octopus_ink

I feel like "Assistant Emperor" was right there for the right hand side. :D But overall I'll allow it.

I think George Takei gets a pass. He's there as a warrior, buddy. (edit ok but not alex cole who is that guy lol, and I forgot that's George's bluesky account. I'll just shut up now. slinks away)

Ah careful with those assumptions buddy. There's folks who post here regularly who could be my grandkids, I'm pretty sure.

I semi-disagree. I think lack of exposure (or exposure to falsehoods and stereotypes) is behind the racism and bigotry of a great many people. If someone is 75 and has been a horrible bigot their entire life, it's going to take something massive to change that, sure. But if someone is 20 and raised by magas in a small wyoming town, learning all the stuff you don't learn from magas in a small wyoming town is likely to make a difference, IMO.

Speaking for myself, I can look at a bunch of areas where my biases were challenged effectively and continuously just by exposure to folks from whatever group I was biased about in the workplace or school.

I'm pretty sure that's the real reason why racists have always been so pro-segregation. It's pretty tough to convince your kid all the black folks are lazy and stupid if the smartest student is his class is a black kid or he's got a strong crush on that pretty black girl who sits by him in science lab, or his best friend at school is a black kid.

These people are motivated by greed and power more than critical thought though. One of them would have succeeded by now if not.

(I know it looks like Trump and such are succeeding right now, but I do think their foundation is showing some cracks.)

My view of their plan is pretty similar to what's been expressed here. In summary - they really think they can "breed out the weak" and vilify education to the point where they have a nation of semi-educated workers who will fill factories or pick up guns as needed. They'll lose some hundreds of thousands every year to preventable disease and hazards that we used to try to prevent, but they don't care because they will have let the educated generations die off, and the younger ones will be denied birth control and encouraged to pump out babies.

They will replace all the scientists and the educated folks who built everything we have with AI, and that's how we'll keep up with the rest of the nations.

It ain't going to work, mind you, but 100% that's where they are driving the bus. We're more likely to end up like Russia, where everything they build is synonymous with being absolute trash and the only thing we have giving us world power is legacy, size, and resources.

With more words, I nonironically believe this. And it's really the oligarchy, Republicans are just their best tool.

It will be slightly more subtle. But IMO this is the crux of the overall strategy, and frankly it's plain as day IMO.

This is the abridged version of the final solution as far as I can tell:

• The only use for the religious part of the religious right is to get birth control down and birth rates up. The reason for this is to keep the factories they keep promising to build stocked with workers to ensure the oligarchy has their workforce. Anti-gay stuff? Gay couples don't make babies. And babies are what it's all about.

• All that "savings" on those ridiculous cuts to healthcare and healthcare research? It really is savings when you don't care if people die. And they think they don't have to care if people die because "only the strong will survive" and also women are now going to be making babies as fast as biology will allow. All the anti-trans stuff? Gender affirming care is expensive, that's money that could be funding private jets and rebuilding Lolita Island 2.0. Autistic kids? Hey, they can do menial labor as well as anyone. Oh and also, that's why Pro-life only means "until birth." After that, there is no reason for them to give that baby a different go at the statistical survival game than anyone else. Doing so would not be anything but a net-drain on the profits of the oligarchs.

• Now that's all damn ridiculous and people will surely figure that out as we are doing right now. But, they are slashing all that education funding and removing or whitewashing all those things from history. All they have to do is wait for the pre-dictatorship generations who had a broader education to die out, and (they think) what they will have left are the "fittest" survivors of their eugenics program, who will be educated such that they have education and opinions only as molded specifically to their place in society and support of its dogma.

Edit to add this image:

They will replace all the scientists and the educated folks who built everything we have with AI, and that’s how they think we’ll keep up with the rest of the nations.

• All those cuts to arts funding? Selling out our national forests to exploit the resources for profit? A nation of semi-educated workers doesn't need art or national forests.

• My buddy the unicorn decent republican would never support anything like that. They probably don't. Most of the shitty ones probably don't, either. First they will assist the rising dictatorship to destroy it all in the name of stomping out wokeness as above, then the rising dictatorship just has to remake it as desired. At that point it would be too late and their opinions won't matter.

• Even Republican congresspeople wouldn't let that happen. They'll do what Putin and whatever other blackmail tells them to, and those that aren't in someone's black book get whipped into shape by Trump, who is clearly a puppet of Putin (at least.)

I could itemize this list much further. Just look at everything Trump is doing or trying to do, and ask yourself "What would be different if they were trying to set up a lossy system of easily controlled wage-slaves and didn't really care about quality of life, or deaths to preventable disease, or care for the mentally unwell or elderly, because they believed in the end they could just breed those things out after several generations of massive death and suffering, and end up with the perfect subservient worker population, compared to what they are doing now."

Mind you, I think we as a nation will not go so quietly into the night and we will stop them. But I truly believe there's a group at the top who is intentionally driving us towards exactly what I have described. A future where we all slavishly manufacture the same products we then purchase with our meager wages in an economy designed to ensure we can survive well enough to buy crap but still line their pockets.

Edit:

A future where we all slavishly manufacture the same products we then purchase with our meager wages in an economy designed to ensure we can survive well enough to buy crap but still line their pockets.

Some would argue that describes the current economic design.

They will replace all the scientists and the educated folks who built everything we have with AI, and that’s how we’ll keep up with the rest of the nations.

As far as I'm concerned, they release it unredacted, or else we get to assume every redacted name is Donald J. Trump.

But I'm also in camp, "We'll never even know about all the shit they had time to destroy."

AND I'M ALSO IN CAMP, "I heard Trump would really be getting sent to jail any day now for about four years, so maybe nothing will happen."

Me either, but on desktop it doesn't care. (unless it's thanks to Linux/ff/ublock but I doubt that) I didn't realize it forced you on phone on until recently. Sorry!

Here is essentially the same thing with less detail. I haven't decided where I like uploading things these days yet.

I recently started using Qobuz also. I was impressed that there are Linux apps, including a (3rd party) downloader that lets me download FLAC. (Otherwise I think you need to use their app in Windows or Mac to download FLAC - the web downloader only let me grab MP3.)

However, although I have loved it, my use case is different than yours, so not really apples to apples. I have a media server running in a VPS, so ethical downloads are my primary requirement. For Download --> Self-host --> Self-stream they are a perfect fit, IMO, though I'm sure there are others.

I like it because I'm not buying music from Amazon, or Spotify, and that it's DRM free, primarily. I will also buy from Bandcamp sometimes. (To be fair, some amazon music can also be downloaded DRM free, but I think anyone reading this probably already knows that. I can't remember if FLACs were available to me never or rarely, because I didn't use Amazon music much.)

Despite that, I'm watching this thread with interest, because I'm certainly open to other options.

Everytime I see Sam Adams mentioned, I always think of Sam Jackson beer.

😂 Oh same, and I really wish Chappelle would do a 3.0 version of himself. (or at least like a 2.3 or 2.whateveritwouldbe) I'd love to be able to enjoy his humor again.

While I thank you for that clarification and you are absolutely correct, it doesn't change my assessment of the error on my part. 😢🙂