skulblaka

Forest porn is an apparently near universal phenomenon for American kids that grew up between 1970-2000. The internet made it go extinct though.

This is the first I'm hearing of it from outside America though, that's neat.

Personally, I would have been looking to get rid of my Tesla around 2018 when the "pedo guy" statement happened and it started becoming publicly obvious that Elon Musk was going insane. They still held a good resale value for a few years after that, I don't think they should have, but they did.

I wouldn't have been caught dead driving one past maybe 2022 or so after their terrible reliability and build quality became public knowledge as well as Elon's public meltdowns and fascism. Sell it to a MAGA rube and get yourself a Nissan or a Ford EV with the money from the sale.

Yet here we are in 2025 making excuses for people who bought the car in 2016 and didn't do anything about it for 9 years, now that this year it's become unpopular and largely unsellable. If you didn't see the writing on the wall for 9 years then that's on you.

My dad was one of the people that bought a Tesla in 2016 and by 2020 he had gotten rid of it for a Nissan because he refused to be associated with the brand anymore. I think most Tesla owners would have had that opportunity at some point in the intervening years. It's not like they've been driving a 30 year old beat to shit Honda that they're trapped in, they all went and bought Teslas, those were essentially luxury cars. If you were well off enough to buy a Tesla the first time around you're probably well enough off to trade it for a different car.

Well it was uncovered that there were plans in place for the governmental purchase of $400 million in "Armored Teslas" which Trump is busy trying to blame on Joe Biden and Musk is desperately telling everyone was a lie.

So yeah they're going to force the US government to purchase a few hundred million dollars worth of Cybertruck.

No I was absolutely being a angry dickhead and that's totally fair. Those are my true feelings though, and to my best judgment logical ones. What do you do when you are faced with a person you can't reason with? Historically speaking, the only real way to deal with it is to imprison them or kill them. I don't want us to get to that state. I just feel like we're being driven towards it. I find the world that we exist in now to be utterly absurd with these sorts of people at the wheel and I will no longer tolerate those who support them. We're bringing punching Nazis back.

Time Magazine Person of the Year is for the most influential person of the year. Not the best, or most admirable. Merely the greatest agent of change.

I do think they need to have a good sample size to get results that make sense, yes.

Doing some research on it, seems like Quinnipiac's standard polling is conducted "in more than 20 states and cities as well as nationally" (particular locations not specified) and has typically 1,000+ respondents using random digit dialing. Meaning they just slap random numbers into the phone and see who picks up.

I can't say I can immediately come up with a better solution right off the top of my head right now, but I can identify several problems with their approach, namely being actual size of sample (1000 respondents is 0.000003% of the population) and the way they gather their responses (when was the last time you answered the phone for an unknown caller? Now when was the last time your grandmother did?).

Eh, I don't think you need to apologize for anything. I am being a grumpy, cranky old asshole after all.

And you're right, anyway. No group of people are truly homogenous. Not all Boomers are bad in the same way that not all Democrats are good. I lose sight of that sometimes and I notice that others do too. It is in our human nature to group and categorize people and things and then to make sweeping assumptions about those groups. I try not to fall into that trap when I can notice it, but I'm just as fallible as the next guy.

Nowhere in that statement did I call out Boomers specifically. This is a cross generational problem. I call out bullshit culture war voters which are, overwhelmingly, older folks. But they're not completely to blame. There are plenty of younger working age people that fall for this same brain dead bullshit. But that's what it is, is brain dead bullshit.

I've got plenty of real issues with all sorts of real shit, that's just one of them.

I didn't mean this in such a way as to call you out personally. Sorry if it seemed that way. I'm just sick and fucking tired of human rights being constantly stripped back for everyone and these fucking fools still just going along with it all happy and joyful because someone else is going to get killed to keep their retirement fund happy. With all due respect, of which exactly none is due, fuck that.

This isn't an age issue. I don't care how old or young anyone is. I care about them actively speeding us all into hell, collectively, because people think the DOW average is more important than the lives and livelihoods of our citizens.

Money is the root of all evil.

Your gleeful wishing of death and despair to people who have worked their entire life is somewhat gross.

Their gleeful wishing of death and despair to people who have done nothing to them except mind their own fucking business is somewhat gross. Reap what you sow. I'll care about your 401k when y'all decide to care about human rights. Trump is in office because of culture war bullshit about gays and trans folks more than anything else. So I don't want to hear it. Y'all collectively decided that punishing people who have done nothing wrong is more important than your retirement so now it's time to lie in that bed you've made.

I've never heard of that polling agency in my life before. I had to look it up, it's a private university in Connecticut.

I sure didn't get polled about any of this.

So no, more precisely, half of all people polled by this one school in a state that nobody talks about approve of what he's doing. I'm willing to bet half of those people have no idea what's going on.

I have a very hard time believing that half of all Americans are happy and content with current events. I live here, I hear people complain.

I'm a troglodyte, I'm cool with that, but yeah it isn't for everyone.

Hi, fellow American here. You seem to need to understand some things, so I'm here to educate you.

We've been gently coddling the conservatives into being better for decades. Their response to this is to laugh at you and then double down on whatever horrible shit they've decided is their culture war target today. Gentle reminders that they're actively working toward the destruction of society does nothing to them. In many cases it actively galvanizes them even more toward their opinions.

So I'm fucking done coddling. Some of my friends and my family are going to die because of things they've gleefully voted for and then tried to throw in my face after. My nation is in flames because of what they've done. The entire world is falling to authoritarian fascism because of what they've done.

So fuck 'em. If you're a horrid piece of shit then I'm going to tell you that you're a horrid piece of shit. You have the option to change your ways or go fuck off and die, doesn't matter one bit to me. But I'm sick and tired of trying to meet someone halfway when their "halfway" is "well maybe we only exterminate half of the blacks and gays and we can just enslave the rest of them?"

In short: Every single conservative "republican" that still idenitifes as such in the modern day is a piece of shit scum human being, who is directly responsible for the hellhole we find ourselves in, and if they know what's good for them they better be afraid to show their face around me and mine. I'm tired of trying to "play nice" with oppressors. I now flat refuse to put up with their existence. These people have threatened the life and livelihood of my family and others close to me that I love and care about, continue to do so, and show not only a lack of empathy but a sick, gleeful, sadistic joy in the idea that my mother can no longer get her medications or that school children will kill themselves or their peers. I'm tired of subsidizing their idiocy and trying to claw progress out of their hateful, regressive policies. I'm tired of having to explain to people why all persons should have equal rights. I'm tired of feeling threatened in public areas by skinheaded fucks with assault rifles. I'm tired of worrying for my partner's safety when they leave for work.

Conservatives have, to date, done nothing whatsoever of benefit to anyone but themselves, ever, and I'm tired of having to act like they are rational actors. They are not. They are greedy, spiteful, selfish fucks, they do not have reasonable viewpoints, and I'm tired of having to act like they do. You should be too. The gentle coddling of such ridiculous viewpoints because "all opinions matter!" has directly led us to our two-party travesty and the casual ignoring of all norms or laws by Trump and Co. These people need to be told when their opinions are stupid and wrong and we've been very, very long overdue in doing that. Failure to do so leads to - drumroll - take a look around outside.

So yeah. Our Canadian friend here is right. The anger is very long overdue. Fact is, conservatives are untrustworthy and worthless and I don't actually care if telling them that helps them or not. We've tried to help them, repeatedly, and been pushed away and ridiculed for it time and time again. So it's time to speak a language that they understand.