Yes. Over the long term it will render the planet uninhabitable, or at least close enough to it.

Keep the proles out.

Yes, maybe… but the point being they could, and often did, rebuild right where they’d been before. Radiation prevents that.

TBF a nuclear incident is not like burning just one house down. It’s burning down the whole city and making it unusable for a decade or ten.

Why?

The internet at large is still a cesspool.

The only difference is who is in control of it.

Missed the half-dozen boilerplate SEO sites that scraped the most generic and unhelpful information possible that feature links to whatever barely tangential software or product they might be selling.

Removing outside sources of information? There are a few countries that already do this, and they’re not great places to live.

Comic book villains are charismatic and have a plan. They can often be related to.

The villains being placed in positions of power are one dimensional, inept, and destructive for the sake of being destructive.

They’re like the villain’s stupid henchmen that constantly plot for their own selfish reasons while trying to not to catch too much attention from their leader.

Some inside perspective:

You are talking to staff or an intern. You might be the hundredth call for the day. They’ve heard all kinds of shit, from long-winded conspiracy crazies to the most courteous and intelligent calls ever. Yelling at them or being a jerk will get you nowhere. Be prepared to state your case clearly and concisely. Your concern will indeed be noted and logged.

Do not call a congressperson that isn’t your own. They are not required to listen to you, you are not their constituent. Do not write a congressperson that is not your own. The letter is almost guaranteed to go straight into the trash.

The best letters go on the intern break room fridge to be enjoyed by all.

Even so, unfortunately the congressperson may not act in a way consistent with the majority of people’s calls and letters. Thank money and power plays in politics for that.

I deleted Threads five days ago.

It was a cesspool of (Russian? Troll Farm?) propaganda attacking Harris for not having any accomplishments for the last four years, complaining about housing, grocery, egg, and gas prices, “fixing” America, a crapton of pro-jesus stuff, pro-Elon comments and reposts, government money going to “illegals” instead of hurricane victims, and a ton of made up lies. …

All of which were as transparent as fuck why they were wrong. VP’s don’t make policy, so what accomplishments should she have? Housing has been going up for a decade+, it’s not new, egg prices were normal while the pics were of organic egg prices and expensive grocery carts had hidden high cost items or just straight up lied about the cost, gas prices are the lowest they’ve been for years. Jesus stuff praised trump, America, tons of AI generated “holy” trump pics, bashed atheists, posted Elon’s BS pseudo-wisdom, Ignored the $20Bn spent on hurricane relief in favor of a few hundred million housing the undocumented workers living in the affected area…

It was infuriating. Because they were so obviously wrong…blatantly, in-your-face, completely fucking wrong. It was a constant flood of lies. Eight out of nine posts were BS.

But as soon as the election swung in Trump’s favor…poof…it went quiet. Hardly a peep. Gone.

And I realize that Threads was captured completely by troll farm bots spewing right-wing propaganda. And it was a waste of time. So my account will be deleted.

He also bought 9% of it and didn’t disclose it, IIRC that had something to do with it as well.

Truly a (reverse?) shitpost.

This is the correct answer.

Life is programmed to make more of itself. Successful life means more successful reproduction and numbers.

Just because we consume that life doesn’t mean that it failed in any way; quite the opposite, if we propagate that life because we find it desirable for some reason that life has become more successful than its competitors.

Everything from apple trees to cattle have become incredibly successful thanks to humans’ desire for them and being the benefactors of their propagation. They are the winners in a backhanded sort of way.

Refine that a little bit: he made a series of very bad business and financial choices regarding the commercial property he bought. He failed to follow through on the legal avenues he had available to him, he screwed with people who wanted to buy his property by jacking up the price after he had an offer, and he constantly blamed others for all his problems.

The man engaged in self-sabotage at every opportunity and made it everyone else’s fault.

He is in no way a hero.

Just keep jacking up the ad-free tier price level.

Somewhere in TX?

All the people killing the Bluebonnets, trampling them for photo ops, or even dangerously stopping in breakdown lanes on the freeway to access Bluebonnets in the median for more pics.

Some do that, too. Unfortunately the weight of tradition seems to enforce the C/CE/AC key preference.

Even the iphone built in OS calculator has the “AC” button unless you manually tap the entry window, then you get a backspace.

Took my first drive as a passenger in a FSD Tesla the other day. I was rapidly underwhelmed. I mean, yeah…it’s pretty cool the car drives itself, to an extent. But even as a passenger I was struck by the number of times I would have taken the wheel and made the car do what it was supposed to. Hesitant pulling forward to turn, hesitant pulling out into traffic after a turn, wrong speed for the road, abrupt turns… Did it get us there? Sure. Did it do a good job? Mid at best. Probably better as an anti-fatigue measure on highway drives instead of taking you places in town. I would not pay for FSD were I to own a Tesla…at least it seems really inappropriate for the kind of driving I do.

This

But Tesla will gladly keep charging a lot of money for FSD.