How does the World view America these days?

  On 3/22/2024 at 4:08 PM, auxien said:

$120k a year is boat money, not yacht money. gotta hustle up that extra to live the big life

happy 500 pages of The World viewing America

boat money in arkansas maybe. most places it will be maybe enough to afford a starter home 

Big shakeup in conservative media as Ben Shapiro's company the Daily Wire fires commentator Candace Owens

before the right wing civil war is the ring wing insurrection against itself 

You know recruitment going badly when they breaking out the waifus

  On 3/25/2024 at 7:50 PM, Nebraska said:

before the right wing civil war is the ring wing insurrection against itself 

it’s already well underway outside of the Twitter grifters in the halls of Congress. R majority in the House is about to be 1 fuckin member, saw that Murkowski in the Senate isn’t discounting leaving the R party…

but the Twitter Civil War is gonna plenty funny from the outside too. i’m all for it.

  On 3/25/2024 at 8:17 PM, auxien said:

it’s already well underway outside of the Twitter grifters in the halls of Congress. R majority in the House is about to be 1 fuckin member, saw that Murkowski in the Senate isn’t discounting leaving the R party…

but the Twitter Civil War is gonna plenty funny from the outside too. i’m all for it.

sam seder and emma had a good analysis of this: these particular conservatives see everything through the lens of capitalism (and thus, business) and another reason why they're so competitive against one another

"Disneyland exists in order to hide that it is the “real” country, all of “real” America that is Disneyland (a bit like prisons are there to hide that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, that is carceral). Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order and to the order of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology) but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle." - Baudrillard, 'Simulacra & Simulations' ,1981

  On 3/25/2024 at 8:57 PM, Nebraska said:

sam seder and emma had a good analysis of this: these particular conservatives see everything through the lens of capitalism (and thus, business) and another reason why they're so competitive against one another

that wasn't as cringey as i'd expected. money's a key thing for them always for sure, but when the money runs into the supposed 'moral sphere' they're portraying (that week/month/year) then things can be a problem. i have little doubt that the fact Candace is a woman (and likely that she's a woman of color, as well) was a key problem for at least some, if not all, of them. whether or not they'd ever admit that (or if they even realize it) is another thing.

Any of you in Baltimore? That bridge situation is terrifying. I thought it was fake when I first saw it. 
 

  On 3/26/2024 at 12:30 PM, Hi Guys said:

Any of you in Baltimore? That bridge situation is terrifying. I thought it was fake when I first saw it. 
 

 

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Very terrifying! Imagine driving over a bridge and then next minute you in your car are going headlong into the water. Still a developing story apparently on how many people have died. Also read that the Port of Baltimore is a top 20 in America in terms of cargo traffic and that this bridge is a big part of that (it is the beginning of distribution routes after the shipping containers come into port), so this will probably impact the city & distribution of certain goods throughout the mid-Atlantic negatively for some time.

This clip shows the ship right before making impact with one of the bridge's support beams: https://x.com/Brick_Suit/status/1772577086424645907?s=20

Havana syndrome back in the news. American personnel have been victimized. Survivors say that a foreign power is coordinating these attacks, but the federal government insists that no, this is not some Havana syndrome, it is rather a few cases of 'anomalous health incidents' (AHIs for short): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68706317

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"They may have been targeted by Russian sonic weaponry"

wtf is sonic weaponry ?

  On 4/2/2024 at 2:45 AM, decibal cooper said:

Havana syndrome back in the news. American personnel have been victimized. Survivors say that a foreign power is coordinating these attacks, but the federal government insists that no, this is not some Havana syndrome, it is rather a few cases of 'anomalous health incidents' (AHIs for short): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68706317

wtf is sonic weaponry ?

if you watch the 60 Minutes piece, which is reasonably long and full of info, they go into that a bit.  I have meniere's and some of symptoms are similar but others totally different and it's strange that this has happened repeatedly to agents working on russia related cases. they talk about one of the cases as well. 

as for sonic weaponry.. things of this type have long existed.. the weapons riot police use for example. easy to see a more focused and smaller version being capable with more $$$ and newer tech. 

also, i had atrial fibrillation and how they correct it in suitable candidates is they go in through the arteries in your legs w/tools attached to wires/tubes controlled by actuators. the doctor is sitting there w/a controller in each hand directing a camera and another tool that has a handful of different devices on the end. these are "force sensing" devices so they know how much force they are applying and when they're applying pressure etc. 

so, what they do is they use high frequency radio waves to burn parts of the inside of the heart to keep the electrical signals that control the heart from jumping out of their "path" or tract or whatever it's called.. because atrial fibrillation is caused when the electric signals jump lanes and give the heart bad directions on what to do.  all those signals are supposed to happen in sequence or specific times so when they jump out of their path the rhythm gets interrupted.. but burning around them they create scar tissue which keeps them from getting out of their lane.. or so is the plan. i had this corrective procedure in 2018 and once before that in 2010. 

the ability to use high frequency radio waves for weaponry is a thing. it exists. think of it like focusing a microwave the same way a spotlight can be focused. 

^^^ that's from the GAO general accounting office of the federal gov't. the pentagon spends a shit load of money annually on all kinds of direct energy weapons. 

also, police use them too. 

edit: here's the 60 minutes piece that all the news stories are quoting. 

I’d like to renew my prescription for gluten-free Oreos plz.

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14 years ago

that host though ...

  On 4/2/2024 at 11:26 AM, iococoi said:

that host though ...

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Speaking about freedom of choice:

besides the complete revamp of the RNC, i'm not aware of co-chair lara trump doing anything else so far in her official position, but maybe this song is it

  On 4/3/2024 at 4:13 PM, Rubin Farr said:

 

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there's a chunk of Neal Stephenson's book "Fall or Dodge in Hell" that takes place in such a seceded state in the USA that's based on religious doctrine/extremism and it's hilarious and kinda terrifying. also, he said when he wrote this book.. trump got elected snd he realized this chunk of the book wasn't crazy enough and he had to rewrite it or it wouldn't make sense. so, he reads part of it in this talk.. 

  On 4/3/2024 at 4:47 PM, ignatius said:

there's a chunk of Neal Stephenson's book "Fall or Dodge in Hell" that takes place in such a seceded state in the USA that's based on religious doctrine/extremism and it's hilarious and kinda terrifying. also, he said when he wrote this book.. trump got elected snd he realized this chunk of the book wasn't crazy enough and he had to rewrite it or it wouldn't make sense. so, he reads part of it in this talk.. 

 

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That was great - and a very interesting update to the book (which was also great). The idea of curated social media feeds is basically happening right now with the algorithms, though they aren't quite as extreme as in the book yet.

If Trump gets convicted and serves prison time (big ifs I know), do you think we'll see a receding of such public displays of racism and bigotry or will it get even worse?

  On 4/4/2024 at 8:58 AM, chenGOD said:

If Trump gets convicted and serves prison time (big ifs I know), do you think we'll see a receding of such public displays of racism and bigotry or will it get even worse?

people were crazy and racist before trump and will continue after trump. it may seem random but conservative corporate think tanks have been driving towards extremes for like 75 years already.  the way schools have been wrecked, wages stagnant, social services slashed etc is all intentional and part of long term goals.. capturing the courts etc.. creating narratives that divide people and spread racism and hatred of the 'other' is a tool they use.. so, yeah.. shit will get worse until it collapses. the pressures of future catastrophes and adversity from climate change, resource shortages etc will also add in to the mix.  i'm not optimistic. i do think some places will be community focused and people will come together to deal with whatever is coming.. but other places will tear apart at the seams.  between now and then who knows what will happen. break down of basic law and order seems easy to predict. 

sorry.. rambling.. but yeah.. america is going to be difficult to "uncrazy" after it's been so successfully made crazy. 

part one up and part two should be up later today on youtube.. currently on podcast sites. .but basically another "oh, ronald fucking reagan" of course.. and student loans and all the things and backlash against anti-vietnam war student protestors and on an on.. early days of think tanks and their fucked up agenda and eltist bullshit.. it's crazy.. part two especially.. wtf. i hate these people. 

part two  these two show another way in how we got to where we are now and why shit is so fucked up.