I don’t follow VR closely so I am curious as to what exactly Meta did accomplish. You seem to have some awareness of this space. They spent an insane amount of money building shit, they must have made something remarkable even if no one cared. Could they really have built only a second rate VR Chat alternative? I mean with that amount of money, he could have built a replacement for credit card processors.

As a WA state resident, we require inclusion in the deal. In fact, you buy 1 California and receive a complimentary WA state for free! Act now, and receive a special-one-time Oregon while supplies last!

I have to tell you that I want to believe I really do. It would be so much better than accepting that the majority of American voters chose this future. In your view, is it just small modifications in swing states which gave Trump the electoral college or do you believe this impacts total vote count to a degree that it changes the overall majority vote count? What I’m getting at is, do you believe the vote manipulation only delivered the electoral college or do you believe that the majority of voters did indeed vote against trump? For me, if it was just the electoral college, it changes little in my opinion of the state of our country. If it’s the actual majority vote, that shows a path to redemption.

I mean, not to nitpick, but I don’t think one can be xenophobic of their own country. N Koreans can’t vote. Hong Kong couldn’t vote (odd governance structure that didn’t allow them control of their own laws), and Russia is Russia.

As an American I can see their perspective though. In the first Trump admin, we could blame the weirdness of the electoral college process as the majority of the population opted against him. This second term is different though. The majority of the US election participants voted in favor of all of this. At that point, it’s pretty fair to blame the populace for the outcome as the majority of voters actively supported this outcome. I still can’t believe when I overhear folk at restaurants actively in favor of this craziness.

“She said she voted for Mr. Trump and still supported him, but felt stung by the veto.”. Sounds like they are having the day that they voted for.

It’s time for Cascadia!!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_movement

Where are the righteous folk though? I mean, who else is left standing? We got Canada and New Zealand but they don’t have enough of a population to really move the needle. The US is heading in the direction it is. Everything in South America is a target of the US so they would have to organize into a union to be enough of a deterrent. I just don’t see anyone else outside the EU being able to pull this off. If there is another alternative I’m on board.

At this point, it appears that the EU is the last bastion of liberal democracy still standing. The world should probably start to move to the Euro as reserve currency and the basis of trade.

Long Live Cascadia!!!

Damn I swear he made that face in True Detective but you’re probably right and both of those performances were amazing.

I recognize bottom right as true detective which is a series and was fantastic.

At this rate, these could be used in the defense of Greenland.

There is a difference between the America of 30 years ago and now that you may not realize. You reference housing and yeah 30 years ago you could afford housing (possibly) but now private equity has purchased housing so new home ownership is getting impossible. You mentioned American laptops (made in China) and operating systems (Linux is from Finland), but the breakthroughs that allowed for current American tech dominance were based on policies that have been dismantled and now currently exist due to monopolies. We are on a downward trend over here where we are living off the accomplishments of old. Think about it like IBM. They were a tech powerhouse until they moved to being a services company and then became a shadow of their former self. They still exist and are a big company but nothing compared to what they were. That’s America now. Australia has the potential to take the reins if they DO NOT follow the current US example as do many other countries.

ThePicardManeuver

I noticed that even though I don’t take a ton of photos, I never seemed to look at the ones I took. Ended up just using my whole camera photo album as the standby screen on my TV so it just shows random photos and I finally got some use out of them. It’s been oddly fun to see random photos taken like 15 years ago pop up that I completely forgot about.

We just had a pandemic 5 years ago…should be fresh in the memory. As an American, this is a US problem and may additionally be happening elsewhere due to US influence.

Who pissed in my pants.

The article goes into the effective tax rate though. Essentially that Billionaires are paying close to nothing via loopholes while holding an obscene amount of the overall nations wealth. It covers a few tax loopholes that make that possible and highlights a topic the is crucially important.

I’ve been in the professional workforce since 2003 and haven’t been to one of these. A company I worked for in 2004 had one but since I was new, I had to pull the oncall shift so couldn’t attend. Pretty sure they were going out of style by 2001. If any company I worked for hosted one now I would just think it’s odd and say I was out of town anyways. I like my direct coworkers but can’t imagine a scenario where I would want to attend a party with the managers and execs.