… or marketing, plain old marketing, advertising and public relations.

You can blast the airwaves with the same message over and over again eventually people just believe it … either because they are lazy, don’t care, it doesn’t immediately matter to them or they just don’t want to be bothered learning the details. It’s the same process of convincing people to either like Coke or Pepsi.

Goebbels and the Nazi party easily mastered it in the 30s … tell a lie, repeat it often enough and eventually it will be come true … if you tell a lie, tell a big lie, the biggest lie you can make and everyone will believe it.

It all boils down to money and marketing … whoever dumps the money into one party, politician, political movement will get the votes eventually and convince everyone of whatever reality they want them to believe.

I think the relevant question is whether the aliens will fuck us … and whether or not it will be any good.

I have an old clock in my cottage. I got it years ago from a previous cottage I renovated. When I found it, the glass had broken so I just treated it as a piece of junk. I renovated that first cottage over a winter and left the clock there to freeze. I put in an AA battery and forgot about it. It kept time great and didn’t lose time … for about two years on the same battery!

The dammed thing outlasted every other wall clock I owned. So I kept it, removed the broken glass and just left it like that.

After about 15 years I still have it in my cottage and it freezes and thaws with the northern Canadian weather. And I’ve only ever changed the battery with the same basic energizer alkaline battery maybe four times!

I’ve never found a comparable clock anywhere. Every new clock I’ve ever bought either fail prematurely or I am constantly changing batteries every two or three months.

So far I’ve junked about a dozen new clocks because they stopped working while this old cottage clock just keeps ticking reliably.

I’m never getting rid of my cottage clock.

But 1989 … wow! … I also had an old Italian friend who was very frugal with her money and the vehicle’s she owned. She also had an 80s era Volvo station wagon that she ran for about 15 years before she got tired of it and traded it for another newer Volvo in the late 90s.

I am a polyp that lives in the gastrointestinal internet tract and I do not want to leave.

Feel the same here … I miss my 960 … it was known as a diplomats car … the thing was luxurious inside and it looked like a plain vehicle from the outside. And it could turn on a dime! I used to love being able to turn around on two lanes without doing a three point turn! I joked with my friends that it had a turning radius of a bicycle. The main reason I didn’t want to sell it to the demolition derby guy was that I didn’t want to see the car destroyed!

1990s or 2000s era Volvo station wagon or sedan

I owned a 96 Volvo 960 for about 15 years before engine gave out with fixable problems … I didn’t have the money to get it fixed, sold it and from what I heard, the new owner is still driving the thing. (one potential buyer that wanted it was a young guy that wanted it for a demolition derby as he claimed that Volvos were great for this kind of use because they are indestructible in a crash. He said the engine is so well placed and protected that it would take several hits from other vehicles before being compromised)

Later bought a 2004 station wagon and other than a few minor problems (electrical issues that aren’t critical to driving the car) and a bit of rust spots, it’s still my daily driver. I met a young guy a few years ago that had a 1992 Volvo Station wagon with a million kms on it (the thing was covered in rust and looked like hell but it was still driveable)

A baby crying

or

a young woman’s scream

less so would be

a grown man screaming in agony … (something along the lines of saying something like 'OH GOD, MY LEG, MY LEG, OH GOD, GOD NO, MY LEG!!!, OH GOD, HELP ME, MY LEG!!)

This was one of the main reasons why I was looking forward to Harris winning … so that everyone in the world could just stop talking about dumb American politics for a while

Now it looks like it’s all we’ll ever talk about at the expense of talking about every other important thing in the world … such as our long term survival as a species on this planet.

That’s amazing

Because authoritarians and fascists always need an enemy … once they subdue that enemy, the need another … they can only exist and have power over people as long as there is enemy of some kind. If they can’t it elsewhere, they start looking at the people next to them.

Extremists in politics are like people with an automatic machine gun and they’re always uncontrollably firing at perceived enemies … once they bring someone down … they keep firing, turn around and start shooting at someone else … and on and on and on … they always see enemies … once they eliminate someone, they move on to the next until eventually they start shooting at you.

Exactly … it’s also a double standard because reddit is basically a capitalist model of the same digital system but no one ever complains or criticizes it.

The socialist digital creators built something and shared it freely with everyone and also don’t exert control over anyone.

The capitalist digital creatures built something and locked it up, monetized it and are using the user’s efforts as the basis for the business only the owners make money on and have complete control over everything.

It’s amazing because it’s a fantastic metaphor for the two platforms.

No worries, they just elected a guy that said drinking bleach and irradiating people from the inside would be a good idea to deal with viruses and bacteria.

That’s the great thing about this new administration …

We’ll keep fighting and talking about things like this endlessly while they go off and rape the economy for themselves and no one can or will have the time to say anything about it.

First president to have actual nude photos of his wife available.

If any other president, especially a Democrat, had nudes of their wife it would be a scandal.

But America is so beholden to these idiots that it doesn’t even matter to anyone.

Hope

They made significant changes to the manufacturing in the 80s during the Reagan Era and they started outsourcing much of the critical small parts manufacturing to southeast Asia, included more cheaper and poor quality materials, did away with unionized labour, integrated more low cost migrant labour and the quality of the final products have degraded since then.

What is born each night and dies each dawn?

I’m indigenous Canadian and my family have had to deal with worse. I’ve lived most of my life fighting all the time.

This isn’t the end, it’s only another road block we have to get around. I’ve had to face down many local, regional and national elections where idiots were elected that campaigned on indigenous hate so none of this is new to me. I may not be American but seeing your latest national election made me feel bad again because whatever you guys do affects us here too.

It sucks and I hate it but the only thing that makes me feel worse is giving up.

I’ll live my life fighting, I really don’t care

You should too.