Statistics isn’t my strong suit. What’s the probability of the probability increasing given that it has been increasing over time? Should we project the future probability to include this growth?

Sat silently through a misguided attempt by my workplace colleagues to do something, anything, useful and productive… FOR THE GLORY OF THE EMPIRE!

I want the Palm Pre form factor back. Sooo satisfying to slide that thing open or snapping it closed.

Keyboard was ok but not as good as the BB, IMO.

SoundBlaster?

This is what I fully expect. It is a sad state of affairs that I have to ask, “Are you serious this is what’s happening or is this your prediction?”

I want to agree with this sooo badly. But I have some empathy for crazy gun guy. And in some dispicable sense, the gun guy is acting completely rationally, if being severely short sighted.

Hypothetical: You drop litter on the ground. On purpose because you’re a thoughtless asshat. Someone calls you on it. Shouting ensues. They slap a magnet on your car. You rip it off and throw it on the ground because you have already demonstrated your unwillingness to give a shit about leaving things to rot in mother nature. They, in response, give your car a nice new scratch with a key and the damage is now permanent.

What’s your next move? Walk away? Call the police? Try to get their license plate and submit to your insurance company? Shame them on Tik Tok?

You’ve lost because your opponent was willing to escalate to vandalism, a crime for which you suffer and that no one is likely to take seriously enough to bring justice.

Society has broken down in this little ecosystem of two. Anyone can injure you, threaten your livelihood. Take away your security. What’s stopping them?

Until you unholster that 1.5lb mechanism of steel, lead, and brass. Now, you’re back in control. You are secure. Things are certain again. No one will be scratching your car, breaking your window, stealing food out of the mouths of your children.

There’s a certain rationality behind it, is all I’m saying.

Of course, we as rational thinkers can see the folly inherent in this escalation. Every petty spat becomes a life or death scenario. If we assume the rule of law still punished outright murder, then you are right back to your original quandary of whether to walk away or be the ultimate kind of “right”.

This is where mores in a society become critical. Maybe we’ve lost our sense of right and wrong behind a veil of rule-of-law. Maybe we’ve become too virtual to truly have a society based on mutual values. Maybe I’m just high and should go stare out a window.

TL;DR: Don’t litter.

Atlas Shrugged is a shit book, but I find myself thinking more and more about the world left behind when the “smart” people all leave. Nepotism breeds ineptitude leading to failed systems. Infrastructure crumbles. Businesses fail. Government stops functioning.

I wonder, after a cascade of failures of complex, core societal systems, which will be the first to actually affect the oligarchs? Gotta be the stock market, right? I mean, well after everyone’s pensions and 401(k)s are in the shitter, but eventually? Maybe?

I appreciate the discourse and that you took the time to link the article. Unfortunately, I think the only thing that article does is lay out an effective strategy for the offending party to delay, escalate, enrich, and flee.

To the final point of the article saying that eventually you would get all sorts of pressure to restabilize from entrenched parties… This administration is incapable of understanding the implications of a destabilized United States. Literally incapable. Their world view is so skewed and their echo chamber so closed that it would be like a cancer having to realize that limiting its growth is good for both it and the host. It doesn’t have the mechanisms to self regulate. Neither does our current oligarchy.

Backed up by what? Stern talking to? Fear of embarrassment? Public pressure? A moral compass? Perhaps there is another Amendment that applies when all else has failed…

Yeah, I’m on the side of the 13-yo.

DAE died a violent death on reddit years ago. I was there. I remember the backlash.

Let’s not revive it here. This place is special.

I don’t think invasion is the first step after the dissolution of the US. I think Texas becomes the new center of a southern entity for the reasons mentioned, but the other southern territories becomes vassal states to Texas. Many of the southern states rely heavily on federal aid to exist. Texas will leverage this to use Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, maybe South Carolina (plus those you mention) as near slave labor to feed its wealth and influence. As a new constitution is negotiated Texas will emerge as the center of a christofascist nation. Florida maintains a tenuous parity with Texas until rising seas make it uninhabitable. They then plead with the great Texas union to provide aid at which point they become subjugated the same as the others.

On thing is for sure, they’d fix immigration overnight. No one would be trying to escape TO The Holy Christian Union of Texas.

Come to think of it, the first post US armed conflict will likely be the HCUT pushing into Mexico as it grabs for the Panama canal and eventually the natural resources of South America.

I wish I was more creative. I’d love to write a post-American fictional novel.

I was expecting crazy stuff in this thread. But this… This is art.

Can your employer compel you to provide a DNA sample?

Brain read it as “linked to” and still said, “Yup, that tracks.”

Sus. If there was a security camera they would have checked that first.

Keep your head down anon, it is a bluff.

Also, stop putting shit in drinking water you sick fuck.

There it is.

Nothing these people say means anything until you follow the money.

Absolutely. Power and leverage as a means to profit. That’s it. Trump is not a statesman, he’s not an economist, he doesn’t have some grand vision for a utopian America that can weather the coming climate onslaught. He sees a place he can apply pressure regardless of absolutely any other consideration and does it until someone offers him money to stop.

This is what contemporary evil looks like.

This is the part the media and the economists get wrong. This was never about trade or the economy. Trump understands neither. What he does understand is power. Control. It is how he has always “negotiated”. Find some pressure points you control, press on it (even if it makes no sense or, worse, actually causes suffering) and then wait for someone to offer something and declare victory.

No grand plan, no scheme, no 3d chess, no deep thought. Just flex and collect.