I grew up in a rightwing household, and unquestioningly drank the koolaid until my late teens. The right’s bullshit eventually became impossible to ignore, so I dove right into the ‘both sides!’ trap and rode the Libertarian train for a while.

It became really easy to articulate what I didn’t like about the right; describing what was bad about the left was just echoes of Fox bitching about things like them voting on emotion instead of logic… but no real examples.

Around my mid-twenties I finally realized ^that was projection; then 2016 happened and holy shit they’re running Trump and Hillary?? Easily the two most hated candidates in my lifetime… against Gary Johnson - an admittedly goofy personality but likeable and most importantly not crazy, THIS IS THE LP’S TIME TO SHINE! …yeah they got 3% of the vote. We won’t ever see better conditions for a 3rd victory, so, pipedream shattered.

Guess I’ll have to just pick a lesser evil, so let’s see what we have to work with…

• there’s the red team. Burn through our fossil resources with reckless abandon. War, war, war, and more war. Shave social services down to nothing so we can claim ‘fiscal responsibility’ which is good I guess (hey! eyes down here, we’re done talking about the war part), a blatant integration of religion and politics, and they want to make life as miserable as possible for my gay/colored/female/nonchristian friends. Fuck, that’s pretty bad…

• Alright, next we have the blue team, which is the opposite of all those things, at the exceedingly high cost of… getting cockblocked by the red team when they try to implement those things… and… well there was that time Bill lied about getting a blowjob- outrageous! Surely the red team does a better job of keeping it in their pants… *checks* …uhh, nope! Fuck, I’m starting to become aware of my own cognitive dissonance and it feels like absolute shit.

So I start voting one issue at a time, crunching both options against eachother and choosing the one that’s best for the US. That way there’s no bias and I won’t be part of this tribal bullshit plagueing our politics… Weird, when I ignore affiliation and vote on policy alone, my ballot becomes solid blue. What are the odds of that?! Next election, solid blue again. And again.

My desire to be ‘independent’ on label alone is pretty much gone at this point, and I’m being more and more vocal about supporting leftwing policies. Family isn’t a fan, but they hit me with the shit OP is poking fun at - I only shifted blue because I’m poor! Once I make more money, just you wait and see, I’ll come crawling right back.

Now, I’m not rich or anything, but I’m (finally!) not living paycheck to paycheck. During all ^that I wandered into the military which gave me access to all kinds of socialized resources which have enabled me to get where I’m at now and have made a pretty significant improvement on my life. The thing that pisses me off about those socialized services is WHY THE FUCK DOESN’T EVERYONE HAVE THIS?! So wearing camo for 4 years for some reason got me this VIP tour of what we should should be doing for everyone.

I was a late bloomer, I got there. I haven’t missed a single election since 2016, big or small. Solid blue. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ll even look up the voter registration of candidates for nonpolitical positions like judges, and red is a deal breaker.

The better off I become, the more blue I get. The notion of red-shift with income is trash.

*snaps gloves*

The force is about to be with you.

Aight, for chill concentration EDM-ish background music…

Satisfactory’s Pygmalion Effect

What kind of music do you listen to at work? Like high energy vs chill focus music?

Yeah your biggest obstacle right now is going to be “our next available appointment is in 4 months”, so ER is the way passed that. It’s not super ethical, but neither is the way our healthcare system operates, so do what you gotta do.

If you’re on any expensive meds, now’d be a good time to get them refilled. …and ‘my backpack got stolen!’ them and get them refilled again if that’s covered.

If you’ve got anything you think needs to be addressed with any urgency at all, skip the normal process and go to the ER to complain about your symptoms, especially if you’ve got ANY pain in your abdomen or tenderness in your lower back (which could mean kidney stones).

Infact, even if you don’t have pain, go in and tell them you feel nauseous after eating anything greasy or fatty, and you’ll get a free ultrasound of your gallbladder to see if there’s any stones in there. …don’t actually accept surgery to remove it unless there are stones that look like they’re for sure going to be problematic, cuz you WILL have symptoms once it’s gone (eating will make you feel like shit… your body should adjust eventually, but that’s not a guarantee, and it can take anywhere from a few months to years).

So, if they offer a scan or any diagnostic, do it. If they offer surgery, have a long think about whether it’s actually worth doing.

Don’t panic; open fire.

Ever considered OR? I’m a surgical tech now but in nursing school, plan is to just switch over to the dark but stay at the same hospital.

One patient at a time. No crazy family members. It’s chill as fuck behind that red line!

Tech here!

/hug!!

If subnautica taught me anything, he voiced the actual sub.

Halo CE, Halo 2, and Halo 3 are great. Then the franchise was purchased by 343 and everything since has been a soulless COD clone with a Halo skin… and a random RTS.

If you happen to have easy access to the ROM, how’s “Star Wars: Racer Revenge” run?

It’s the less popular but more fleshed out spiritual successor to the N64 pod racing game - the PS2’s take nailed the physics - the two engines and racer pod are (or at least feel like) three separate entities, and playing in first person view with the engines controlled separately by the left and right joysticks feels fucking magical.

Tried to run it on PCSX2 years ago, but it was one of the few games that meshed so poorly with the emulator that it wasn’t playable. I’m guessing the emulator has seen some improvements since then - could definitely use a nice shot of nostalgia.

Zotero

If you’re in any flavor of academics from middle school to doctorate program or otherwise writing papers that require strict citation formatting, drop what you’re doing and click that link.

Or probably YouTube it or something first so you can see why it’s so much better than your standard internet citation generators.

Don’t forget to share the intel with your classmates!

Edit - honorable mention to Desmos for 99% of your calculator needs… with the unfortunate exception of exams, cuz phone.

…and a swan-dive into fascism is preferable to that because…?

Our political model is janky as fuck. I don’t need to explain the pitfalls of a two-party system to you - I already know you fucking hate it or you wouldn’t be eyeing a 3rd in the first place. I hate it too. But a two party system is what we have, which means you have three options:

• Red (fascism)

• Blue (not fascism)

• Let the other voters choose Red or Blue for you (abstain or vote 3rd).

Which of those options will do the best job of accomplishing YOUR goals?

What even are your goals? 3rd party as POTUS? You gotta lay the groundwork first. 2016 was the perfect stage for a 3rd party victory within our current model: we had an absolutely hated candidate running on both of the big two; a voterbase just as sick of the status quo as they are now; a Libertarian with a genuinely likable personality, some solid policy stances, and who managed to shift the “crazy” that Libertarians were reputed for to an honestly charming variety of “quirky”, and a surprisingly steady stream of coverage by the media. We will never see better conditions for a 3rd victory in our current model.

So how did the Libertarians do with that perfect storm? 3%. They got fucking 3% of the vote. How do those conditions compare to today’s? Red is running that same hated sack of shit Trump; but Blue couldn’t find a candidate hated as much as Hillary if they tried to - to the contrary, Harris is churning up optimism like I’ve never seen before. The die-hard Reds and Blues aren’t going to change their votes over that, but the folks in the middle are going to be far less inclined to vote 3rd than they were in 2016. 3rds have gotten pretty much zero media attention this time around. They literally do not stand a chance to beat even 2016’s 3%, let alone enough to actually win.

Your only way to the top is to change the political model into one that’s more favorable to you; and the easiest way to do that is to keep not-fascism in power long enough to get the general population pissed off enough about not having ranked choice that it starts making its way into bigger and bigger elections. Your next-easiest path to victory is insurrection… that most likely both fail and get yourself killed, so please don’t do that. Your least-easy path to victory is to allow fascism to take root, as that will push the model even further away from your reach: if that happens it’s game over for everyone except the fascists.

If you see a different option that’ll lead to a 3rd victory in our current model, I’m all ears; but if not, you still need to set the stage with favorable conditions, to include preventing the stage from being burned to the ground.

I’m gonna make a peanut butter and jelly pizza now just out of spite.

The Dems will preserve a political model that’s at least malleable. 3rds will need to work together to push ranked choice more and more into voters’ field of view.

Republicans will swan-dive into fascism, in which case 3rds (and everyone else) are fucked.

Dems aren’t going to help 3rds directly, but any one who wants the possibility of a 3rd party victory later is committing political suicide by failing to vote blue as a means of buying time. Voting 3rd when that 3rd has no potential for victory is self-destructive.

I’ve heard and experienced WAY too much supporting anecdote to just wave it off as confirmation bias. Official statements by telecoms and such be damned, this shit is 100% happening.

There’s a lot of things to argue about, but pizza just isn’t one of them. It’s a chunk of bread with leftovers on it. If it tastes good on pizza, it belongs on pizza; and what tastes good on pizza depends on the tongue probing it.

Pineapple… sausage… anchovies… goat cheese… potato chips… a fucking strawberry slurpee - if you like it, you rock it.

The only wrong option is to abstain from making/ordering the pizza you want because that ingredient doesn’t ‘belong’ there.

AI (or at least the algorithm shit we’re calling ‘AI’ that isn’t intelligence, artificial or otherwise) getting a robot body is just installing a program onto a computer with moving parts. …not really anything new or exciting about this.