What happened to all of your 'th’s? Something with a localized keyboard?

I’m still riding the bike my parents got me when I was a teenager, and these last couple of years I’ve easily put several hundred miles on it. Heck I’ll probably ride it in about an hour to go pick up my kids from school. For school pickups and dropoffs over calculated a conservative $10 a week saved in gas consumption by biking instead of driving, plus I start my day envigerated rather than annoyed about school traffic

This whole fertility thing is so weird

The fertility thing comes across as so weird because its an actual problem that Republicans don’t want to solve in any reasonable way because that will involve threatening their donor’s bottom lines. Basically across all developed nations with easy access to birth control, education and modern mechanisms birth rates are falling and in many countries these rates are already well below replacement rate (2.1 children per couple, not percent like RFK Jr said)

The United States was consistently staying above replacement rate via immigration but I have a nasty feeling that isn’t the case anymore

The reason replacement rate is so important is Capitalism really depends on growth companies gaining new customers. The stock market in particular relies on new wallets to spend money, homebuilders rely on new people to build homes for, and offices rely on new employees to hire. When populations start stagnating or worse shrinking, Capitalism really starts to fall apart as that causes an ongoing recession as fewer wallets in an economy means less money flowing through an economy. Less money moving through an economy means a smaller GDP which means the the economy ultimately shrinks. Bad economic conditions also lead to people feeling less certain about bringing a new baby into the world so the cycle tends to accelerate before the actual population decline can accelerate noticeably

The obvious solution is to decouple necessities of life from capitalism and significant state investment into improving existing infrastructure and planning for degrowth so that a long term recession and the effects of declining/re-balancing populations do not negatively impact the masses living through them. This is of course antithetical to capitalist and conservative goals, so as they realize this looming threat is upon them they’re getting extremely weird about it and trying to find ways to get more families to have lots of babies to try to reverse the trend.

In short, these republican pundits are trying to have a serious conversation about what could be an extinction-level event for capitalism without cluing in the masses to the flaws of capitalism or the fact that its an entirely man-made crisis that doesn’t actually involve any scarcity of the necessities of life

Is that the anti-fluoride general from Dr Strangelove?

Women exist for more than your sexual gratification. Objectifying women isn’t funny

Naked events like this aren’t about showing off your smokin hot body, they’re about freeing oneself from the confines of clothing and the societal expectation that everyone cover up. It’s about embracing the natural state of nudity and enjoying the feeling of nudity. There’s also a shock factor that’s similarly effective in protest like this, particularly in illiciting reactions from conservatives while ridiculing them

Something something the cloud is not a backup

Your back of the envelope math is good, but small towns usually have very low property values due to not being super desirable places to live (and declining populations) a realistic average would be 100k average home value. Some will be smaller, older houses and only worth around 25-50k, some will be much newer houses built in this century worth closer to 200-300k but most will be older homes that people continue to live in and maintain worth around 100k

Also the city was clearly woefully underinsured with only $1m liability coverage. Most cities should have 10-100x that these days

Edison’s lightbulb invention story makes for a really good rugged individual story. Dude keeps trying after 400 failures finally finds the one that worked and becomes rich and famous for it

There’s an amusing scene in Iron Sky where a 1940s style Nazi meets some neo Nazis and he ends up positively disgusted and calls the neonazis an insult to their race

Just makes me thing of this gag from the IT Crowd

I’m so glad he’s in such amazing shape that he can *checks notes* climb a single flight of stairs

So super short version is a conservative dude or three tried to create /c/conservative and were immediately drowned out and made fun of, then they transferred moderation to others who now use it to make fun of republicans

I don’t work in healthcare and I have not needed gender affirming care myself so I can only rely on what I hear from the trans folks I know, and none of them had an easy time getting the healthcare they need. Everything I’ve heard indicates that it takes multiple years to begin receiving any kind of gender affirming healthcare outside of psychological so it’s not something people are going to go through on a whim. They have to be feeling a fairly significant amount of dysphoria to go through that much medical gaslighting and reach the first actually medical step of a prescription for HRT. But transgender, just like gender and sexuality is a spectrum. Some folks don’t want to do more than socially transition, some folks want to go all in but some will skip some procedures, and some are absolutely 100% and need to completely transition

There have however been actual pushes to try to create discorse exactly matching what you said “I’m not against trans people, I just think it’s too easy for kids to permanently modify their bodies for a fad!” And of course the more extreme version “you send you kid to school and they home fully transitioned! And if you try to do anything about it they tell you you’re endangering your child!” So definitely don’t trust anyone trying to spread this discourse

Y’know what, reviewing your post history, I believe you. You happened to step on a landmine though with your above comment about criminals, because the general problem of overpolicing and excessive force is reinforced by a laws that help perpetuate it.

For an extreme example, if you make it illegal to sleep under a bridge, any homeless person trying to get some rest in a public space that happens to provide a little bit of shelter is now a criminal. But do you think the police are going to hassle grampa who dozed off sitting at a park bench because it’s 3pm and he usually has had a nap by now? And when the newly deemed criminal gets upset about being arrested for just trying to get some shut eye that can be determined to be resisting arrest therefore the police can use more force. Maybe that triggers some PTSD and they start fighting back in which case the amount of force escelates.

The law and the criminal justice system are unfortunately designed to perpetuate a cycle of criminalism. Punitive prisons and sentencing make it difficult for anyone who has been arrested to adjust to living in society again. Parole and probation (the supposed support structure provided to people as they leave the prison system) is structured to penalize folks who already have it rough for struggling to make ends meet, and can quickly land people back in prison for offenses as simple as having work schedule them during their mandated parole meetings and needing to choose between potentially losing their job and becoming homeless or potentially being arrested again. Or they might find that they can make an actual living wage working in a black market (drugs, vehicle chop shop, etc.) because having a record excludes them from better paying employment options that offer a better work-life balance. Or maybe they couldn’t afford the restitution payments required (fines that were part of their sentence and fees for participating in the justice system) they go back to prison and ultimately come out much later even less able to adjust and the cylce continues until they die in prison, die homeless living in a gutter or die a death related to whatever trade they can pick up with their criminal record (industrial accident, drug overdose, gang violence, take your pick)

So yeah in short, some folks have a tight line to walk so that their existence isn’t criminalized

Says a moderator of !Antifa@maga.place

There was an SNL skit a while ago with a similar vibe. A bunch of white nationalists having a meeting and one guys describing his vision for a white utopia and the other guy is like “yeah I just got back from Vermont and it really sounds like you’re describing Vermont”

I get some AI generated vibes off of that image honestly, which would definitely explain the funky star alignment if my gut instinct is correct

Nice dog whistle there.

Police have a long history of using excessive force and being excessively punitive against anyone who looks different. Literally the first police force in the country were slave catchers and they never left those roots.

Edit: holy shit did you actually forget to change alts before replying to yourself?! Good job! Bravo!