being a snob about anything.

Actually I printed a few decent ones with my Ender 3. A couple tests on my new A1 came out really nice.

Proctologists need not reply.

If Bonespurs calls them rapists, drug dealers and murderers I hope they all class-action sue his ass.

Followed the link, the page I see does not have Personalized Shopping.

Not showing on my page either. I wonder if this is only happening in the app and not the website.

Profile - Data & Privacy - Personalized Shopping

One of them is even running for President! It’s not dementia it’s The Weave.

Dunno how that’s relevant but thanks - LOLOL worth the watch.

FoxOS - coming soon?

Speaking of a chromebook experience, installing ChromeOS Flex on my wife’s slow, outdated Surface Pro made it sleek and fast again. Can you suggest a Linux distro that would be similar on old laptops?

As a retired software dev, for me Windows is simply a longtime habit enforced by past work environments. I did use Linux for over a year on my main PC but went back to Windows so I could keep using my old copy of Visual Studio. My deeply conditioned shortcut keystrokes didn’t work in VSCode - in fact, why did they change so much of the UI? But now that I’m used to VSCode, which I only use for hobby coding anyway, there’s no excuse and I intend to go back to Linux by year end.

Damn right-wing boomers. Oh wait.

Does it have to be a giant tree tho? There are floating machines cleaning plastics out of the ocean right now. One of them I’m pretty sure was conceived by a high school student for a science project, and it worked so well somebody built it. Good shower thought tho.