I find that they have a lot of mistaken assumptions that are just lies repeated by Fox News. Sometimes they don’t even watch Fox, they’re just surrounded by people that do.

I like to focus on the economic issues, since there is hard math for the economy and I find it’s not productive to argue with someone who is terrified that a trans person might be in the same bathroom as their child. I find these people literally start foaming at the mouth over that stuff and I just don’t have the right math or words to cut through the rabies.

For example. I’ve heard Republican voters say that Republicans are better for the economy and reducing the national debt. Ask them which Republican presidents have left office with a reduced deficit?

Ask them if they know how much it added to the national debt when Reagan, Bush, and Trump passed tax cuts primarily for the rich and corporations.

Let them know that you’re also concerned about the economy and the deficits, and show them a chart of federal spending and ask them whether they want to cut Social Security, Medicare, or defense spending to pay for more tax cuts for the rich and corporations.

Then ask them why DON’T the Republicans cut ANY of those things to pay for their tax cuts? Why do those deficits just get passed on to the next Democrat and blamed on them? How are Republicans going to reduce the deficit when it’s not politically feasible with their base to cut ANY of those three things?

When it comes to immigration, ask them why they think immigrants are trying to get here in the first place. Show them Smedley Butler and talk about the war on drugs and ask them if they think the US is partially to blame for the violence in other countries that people are trying to escape from.

Also, show them the Maddox comic where he depicts immigrants “stealing our jobs”. Ask them who is hiring these illegal immigrants and why? Ask them who the managers and owners of those companies vote for and why those people might have an incentive to preserve the “illegal” status of those employees.

Took a peek in worldnews recently and yeah it’s bad. I don’t remember it being so bad the last time Gaza was bombed. It’s like they cleaned out worldnews for the IPO or something.

One of my cats will headbutt me if I say “headbutt”, he’s like a pokemon or something. Hard enough that I can hear a thunk.

Two that I watched on Netflix a while back:

The Untold History of the United States - good overview of US history with an emphasis on conservatives fucking us over and liberals not really doing a whole lot about it

Winter on Fire - striking footage of the Maidan revolution in Ukraine prior to the invasion of Crimea

It’s been nearly 10 years since you needed to develop with C# on Windows.

New versions of .NET have been cross platform with a free IDE since 2016.

might be able to genocide too will genocide even harder and louder

Fixed that for you. Vote for who you want, but don’t pretend that there’s any question about Trump’s stance on the issue. He’s publicly called for the final solution to be applied to Palestinians, and people in his party are telling their supporters that they think Gaza should be nuked like Nagasaki.

If Trump narrowly wins the election and the Palestinians suffer even more, wouldn’t you feel the slightest bit guilty for staying home?

What helped for me was to just focus on consistency of activity first and foremost. Making sure I have a consistent 1hr a day fitness plan that I don’t hate, and use a fitness watch to look at streaks over time so you don’t want to break them. For me upper/lower splits every other day helped make sure I get enough core/legs in because I was always skipping leg day. I try to do the major compound movements and supplement with additional stuff if there is time… Pushups, pullups, squats, deadlifts. I’ve also been doing intervals on the exercise bike so 3 min of bike for every 7 minutes of lifting

I started to see results after a few months, but it’s only recently that I’ve started to pay more attention to what I’m eating. I think it’s good to get the consistent activity down first before you worry about cutting and calorie deficits. That way whatever you’re doing, mentally you know you can do it even if you feel more physically fatigued.

I also didn’t realize just how much protein I really needed, didn’t see much in the way of results until I started to eat around .8g protein per pound of body weight. Chicken, salmon, low-fat Greek yogurt, egg whites, and some protein bars/shakes… I found it wasn’t that hard to stay around 2000 calories and still eat 160+ g of protein.

I’m probably going to eventually get a fitness and nutrition coach because my health insurance will likely cover it, just to have additional confidence in what I’m doing.

Ah yes, my last company bought into that crap. They called it RPA for Robotic Process Automation and they also used it to access internal apps that we had full control of.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if they just used it to enter data into third party websites which had no APIs or integrations.

At one point we updated the title of an HTML page and we had to revert the change because the RPA team said it would be a three week turnaround to fix their script.

I noped out of there not long after, it was yet another “project management driven” company where managers and project managers were repeatedly duped by vendors and outsourcing firms instead of hiring and retaining developers.

I’m using this one and like it. Chairs in a similar price range from Staples just didn’t have all the right adjustments that this one has.

https://www.autonomous.ai/office-chairs/ergonomic-chair?utm_term=631224075317&utm_campaign=[P]_US_Search_Standard_Brand_Phrase&utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_content=autonomous ergonomic chair&gad_source=1

I’m not planning on being able to have an IT job in my old age. Seems likely that ageism or economic factors will conspire to make sure I can’t. I’m planning on possibly involuntary retirement in my 50s.

Why do they care what Hamas is armed with when they’re primarily killing civilians?

Gens Y, X, Z, and soon A are being taught by conservatives that capitalism can’t be reformed, and therefore are digging capitalism’s grave with their own hands.

You want reasonable restrictions on firearms? Conservatives say that can’t be done because of the 2nd amendment. They’re basically teaching gens Z and A that the 2nd amendment needs to be eliminated and those generations might actually have the numbers to do it eventually.

It will be the same with capitalism. You want reasonable regulations and taxation to reign in the abuses of the rich and corporations? Conservatives say you can’t do that because the free market must be supreme.

Conservatives will dig the grave of capitalism by continuing to fight against any reforms that would make capitalism more livable for future generations.

How do we fix it? Israel shot themselves in the foot by keeping the Palestinians divided and ensuring that a two state solution can not be viable. Therefore, the UN needs to step in and implement a one state solution. Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank would be given citizenship and representation in a combined state. UN peacekeeping forces would have to fight against groups of terrorists (both Hamas and Israeli) who oppose this solution.

Israel has the right to exist, but no one has an inherent right to an apartied ethno-state. The combined state would have a more equal amount of Jews and Arabs, so the Israelis would be unable to oppress the Palestinians the way they currently do.

Is this a popular solution? No. Will anyone seriously argue that a two state solution is still viable and that Israel will work towards that? No.

The idea of a Palestine controlled by the UN was actually part of the original plan for the region that the British drew up, before they decided to use the Zionists as a convenient tool to screw over the Arabs.

The current state of affairs weakens the entire idea of the United Nations as a tool for preventing major worldwide conflicts. If Israel continues to get away with ignoring international law, and if the US continues to veto UN resolutions that seek to hold Israel accountable, it contributes to moving the world closer to WW3.

People will say that the situation is much more complicated than just “European colonizers oppress yet another group of brown people”. Fine, if that is true then that is a good reason why the US should not be taking one side over the other, and the US government should back out and let the UN do what needs to be done.

I wonder which borders have to be accepted, the 1967 borders? Genuinely curious… Whenever they expand settlements into the West Bank or annex parts of Gaza, do you have to re-certify that you accept their borders and right to defend themselves?

I personally recommend that people (men especially) stay away from them.

I always struggled with confidence and self-esteem, so for me dating apps were just making that worse. I spent months swiping and the breakdown for me was something like 200 swipes before I’d get a match, then out of those matches, at least half were spam bots or fake profiles, then out of the other half, probably only 1/5 would answer my messages. The ones that did answer either weren’t very engaged or just never responded at all often the initial interaction. All of this just contributed to lower self esteem and more bitterness and depression.

I found the women on these apps would put in 0 effort at conversation, and yet would say things like “We should get to know each other first” when I tried to set up a date.

Then the dates that I did get, I felt catfished but more likely it was my own wishful thinking and being willing to overlook obviously misleading photos. I had at least one date with a girl who matched her picture but then was a complete psycho.

I don’t really blame the women, it’s just market forces at work. These apps tend to have way more guys on them than girls, so the women are (generally) able to just sit back and the men are expected to wow them with fantastic opening messages or have the exact right physical characteristics. For this reason, Bumble was the only app I had success with and would have recommended.

For me, I had hoped dating apps would be a useful tool for meeting other singles in person to get to know them, but I ended up with the impression that many women were just using them to inflate their own self esteem, and loved to chat and get compliments but never actually wanted to date.

Anyways, it sounds cliche and I’m sure someone has said this to you, but you should work on building yourself. What worked for me was to find an activity that I could be secure and confident in and also meet women in that setting. I found two different long-term relationships through coed rec sports, and it’s not like I was some superstar at sports impressing the women or anything. Just go into it thinking about improving your own mental and physical health, work on getting better and meeting more people.

Both women I met through coed sports told me that I was much more appealing in person than my dating profiles, so maybe some profile improvements were warranted, but I concluded that it’s just not possible to get a good sense of someone you might want to date through pictures and a chat. Dating apps are only useful if they lead to meeting people in person, so if they aren’t enabling you to do that then you just have to get out there and meet people without them.

I do like Al Jazeera for an alternate perspective from the Western media taking points, but I wouldn’t necessarily call them unbiased particularly when it comes to this conflict.

That being said, I highly recommend their documentary series Al Nakba which is a documentary series about the founding of Israel from the Palestinian perspective.

I’ve been a cord cutter for a long time and I enjoyed watching world news on Al Jazeera for a long time. While I definitely enjoyed their content as an alternative to the celebrity fluff filled US cable news, it’s definitely biased against Israel when it comes to this conflict. However, I would still recommend everyone watch Al Nakba which is streaming for free with no ads on their website. It’s a four episode documentary series about the founding of Israel with primary accounts of what happened in the ground there from Arabs, Israelis, and British officers.

It’s probably very biased and one-sided, but the rest of the media is very biased and one-sided in the other direction.

For example, Wikipedia says that the 1948 war was started by the Arabs once Israel declared a state. In Al Nakba, they challenge that narrative with first-hand accounts from Arabs and British officers who say that it was the Israelis who started the war through ethnic cleansing of Palestinian villages, in some cases before the British even left.

Mark the Shark and Ruben the Roomba

I’m at the same time horrified and fascinated by them. I saw a comment that accused NATO of causing he war to “drag on”. When I brought up that Russia could just leave, I got people unironically replying that Ukraine was the aggressor in the war and that it was Ukraine committing genocide and attacks on civilians. I understand that I could be trapped in a western bubble… but really? I didn’t bother asking for a source because I’m sure the only source for that misinformation is the Kremlin. What’s crazy is that you would think the Russian shills would be spread out trying to infect other communities with disinformation, instead they all flock to this echo chamber apparently, so it seems likely that they genuinely believe this stuff.