jtrek

'I know he was going to start deporting people but not innocent people, not hardworking people,' she said.

Heartless.

she voted for Trump in the 2024 election, mainly for religious reasons

What religion? Some trimmed down Christianity that skips the good samaritan and sheep&goats , give your possessions to the poor stuff?

Probably. There's a lot to cherry-pick from the bible, and most people aren't critically thinking scholars.

Ghost jobs should be illegal. Any org found posting a ghost job should be required to pay a year's salary to every applicant, and everyone involved in authorizing the post should be barred from working in HR for life.

I hope no one reads that top-down and comes away with "Don't vote. Delay today". That'd be a silly way to read it.

There are two main things that change people's minds: Peer pressure, and trauma.

We're social creatures and we take cues from people we trust. The right wing has done an excellent (and horrifying) job of creating unified in-groups for their followers. They have fox news. They have talk radio. They have churches. They have also demonized their opposition - "ivory tower elites", "coastal elites", queers, commies, etc. Many people will struggle to change their mind when everyone around them hasn't.

There was a thing I was reading about a while ago, about flat-earthers. A bunch of them got shown a lot of evidence to contradict their beliefs. They all stuck to their flat-earth nonsense, except one of them. The guy who'd started dating someone sane, and hanging out with her friends. He changed his mind. In large part because he no longer saw the flat-earth community as such a vital part of his in-group. Or so the author argued.

The other way is trauma. If something really horrific happens to someone, they might reevaluate. But if they're still in the same social groups, they're likely to fall back into their old ways.

In the book "Dying of Whiteness", the author interviewed a variety of people. Among them were gun violence survivors. There was one passage where a woman said something like, yeah, easy access to guns is why her son died. Maybe he shouldn't have been able to just go get a gun and shoot himself. But, she said, she would never say that to her peers.

So, in short: No, not really. The social groups carrying maga identity are self-reinforcing. They're all looking at their peers, who are all still maga.

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe is a good comic about some of the same ideas, too.

They are prioritizing the financial interests

Sums of why a lot of things are bad

Don't over think it. Meet other people.

I think that's my least favorite brand of Christian. Ignore all the sheep and goats, good Samaritan, give to the poor, parts to be smug little shits.

"it wasn't perfect on the first try so we're going to just give up" idiocy.

Microsoft needs to be dismantled.

Everywhere I've worked that did micro services it was kind of a pain. One of the places I've worked had a simple monolith backend and it was great.

I don't really like the parroting of in-jokes thing. Probably any sufficiently long lived large group will probably have in-jokes, but reddit-isms always grated the most.

I've lived here for most of my adult life and never felt like I needed a car.

Having one is a huge pain. Parking. Insurance. Gas. Maintenance. Getting home when you're drunk.

It's easier to just get on the train.

I'd like if transit was cheaper and more reliable outside the city. Visiting family in the suburbs via transit is slower and more expensive.

If there's a good in-game group finder, where you can specify like "first time doing it" or "chill group" vs "speed runner" then it's probably fine. If you can find players, that is.

I played a lot of guild wars 2. I'd start groups on the lfg with a message like "chill [content] run - I don't care about your build" and people would join, and we'd have a fine time.

Some other MMO, I forget which, I'd end up sitting at the lfg for a long time and never got a full group