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Trump supporters generally are cowardly cattle. A few can obviously be riled up and pushed to do violence, but not enough to do any real damage. I mean in terms of a civil war. January 6th was a unique situation that will be better prepared for next time.

Only about 30% of people even like trump; probably about 1% of those people are able-bodied, have weapons, have nothing to lose, and could be convinced to kill for him. Of course that’s still like a million people, which sure as shit ain’t nothing, but they’re spread out, unorganized, and still very few compared to military numbers. As for the block of people who would identify as not supporting trump, I couldn’t really guess numbers, but people are wildly mistaken to think that only people on the right have guns; we just don’t have murder boners or make guns our whole personality. I hope I only ever use my guns for target practice, but I’m absolutely ready to use them to defend my home and family if ever necessary, and I’m not interesting enough to have any reason to believe that that’s a likely scenario. Honestly, my biggest concern on that threat is a scenario where trump wins and releases voter registration info and SuGgEsTs that the second amendment folks do something about those tricksy democratses. The only other people dumb enough to break in while I’m home are cops, and I know that the courtroom is where you fight that flavor of fascism.

Generally speaking, regarding the big question here of what will happen if Harris wins, I think that the answer is “nothing shocking”. There will be claims of an unfair election process, maybe some meek attempts at insurrection, continued prosecution and convictions for trump’s crimes (and probably slap on the wrist sentences). The economy will gently recover, the future will be invested in, maybe some rights get legislatively protected. Military and police funding will continue to balloon forever. We’ll still fund genocides and fuck with any country that pivots toward socialism. “Nothing will fundamentally change” but it’s a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

Then after 4 years of sexism and racism on OAN and Fox News, Desantis or a similar creep wins the presidency in '28. They roll back everything they possibly can and fuck the country up for the profits of billionaires and corporations again. Because reasonable people will get too comfortable to care enough, but unreasonable people can’t stop foaming at the mouth over every weekly culture war.

When trump is finally gone, trumpism will still remain. And it will have prettier packaging. That’s when it gets really scary imo.

I would prefer Sriracha (shout-out to Underwood Ranch specifically) but to each their own.

Sure. Here’s a song a friend wrote with me and then I recorded in Audacity. I didn’t realize just how very Andrew Bird it is until much later lol.

Pro-Creation

TL;DR: it’s been the hardest and worst influence in my mental health at pretty much every point in my life.

We moved a lot as a kid and my parents fought a lot. Why? Because my dad was in the army because there just wasn’t economic opportunity otherwise. I still have some psychological scarring regarding food security, and I’ll have something akin to a panic attack if I eat something that tastes anything like Berry Berry Kix because we bought like a pallet of it when it was on sale one time and it’s all I had for months.

When I graduated high school in 2007, I didn’t attend the ceremony. Why? Because I needed to work. I didn’t want to be economically trapped, so I worked as much as I could so I could pay for community college and then transfer credits to a 4 year school and hopefully get some kind of scholarship based on my good grades. While in community college, that plan changed drastically because of the 2008 recession. I managed to complete my 2 year degree though, thankfully.

In 2013, my mom died. She was 51, almost 52. She was very sick in a country that doesn’t take care of the health of its people. She drank heavily from the stress of money being tight, and she smoked since a very early age, so I can’t squarely blame capitalism entirely for her early death, but doctors weren’t interested in helping somebody who was already so far gone that her death would hurt their statistics. In any case, this launched a deep depression in which I stopped finding joy in any sense of artistic expression or productivity for a long while. I stopped caring so much about whether I was alive.

Soon afterwards, while I was already at a low point, I had a boss that was extremely abusive. I learned what gaslighting is. Nothing I ever did was ever worth an attaboy, but not getting screamed at became the reward I would seek. Basically Whiplash, but with chefs instead of musicians. My employment prospects were extremely limited, so I was stuck there. I strongly considered escaping it in the only way I had control over it all, but thankfully opted for a hail mary risk that happened to pay off; I quit and took a temp job scrubbing toilets.

It’s a long story, but that led step by step to my current job operating a combined cycle power plant at about $130k/year. I met a lovely woman in July 2016, married her in September 2020 (despite the covid of it all), and we just bought our first house yesterday. Despite my eventual successes in life, I still bash this economic system because I knew that ultimately I just got really lucky. But this isn’t the ending. I wouldn’t be surprised if housing crashes again at some point and it turns out that we shouldn’t have bought. Idk, we’re just doing our best here.

I could talk for hours about how profit motivations and economic struggles caused people to clamor for returning to school and work at the peak of the pandemic, which caused a million preventable deaths, but that barely moves the needle in terms of my personal mental health. I was an “essential” worker, which really just means “expendable” but I had already come to terms with that by then. It would be more appropriate to talk about how the music industry changes have impacted my interest in making music since I know it’s astronomical that it could ever even be a hobby that pays for itself, let alone make a little extra through gigs.

I hear from people when I cook or play music or engage in other hobbies and interests that I should (paraphrasing here) find a way to monetize that. These things are my escape from capitalist hellfire. They are the pressure relief valve. Why in the fuck would I invite that vampire into my safe haven? I’d much rather give my music away or give away cooking tips. I don’t want to cater your fucking wedding. I don’t want to track how many listens my mediocre music might get on Spotify. I just want to create.

I make money at work and I make happy at home.

RDR2 is very much not for everybody. It is intentionally tedious. It’s the kind of game you sit down and play for at least 2-3 hours every time you play it because that’s just how long it takes to get anything done. You aren’t fast traveling. You aren’t doing things instantaneously in a menu. Your time as a human being is an in-game resource. If you’re in the middle of nowhere and your horse dies, a ton of your shit was being carried in the saddle; you need to walk your ass to the nearest town lugging that saddle, vulnerable to wild animals and robbers. It’s a game about getting things done with your own two hands at the turn of the century when that was becoming much less valued. It’s a game about subsistence. You could have an easier, more prosperous life, but at what cost? At whose cost? It’s a game about nature and living in a natural world as a natural being, criticizing the transition into industrial exploitation of our fellow natural world and natural animals, including natural humans. It’s not a rootin’ tootin’ spaghetti western adventure; it’s an interactive classic American novel that can occasionally have funny or fun moments depending on your tastes. I fully understand that it’s wasn’t a game that you or millions of other people enjoyed, but I think it’s wholly unjust to label it a “bad” game for that. It did exactly what it set out to do, and evoked impactful emotion in sharing its message as intended for the people who wanted to be open to it. It’s successful art, but not all art is for you and not all art is for me. You may have gone in with the wrong expectations for it. I think it really sucks that every rockstar game since the early 2000s seems to be marketed as “GTA but ___” because the Red Dead games and LA Noire are very much not GTA. They’re 3rd person open worlds with similar engines, but that’s where the similarities end.

If you ever try it again, come in with a similar mindset to wanting to sit down and watch The Godfather, not The Avengers. There’s a lot to get out of it if you just focus on the story and the characters and the beautiful setting. Enjoy the honest work, and lament the shootouts and heists.

For anybody just casually interested but with lesser needs than OP, I bought a 65W supply to replace a phone charger I forgot at a hotel and I’ve been very happy with it. Don’t just buy a single port replacement if you fuck up at check out like I did lol. Here’s what I bought: https://a.co/d/2TKDE2G and it’s $40 right now.

It has 3 ports total, 2 USB C and 1 USB A. The only issue is that it doesn’t come with cables, so I also bought a 3 pack of 2m USB C to USB C cables. No complaints.

Excellent question. Idk, I can see indirect sex work like camming or porn still happening because that could be connected to a desire to perform for an audience. Maybe less prostitution but I’m almost certain that it wouldn’t go away completely.

At least that’s a consistent viewpoint. What I despise is demonizing sex work but not exploitative labor practices. It’s totally illogical to me that people will pride themselves on working 12+ hour days, skip breaks, come in on days off, work nights and weekends and holidays, etc but look down on people who have an OnlyFans or whatever. I don’t really understand criticizing one without the other.

Personally, I don’t give a shit about sex work. If it were fully legal and workers were protected and everything, I still don’t know that I would pay for it, but I sure as shit wouldn’t fight to take that choice away from others. It just wouldn’t really affect me. Same thing for access to safe drugs or abortions. I’m not going to advocate for other people to not have choices in their personal freedoms, so I guess I’ll fight for people to have access even for things I’m not that interested in for myself.

Yes