OpenStars

I want to go there!!! It makes me wonder if there is a Star Wars one... (meh, close enough).

I guess I spoke too quickly as well. Probably people do write the news, but (a) how do you even find things these days, when searching is crap; and (b) it would perhaps do little to counteract the mis- (neutral), even active dis-information that is out there now. Also those sources I mentioned tend to be rather high-end, e.g. of the scale of intelligence required to make use of and especially to really enjoy watching them.

Speaking of the Bush administration, I recall hearing about the event where they pulled down Sadam Hussein's statue (iirc?) but later when I watched it happen with my own eyes - with the audio ON mind you - it told a 100% different story. Crowds cheering, or booing, or something, but the important thing is that with the audio OFF they can say whatever they wish to, and we'd believe it b/c how else could we know the reality? Unless someone happened to have the original source... except even then, what if they swapped the audio out, how could we tell!?

The only real way to tell a counterfeit is to know the real thing so well that nobody can tell you otherwise. So what, I am supposed to know about the entire history of the Middle East, and all of the machinations of the US government within that!? I have a fucking job you know, and as a not-Boomer, may never see retirement or own a home even then - who has time to add all of that to their schedule, on top of every single other thing like climate change, ThE eCoNoMy ThO, Covid and/or vaccines, and all of the other myriad things out there (like gay frogs for some damn reason, I dunno)?!

Highly ironically then, the internet may have slowed down the pace of systemic and active disinformation - by providing an "alternate" source of real, true facts - even as in other ways it also sped it up (by providing a source of "alternative facts" that are not true).

And in response to all of that, the Democrats choose to nominate... HRC, smdh. Remember, Trump did not win, so much as she lost - worse than any candidate in modern history, and the second-worst btw was... him. Conservatives, liberals, voters, apathetic people - we brought this upon ourselves. I really hope that we get to live, but if we die, I cannot really blame anyone else? The wealthy elites, ahem excuse me, the Democrat politicians, don't really exist within the same world as 99.999999% of the rest of Americans, which might be fine except neither do they seem to bother even so much as learning about them - except, you know, enough to carry hot sauce in her purse I suppose.

What you are describing sounds an awful lot to me like the mantra of "move fast and break things", which as I understand it was popularized by Mark Zuckerberg of ~~Facism~~ FaceBook, and refers basically to the fact that we can move so quickly nowadays - with the abilities of code monkies hopped up on crack (one presumes, this on top of the Red Bull and Dorritos combo:-P) that even if we screw up, we can still move quickly enough to fix it. Now, you might say that even one second's thought would be enough to dispell that rumor, however my counter to that is... he's rich. (and!? WTF does that even have to do with anything!? oh wait, he took all that money from society regardless of the harm that it did to us all, okay then)

Anyway, there have always been the elites - the idea of the Illuminati, regardless of whether they are "really" real or not, like seriously, how could they not be, that's simply how the world works!? - who have controlled society. The problem is, the elites feel like they no longer need the backing of irl human beings, b/c of (a) globalism (so humans here don't need educating, if you can get sufficient number of coders somewhere, who are willing to work for bananas and cocaine), and (b) automation (so... do we really need human beings at all? and also climate change makes it unlikely that we'll all survive? welp, better start killing them off in mass numbers, or better yet just let them do it to themselves, whilst *I* simply accumulate all of the wealth that I possibly can until then).

We are all so damn naive - and yes I include myself first and foremost among that set.:-P I am not sure that this problem even is fixable, but if it were, it would take an amount of collective effort that... I am not certain exists any longer. Or the backing of an elite. I guess we'll see what happens. :-|

My life is finally complete once more - I mean, not in this capitalistic hellscape, but you know what I mean (he makes it bearable I guess is what I mean:-).

zomg totally worth the effort - thanks for sharing! :-P

Edit: let's see... can I...

We can't see it for some reason?:-(

Exactly ^this. It makes sense to them that they "worked their way through college", ignoring how that is no longer possible.

Tbh I'm not a fan of just handing out money to the predatory banks who screwed students over with those loans either, but damn we should do something. Like maybe educate ourselves on a topic prior to banning people from doing it, possibly, hopefully?

And then they go and say "that's not how democracy works", except when you win the majority so hard that you even overcome the electoral college effect then they simply overthrow democracy itself.:-(

There are indeed real facts, and real people, behind all those pithy sayings.

Um... I refer you to the previous graphical answer:-).

(But in this case, it means no - it's somewhat versatile like that:-P)

US education was abysmal before that already

Solid points all around, but I wanted to add one historical tidbit: at one point the USA had literally the best edumacashiun in the world. After WWII, the other nations (like the UK + those in the EU) were bombed all to hell & back whereas the USA was relatively fine. People like Bill Gates advocated strongly for US education funding, b/c it helped feed that behemoth giant of a corporation to have an already-educated workforce, funded by US tax dollars, that they could take advantage of.

We have fallen FAR down the world rankings since then. Tbf, some of that may reflect changes in measurements e.g. does "every" kid need one, or can some be excused to go be a farmhand without needing to finish? (this affects averaged measurements, but not peak ones, or the previously thus-filtered ones)

Who could oppose that?

I think you know who... there is one class that seems to go FAR out of their way to control the conversation to the end of "there is no class struggle" (or even "there is no such thing as class"?).

Someone else could write news then? People started doing that on YouTube - e.g. CPG Grey, Ian Danskin/Innuendo Studios, Hank & John Green, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Kurzgesagt, etc. It did not work out well I think, especially since people seek more immediate gratification i.e. Twitch dances or whatever rather than fully college-level subject matter provided entirely for free, oh except having to watch ads for the corporate overlords.

If we do not value i.e. take care of things, we will lose them. In this case - and here I will use a generational term, b/c it refers to the only people in charge at the time it occurred - the Boomer (+ Great) generations chose this for the legacy of everyone who came after. Which is only the history of how we came to be here, but it is our choice to continue forward this way.

The word "think" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there... plus how many conservative voters these days even have college degrees? The TV (or radio) man says to vote one way, so they do, end of the matter as far as they are concerned. (extraordinarily sadly, no /s on this one)

I have noticed that the titles of many articles, yes even at The Guardian that generally has good content once you get past that, are written to generate maximum clicks.

You were not ignored by accident. It was a calculated decision to maximize profits, in a manner that controls the conversation and leaves you out in the cold.

Fuck corporate greed:-(.

But for you, my fellow human being who isn't a hollowed-out shell i.e. CEO, I wish the absolute best outcome possible. (And me too.)

Maybe house prices will go down someday? I really am genuinely surprised at all that Biden('s administration) has managed to accomplish, but it was set back years before it even started by the pandemic, greedflation, and other economic and other forms of unrest. If we can get past this next election without a literal and actual bloody civil war... well then most of us will still die of climate change (gee, I am just full of positivity today aren't I? sadly, that is the most positive take possible on that one:-|), but we might be able to make some headway? e.g. start incentivizing building houses further away from city centers, which WFH should help make possible - and even if you want to live in a city, the decrease in demand should help lower prices?

Anyway, all we can do is what we can do (aka not everything is within our control), so don't stress too awfully much about it. We'll die - we can't change that - but hopefully we'll have some good days between now and then:-).