Awesome, how do yoi like the Graphene experience? I just switched from Samsung to a Pixel and installed Graphene as soon as I got it. Still getting used to things, and still using some Google services and apps. Have you found good replacements for things like Android Auto and RCS for text messages (not that I can get RCS working yet in any case)?

NextCloud and Ente look interesting, I need to check those out for Photos and Drive alternatives.

I literally just had mine too, there’s dozens of us. Dozens! Happy birthday.

Their singing ability was definitely a cost, never let one pick any Bard or Bard adjacent class.

It doesn’t come across as you appreciating value in artistic expression and other intangibles when you say “suck it up and get a real job”. That may not have been your intention, but it can definitely be read that way. I think that is the “boomer” people have commented on.

I don’t think there are really that many people who think social media creators or better than farmers or essential services personnel, and those that do are completely out of touch, but there are plenty of people who see alternative media creators as less than any other job. I personally think A-list actors, celebrities and sports professionals are no better than grocery store worker or warehouse person, but I won’t deny they work just as hard in different ways.

By that metric do authors or poets or actors create a physical product? Do computer programers? Since the death of physical media, books and art are now far more frequently digital than paper or canvas. Applications and software is 100% digital. Newspapers are dead, so journalists don’t create a physical product. Is your argument that only physical labor producing physical things is “real” work?

That might be true, but it is also unnecessary to bring race into it. No war but class war is a phrase I really agree with, and making how white the 1% is part of the argument just plays into their game. Nothing would be lost in that argument if it was just happy 1% day.

Nah, gotta go all in with that Battle Pass. Unlock perks like drivers license skins, use of the HOV lane, etc. really gameify the system and get those hardcore competitive type-A executives working on high scores.

But the gun stuff is a constitutional issue, which is the complete opposite of states rights.

Abortion was pushed back to a states rights thing because there was no federal laws on the books and they scrapped the right to privacy interpretation it was previously under. The right wing is happy to argue against states rights for a national abortion ban, especially when they are losing at the state level.

I watched all the videos, his self defense claim was credible enough from a legal standpoint. The prosecution tried to make an example of him instead of charging manslaughter or even 3rd degree murder, while the media narrative painted the event like a KKK lynching. This is why people still think the men shot were black, were unarmed, and were not attacking him.

He instantly became the focus for the entire left/right divide, and that kind of “fame” would fuck anyone up. He was kicked out of school, fired from jobs, and only the right wing grifters would have anything to do with him. At 18 half the country wanted him dead, it’s no wonder he ended up so fucked up.

Hate to break it to you, but everyone involved in that case was white. They also over charged trying to make an example of him due to the media circus.

I guarantee you it was, as the only edit I made was to comment on how I somehow got a net 17 downvotes with only you laying out a complete reason for disagreement, even if it was due to a misreading caused misunderstanding apparently. I found it funny that I honestly couldn’t figure out which political party I pissed off to get that many down votes.

I would like to point out that I did 100% say Universal Healthcare, and nowhere did I implay keeping our shitty healthcare system with a UBI. To further clarify, UBI should only replace welfare programs, so stuff like food stamps, WIC, TANIF, state welfare, social security, etc. because those have restrictions and fuck people over almost as many times as they help them.

Social Security probably won’t be solvent in 50 years, food stamps are great until you make a dollar over the max allowable and lose all food assistance, WIC is great until your infant is just a little older and you lose all assistance. SSDI takes years to begin receiving and is, once again, subject to being dropped for any of a variety of reasons.

I will assume that you mean only the 2nd amendment and not that preventing anti-transition and/or anti-abortion legislation would also prevent laws on murder, rape, etc. If I am wrong, I think my response will cover those as well.

The purpose of the government is to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. All those things you listed infringe on the rights and bodily autonomy of others, which falls under justice and general welfare at the very least. What anyone does with and to their own body under their own consent does not, and if thus overreach of the government.

Self defense, whether armed or unarmed, passive or active, is a natural right belonging to any living thing to prevent loss of their autonomy. Guns are tools to enable self defense and even the playing field. They can be and frequently are used without infringing on the rights and autonomy of others.

I also did not include guns under the government not having the right or business to regulate. I think they certainly can, and they have through the 2nd amendment. If you want to change this, you must follow the established and agreed upon rules to do so. If you do not, you weaken all other laws by establishing loopholes where they can be ignored.

Yeah, but you have to take the whole sentence to actually identify the grammar, not just the first 4 words. Beyond what has already been said about well regulated meaning ‘in good functional order’, that is a explanatory preposition to why the rights of the people to keep and bear arms is important. The Federalist papers back this up well enough as well.

If I said “Because being hungry sucks, access to the fridge shall not be restricted”, this does not imply that one must be hungry to have access to the fridge. Maybe it would be better if it were so people couldn’t over eat or eat out of boredom, but you would need to change that sentence to make it mean you had to be hungry to access the fridge.

There is also the fact that under federal law, everyone not serving in the standing military or the national guard (the organized militia) is legally classified as the unorganized militia, but I don’t think that even matters to the reading of the amendment.

I would think that having procedures, medications and other medical costs covered under universal healthcare and having a non-means tested or work gated UBI would be a hell of a lot better than the current Medicaid and SSI disability nightmares.

I include both of these together because currently the overhead expenditures for managing and running both the collective welfare programs at all levels and our for-profit healthcare system run at the behest of and for the profits of health insurance burn a significant amount of both money and time.

Needs may vary a lot, but having hoops to jump through to maintain eligibility for multiple welfare programs and under constant threat of being kicked off of any of them doesn’t seem to be the right answer to me.

Huh, none of that has anything to do with communism. I basically agree with everything except the guns part (I believe that to be a fundamentally incorrect interpretation of the wording of the 2nd amendment), but in a “the government has no business or right to regulate those things” libertarian way.

It’s also not woke because the principle of bodily and personal autonomy is old school “don’t tread on me” libertarianism, and thus “right wing”. I think I agree with Linus about the inability to define those terms, carry on.

I may not be the target audience though as I also totally want socialized healthcare, free education extending into the collegiate level, and a UBI replacing all welfare programs, because those fall under the “General Welfare” set out by the Constitution and those things would cost less than what we have now for far better outcomes.

EDIT Wow, that’s a lot of voting engagement. I am not sure if I pissed off the Left for saying I believe the 2nd amendment as written and intended grants an individual right to guns, the Right for saying universal healthcare and UBI is good and I don’t believe the government can or should legislate abortion/LGBTQ rights/etc, or both sides equally.

That meat isn’t going to loaf itself.

That would require the federal election committee to violate the constitution by putting him on the ballot, then the same for every State government. This is an order of magnitude beyond the attempts to keep him off the ballots for Jan 6, as he was never convicted of or tried for it. The Supreme Court would need to destroy the constitution to rule favorably on it, and thus remove all their own power as the third branch of government.

The US is not yet as corrupt as the CCP or Russia, and Trump doesn’t have the political and personal capital of Xi or Putin to rewrite the constitution to allow more/unlimited presidential terms.

I do see the possibility, but if it is true then the only way to stop it is armed insurrection against a tyrant. Trump would have to dismantle the courts, blatantly violate the constitution, and fundamentally alter the government. The military would have to go along with it too. The problem is that you cannot make a preemptive strike or you give Trump a casus belli to do just that. Whomever acts first loses, and it should be the administration commiting unambitious treason first if you want to stop it. Until then, you need to keep working through the established legal system.

I still don’t think Trump has the personal or political charisma to line up every hole in the swiss cheese of constitutional, legal, moral, and cultural protections to pull it off, but I’ll be prepared to eat crow if he does succeed in overthrowing the government and becoming a dictator.

I am pro-border in the fact that I think borders serve an important purpose and that laws surrounding immigration should exist and be enforced. That said, I think fixing immigration requires following the god damned laws and constitution, you don’t enforce the law by breaking it. Fuck! Immigration courts and the entire immigration bureaucracy needs to be beefed up to handle this, and law enforcement of any kind needs to be working under the judicial system. Warrants are needed, you can’t suspend habeas corpus, cops should never be masked and anonymous, and all law enforcement should be held to a higher standard than everyone else.

I think Trump is causing the legitimate action of enforcing our laws to look bad, and he is harming law and order for decades or longer. It should not be controversial to enforce laws, and if it is those laws need to be changed.

Despite how scofflaw this administration is, however, I do not think Trump will run for a third term. I don’t think we as a country or even the Republican party as a whole is willing to that blatantly flout the constitution, and I think that at least 60% of both parties want what is best for the country. I don’t think actual Nazis or true jackbooted fascists are more than 10% of the right (I can’t believe I now think it’s that high), but do believe 20-30% are exploited by grifters and opportunists. That might be naive, but it seems like.everyone is abandoning their faith in the fundamental good of others all across the country/world and I think that is sad.