Yeah, well, Obama ran on compromise and good faith resets, and it really just got taken advantage of. It was the naivete of a young electorate who didn’t yet understand the sheer depths of cynicism to which conservatives and neoliberals had already sunk.

It’s clear to me that bicameral governance breaks down quickly when they stop actually employing the system as written. Like, I can say for certain that we would probably have a viable third party option if we had actually properly expanded the house, Congress, and the courts.

It also really breaks down when empty land has more voting rights than millions of people living in a city. Humans tend to cluster together because it makes logistics easier and quality of life better

Well, if Trump’s last go-around is any indication, when Republicans control every level of government, they get virtually nothing done as they spend all their time infighting amongst the various groups that make up the Unholy Coalition.

You’re wrong, but, keep cooking fam. COVID is only “very low” in the US because we have pulled all funding for PCR testing, contact tracing, and wastewater level analysis. COVID didn’t go away; we just stopped caring once it got a little more tolerable, symptoms-wise.

I wear masks still because they are PPE — PERSONAL protective equipment. I can’t trust anyone to consider me and my immunocompromised state, so, I wear a mask to try and at least protect myself. I’m not making a ‘statement’, and your notion that I am can eat my entire asshole.

Stick to speaking about your home country. You clearly don’t understand the situation on the ground here.

I know. But they are making COVID masks illegal to wear at protests because they are claiming that we are anarchists trying to to hide our identities. Meanwhile, these same cowards covering their face to protect themselves were the same cowards screaming bloody murder at the beginning of COVID that they can’t wear a mask because of 'health issues.

Yes! The library in my hometown has a 3D printer that my cousin runs and maintains. It’s super neat. She is the head librarian, but she takes online tickets with the STL file, slices it, prints it, finishes it, and puts the print in a basket in the front of the library. You use your library card to then check it out. :)

3D printing isn’t the most useful tech right now, but, it’s an excellent first step towards the development of a cottage industry built around just making parts to repair random things in a house and encourage reuse.

Can’t we just combine Austria and Hungary again? Everybody loved that.

Well, except Bosnian Serbs I guess.

Homie looks like the heel of a foot. Putin sure knows how to pick the pretty ones.

You know, it pisses me off a special kind of way to know that there is currently functionally no difference between a 15 year old stoner using ChatGPT to generate a paper and the people operating at the highest levels of global policy creating sweeping policy changes.

‘Rule by Collective Unconscious’ certainly feels like a new idea. If anyone is looking for a good scifi short story prompt, have at it! My only request is that you name the inevitably evil AI “Thoreaux”, please. TIA

I think about this comic probably once a week at this point. I don’t know if anyone will ever be able to boil the problem down any further than what’s here — “but what if we make a better world for nothing?”

Unfortunately I have tried to show this to people, or use the line that illustrates it, and the gist of the general response is “my comfort comes before our safety.”

Yeah but those don’t have AC. Well, except the ones in Alaska I guess.

I am proud that I was able to help build a library in an exceptionally small borough immediately outside of Pittsburgh city limits. I thought I knew what libraries were before that project, but man, modern libraries serve so many niches that small boroughs can’t ever hope to provide.

Sure, it had books, but it also had computers with largely uncensored fiber internet access. It had a tool library, with everything from screwdrivers to hydraulic suspension spring compressors. It had a small kitchen with a few cooktops for cooking classes. It had a back garage that was kitted and tooled as an auto mechanic workshop that hosted classes AND could be rented for DIY car maintenance. It had music, games, DVDs, atlases… Hell, they even rented eBooks! All stuff that poor kids of all stripes would never have access to otherwise.

It’s definitely a place to hang out, but I wish people would dispense with the notion that a library is where the free books live. It has been so much more than that to so many people for almost a century now. Fight and protect your library, folks! You truly have no idea how many people make use of it unless you’re there all day.

What fucking sucks is that they are criminalizing wearing KN-95s to protests in state laws because apparently they’re so dangerous while simultaneously saying that these guys need masks to protect themselves.

Why the fuck do the cromagnons in office think I’m still wearing a KN-95? So I can cosplay Blade Runner at work? Because I am a duck furry and this is a subtle way of fursuiting? For the high fashion? Because I am taunting non-mask-wearers? NO, IT IS TO PROTECT MYSELF.

aaaaaaAAAAAAA

Yeah, I am always forgetting my owls in the sun.

I always thought it was wild that the Klan is so vehemently against Jews, yet, they worship Christ, who was raised Jewish himself.

Coooool. That’s a fun fact indeed.

a bald eagle screech rings through the valley

Mmm, I understand you now. That’s fair.

I guess since I’m not on Reddit anymore, I can just say what I feel — this kid almost certainly has wall-to-wall glass curio cabinets filled with resin hentai figurines.

I guess, but I am referring more to that there should only be a House of Representatives, and that the Senate serves no purpose other than to represent corporate interests and tamp down on popular sentiment.