This kills the human.

Man, it pains me to agree with JD Vance on anything, but we really do have the lamest opposition party. All they’re good for is performative bullshit like this. We’ve got Gestapo black bagging people on the street and dragging them off to foreign torture prisons, and the best the Dems can do is mock Trump for wavering on tariffs. It’s truly fucking pathetic.

I’m really struggling to understand how this could have happened. It’s not like sailing ships are speed demons. The average speed for a sail ship is like 7 knots, or about 8 miles per hour. Let’s say this bad boy was getting a strong gust of wind and got up to like 15 knots; that’s still only 17 miles per hour. Bridges, such as the Brooklyn Bridge, typically don’t move. Also, their height above the waterline is part of the public record. You can look that shit up. I just did a google search on “brooklyn bridge height above waterline”, and it says 135 feet. Super simple, took literally 5 seconds.

If you are sailing a giant, slow ship through a waterway that has a very famous bridge covering it… how the fuck do you decide to do that without looking it up first? And as they were approaching, they could have been like: “Hmm. That bridge seems low. We should double check our figures, and then turn around maybe if it looks close”.

I just… the level of sheer incompetence on display here is fucking staggering.

To which the old man replies: “Man, what the fuck is up with all of you people coming up here to ask me what the meaning of life is? I moved to the top of the tallest mountain I could find to get away from you all!”

I’m going to throw a trigger warning on this next part just in case:

Well, at least she admitted that she’s a fucking coward. That’s a great first step. Step 2, of course, is to either grow a spine or resign so someone with a spine can take her spot. Color me skeptical, but I don’t imagine Sen. Murkowski is willing to take that second step.

I deleted my Reddit account back when they fucked over the 3rd party apps, but I still do browse their site. Much as I think that Lemmy is the superior platform, Reddit still has a huge numbers advantage, and so the amount of content over there is much greater than here.

Any time I go into the comments section, though, I am reminded that Reddit is a shithole. So I try to stay out of those and just read the linked articles.

It’s interesting that you mention Martin Niemöller. He, like all of the MAGATs getting their faces chewed off by their elected leopard, was a giant piece of shit. His poem wasn’t some clarion call to people who saw the danger of the Nazi party… he was a Nazi. He was a big fan of the Nazis and their agenda. Dude straight up hated the Jews. He only fell afoul of the party’s agenda when they started coming after protestant churches, as he was a pastor.

I don’t feel bad for the Martin Niemöllers of the world, and I don’t feel bad for any person who allows themselves to be duped by obvious conmen. The fact that they gain some measure of enlightenment only after they reach the “find out” stage of the FAFO cycle does not in any way elicit sympathy from me.

Look - we’re at a unique point in our history; information is more free and available than at any time before. Anything that someone wants to find out about practically any subject is just a couple of clicks away. The fact that we’re still so shitty and ignorant is a never-ending source of frustration for me.

You appear think this is the fault of random people who wear different color hats instead of the result of decades of effort by some of the richest people in our society to fundamentally weaken democracy and to create uneducated people that can be manipulated.

I can assure you I do not, regardless of what you think the appearances are. I fully understand that this is the result of a systematic approach of the Republican party working as stooges of think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation.

That being said, my anger is most certainly NOT misplaced. For example, I can acknowledge that crime is often a result of poverty and desperation, and yet still be angry at a person who steals my stereo. People have the capacity to be more than just the result of the machinations of others. Not holding them to blame for their actions is anathema to me.

Also, I’m returning the favor and downvoting you for the ignorance you displayed in assuming my motives.

I suppose that’s fair. It was mostly hyperbole, tbh. I am not cheesed off at people who literally look like the scum-sucking piece of shit in the article. It just sounded good.

Fuck this guy. Fuck his friends, fuck all of his family members who haven’t disowned him yet, fuck anybody who looks like him. Fuck everything about him.

This piece of shit voted for this, and now is upset simply because his livelihood is affected. No lessons were learnt. No lessons will ever be learned. He is but a symptom of the cancerous rot at the core of our so-called Democracy.

Edit: Fuck any fucking cowards who downvote this without providing a response as to why they disagree.

Well, look - my softie bleeding heart librul values make me absolutely hate it when economic uncertainty leads to people losing their homes and their livelihoods. But this is the government that we, the people voted for. And if the government that we, the people voted for is creating economic uncertainty that is causing people to lose their homes and their livelihoods, then my bleeding librul heart bleeds for the people who are displaced. But I am also well versed in irony, and brother, this is an irony smorgasbord.

If you’re one of the people who voted for the guy who’s creating the economic uncertainty that’s currently fucking your shit up… brother, I’m not sure what I can do for you.

Resistance is always the last option. The best option, and the first you should turn to, is voting in a way that is consistent with your values and your economic priorities. If you voted for this, and you’re upset at what your voting got you… I’m not sure that you’re going to like what I’ve got to tell you.

Bümenschrapnel

For a deeper gut punch, remember that in “Heart of Gold”, Zoe tells Wash that she wants to have a baby with him, and she won’t brook any of his lame excuses, like “the universe is too dangerous for kids”. It’s possible that if there was ever a second movie or a continuation of the series, they’d say that Zoe did get pregnant just before all of the shit went down, but with it being abandoned IP, we have to guess. So what do you think? Is there a mini Wash in Zoe’s future?

Wash’s, in “Serenity”. It was just so unexpected and abrupt, and it served to generate a sense of unease in the viewer; after Wash’s death, no character seemed to be protected by plot armor. Granted, Shepherd Book bit it before Wash did, but the movie seemed to set him up to be separate from the rest of the crew. I loved that Whedon played with this concept of fragility in the ensuing battle, with Kaylee getting darted, Zoe getting sliced up, and Simon getting shot. And then, Mal’s battle with the agent… I thought the misdirect was masterfully done.

I’ve been affected by character deaths before and since, but Wash’s death was the only death I’ve seen in media that has made me worry for the safety of the other characters. It made a lot of sense outside of the movie, too, as “Serenity” was more or less a tribute to some IP that was never going to get resurrected. While watching the movie for the first time, I was left thinking: “what if Whedon just said ‘fuck it’?”

I think it all boils down to that nebulous concept of “the social contract”. The most naive interpretation of the justice system is that it will provide justice when justice is demanded. It is, after all, called “the justice system”. But what constitutes justice? And who receives it? We have already seen two separate supreme court decisions that state unequivocally that the police are neither obligated to serve nor protect people. We have also seen that young black men are 7 times more likely to be falsely convicted of serious crimes than young white men, so we know that the justice system does not work for all of us. We know that rich people get convicted far less often, and for far shorter sentences than poor people, and we know that the legal system saps the opportunity to acquire generational wealth from those who do get convicted.

It is illegal to shoplift $100 of groceries from a corporation, but it is perfectly legal for that same corporation to drive out competition and then raise prices, in essence stealing from the entire community. It is illegal to intentionally harm someone, but it is perfectly legal for a medical insurance company to deny coverage to paying customers for necessary medical intervention.

When justice is completely out of reach by legal means, the flimsy fiction of the social contract is voided. New York City has somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 murders per year, which means that there have probably been 5 or 6 other people who have been murdered in the city since Brian Thompson was shot. Are the police putting the same effort into tracking the killers of those people as they are into Brian Thompson’s murderer? The reality is that the vast majority of us are intentionally excluded from the halls of power. The American Declaration of Independence makes the bold claim that it is a self-evident truth that all men are created equal. Does the present situation in this country feel to you like equality? Because to me, it feels like there is an owner class, and a peasant class, and brother… we ain’t the owners.

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I would very much like you to point out what I made up.

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