I see four downvotes.

Would love to know the position those people have. Are they threatened by their own ignorance being called out? Or are they just conservative?

Something like host over half of all Americans cannot read above a 5th grade level. Almost a third are functionally illiterate.

It’s not that they don’t have critical thinking skills. It’s that the entire lower-90% have been so badly nerfed that it is increasingly difficult for anyone in that cohort to get to a point where they can educate themselves without copious assistance.

And that’s exactly how Republicans prefer the population - uneducated, illiterate, ignorant and gullible. The better with which to scam them for their votes.

• Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
• Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)
• Time Bandits (1981)
• The Dark Crystal (1982)
• Krull (1983)
• Brazil (1985)
• Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
• The Princess Bride (1987)

Any one of these are both campy and thought provoking.

LubeLogger

For anyone whose first thought does not reach for vehicles, this is a most unfortunate name. Extremely appropriate, but unfortunate.

This is certainly the pattern that is actively emerging.

The fact that “AI” hallucinates so extensively and gratuitously just means that the only way it can benefit software development is as a gaggle of coked-up juniors making a senior incapable of working on their own stuff because they’re constantly in janitorial mode.

most of them see the US as the Great Satan that is responsible for any and all evil in the world.

That’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

America is largely fine. The problem it has is a violently coercive economic model that forces people to be profitable to other people or risk destitution, homelessness, or even death by exposure, and a political system that is militaristic, imperialistic, and dysfunctional.

My favourite quote is this:

America has three political groups, but is serviced by only two political parties - the extreme ChristoFascist right has a party all to themselves, while the moderate right and centrists share a party such that it cannot effectively function.

Okay, that is legit hilarious and makes so much sense in retrospect.

I have always taken the metaphorical red pill when given a chance. I would rather live in pain and suffering knowing the truth, than living in ignorance and happiness.

And I don’t mind being ugly. I’m a misanthrope anyhow. Being ugly just means you are more likely to be left alone.

No, I refuse to look away from facts and reality. I read the science before the IPCC gets to it and “politically massages” it into useless pablum. I listen to those who actually do climate science as a day job… and most of them have started calling themselves “climate pathologists” and are refusing to bring children into this world, because to intentionally bring children into such a future would be to inflict malicious cruelty onto those children.

A blissfully naïve ideal, considering the rightward shift of almost all governments world-wide. The political right depends vitally on creating an ignorant, illiterate, and uninformed electorate who breed like rabbits… you really think that they will willingly fund education and healthcare of any effective kind?

Right now, our best bet is to stop pumping out innocents who will only know a life that is brutish, cruel, and (once civilization collapses) short. They may have a decade or three of modern conveniences, but anyone under the age of 30 will likely die long before they would otherwise experience a natural death.

I am not talking about taking yourself out. I’m talking about not adding to what will be a very big problem within the next two to four decades.

The only reason why we have reached 8 billion is because of industrialized agriculture. Climate change - via chaotic weather - will make agriculture in general impossible. When agriculture at scale ceases to be functional - and the collapse of the AMOC will make one of the bigger impacts in the middle of this century - the ability for humanity to feed more than a billion or two will cease to exist. Humanity will tear its entire infrastructure apart in a desperate bid to live another day. Anyone who wants to subject their children to such horrors is not a person who cares for their children.

We are already exceeding the “worst-case scenario” that has projected a likely extinction of humanity within this century. Why add innocents to the potential misery and suffering?

If wages had kept up with CoL since the 70s, it would be minimum 10× what it is now. The only reason why things are expensive is because of Greedflation. Things could easily be 1/10 the price and companies would still be profitable, it’s just that the Parasite Class wouldn’t be making off with their unearned billions that they stole from the working class.

In Canada, the CBC has the least amount of bias of any domestic news source.

Going International, I would say AP, PBS, NPR, Reuters, BBC.

10k is cutting it thin… the Accuracy International ACSR is just a hair under $10k USD… and that is before taxes. Then you need the 1,000-10,000 rounds of ammo for training before you become good enough to start taking out card-carrying members of the Parasite Class from a kilometre-plus distance.

Now granted, you can go a lot cheaper than that, but accuracy and range will suffer. Remember, you want to be far enough away that you can reliably pack up and sanitize the scene before you leave.

Alternatively, swarming AI drones in the hundreds, with on-board explosive packages, would allow you to deploy from abandonable emplacements that can loiter for many hours to even days. No-one is going to question a cube van that sits in a paid spot for a week, at least until it’s roof opens up and a thousand tiny drones with facial recognition take off and take out a few oligarchs.

But honestly, you’re likely talking a few tens of thousands for that scenario, at minimum. I would likely bank at it being in the low hundreds of thousands for a truly effective and difficult-to-counter deployment.

10k is cutting it thin… the Accuracy International ACSR is just a hair under $10k USD… and that is before taxes. Then you need the 1,000-10,000 rounds of ammo for training before you become good enough to start taking out card-carrying members of the Parasite Class from a kilometre-plus distance.

Now granted, you can go a lot cheaper than that, but accuracy and range will suffer. Remember, you want to be far enough away that you can reliably pack up and sanitize the scene before you leave.

Alternatively, swarming AI drones in the hundreds, with on-board explosive packages, would allow you to deploy from abandonable emplacements that can loiter for many hours to even days. No-one is going to question a cube van that sits in a paid spot for a week, at least until it’s roof opens up and a thousand tiny drones with facial recognition take off and take out a few oligarchs.

But honestly, you’re likely talking a few tens of thousands for that scenario, at minimum. I would likely bank at it being in the low hundreds of thousands for a truly effective and difficult-to-counter deployment.

Fund a sterilization program for young people who have come to understand the future that humanity is hurtling towards, and who want to avoid bringing a child into such a brutally cruel future.

Both my niece and nephew have sworn off of children, as they have good educations and have fully understood just how badly humanity is fucking itself over. They’re just trying to find doctors that will do those procedures on people under 30.

Europe as a whole is swinging too far too the right. Y’all all are descending back into Fascism. The recent popularity of the AfD in Germany being a prime example. My own parents - who immigrated from Germany - are deeply disappointed in the direction the country is taking.

Shoveling cow shit, grain, silage, and tossing 50kg/120lbs hay bales nearly every day growing up as kid on a farm got me started on ruining my body early in life. 12 years as a toolmaker standing on concrete 10 to 12 hours a day and lifting heavy pieces of steel, Then 15 years spent dragging 115+kg/250+lbs patients up from basements and down from upstairs bedrooms as a medic has done little to nothing for my back either.

While stretching and certain exercises could have helped greatly with that, it’s also not something that would have been available to us in our youth. It’s only been in the last two decades that kinesiology, stretching, targeted training, and other body-movement sciences have started becoming widely available. And that doesn’t help anywhere near as much after the fact.

My condolences on the current state of your meat vehicle.

Just shy of 2m tall myself, and I don’t seem to have any of your issues, even nosing into my sixth decade on this rock.

About the only thing I could complain about is the family orchard tractor, which is Chinese-made, and seems to have been designed by someone a full 45cm shorter than I am. But that’s about the only thing I have cause to complain about. Some appropriate warm-up exercises and my knees are fine even after a few hours of vigorous pedal-pumping at inappropriately pretzeled leg angles.