I have few teachers I can remember lessons from my high school days, 20+ years ago. The US was fresh post 9/11, patriot act era.

AP History teacher, a Vietnam vet, took his time to explain why only “tinpot dictators” need military parades to show power and US armed forces Generals would never go for it.

While teaching checks-and-balances, he firmly believed enough good men and women would remain in positions of power to never let a dictator override the constitution.

Another time, he pointed out that the presidential election is never actually called until the candidate concedes (when asked about gore v w) and that fore conceded because that is what is done. When we pressed him on it, he said “You are teenage boys, and you think like teenage boys. Adults know what’s right, even if it means you lose.”

All that is to say, I consistently see reminders that this current administration has the same mental thought process as a group of teenage boys, spoiled teenagers who started at third and think they hit a home run.

You just described acting.

There is also a Ukrainian Catholic “sect” (denomination? Not sure the proper terminology). They follow the heirarchy of the Pope, like other Catholics, but I believe there is more figures in there too (metropolitan’s, archbishops). Their liturgy is more Orthodox than Roman cathlicism, (Byzantine rite) and some other differences - communion, baptism/confirmation, priests can marry.

I disagree. And I don’t mean to preach, but there is a power in words and using them (or not using them). The fight over the word and meaning of socialism is not what “the people” need right now, that can come later. This has been happening in the US closing in on a century. It’s not those tolerant of material reality (as you say) you need to convince, it’s those that would benefit from “the peoples” agenda that don’t acknowledge material reality. Ride the wave of making billionaires pay.

Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.

Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security.

Socialism is what they called farm price supports.

Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance.

Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.

Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.

When the Republican candidate inscribes the slogan “Down With Socialism” on the banner of his “great crusade,” that is really not what he means at all.

What he really means is “Down with Progress–down with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal,” and “down with Harry Truman’s fair Deal.” That’s all he means.

• Harry Truman

Don’t swim against this right now. These programs from the new deal and fair deal are not even called socialist by American standards anymore.

Putin can stop this war today. He rather his people keep dying, his country invading territory as long as the money in coming in. Zelenskyy will own all of Ukraine at this pace. It’s clear Putin is not looking for peace!

😂

I work for one of these behemoths, and there are a lot of adults in the room. When we began our transition off the prior, well known corporate AV, I never even heard of crowd strike.

The adults were asking reasonable questions: why such an aggressive migration timeline? Why can’t we have our vendor recommended exclusion lists applied? Why does this need to be installed here when previously agentless technologies was sufficient? Why is crowd strike spending monies on a Superbowl ad instead of investing back into the technology?

Either something fucky is a foot, as in this was mandated to our higher ups to m make the switch (why?), or, as is typically the case, the decision was made already and this ‘due diligence’ is all window dressing to CYA.

Who gives a shit about fines on SLAs if your vendor is going to foot the bill.

Oh man, I would browse while on the shitter at work. It used to be one of my OGs. A lot of tinfoil. And you’d get the deep dives that didn’t feel politically motivated (compared to today).

Then, the Trumpeting.

Like everything else not stapled down circa 2016, it was an easy target for the Russian firehose of falsehood: an entire community of people wanting to believe some alternative bullshit.

“Learn a bit of your own history” posts links from 3 mo ago

You got em. The long and storied history of q1, 2024.

The a-bombs weren’t the president, Truman was. And yes I think Trump is emphatically worse at his job than Truman.

Agreed. Coming full circle back to my comment, Putin and Russia are to blame for the unnecessary deaths of Ukrainians, not those who harbour sentiments of “Fuck Putin and Glory to Ukraine”

If the election was illegitimate (you mean he really didn’t get 88% of the vote ?!?), then it sounds like its Putin shitting on Russian citizens. Not sure how my comment is derogatory either.

Yaaa, let’s blame the sentiments of observers for killing Ukrainians, not the genocidal kgb agent and the country where 88% of the voters reelected him…

I’ve thought about this a lot lately, especially since having kids. It really hit me how much non-verbal and indirect communication they pick up on. I want my kids to be good people, better than me, and I worry they are picking up on my short comings.

I think society is like that. We say sharing is good and we teach sharing, but a disproportionate group that takes everything, that is selfish, that puts there priorities above others… that behavior is rewarded, intentionally or not. And generations go by and the behavior is normalized.

I like (and shudder) to think alot of history is a series of these little oversteps that the masters of the universe are laughing about at the time… “trickle down economics, can you believe they are buying this shit?!” And 50 years later, after 2 generations the supporters forgot it was all a scam and are genuinely believers.