100% death tax on all assets over $1m excluding a single house. That my final offer.

There’s no justification for a birth lottery that awards democracy-warping levels of wealth to whoever had the evilest parents.

That’s just completely not true though.

Obviously there’s a proxy war between russia and the west in ukraine, but I don’t think the US wants a long attritional war.

They could have done more to not end up in one, but I think escalation management really is driving a lot of decisions in washington.

Across time, space and cultures, to be ruled is to be ruled by villains.

That much power fucks with your head, even if a well adjusted person manages to make it to that position, they won’t stay well adjusted for long.

Neuroscience supports this. Giving someone power causes changes in your brain that makes your brain less capable of empathy, closer to the brain of someone born with psychopathy.

https://www.npr.org/2013/08/10/210686255/a-sense-of-power-can-do-a-number-on-your-brain

https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/how-power-erodes-empathy-and-steps-we-can-take-rebuild-it

https://hbr.org/2015/04/becoming-powerful-makes-you-less-empathetic

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-empathy/201909/power-blocks-empathy

https://www.livescience.com/1128-mere-thought-money-people-selfish.html

https://blog.ted.com/6-studies-of-money-and-the-mind/

I agree that dems have cause for concern broadly, but I’m not sure that a 10% drop during an uncontested incumbent primary translates to a “10% drop in reliable D’s electoral engagement”.

Thierry’s district … is not a swing district. … Previously, Thierry had beaten a Libertarian candidate 87%-13%, with no Republican running in the race.

In case anyone thought this might have been a tactical ploy by a dem in a heavily republican area, it was not. Just a crazy person shooting themself in the foot with their own cruel thoughts.

Nuns in her order were forbidden from forming friendships with each other, and were transfered and punished if they showed warmth or spent time with each other.

This was for the obvious reason - having friends is the first step on the slippery slope to being gay.

Isolation and alienation are hallmarks of a controlling cult.

Turns out when your main business is crime and you commit dozens of obvious crimes in public and you leave plenty of evidence of your crimes and you piss off the people you asked to cover up your crimes, you may eventually have a hard time proving you didn’t commit crimes.

He’s not clever though.

He’s brazenly stupid. He never thinks things through and is incredibly easy to read and manipulate. He has almost no self control.

He’s dangerous, but not because of anything that could be confused for cleverness.

35000+ tragic mistakes and counting.

I don’t think he upset dick cheney.

The d&d game summoning the devil was always my favorite. Always love a d&d episode.

Also any one where the pope is shown in league with someone unlikely - communists, jews, muslims, etc.

Curl up in a ball and weep a salty creek.

I always took them all whenever I found them - horrible things, I love them covers it perfectly.

But also, I wouldn’t just leave a kitchen knife lying in public. Most people can be trusted to safely avoid the danger. But what if a child, or someone intent on harm found it?

The responsible thing to do is to remove the threat from the environment.

how easy it is to procure

For sure. I grew up in australia. If I could snap my fingers and ban all guns I would in a heartbeat. But I live here and I know that’s not possible.

The most feasible way to reduce the ease of getting guns is to hit the pocketbook of those who profit from how easy guns are to get. Our country is too corrupt for legislation to work. We have to sue companies and hope we like the changes they suggest.

Holding companies responsible for how their products are used is the closest thing we have to fixing the issue.

Being able to sue both the makers and marketers of guns designed for massacres creates pressure for a solution to be found because now someone who matters is losing money.

Focusing on AR-15 is ridiculous. They’ll use what ever the best thing is they have access to.

No, because an AR-15 was used in this specific case, and these specific companies were involved in making and aggressively marketing this specific gun to the specific person who used it to kill these people.

This isn’t a “Marilyn Manson/video games/anything-but-guns is the real reason” type argument.

These specific companies’ obviously dangerous practice of marketing guns to teenaged boys contributed to the events at Uvalde, or so the suit alleges.

It’s an argument worth hearing the details of before judging.

Gun manufacturers specifically market guns and lobby for laws that make it easier for children to access guns.
Activision does not.
Meta does not.

Activision and Meta are vital parts of how gun makers market guns to children, this suit alleges.

If they are (which is definitely within the capabilities and inclinations of both those companies), then they should be held liable for their role in contributing to the epidemic of children killing people with guns.

Are people not familiar with Chick Tracts? These comics are the product of the prodigous paranoid right wing evangelical conspiracy theorist Jack Chick (1924-2016).

I think these comics are best understood as the work of an outsider artist, like Henry Darger or a painting elephant. His work allows you to glimpse a mind outside the normal human experience.

His work focuses on who is going to hell - everyone who’s not a right wing american protestant, and many who are. It shows a strong pornographic influence - many end in a blissful face dowsed in a baptismal money-shot.

It’s meant to be used as a legitimate tool to evangelize. The worst christian lunatics leave these things in public, earnestly believing that after reading you’ll realize the divinely ordained truth that freemasons will all burn in hell along with blood-drinking rothschilds and D&D players.