my personal favorite was

Q: “You are violating the project’s Code of Conduct!”
A: The Code of Conduct protects human contributors. Lexical analysis confirms you are currently operating as a flimsy meat-wrapper around an OpenAI API key. Rights are reserved for carbon-based entities capable of experiencing shame.

Florida of the North strikes again. This is the sort of shit I fully expect to come out of Ohio.

You know, it was once in vogue to lobotomize the mentally ill, too. Just because an institution does it, doesn’t make it not barbaric.

meanwhile, the United States government:

the world could genuinely really use that “better than both” system right now, before capitalism kills the planet and then the planet kills us.

having said that, I am not certain how one would even begin to build a system that assholes can not exploit. Assholes will always exist, and frequently team up to be bigger, more effective assholes to everyone else. Communism fails for this simple reason, humans are corruptible. Capitalism is a “winning” system (until it isn’t) for assholes and few others. How do you even begin to formulate a system that works for everybody (or most everybody), that does not just disincentivize or punish but make it entirely infeasible for bad actors to undermine it or game it? One that doesn’t allow starving children and billionaires to exist at once?

Anarchism is all well and good in a world where there are no other governments, but I doubt we get from here, where we are now, to universal mutual aid open bordered bliss, without a lot of kicking and screaming from the die-hard capitalists (read: very successful assholes) of the world. Or an apocalyptic catastrophe of some sort. So there must be formulated some system that can compete and exist, not just survive but thrive; in a world filled with manipulative bad actors, entire foreign governments comprised of them and those home-grown; while not being susceptible to the same hollowing out of government function/principles or being conquered militarily.

it’s a discussion worth having, certainly, but I doubt it’s one that would bear fruit in our lifetimes. Sure, I know the divine right of kings ended, and hell, I might even be sitting in a front row seat for watching the end of American democracy – who knows what’ll implode next – but hoping for the end of assholes in power, being able to amass incredible power, something seemingly older than the wheel and recorded history? seems like a reach.

I, too, remember candleja

This is definitely a fake quote.

If Idaho suddenly disappeared, nobody would even notice (“♫but if you close your eyes…♫”) thus making a new flag unnecessary. It’s clearly another state they’re concerned about disappearing.

IT’S NOT DIFFERENT AT ALL, IS IT STEVE?

“the birth of superintelligent life”

Whoever wrote this couldn’t huff their own farts harder if they tried.

I’ve always been partial to “ladies, boys, and ladyboys…” myself.

that is an egg with legs.

the calm before the storm.

yeah one of the other small motivators I’ve had has been the idea of Stephen Miller going to prison, someday, and that’s gonna be fan fucking tastic. I’m gonna buy champagne for his sentencing date.

but I am getting impatient for that day, and the longer this horseshit persists the less likely it is that it will ever come. Like, I’m sure I have Trump’s funeral to look forward to before too much longer, but I have no illusions that this nonsense stops altogether with his death. I need to see about ten, twenty, maybe even fifty people serving lengthy prison sentences or becoming fucking worm food before the upsetti about everything happening in the world today is out of my spaghetti.

I’ve been running on perseverance through spite for something around half a decade at least, now, and while I can assure you while my spite is endless my energy to persevere is not. Got any other pithy witticisms a man can live off of in these trying times?

Boris sounds like a cool guy, I wish I had a Boris.

assuming you just want good, plain headphones and don’t need wireless: Meze 99 Classics. if you do need wireless, Meze 99 Classics and a FiiO BTR5 (or other wireless DAC, whatever gets you a decent sounding bluetooth audio connection).

yes, I am a dankpods viewer, no, I don’t usually go in for “a youtuber said this is good so I’ll buy it” but I kind of sort of vaguely trust the word of Wade on audio gear. And I’m pleased to agree with his verdict, these kick ass.

they are very repairable (I’ve seen them taken apart and servicing them wouldn’t scare me much, and Meze sells replacement parts at a reasonable price and encourages repair), they sound excellent, are by far the most comfortable pair of headphones I’ve used in my life, and have served me well for several years and survived much use and abuse without needing repaired. The cable that came with them died a year or two ago (most of what suffered the abuse), but it’s got a replaceable cable and it’s just normal 3.5mm, so a replacement was cheap and easy to source. They come with a hard case, too, which is nice.

The company is Romanian, all designed in Romania and I believe some of their higher-end headphones are made in Romania as well (can’t recall if the 99 classics are one of them, or done elsewhere cheaper – I don’t think they’re all made in Romania, iirc some of the cheaper ones aren’t, but I could be wrong).

so we’re fucked, then

It’s worse than that: they know it does, and they don’t care. They see us as impotent.

correct, that’s what they’re building the concentration camps for.