Ah... yes. You're undoubtedly right.
Shame I didn't think of that. I stand behind the spirit of my post, but yeah...
WatDabney
joined 11 months ago
I guarantee that today or tomorrow hundreds of thousands if not millions of Republicans nationwide are going to see that story and think, or even say, "Good! Serves 'em right!"
And they're also going to continue to insist that they're the moral ones.
"Corporate" is the key word there.
Major corporations, including but by no means limited to those that have bought up all of the major news outlets, are, along with a number of destructively insane billionaires, the main financiers of this attempted fascist takeover. They're the real driving force behind it.
They see this, and accurately, as a significant moment in human history - the point at which modern civilization might just come to broadly recognize the significant harm done by the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few and much more to the point, might take steps to prevent it. And that's a direct threat to their entirely unearned, undeserved and grotesquely destructive privilege, and in their literally insane lust for wealth and power and the privilege they bring, they're going to stop at nothing to prevent that.
People talk about a class war - the class war is already well under way. The oligarchs have been actively fighting it for years now. Most of the people just haven't realized that yet.
Since the Heritage Foundation just overtly declared war on American democracy, complete with a thinly veiled threat of violence and bloodshed, it's just that much more important that news like this is spread as widely as possible.
The fascists riding Trump's coattails aren't even hiding their intentions any more. We must not let them succeed in destroying the few remaining vestiges of American democracy, and the first step in that is keeping that loathsome lunatic Trump out of office.
What the fucking fuck?!
Those fucking psychopaths actually want to punish Mexico for experiencing a drought?
Ah - just went and read the article, and what it actually centers on is a sugar cane industry that's been wedged into south Texas (undoubtedly with big fat bribes paid to politicians).
Sugar cane is notoriously water-intensive, and likely should've never been grown in south Texas in the first place. It's near certain that the sugar cane industry is actually the most significant proximate cause of the very drought conditions that are now a problem. So in effect, it's the US, at the behest of Texas legislators and interests, wanting to punish Mexico because the Texas sugar cane industry wasted all of the available water and still wants more.
A similar entirely contrived "problem" exists in south Florida, in which the heavily subsidized sugar cane industry and their legion of wholly corrupt politicians are the proximate cause of the draining of the Everglades.
A gratuity is just a postdated bribe, and everybody including the Supreme Court knows it.
There's another whole aspect to the recurring pushes to remove the dams that's pretty much always left out too.
Likely the biggest beneficiaries if the dams were removed would be power companies, who, even with the dams generally operating at a tiny fraction of capacity, are stuck having to sell cheap hydroelectric power at low rates.
If the dams were removed, they'd be able to justify contracting (often with their own subsidiaries) for the construction of expensive new power plants with lower capacity and higher operating costs and would then be able to convince the PUCs to grant them massive rate increases.
Ah, but I'm sure that has nothing to do with the mysteriously well-funded campaigns to remove the dams that get a new round of publicity every few years...
No - I don't agree that they're completely different.
"Made by AI" would be completely different.
"Made with AI" actually means pretty much the exact same thing as "AI was used in this image" - it's just that the former lays it out baldly and the latter softens the impact by using indirect language.
I can certainly see how "photographers" who use AI in their images would tend to prefer the latter, but bluntly, fuck 'em. If they can't handle the shame of the fact that they did so they should stop doing it - get up off their asses and invest some time and effort into doing it all themselves. And if they can't manage that, they should stop pretending to be artists.
I'm roundaboutly reminded of one of my favorite novels - Greener Than You Think, by Ward Moore.
It's a science fiction story about the end of the world that was written in the late 40s. The proximate cause of the end is all of the landmasses of Earth being smothered by a gigantic and very aggressive strain of Bermuda grass, but the real cause is the utter and complete failure, due to ignorance, greed, selfishness, short-sightedness, incompetence, arrogance and so on, of every attempt to combat it.
Another of the many things the current US shares with Ancien Régime France - then and there too, the richest paid little to nothing in taxes, even as the government served their interests almost exclusively.
Dredge.
A very simple concept and gameplay loop that expands out into the bizarre and fantastic.
Honorable mention: Ronin.
Bullet time, effectively turn-based ninja combat. Simple, regularly autosaved "go until you die, then try something different" gameplay loop and just a helluva lot of fun.
Honorable mention: Valley.
Smooth and thrilling first-person mechanically-enhanced parkouring along the way to investigating the mysteries - both ancient and more recent - of a unique and very picturesque valley.
Exactly.
Entirely on brand, it's the classic abusive asshole position - "just do as I say - I don't want to have to hurt you, but I will."