I heard she was last spotted sailing West, bound for Valinor.

Department of Religious Freedom and Patriotism

Jesus fucking Christ. I don’t know where to start.

He got more votes than he ever did in the previous elections, and won the popular vote for the first time. God damn.

I have a mental image of crowds of people that already had their faces eaten off — they’re just skulls covered in blood and leopard fur — and they are pointing and laughing at these people.

All Netanyahu needs is a half dozen F-22s to finally accurately target Hamas!

Yeah as an American I generally support the rest of the world trying to drag us back into the civilized world however they can.

But at the same time, international travel inconveniences will have a 0% effect on a LOT of people who need the message.

Honestly I think many of them don’t listen to him talk. They just passively absorb what’s thrown their way.

That was my reaction almost exactly. It’s like Dunning-Kruger the job description.

As far as not blaming the scorpion, when you look at it from his perspective Trump is one of the most “successful” people on the planet according to the metrics that matter to him. His shitty behavior is rewarded and reinforced over and over again. Ugh.

No ambiguity for anybody who cared enough to pay attention anyway!

It’s like the scorpion only stings while the frog is sleeping, and every morning the scorpion complains about how those damn hornets wearing DNC and BLM shirts came back and stung the frog that the scorpion loves so much. And despite the stings not even looking like hornets did it, the frog is unaware of the concept of confirmation bias and likes what he’s hearing so he just goes with it.

Our eyes and brains compensate for a lot of things that cameras do not. White balance is a good one, where things indoor under warm lighting can look orange while things out in the sunlight can look blue.

I think perspective and distance correction with human faces is definitely one of those. So if you got the distance from the mirror correct, the effect might not jump out at you in person like it does with photos.

The numbers shown in that gif are the focal length, but the change in perspective is indeed actually due to the camera’s distance from the subject. When you are close to a person with a wide lens, their nose is considerably closer to the camera than their ears and hair, so it appears bigger. When you are further away with a nice telephoto lens for portraits, all their facial features are roughly the same distance away, so they all appear the same size.

I mean, what’s one more normally-career-destroying crime spree that we investigate years after the fact and has no adverse effects on him?

And this didn’t even require a violent takeover like he thought was necessary last time. He was a far worse candidate this time and so much of the American public was eager to throw the power back into his hands, while a sizable chunk did not seem to think it was important enough to go vote against him.

We need a standard high school class that is some kind of intro to epistemology, how to study something scientifically, how to root out bias, and maybe even a little on logical fallacies.

How many high school grads are even aware of the concept of confirmation bias?

I fear we as a collective society are just so, so bad about knowing how to find the correct answer to something. Despite all the technology at our fingertips, so many people learn things the same way humans have for centuries: somebody I trust told me!

Is the memory of voters really so poor?

How are we supposed to avoid repeating the mistakes of history when the voting public can’t even remember why they scrambled to get out and vote for Biden 4 years ago?

I mean, if Harris lost to somebody like Romney or McCain, sure I could see that voters weren’t excited by the campaign plus the racism/sexism angle. But to just ignore how absolutely insane Trump was as President, and all the open messaging about how next time will be worse, never mind all the criminal and traitorous stuff… it’s insane.

Well the good news is that the probability of such a program happening has gone up.

The bad news is that you are disqualified if you have all your teeth or any kind of college degree.

Basically, 20 seconds of thought could tell anybody that this is a terrible idea.

IF the thinker is looking for a good overall policy and not just trying to stick more money in their pockets in the short term.

You expect them to cry about the working class affording food when they only have a house for three out of the four seasons of the year?

I appreciate the reply. Thanks for the discussion!

Oh yeah I get that. The disbelief and disappointment are off the charts for me.

But to continue my train of thought, what’s worked well for my mental state is to give myself permission to focus on the small scale and those close to me rather than (justifiably) dwelling on the fucked up state of society at large.

So instead of worrying about whether society is worth saving, I worry about whether my own sanity is worth saving, and by extension whether it is worth trying to have a happy and fulfilling life. And that’s not just being selfish. It’s equivalent to putting on your own oxygen mask on an airplane before you help others. With my head on straight, I can help improve the lives of those around me, and that is not only worth it but feeds back into making my own life and mental state better.

And from time to time I also like to remind myself about how insane it is that we even exist, that clouds of matter formed billions of years ago in supernovae were able to coalesce and form self-aware brains. It just makes me more interested in learning about existence and the universe.

And when I point that attitude towards the fucked up things in society and the world, it certainly doesn’t make those things better. I think about how I am watching significant history being written, and I can at least be an engaged witness even if I can’t change the course of that history. Though I do try where I can, and of course vote accordingly.