That’s why homelessness is being criminalized.

The explicit goal is to recreate Victorian workhouses for the benefit of the new generation of robber barons.

Lining up to buy a piece of the action.

We the people are completely and totally fucked.

Nexus Mods owner Robin Scott summed up the situation perfectly on Jan. 6, two days before the official statement went out on X, in the comments of a Reddit thread about “censorship” on his site:

We also removed the exact same mod with Joe Biden’s head at the same time (on the 2nd of January) to ensure there was no bias and because we don’t want to handle all the nutjobs that come out the woodwork whenever these mods get posted. Funny how the outrage-bait YouTubers don’t mention that, isn’t it?

Case in point, today, with all the nutjobs coming out of the woodwork sending us death threats, calling us pedos and all the other “wah wahs” that come with this ridiculous situation because some YouTuber told them we are only removing Trump mods.

It’s so dumb, and these people are so dumb, that I really cannot be fucked with it. I’m not expecting any of my staff to have to handle these whackjobs any more than showing them the door either. So we delete all the mods we see/that get reported to us on the topic, and all the people this upsets can trot-on because it’s really not worth our time or effort to care about.

I’ve criticized Dark0ne repeatedly over the years specifically because he tends to be an asshole, but this is one time I’m with him 100%.

If the US had a caste system, and it was a legitimate reflection of individual worth, drug company executives would be at the bottom.

So my only question really is whether these people are deliberate agents provocateur who are now feebly trying to hide the fact that they were working for the benefit of Trump all along or if they’re blithering idiots who are genuinely so fucking stupid that they didn’t see this coming

I see no third option - it’s one or the other

No - not particularly.

I don’t doubt that they have some gut level opposition to the other things, but I don’t think they’d care enough to force a potential government shutdown the week before Christmas or threaten to spend however many millions it’ll take to primary Republicans who won’t come on board if it wasn’t for the debt ceiling.

It’s very simple - Trump’s been lying all along about cutting spending, and he’s trying to avoid having to get the debt ceiling raised by the next congress while he’s in office and he’ll be the one signing the bill. He’s counting on his supporters’dull wits and short attention spans to stop them from paying too much attention to the fact that he’s pushing to raise it now, Later on, he’ll be able to say that it had nothing to do with him because it was passed by the previous congress and signed by Biden, and the dunderheads will just nod and go along with it.

The rest is diversion, meant specifically so that allied media can run articles like this one, in which they gloss over the debt ceiling (if they mention it at all) and instead talk about the sorts of things that will get Jim Bob Bigot’s jockeys in a twist.

This is what it’s really all about:

It even prompted President-elect Trump to say he is “totally against” the legislation and insist any spending deal raise the debt ceiling before he gets into office,

The rest is just distractions to keep his dull-witted supporters from thinking too much about the fact that the guy who promised to cut spending - who actually created a new office that was supposedly going to do just that - is pitching a tantrum until Congress proactively raises the debt ceiling for him.

There’s undoubtedly at least a bit of projection there, but I think more what it is is just that tankies are driven almost entirely by righteous indignation, and they’ll take pretty much any chance they get to indulge in it. They don’t really stop and think about things - they just see something that could serve as a basis for a nice, satisfying righteously indignant screed and off they go.

And that leaves them susceptible to, among other things, hypocrisy.

What the fuck are you babbling about?

“I’m not a racist but…” is just the more common and easily recognizable version of the same brand of bullshit in this article.

They all boil down to the same thing - a rhetorical strategy by which dishonest people try to simultaneously say something and dodge responsibility for having said it.

You seem hypersensitive about racism. Why is that?

That’s the conspiracy version of “I’m not a racist, but…”

And you just know that if somebody tried to sit him down and explain the purposes and goals of military aid to him, his attention would drift after about the fourth word, then he’d interrupt with, “Yeah but why are we paying? They should be paying us!”

Oh… hey. It just struck me - maybe he thinks that if they pay, he’ll get a percentage…

It’s so incredibly obvious that that would happen that I sincerely believe that that’s part of the intent.

Not to mention that all of this noise about flavored vape juice being some sort of underhanded scheme to rope in kids is one of the most ridiculously dumbass things that I’ve ever seen gibbering idiots apparently sincerely claim to believe. Well - this side of Qanon at least…

When I started vaping, premixed juice was the exception rather than the rule. So what you generally bought was nicotine extract, propylene glycol and/or vegetable glycerin, AND FLAVORING. Flavoring it was the standard literally from day one.

Nicotine juice is flavored and has been flavored all along for two very simple reasons: first and foremost because on its own, it tastes like crap, and second because everybody - not just kids but EVERYBODY - likes for things to taste good.

I am so fucking tired of assholes and idiots.

And predictably, this article isn’t about actual anti-semitism at all. It’s just another cynical and dishonest attempt to conflate the boycott of Israeli products in response to Israeli government policies with actual anti-semitism.

Best I’d say is 12 Monkeys, but that’s unsurprisingly already been mentioned.

An odd one I want to recommend - Static (1985) - IMDb link

It’s broadly similar in that it’s surreal and unsettling and deals with alienation, loneliness and death, and it has a great soundtrack (and in fact introduced me to The The’s This is the Day, almost 40 years before GotG v3). And it stars Keith Gordon and Amanda Plummer, who are both excellent.

The most notable difference (not so much that it’s vital as that it’s so obvious) is that it looks completely different. Visually, Donnie Darko is very dense and rich and dark, while Static is very pale and washed out and stark. It fits the context though.