They’ll keep doing it until we start taking the problem of monopolies seriously

And make all fines % based because as they say, flat fines are only punishments for the poor

The 2000 election was such a massive turning point for the US. So many branching consequences, but imagine if we had had an environmentalist in the White House instead of Mr. Buy and Drill Our Way Out of This? At the time of 9/11 I believe it was Tom Daschle of SD on record calling for a Green Manhattan Project which obviously fell on deaf ears quite quickly as the bombs started raining down on Baghdad. Sure there’d still be cries for vengeance, but I also think if POTUS had been saying at the time ‘we win this war by getting ourselves off foreign energy’ it just might have been persuasive enough to embark on some major developments.

The free market / capitalist part of the GOP is dead and gone. They don’t care about labor, the budget, spending, anything - they just care about getting power and keeping power. They also don’t really intend to do anything they claim to care about, it’s all just about fluffing up the base.

They should honestly stop screwing around and break up this obvious monopoly. That’s the reason they get away with all of the stuff they get away with. Should have been clear at the merger it was an anticompetitive move and never should have been allowed to get to where it is in the first place.

Japan is mostly private too, isn’t it?

Sorely needed blue dashes too! I just wish there were a few more heading up into the mountains from Denver too.

To me this is the most important reason for building your own PC. If you don’t care or don’t want to research each part then sure, get a prebuilt. Otherwise, it’s really nice to know what’s in it and do your research on each piece so you know it’s quality and will be supported.

Yeah I’ve been waiting for the day he decides to own the term fascist the way he’s taken other terms. I don’t see a downside for him either really, the base would eat it up

They’re completely lost at this point I think. The ‘skip ad’ button is brilliant from a marketing perspective, if you ask me. One can get pretty used to tuning out ads but having that skip button keeps you actively interacting. So even if you didn’t see the whole ad, if the advertiser is smart you heard their name before you skipped. Plus the user gets to feel like the ad isn’t shoved down their throat, they have control.

If I were running things I’d quit this dumb battle with the users they’ve declared and make ads extremely easy to skip - I feel like you’d have a lot fewer refugess from the site and a lot more people less motivated to install an ad blocker in the first place.

I’m going to give you my philosophy also as a non Dem/Gop voter. It’s not voting out of fear, it’s understanding your options and thinking tactically about them. Take you for example - will it be easier to conduct the kinds of direct action you’re envisioning under a Biden admin or a Trump admin? And longer term, will the things you want to do be easier after four years of Biden or Trump? Because the way things are going now it’s going to be one of those two in the White House.

This is how you need to be thinking because it’s how the game works. You gotta think big picture, game theory. It’s definitely how they’re thinking when they say ‘a vote for these guys is a vote for Trump’. We need to be working directly to change the game too for sure, but it’s not going to change before November '24.

I’m in the same boat and often wonder what right these billboard companies have to put their messages in my face

Does it really matter what internal effort there is to battle hate when the celebrity owner is publically boosting it himself?

I think this is probably great for specific forensic work and similar but the problem with deepfakes isn’t that people can’t determine their veracity. The problem is that people see a picture online and don’t bother to even check. We have news sources that care about being accurate and trustworthy yet people just choose to ignore them and believe what they want.

And inserted randomly within the content

In a just world the news shows would have a real income ticker instead of the Dow.

Or some other tracker that shows values actually relevant to the average American.

SMH do we really have to do this god-emperor thing with every single dude who gets a little bit of fame in the business world

Yeah he’s barely even playing with his own money anymore

I think it’s like those commercials you sometimes see like during a big sporting event or something where it’s over and you’re like - what company is that and why would I care? They really do sometimes put an ad out in front of millions of eyes knowing there are only a few dozen in the audience who would care. But those eyes have the power to make million dollar purchases for their companies.

The thing I’m most likely to stop buying online without free returns would be clothing. Online clothing retailers should 100% know that a purchase is never final until the person gets it and tries it on. It’s too common to have to send items back for fit - I’d just start going to the store and trying it on there again instead of paying for each return.