You’re putting this on the citizens when we really have little say.

In theory, everyone should vote and the will of the people will be done.

Sadly, that isn’t how it actually works.

Lets just say that various industries spend a lot of money bribing lobbying to keep things profitable for them.

I’ll use an example from when I was younger. I worked at a big box retail store. It was 45 minutes one way, but hey, it was a job.

The nearest bus stop would have required me to drive 35 minutes to downtown to catch a bus, which is the wrong way to begin with, then get on the bus and wait over an hour for it to arrive at work.

The politicians and planners build AROUND cars here. Public transport is an afterthought, if thought of at all.

The American’s who would like to reduce dependence on automobiles don’t really have that option in most of the country - but sure, we’re all morons who don’t understand the concept of public transportation.

It isn’t stupidity or ignorance on the peoples part, its greed by the ruling class. Any ignorance on the matter has been propagandized and weaponized by said ruling class to gain support for their bank accounts cause.

At this point, I’m working from home, as is my wife. We would still need at least one car, but I’m looking to sell mine, get out of the monthly payment at the very least.

Because the word Kiwi refers to other things.

A fruit, people from New Zealand, etc.

Oooh, Detective Pikachu - Rated R.

A gritty, bleak, neo-film-noir take on a grizzled, aged, jaded Pikachu who just needs to finish his work before he can pass on - his duty keeps him alive.

Opening scene - Black and White.

We enter an alleyway, slicked down with rain, with clearly muddy debris visible under the surface of the water in foot prints as characters pass.

The camera pans up, to a victim. The gore, the blood, the entrails, the brains… All vividly rendered in color against a monochrome background.

Zoom into Pikachu’s eyes. He squints for a moment, takes a drag off his non-filtered cigarette, closes his eyes for a moment as he inhales, and tosses the butt into the alley gutter.

Opening credits roll.

I had some, before I moved.

Let me just say this, what came easy to young me in boy scouts… well, I’m just glad if I hit a safe area in the general direction I’m aiming.

The other issues is as a boy I shot off the right of the riser on a longbow, and this was an off the left takedown (recurve) bow - still the amount I sucked surprised me a little, lol.

So hopefully you have time to practice.

Pffft. I write everything as a one liner in notepad and just copy and paste into a compiler.

Note: Sarcasm. I’m not a dev, I just script shit for my own convenience at work. I’m the guy the idiots talk to first. After 12 years I’m pretty good at filtering out the bullshit and giving a concise ticket to escalate in the event I don’t have permissions to fix something.

I have fixed code before, but its been very rare, and was most certainly a case of the actual dev not seeing the forest due to the trees. It just happened I had the cube next to him and he wanted any other set of eyes, lol. I just happened to have some education in various languages that I opted not to pursue further.

Eh, task ChatGPT with it.

Yep.

I work in IT, if I’m on a call or actively working a ticket that I can finish and just ran out of time? I’ll stay, happily, and finish it.

I’ll help cover vacations, and if I like the company, other people calling in to an extent.

The longest stretch I worked was when I was much younger (and dumber). Retail, before the holidays. There were a variety of contributing factors at work, but in the end I worked 22 days in a row, most often 12+ hours a day. The OT pay was nice, don’t get me wrong, but I quickly learned that my time and well being are worth more than most employers can offer, even with OT adjustments.

I slept over 24 hours straight, and my body hurt ALL over for two weeks. That was with a wonderful girlfriend at the time who knew her way around a massage, and was happy to do so when asked - and I needed it then, lol.

I would posit that it could be based on something else entirely, a civic or moral obligation a person feels to abide by the spirit of the law to help protect fellow people, even if they would not be punished or could some how gain something - in this case, a finite resource - time, for violating the law.

If a four person table has three Nazis sitting at it, and a fourth person sits down with them, there are four Nazis at the table.

Accordingly, if a public figure makes a Nazi salute (several times) in a public live recording, they are a Nazi.

If it walks like a duck, etc.

They may not claim Nazism, but fascism is fascism whatever flag you wave. The individual motivators behind it are not relevant.

Both my grandfathers are rolling over in their graves as I watch fascism goose step into America.

I don’t disagree. My last job was using winget to update some things. I raised the concept of trusting otherwise unknown updates, but I was pushed aside for the quick utility.

I’m only a student of cybersecurity, but I harshly judge my former “security expert” on far more than that.

Like fuck, the help desk has to install every patch, to every machine, through a spreadsheet?

No, deploy that shit from a server. Fuck.

In a way, I’m glad I left. In another way, I would really like a pay check again… and I moved to a well, tech illiterate state. Fuck me.

Wait and Bleed in my ass.

We live in troubled times, the planet is overheating at a rate that it might affect my life more than being more uncomfortable in the summer. And that’s Texas summers at that.

There is an island of plastic refuse in the ocean bigger than some countries.

I saw the home computer come to the living room and the internet be birthed.

If you were to ask if I was jaded as a kid, already? Yeah. Around 7 years old.

It isn’t getting better. Corporations claw for more and more at the expense of the people and the planet.

I hope the younger generations can lead the charge of change, but for me… I don’t have the time or energy to play games most days, let alone change the planet.

And for those who will say, “Aren’t you just part of the problem then?” Sadly yes, I am. I try to make changes when I can, but I fear changing the small environment of my home will not be enough.

If it has horns, that isn’t milk.

God who looks at the mirror and sees that and still thinks “Yeah I can talk to women.”

I’m homely, but god damn.

Possible to an extent I suppose, though with the clear silhouette of the whole body, that seems like it would entail a lot of nude usage for a chair in a “family” area.