Folstar

I suspect the Mandala Effect is what happens when timelines/realities collapse/fold into one another. Us humans are bad are perceiving when these things happen because we simply wrap it in an SEP field and go about our lives, but sometimes little leftover details catch our attention.

We need politicians with actionable plans worth voting for

Reading is hard, yo

Yes, biding time and running a pincher strategy of sending out some people to kiss the ring and sending significantly more to the watch groups, industry partners, and courts. Though we've also lost as many people to foreign institutions in the last two years as in the previous twenty.

The GOP courted the anti-intellectual vote because their ideology no longer had popular support. It was a deal with the devil and now the devil has come to collect. It's unlikely they can wind back that deal. The only hope is that more voters wake up and start to understand the impacts of putting morons in charge.

Oceania will not tolerate Eurasia giving technology to Eastasia.

Great context. Though you should probably change all that talk of the US funding research to the past tense, or the in-freefall-collapse-as-budgets-are-slashed-and-political-goons-replace-science-advisors tense, which is rarely used but the current situation fits.

whoosh

I've found fanbases are often split between the best and worst people around without much in the middle. It usually comes down to WHY they enjoy the thing.

Star Trek space travel and the social commentary versus pew-pew. R&M science fiction concepts versus being a drunk asshole. Warhammer as satire versus ...whatever they think it is.

Now look, you can think lasers are cool or that one jerk is funny, but if that's all you got... yikes.

I really have a hard time reconciling the Trek fans with the shows. Like, how did a person watch [insert any Picard speech] and end up this way?

Yes, costs are higher now relative to income, but demands also are.

There is a dangerous underlying logic to this line of reasoning. Treating all technological innovation as an added cost to be borne by the end consumer leads to one inescapable dead end. Yes, sometimes there are actual costs. If so, fine. However, this blanket notion of hedonic price adjustment increases wealth inequality with no end. It isn't a sensible and we should be thankful our ancestors were not so foolish or we'd all be living in trees or caves right now.

I didn't say people there were satisfied with the status quo. I said they had fantasy-based thinking instead of actionable plans and, for some reason, are letting the GOP sane-wash itself so long as they blame what they did on Trump. Both of those actions are quite anti-status quo. They're also really, really stupid.

This is 100% the wrongminded mentality we are talking about. We need systemic change to how we vote. We need politicians with actionable plans worth voting for. We need people who understand how voting ACTUALLY works in this country. But nah, man, just fucking vote! That's the solution!!1!

I tried Bluesky. I noticed two overwhelming trends that led to my hasty departure:

Wishful thinking left-wing politics. Encouraging people to pretend like how things ought to be is how things are, and to act accordingly. This is lazy and disastrous thinking, both because it overlooks the real systemic change that needs to happen to get to where you want to be. Though, in fairness, there is quite a bit of this on Lemmy too.

Extremely popular poster who spent their entire careers making the Trump presidency a certainly trying to back pedal on Trump specifically. No mention of their awful ideas they still keep and spread that lead to such an outcome. Lots of thumbs up and people saying "see, they get it" while also not connecting the dots, as if Project 2025 fell from the sky and wasn't the product of decades of effort.

It's an idiot convention.