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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • Let’s also remember that most people didn’t REALLY think Trump had a chance in 2016, even most Republicans voting for him. If everyone that would have voted against Trump had shown up (less than 60% of eligible voters turned out in 2016), it would have been no contest. He didn’t even get the popular vote in the end. But nobody took his campaign seriously and counted on everybody else to turn out to make the obvious but boring choice.

    In 2020, though, we had the highest turnout of eligible voters since 1920 (still an embarrassing 66.6%). The only reason that the turnout for 2020 was so high is because so many people were so eager to either maintain or end Trump’s reign that people were charged up and went to the polls. The only realistic way that Trump doesn’t win this time though is if everyone who was so charged in 2020 remains as charged this time, or a new bunch of voters, like newly eligible young voters, show up in droves… and I’m very concerned that that doesn’t happen.





  • I moved out to go to college at 18 and back in with my mom as 21 after dropping out due to financial issues. I had trouble finding work there, nothing stable that paid well. I was a pretty lonely depressed guy, a virgin into my 20s, with nothing significant in my life and nothing to offer anyone else. It was a pretty shit time for me. I ended up moving in briefly with my dad 2 states away and was able to find a decent paying factory job shortly thereafter and got my own apartment. Then I found an even better paying factory job a year or two later, and got promoted to management within the year. I lost a bunch of weight, was able to save money, lost my virginity finally and I bought a house. I met the woman who would become my wife. Sold my house moved in with her. Went back to school, got my degree, got a much higher paying job, bought a much nicer house and we just had our first kid.

    I don’t want to tell you how to live and I am not under the impression that everyone can just do what I did. Everyone is different. Circumstances are different. I know. But nothing in my life started to improve from my lowest point in my adulthood until I stopped the complacency, moves out and worked to improve myself and my life. I would be shocked if your 50+ year old uncles who live with you grandmother and have never had a girlfriend are truly happy with their situation. I would encourage you to seek to change your situation if you can. I’m only a year older than you. At one time I was tens of thousands in debt, out of shape, had teeth falling out, living with my mom, no social life, no girlfriends, sexless, penniless, and had no hope or outlook in life. I have had my own share of failures, yet I am in a good place now. I got my teeth fixed, got a degree, i have a nice job, a nice house, a wife and beautiful daughter, and we’re comfortable. I hope you can get there too.




  • So… I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t think this is quite right. Intent does matter in a criminal act, yes. This is called mens rea. It is the intent and knowledge to commit a criminal act, rather than just the action itself. For example, causing the death of another intentionally (without reasonable cause like self defense) is murder. Killing them unintentionally is only a crime if you were criminally negligent (which also includes knowledge and intent) and said negligence caused the death.

    However, motivation is not the same as intent and a potentially unethical or political motivation to perform an otherwise legal action does not make the act illegal. Especially in the execution of the law. If your political rival commits a crime, even though you may care more about their political challenge then actual justice in that case, you still can and should execute the law exactly as you would for anyone else. The alternative would be to allow personal bias against the criminal to make them immune to the law, which can clearly not be the solution. So long as due process is followed, the law is impartial, and the trial is fair, it doesn’t matter what the motivation of the prosecution was. They are still subject to the law like anyone else.

    I just had this same argument with my Father-In-Law a couple weeks ago about the Trump convictions. He said it was all politically motivated, so it was wrong. I said, maybe it was politically motivated, I don’t know. I can’t read the minds of dozens of people that I’ve never met before. But it doesn’t matter if it was or not, because Trump still committed the crimes, as was demonstrated before a jury, and he was given a fair trial like any other person was and found guilty by a jury his lawyers helped to select. What anyone’s hopes or reasons were are their own and completely inconsequential.



  • I don’t know about your specific university, but you should also compare how much their tuition and fees have increased in that 20 years and before. Average rise in tuition and fees across the board in just the last 20 years has been 179%. Adjusted for inflation, the average annual tuition and fees at public universities have nearly quadrupled since 1969, from $2440 to $9349. They’ve also more than tripled at private universities in that same time frame, from $10,636 to $32,769. Again, that’s adjusted for inflation. Has educating people really become 3 or 4 times more costly in the last 55 years, or have they realized they can charge more, make more pointless cosmetic improvements to campuses to entice students, and line the pockets their boards of trustees and presidents, some of whom make multi-million dollar salaries?

    Your second paragraph is good advice though. I tell people the same thing.



  • First, an educated populous brings the entire economy up. It creates new markets, new fields and industries, and more opportunities for everyone. It also takes a large chuck of the workforce into offices, labs, and around the world instead of competing with you for your machining job at the factory, which would devalue your role and result in lowering your wage, if you got the job at all.

    Second, the only reason for the massive amounts of student debt is due to universities massively inflating the cost of an education to milk the government of their federal student loans. This doesn’t address that directly, but it applies pressure on the government to reign in these bloated tuition and book costs that universities are pushing.

    Third, if we’re so afraid Joe the Plumber and the rest of the Working Class might have to help his fellow man with 3 cents of his annual tax rate, then increase the tax on the wealthy controlling class to cover it instead. The same tax bill will mean waaaaay less to them.

    Edit: for clarification, that was a rebuttal to Graham’s comment, not yours, OP






  • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.worldtoNostalgia@lemmy.caSmallville
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    1 month ago

    The first season is rough. Largely an episodic ‘freak of the week’ conflict with a new empowered antagonist each episode, with some pretty mixed results in quality and some very hard to suspend disbelief over. But then they start having some more season archs at play that are much more interesting, with the occasional, usually way more fun, cameos, guests, or empowered enemies, even some returning freaks of the week. It is never perfect, and it has some noticeable lesser seasons, including, unfortunately, the last one. But I have a soft spot for it overall, and there are some episodes that hit real fucking hard for me as a life long superman fan. I haven’t gone back to watch it again in years, but I used to play the show’s DVD sets while I worked at my developer job in college back in the late 2000’s, along with another nostalgia hit, Reaper (RIP).