And he chose that picture of himself?

I don’t know about how “normal” that might be but you’re feelings are valid. You also can’t stop progress. People are hardwired to make crazy new stuff and we’re really good at it.

But just because it exists doesn’t mean you have to use it. You can live a rich, full life even living like the Amish or other in low tech environments. The Mininites (like the amish but with phones and cars and computers) only adopt technology that benefits them and thier community. They live more primitively than most of the global north mostly for religious reasons, but there is wisdom in focusing on gizmos, gadgets, and software that improve your life in some way and ignoring what doesn’t.

I set my mom (62) up an old laptop running Ubuntu last year when her laptop was stolen out of my sister’s car. She’s adjusted fairly well to it. She needed a lot of hands on support at first and any time she uses her printer, but she has figured out how to do a lot of things on it on her own.

She makes papercraft activities in inkscape for a weekly storytime she hosts at a bookstore and has gotten very proficient, but still needs some hand holding when printing errors crop up.

I think a better title for this question might be “What issue do you feel strongly about but have weak arguments for and can only tolerate agreement with your position about?”

I think you may have missed the point of the article. I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume democrats don’t want to do anything about immigration. Trump and Biden both have basically the same plan to address illegal immigration. Harris’ plan is similar to both of theirs as well.

Illegal immigration is not nearly as serious as the average Republican might believe. They add strain to systems already working beyond their limits, but legal or illegal migrant workers aren’t displacing citizens at work and aren’t leading to the kinds of outcomes Mr. Trump would like his followers to believe. It does happen occasionally, but not enough to justify the alarming hate filled rhetoric.

The problem is that “poisoning the blood” is nakedly racist. The phrase has been used for over 100 years as a dog whistle for white nationalism. How can you have a rational discussion about addressing the real problems that enable illegal immigrants (American businesses hiring them) or the additional strain they put on already over worked and under funded public services if one side is ideologically set on the notion that migrants are evil?

I don’t think it’s reasonable to believe that democrats don’t want to address the border. Safe, legal migration into the United States benefits everyone. If we streamlined the legal immigration process and cracked down hard on businesses and individuals hiring undocumented migrants, that would address the bulk of migrants illegally crossing our borders.

Perhaps we make it a felony with mandatory jail time (per infraction) to hire an undocumented worker or own a company that employs them. Or perhaps we remove the exemptions some types of businesses enjoy from paying minimum wage. One of the reasons businesses hire illegal immigrants in the first place is they are cheaper than American workers because you can pay them less than minimum wage.

Right now there are a lot of businesses that benefit from cheap migrant labor, if we can break that trend, some of those businesses will fold, for sure. But do we want to let failed businesses that can’t stay open without breaking the laws of the United States to continue to operate?

Wikipedia says the sportage was a Mazda with kia branding back then. Which probably explains why I only ever had electrical problems that weren’t from unrepaired damage.

A ten year old 1995 Kia Sportage. All sorts of electrical problems, the four wheel drive didn’t work and I could never figure out why.

I will say the engine was surprisingly durable. I got it stuck in the mud and a friend of a friend tried to help get it unstuck by trying to drive it out, but only managed to get it stuck deeper and cracked the block. I had to add new coolant every day, but I drove that car gor another 6 months with a cracked block and only had to spend a few minutes trying to coax the engine to start when it was cold.

Pro tip: Never buy the first year of any car, even used.

Well yes, but also no. Meta fired those folks because they were using their lunch stipend provided by meta for things other than lunch. Petty, given how much they were paying the employees, but almost certainly a breach of contract on the employee’s part.

Meta is probably trying to do layoffs without paying layoff costs or taking the stock hit layoffs can cause. Which is still capitalist AF by any measure, lol. For fans of watching what kind of shit the oligarchy is trying now, Meta is definitely one to keep an eye on. Mark Zuckerberg has been moving very conservative very quickly lately.

Capitalists also say “You’ll own nothing and be happy”, the part they leave out is that it’s because you will rent every from them. In filthy socialism, the state holds everything in trust for the people and nobody makes any profits from ownership (the true power of capital).

The short answer is because autism is different from sexuality and the same system that works for one will not work for the other.

I would actually caution against embracing any label as part of your identity because as you have observed the autism experience is universally different. So too is the gay or lesbian or transgender experience. These are words we use to describe aspects of ourselves, but too often come to define us instead and enable exclusionary behavior such as gatekeeping identity or depening isolation for anyone who doesn’t fit neatly into a label.

Kamala will probably win the popular vote, but Trump will take the presidency either through a technical, electoral college win, or a supreme court decision.

If Kamala somehow wins the popular vote and the electoral college, expect more violence. Probably large scale organized violence like we saw in 2021, but also increases in mass shootings and hate crimes. Unless she wins by a landslide (which is very unlikely) the supreme court will likely be involved and the process will drag on into at least January, if not longer. The court will probably find or invent a legal position that gives Trump the presidency anyway.

No matter who is president, Americans living in red states are fucked and any Palestinians living in Gaza are probably going to be killed.

A Trump presidency would be bad for every American and every person living where the US has influence. If the Republicans also take control of congress when they elect Trump, it’s probable that would be the end of the United States as we know it. Trump dismantled a lot of important parts of the administrative state that keeps the gears of government turning during his first presidency. A second round in office, with the other two branches in his pocket, would give him the chance to completely gut the institutions of the united states until the presidency controls everything at the national level.

We would probably see a national abortion ban, a ban on transgender care for adults and minors, the gutting of civil rights protections, most government services privatized, the destruction of countless government agencies and a purge of anyone who might object to any of that.

A Harris presidency would stall some of the efforts of the fascist takeover of the United States but not even a majority of those efforts. Republican controlled states would go into overdrive with their destabilizing agendas. Life will become a lot worse for anyone who isn’t a cishet white man living but has the misfortune of living in Maga country.

The good news is regardless of the outcome Trump won’t be involved in the 2028 presidential election, if we have one. He’s old enough and senile enough that he won’t be in any shape to govern by then so at least we get some new horrors to look forward to.

This is probably one of the more tragic results of the mess we’re in right now and there is no good solution. Not killing anyone would be ideal, but not enough people feel that way or we wouldn’t be killing each other as much as we do.

You can’t change a bigots heart unless they want to change. You could kill them, but what difference would there be between you and a bigot at that point? These kinds of problems take generations to sort out, which is unfortunate for all the dead southern queer people who will be murdered legally in the years to come.

Yes, but also no.

More users would be great for the fediverse, in theory. Right now Lemmy (and Mastodon) can attribute a lot of their users to people unhappy with Reddit Inc. (or X) in some way. Throwing more unhappy people into the user base would probably not lead to good outcomes.

Personally I think Lemmy and Mastodon will never get the critical mass of users needed to maintain healthy communities because the only thing they have to offer is a less bad clone of an existing network.

X is bad because a malignant political demagogue is actively destroying what most people liked about Twitter. Reddit is bad because reddit inc. cares more about profit more than the needs of the user base. But the platforms they created and/or operate aren’t designed with a federated model in mind.

If the fediverse is ever going to move out of the technically savvy, early adopter nerds phase I think it’s only going to do that through something new and better than what already exists.

Justice has very little to do with the US legal system.

I couldn’t tell you specifically why, but I would question the value of such a project. Project 2025 undermines the foundations of the United States and moves the US towards authoritarianism.

Red versus Blue was an entertaining web series, but not an effective system of governance. Things like project 2025 are symptoms of a deeper sickness in the United States. Democrats shouldn’t be playing the same game as fascists, once you play by their rules, you’ve already lost.

The United States is an Oligarchy, the will of the people is almost entirely eclipsed by the interests of capital. Democrats don’t need their own project 2025, the people need representation in government regardless of what color flag their elected officials fly.

Fun real fact: You can strike elements from any contract you sign if you draw a line through the text and initial it. Half the time the account person catches it and rejects it, but sometimes they don’t and you can have some fun. If they took it to court a lawyer could easily argue that both parties would need to have initialed the change, but it’s a lot of trouble if you haven’t done something insane like struck the interest section of a purchase agreement on credit.

I once did it on an employment contract and struck the section that stipulated availability outside of normal working hours. Just don’t expect it to go well once you flex your power.

For some women that would be a turn off for a romantic partner, yes. You don’t have to plan a future with everyone you have sex with. There are plenty of women who want something casual and low attachment and would not be bothered at all by anything you mentioned.

Women are not a monolith. Each one of us is different and have different wants, needs, and desires. Don’t let the bullsh!t about you not being desirable stop you from trying. Rejection sucks, but never trying is much worse.

Animal populations have been dwindling for years while the human population soars. Perhaps all those humans who were animals have been ranking up lately?

Those beautiful, oblivious, meat-brained beefcakes.

I’m sorry you feel that way, but it’s not true. All you’re missing is self-confidence and self-worth. It may not feel like it, but you are worthy of love and validation. Love yourself because you are alive and trying.

It’s not easy, especially if you’ve built up a lot of myths about how you’re broken or unlovable. Find the things you like about yourself and go from there. All you have to do is keep trying.