I don’t think people can deny or change what they’re attracted to.

I’m not even going that deep on it. I just think policing what people are attracted to (for whatever reason) is a fool’s errand. At the same time, advertising what you’re attracted to invites public criticism.

They need to reserve the furthest and darkest place in their mind, build walls around it like they’re building nuclear bunker and seal off all the exits.

Not even that. They just don’t need to throw on sandwich boards and parade around anime conventions with bullhorns insisting they have some god-given right to fuck the art.

Ha. That’s so old school. Now it’s more like…

Imagine living in a country of mental patients where if you insult their favorite storybook character, they have this burning urge to kill you.

Nervous anti-Harry Potter noises

What kind of profit wants people to die in their name for an insult?

We’re seven levels deeper than “What did the Prophet literally want you to do?” Because a lot of this is seen as a very secular form of treason, subversion, or other form of espionage. Iranians are deeply paranoid, particularly of “Western” influences, because the state leadership believes it is used to cultivate double-agents for the purpose of sabotage or counter-revolution.

In some sense, it’s like walking into an airport with a big t-shirt that reads “Dis Guys Da Bomb!” and getting tackled by security. The thing they’re responding to isn’t a banal fashion choice.

Doesn’t use medication

Five cups of coffee a day

:-/

If you’re going to be a perv, the least you can do is keep that shit to yourself.

You wouldn’t be the first person to have a freak fetish in a room full of people who all agree “Freak Fetish is bad!” that just nodded and smiled and kept their fucking mouths shut.

It is a shame it is not both, evil but just really bad at it.

Well… when you consider how badly they cocked up the Iran War, how badly they mangled their trade policy with Asia and Europe, how bungled their coms operation has been, how much money they’ve pissed away on publicity stunts that poisoned people to their brand, and how well groups like the DSA have done in their wake, it could be argued that they’re both evil and bad at it.

But, at some point, you give a pack of sociopaths the world’s largest military and police force and they’re going to do some damage. Even if they bungle the execution, it’s going to hurt Venezuelan fishermen and Gaza refugees and Minnesota EMTs far worse than it hurts anyone inside the actual halls of power.

seizing Starlink from Elmo has a place on the list

Democrats were falling over themselves to suck up to Elon prior to 2016. I don’t see anything in the cards to suggest they won’t start sucking up again as soon as they’re in the majority.

Start doing shit like that

There’s no money in it. There’s no glamour. You won’t be able to go out like Krysten Sinema, dining out in Silicon Valley wine caves full of AI Art with your fucktoy ex-marine bodyguard, if you try and pick a fight with the richest people in America.

You’d need a party with principles to butt heads like that. Or, at least, a party that could plan more than one election cycle ahead. The Dems simply aren’t that party. Not under Schumer/Jefferies, anyway.

Incompetent or Evil

Either way, maybe Ukrainians need a better solution than this dogshit service.

Poor Man’s Huel

Good advice

We know Covid originated in Wuhan.

That’s never been confirmed.

Neither has the “no natural zoonotic path” bit, incidentally.

Accidents happen even in level 4 biolabs.

And we’re back to Wuhan Lab Leak Theory.

there is no natural zoonotic path to Wuhan

How do you get from “we don’t think the disease naturally originated in Wuhan” to “China engineered a virus, released it in their own city, and then used that as a vector for malicious infection of the rest of the world”?

Half the US intelligence agencies support the lab origin theory.

They also insisted Iraq had nuclear weapons.

Beginning to think that Jeffery Epstein was at the center of a massive financial and influence peddling network that reached into the highest levels of business and politics.

Well, now that we know this picture exists, I’m sure someone will be doing something about it.

They don’t even have to be communists, per say. Just being Asian and unaligned is enough. Or Haitian, for that matter.

It was definitely some random scary bullshit on the internet that co-mingled the two. But so much of the hype in the early days of COVID ended up being FUD used by the administration to justify draconian anti-immigration policies. We had FOX News screaming about Leprosy and “Mexican Flu” being transmitted by Migrant Caravans decades before that. Any disease outbreak became an excuse to hyper-police people entering the US at the borders.

Part of the problem with all this disease discourse is that it’s routinely anti-foreigner agitprop. This goes straight back to The Spanish Flu, which originated from a Haskell County, Kansas pig farm and got spread across Europe by WW1-era US soldiers. It became major weapon of the 20th century reactionary right to ban Italian Immigrants way back then. Now we see disease scares used to freeze out everyone from Taiwan to Brazil to Afganistan. If anyone is sick anywhere, it’s an excuse to ban migrants everywhere.

Leaving their international airports functional while locking down their cities, intentionally infecting as many places as possible.

Are we still doing Wuhan Lab Leak Theory? Wasn’t that debunked ages ago as some Trumpie lie pushed to deflect our own abysmal COVID response?

identical apartments

Under Communism, we were forced by the government to live in Poor People Houses. It was illegal to tip your landlords. If you updated your wallpaper, the local Commissar would murder your first-born child and eat your dog.

Incredible.

they embraced the revolutionary technology of cars

Well… they had it foisted on them.