I’m on staycation this week.

It’s glorious.

Not awesome.

Having a depressive episode that’s messing with my appetite and I’ve woken up early three times this week.

It bothers me that the presidential race seems like it may be decided solely based on the quality of each side’s memes.

Um, frustrated.

My parents are eighty years-old, driving for DoorDash (using my car), and they’re putting 1,000 miles on the car a week. There is no lifeline once my car dies, thanks to inflation. There is no other job for them, because no one will employ two octogenarians.

And I can look at the two flavors of conservatism headed our way in November and I low-key hope my mom and dad pass away instead of having to deal with the struggle that’s going to come, because it’s invariably going to get worse. I don’t think civil war is coming, but I do think the capitalists are going to find new and shitty ways to make all of our lives harder.

From a purely historical perspective: weird.

That’s awesome.

I’m on year #4 with my Lenovo Legion. I’m planning to buy a new one later this year to keep up with gaming tech, but I’m keeping this one to be a dedicated Linux machine for browsing and general use, with the plan being using my new machine only for gaming.

I’ve had my Lenovo Legion for four years.

Great product, still works well. The only downside is how much I hate the plastic tabs you have to work open in order to get into the machine’s guts.

Last weekend was too busy, but in a fun way. I was announcing a roller derby tournament.

This weekend is super chill. I’m doing nothing, and it’s everything I dreamed it could be.

I hope you like it. :)

Just got freaked out by a new film called ‘Latency’. I’ll watch it tomorrow when I’m not getting ready for bed.

Not bad.

I’ve reached the point where, as a contrarian, it’s time for me to speak less about politics online, so I started adding in filters to my Mastodon feed, and I like that my feed is less doomscrolling now.

These stories kind of make me glad I’m so quick to block people. Anytime someone approaches me that isn’t doing so in good faith gets the hammer.

I’m sorry all that happened to you.

It was never a secret what an awful man Joe Biden is, for many of the reasons OP listed in their post. Many people in 2020 said something similar: “Elect him and then pressure him to the left.” It’s a useless sentiment.

Since 2020, despite partisans’ supposed pressure, we’ve not only seen another genocide, but homelessness has spiked, wages have not improved in a meaningful way, education and health care are still cost-prohibitive, prices for everyday goods are 2-3x what they were Pre-Biden, Roe has been repealed and SCOTUS has made it very clear they’re going to target queer people next, and they’ve added hundreds of billions more in debt to help Ukraine while neglecting Americans. He even withheld $600 of promised COVID aid. He’s been such an atrocity of a president that it’s likely to get Trump reelected.

And this is coming from someone who voted Biden in the hopes that a cultural win against rising fascist interests might turn back the clock, but I was wrong. Biden, either in his greed or fecklessness (depending on who you ask, I suppose) has created the conditions for a probable fascist takeover. Personally, I think it’s greed.

I’m not sure there’s a reasonable argument to be made that there isn’t a fascist candidate in the next presidential election. One candidate will stab you in the front. The other will stab you in the back.

Also, just a personal pet peeve, but people need to stop using the word ‘democracy’. We don’t have one, and it was designed that way.

Was going to say this.

No matter who we elect, people get poorer, health care and education get more scarce, and the legislators spend their time finding ways to spend hundreds of billions more on war.

Wage earners aren’t stupid. They haven’t had a president that is truly in their corner since Lyndon Johnson, and it shows.

There is no point in much of anything when you know definitively that your future is one of poverty no matter what you do.

Pretty okay.

My team is in the Super Bowl. Again.

Go Chiefs!

I think it’s a little silly for anyone to grandstand on self-important moralistic consumption, because you can’t be a consumer of most things in the US without contributing to evil labor practices on some level.

Nearly everyone owns a computer or cell phone, and those are all produced with parts sourced unethically on some level or labor that is impoverished in a more remote or regressive part of the world.

And some artists are so incredibly good it’s impossible to ignore the quality even with their questionable morals, like Michael Jackson or Salvador Dali for example.

Everyone should make an effort to be mindful of their consumption, in my opinion, but I will always roll my eyes at people who are preachy about it. As some have mentioned, the secondary market is a great thing for trying to manage the problematic side of things, and even better, you’re upcycling when you by used.

There was another thread where people were calling for McCarthyist treatment of the legislators that refuse to vote for more war money to Ukraine.

There’s been a ton of doxxing in the US over valid criticism of Israel, including advertising trucks with students’ names, photos, and info driven around college campuses.

It may be that people just need to simmer down a little. I still remember when Spike Lee tweeted the name and address of the wrong George Zimmerman and forced an innocent old couple into hiding.

Same.

There was a two-week period here in Kansas City where the city reopened without a mask mandate (one was later ordered prior to the 4th of July) and I went to the gym for the first time in two months.

Zero masks. Zero people distancing. No one sanitizing after using the hand scanner to enter.

That was my breaking point. I now expect the worst in people as a general rule.

It isn’t in our nature as a species to unite and work together. The closest we got was COVID and even the threat of mass viral death only united us for about 2-3 weeks before people were starting fights over closed hair salons.

Thank you for your point of view. I appreciate that.