My highschool was a smaller charter school that was essentially a bunch of connected / encircled modular buildings.

I actually kinda miss it because it had different vocational paths and I ended up in a student-run computer shop. We actually fixed things around the campus and other people’s machines and stuff. Shame that sort of thing kinda fell out of relevance, job-wise!

We also had a large computer lab where we played things like CounterStrike Source, Battlefield Desert Combat or 2142, and sometimes Unreal Tournament maybe?

Lol anyway, to your question: I think I might have been popular-ish. In the sense that I think I was a sort of “ambassador” between groups.

I made friends with the drama kids, the nerds, had some goth friends, stoner / skater friends, and I’d often introduce them to each other. I had my “circle” but I was that guy who sorta knew almost everybody.

I think the thing I miss most is that everyone saw each other as individuals back then. Surface level you might fit with a “group” sure, but we tended to see each other as people and for the most part they got along.

But sadly when I moved away after graduation, only like one friend really made the effort to keep up with me over the years. :( Quality best friend though!

But I still think of them often and hope they’re doing okay in this crazy world…

Well the #1 goal of business anymore is to reduce labor costs. . .

“You know that’s what Charlie was all about, is bringing people together, no matter if they disagreed or agreed."

I’m hearing this perspective a lot from middle ground people, and I’m inclined to think a lot of them are just missing a huge gap of information. (Ignoring the fact this guy quoted is from the “Young Republican Party”. Blegh)

I think a lot of them are shown a different side of certain figures.

I’m not talking about hardcore cultists, if their beliefs line up, they just get reinforced and they’re easy to “maintain”. I think the real targets are the “useful normies” that don’t really get it and usually “aren’t into politics.”

If you don’t protect your privacy, give out your information everywhere, clearnet log in to google / Facebook / insta / reddit / tiktok / twitter / etc, accept all the cookies, etc… algorithms are largely responsible for pushing your perspective of the world.

Let’s make the relatively safe assumption this is most people of any leaning who’ve had a smartphone just shoved into their hand before critical thinking skills were instilled, and were network pressured into blindly joining all these things to talk to their friends.

I genuinely think a lot of these folks saw only clips that made this guy look like a thoughtful and clever debater who gave people time to challenge him. If these normies follow the guy and go deeper, they’ll get pulled into what I like to call “the fashy funnel”, but a lot of them won’t. Most people don’t care.

They’ll just be exposed to little “reasonable logic” clips at a time that will slowly nudge them towards the opinion of “Huh maybe the righties aren’t so bad. I’m glad he’s willing to talk.” Well meaning, and of course, used against them and exploited.

The funnel system doesn’t want to drive these “moderates” away so it doesn’t show them the extreme stuff that would trigger their bullshit alarms. That’s saved for further down the rabbit hole. The goal is to appeal to their well-meaning centrism.

The guy said a lot of his WORST stuff on his podcast or Fox, because that’s where that funnel-segment of his audience would be accepting of it.

Meanwhile, if the algo thinks you’re a lefty, you probably get treated to the most awful stuff he said right out the gate, because it (often correctly) thinks that’ll piss you off and keep your attention longer.

And that’s how you sow working-class division, where one side sees the killing of a monster, and the other sees the death of reasonable bipartisan discourse.

They’ve both seen what they were told to see, and both sides then turn to each other and are outraged at how blind and foolish their fellow human beings can be.

Those arguments drive engagement, though. So the owning class wins again.

TL;DR: Stop accepting cookies, block ads, touch grass, be excellent to each other, social media was a trap the whole time.

My “trick” with this is to mv files I’m very sure I want to be “deleting” into /tmp . If it instantly turns out to be a mistake, I can pull it back. Else, it gets purged on reboot.

This is usually A-okay for my home server since it reboots so rarely! A desktop machine might give you a little less time to reconsider. But it at least solved the “trash is using 45% of my hard disk now” issue haha.

In the very worst case scenario there’s the “Drop everything and run photorec / testdisk” as a last resort!

That’s what I was thinking.

Like thankfully whatever they’re up to isn’t too interesting to Discord corporate or “U.S interests” right now, or their communications would be turned on them so fast.

But hey at least it’s like a small step up from Facebook. Somebody help them set up their own Matrix protocol infrastructure. :D

“Especially basic white ones. I’ll take my upvotes now. I’m glad this isn’t reddit!”

embarrassing and irresponsible mistake from the ATF

Oh that’s kinda been their MO for as long as I can remember. It’s kinda their motto. Instead of educating anyone, they routinely do things like try to preach the horrific danger of detachable magazines as the dork tries to insert it backwards.

It’s also a straight up meme that they’ll conduct some half assed raid where they shoot someone’s dog and go “Whoops. Wrong address.”

They know less about firearms than your average airsofter or tactical gamer, but they’re an authoritarian arm on “regulating” the things so they’re usually the first to jump to wild, illiterate conclusions.

I think socialist gun owners and insufferably right wing gun nuts could probably high five over beers when it comes to their mutual sheer lack of respect for the ATF. Lol

Genuinely, WWJD is an interesting thought exercise here.

Without really digging for it, my first guess would be “repent and sin no more.” I imagine less turning oneself in to the cops, and more directly asking forgiveness of the ones you wronged. There wouldn’t really be a “setting it right” for such an act though.

That’s where I can’t imagine where things would really go. The feebs would definitely involve themselves anyway, even on the razor slim chance the aggrieved did not.

As much as we very much disagreed (to put it gently) with this hateful brainwashing crusade and are maybe glad to be rid of a prominent source of it, it is still not the way of Christ to be another’s executioner.

I’ll be honest, I’m struggling here. On one hand Kirk was causing a lot of harm through pursuading the worst sides of people under the guise of “logic.” His individual capacity for further harm has been neutralized (“martyr” narrative aside), and that feels like a positive.

But in the end, I don’t want to celebrate murder. I wish it never came to this and people had enough sense to have just ignored him entirely. The fact that so many people find this ideology appealing and we’ve gotten this deep demonstrates a moral decay of our civilization, and in the end he was slain by the monster he and his ilk helped to unleash on us all.

Heh sorry for the rant as a reply. Just thinking out loud I guess.

Come get me. FAFO.

“Better come armed and send bachelors.”

“I’ve heard enough! Stick an arrow in his gob!” – Gimli

As if he read the book.

As if he read a book. . .

The “zucman tax” aims to tax the 1800 richest french families at a rate of 2%, Wich would bring 40billion.

2%. 40 BILLION.

This will never not blow my freaking mind. No matter how we illustrate it, it’s still hard to fathom.

Exactly! That’s why Hitler stopped at Czechoslovakia and Putin stopped at Crimea.

Phew, imagine if people put up a fight! :O

South Korean workers, so “exhausted and in shock” that they desperately want to go back to South Korean work culture.

LMAO you’ve truly outdone yourselves.

Yeah if you ask me just walk into your local grocery store or large concrete library, don’t use the WiFi, and bam, cellular waves just stop working. Lol

“undocumented cellular radios”

Oh, now you’ve done it. Now ICE goons are smashing highway infrastructure and throwing it into vans.

And they’re real big on putting children to work in those plants again, soon too!

Right after they’re done gutting OSHA as “government overreach that limits innovation.”

“Relax, guuuuy!”

So, same strats but now the casino is a (increasingly “former”) superpower that can make war.

Yeah, that checks out.

What I really don’t understand is how destroying the country will benefit these ultra-rich, if like, say, the dollar becomes worthless and the economy stagnates into freefall a la Great Depression.

Do I not understand global economics of the ultra-elite or is there really some Epstein-crypto-island-2.0 where gold bars are the only currency, where they’re planning on skittering off to when they’ve left the rest of the planet a smoldering ruin?

Seriously, they’re the greediest most self-serving liars this side of Hell, I don’t think “Watch it all burn just for lulz” is the actual endgame and yet they’re so ridiculously inept and violent that seems to be the only logical outcome that can be seen miles away and closing fast…