WatDabney

80 years of jingoistic propaganda to excuse ever greater oppression, violence and murder has created a nation of psychopaths.

Okay - let's imagine that by this time tomorrow, you successfully eliminate every single billionaire and corporation that's a contributor to climate change.

What happens next? Do you actually think the climate is just going to spring back to what it was? If so, you're in for a rude awakening.

Climate change is a done deal already. It has far too much inertia - even a dramatic change is only going to make a notable difference somewhere far down the line.

So entirely regardless of whether and to how much of an extent we might be able to enact societal or political change, we're going to have to cope with some fairly significant climate change. And that, I believe, is where people should be putting most of their focus.

That's not to say that I disagree with you fundamentally. In fact there are very few solutions to the problem of the outsized influence of a relative few wealthy scumbags of which I wouldn't approve, or even willingly take part. But at this point, that's more just (well deserved) vengeance - it's not going to make a dramatic difference in the climate change that is already in process. It's already too late for that.

The lab is off-limits. The only place you're allowed is the museum. And it's just that simple - as soon as a guard saw you in the lab, you got a bounty.

Yes. Long past time in fact.

People have been focused on political solutions far too much - "too much" not least because in so many cases, the final arbiters of which, if any, political solutions get adopted are a relative handful of fabulously wealthy psychopaths who are going to oppose anything that undermines their privilege, entirely regardless of the long-term consequences.

So understand - because of their control, political solutions for the most part are not going to happen. It doesn't matter how important they might be, because the systems are not rational - they're warped to the service of the privileged few.

So it's going to come down to individual action primarily.

Note though that that doesn't necessarily mean entirely self-serving action. Quite the opposite in fact - individuals will need to focus on what they can do, as individuals, to at least ease the hardship not only for themselves but for their fellow humans.

And at some point, quite likely, we'll even be able to rely on governments to fulfill their responsibilities. For the immediate future though, that's too often not the case, and we as a species need to come to terms with that and act accordingly.

This is a great example of the sort of thing that would be hilariously revealing if lying suddenly became literally impossible.

Imagine Musk calling up lawmakers and saying, "Listen - my cars are too shitty to meet your standards and I'm too greedy and distracted to commit to the necessary time and expense to sctually make them good, so could you maybe lower your standards so I can rush my people to slap together something shitty, snd then we'll just lie about it, mmkay?"

"Oh yeah - and I'll probably need you to step in and "negotiate a settlement" over the inevitable class action suit. I'll get back to you on that."

Damn I love that song.

I love everything Morphine ever did, and especially this album, but still... that song is something special.

Well of course he doesn't - he's a psychopath. A complete lack of concern for others is one of his defining characteristics.

And even beyond that, Biden's a special case.

Another aspect of Trump's mental illness is his entirely self-absorbed conception of reality. For instance, he wanted to win in 2020; and he believes he deserved to win in 2020, therefore, from his delusional point of view, the only possible reality is that he did win, but somebody stole it from him.

And that somebody is Biden, and since another aspect of his mental illness is to childishly cling to grudges over perceived wrongs, he has it in for Biden specifically.

LOL

Libel? For an assessment of toxic, pretentious self-righteousness?

That's just about the most delicious irony I've ever encountered.

Huh.

I thought about going into all of that, but at this point in the US it's still mostly speculative, since they haven't gotten the bans in place yet, and these pretentios fucksticks would never believe it anyway.

I didn't know that it's actually happened in Australia. That's unfortunate, but it'll provide me with an example in the future.

It's a fairly standard corporate move though. The biggest corporations lobby for a bunch of restrictions and requirements on their own industry because they're in a position to meet them, but they'll serve as a barrier to entry for potential competition.

So it's possible - arguably even likely - that these self-righteous asshats crying about the evil tobacco companies are actially effectively (or even literally) working for those very companies.

Which is just another reason why I have nothing but scorn and disdain for them.

It's not that I "can't fathom" it as that I know that it's complete snd total bullshit.

Tobacco companies didn't invent vsping - ordinary people did. And tobacco companies didn't originate the idea of flavoring it - the same ordinary people did. We did it because we prefer it that way.

And then years later, some bunch of self-righteous twats who know absolutely nothing about yhe actial history of ot come stumbling along and start blathering a bunch of fucking nonsense about the evil tobacvo companies flavoring juice to enticevkids.

Motherfucker - I was flavoring juice myself when tobacco companies didn't even know vaping existed - when it was just a handful of people on a forum experimenting with attaching homemade nichrome coils to modified flashlights.

So don't fucking presume to tell me what I can or can't "fathom."

I didn't call anyone a big mean doo-doo-head.

I called anti-vaping crusaders, among other things, "toxic assholes - vile, loathsome, uncaring pieces of shit who hide behind an ill-fitting mask of health advocacy to feed their own pathetic and destructive need for self-affirmation through self-righteousness."

And I meant and mean every single, carefully chosen word of it. That's not just a random insult hurled in someone's general direction, but a very deliberate and carefully considered description of what I've come to see as defining characteristics of a particularly noxious and loathsome group of people.

Ah... that's right - I left out "sanctimonious."