Jesus, Trump thinks he’s Walter White. I mean, Trump is a malignant narcissist, egomaniac, who is simultaneously a pathetic loser and a dangerous, power hungry, psychopath, but at least Heisenberg knew chemistry. Mr. White was at least educated, and he could run a successful business. Does Trump even know what chemistry is?

"Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy

Taking shape? Like it’s new? Like it’s only now just emerging? Jesus Christ, Biden…

Fucking neoliberal trash.

The biggest factor pushing up egg prices is a wave of avian flu, which began in early 2022 and led to the culling of millions of egg-laying hens. With demand remaining steady, the reduced supply has caused prices to rise.

Supply and demand, folks. Supply and demand. Demand high, supply low? Price goes up. Supply high, demand low, prices goes down.

While prices are expected to ease from late 2024 highs, they will likely stay above pre-outbreak levels through 2025.

Or indefinitely. Once people get used to paying a higher price for eggs, what’s to stop the stores from keeping the prices relatively high, even if the wholesale price goes down? If a store can increase their profit margins on eggs, why wouldn’t they? Especially if the store is a large corporation, always looking to maximize profit and return for shareholders.

Some people might say, “competition will bring the price down. Once one store lowers their price to gain a competitive edge, other stores will have to follow or risk losing customers.” To this I say: who the hell comparison shops for eggs? Look, I’m sure some people do, but, if most people are like me, they’re not going to multiple stores to see who has the lowest price for a dozen eggs. I go to one store, my favorite store, and I just get the same eggs I’m used to getting. Even if I did want to comparison shop, not all stores are going to sell my preferred eggs (I know a lot of people will say, eggs are eggs, but I like cage free eggs even though it’s probably bullshit I like to think my eggs aren’t coming from chickens who are stuffed into those little wire cages all day), so it would be hard to do an apples to apples comparison.

Plus, as more and more stores become consolidated into fewer and fewer major retailer chains, even the theoretical idea of price regulation through competition goes out the window.

Probably jobs that didn’t need to exist in the first place. Unfortunately, people need the money, even if the jobs themselves aren’t necessary. It’s like in the Soviet Union where they would create superfluous jobs so that everyone could have a job, and an income.

His only comment on grocery prices was during his interview with Time magazine for his man of the year article in which he admitted that there isn’t much he can do to bring grocery prices back down to the levels of 2019. Economically, the only thing that will do that is a strong recession that no one wants.

This is what folks don’t seem to understand: prices only go back to where they were five or six years ago if there’s a recession, and a severe one at that. The Fed is trying to get inflation under control, but even if they’re successful, that doesn’t mean prices will come down, that only means prices won’t go up as quickly. Getting inflation under control means prices go up 2% per year instead of 2.5% or 3%. Trump can’t change any of this, and many of the policies he says he plans to implement would likely make it more difficult to get inflation down to the Fed’s 2% target.

TLDR, shit ain’t getting any less expensive unless there’s a pretty bad recession, and Trump can’t change that.

All I’m saying is I don’t think the age verification requirement, in and of itself, is unreasonable. I’m not necessarily in opposition to better, more privacy-respecting verification methods, nor am I necessarily opposed to, for instance the age verification requirement being lifted until better age verification technology can be developed. All I’m saying is I personally do not find the age verification requirement itself to be unreasonable. That’s it.

I understand that you all want to believe that we live in a system where the rules are rigidly applied to everyone equally, regardless of circumstances, without exception, but that’s not the case.

Trump broke the law, that’s a conclusive fact, and he should suffer the appropriate legal consequences for that, but that became really complicated when he was ELECTED PRESIDENT… AGAIN! The president of the United States has a considerable amount of power and influence. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is. Ideally, the president of the United States wouldn’t have nearly as much power, ideally a president would be held to the same legal standards as everyone else, ideally the American people wouldn’t reelect a convicted felon, but clearly we don’t live in an ideal world.

I never said that it could.

Are you suggesting that it should be legal to sell alcohol to children so long as it’s not a lethal amount? Should a kid be able to buy a single beer? It’s not like it’s going to kill them.

What about selling physical media pornography in a store to children? Should that be legal? It’s not going to kill them. Should a kid be able to walk into a porn store and slap down his allowance for a copy of Hardcore Anal Superstars 2?

The judge thought it was relevant. You disagree, I get that, but I don’t know what to tell you. Send the judge a strongly worded letter, I guess.

might want to get the fuck out of the USA pronto

Probably not a bad idea in general.

Several U.S. states have enacted laws requiring pornography sites, such as PornHub, to implement age verification to prevent minors’ access

Doesn’t seem too unreasonable. When I buy alcohol I have to provide verification that I’m over 21.

The thing is, how do they enforce it? People in those states can still access pornhub through a VPN. Plus, what about all the other many, many porn sites?

I get what they’re trying to do, but I think there are some logistics that haven’t really been thought out.

I don’t know why you think they give a rats ass about morality or democracy. I suppose because they say they value those things? I guess you’ve never heard of this thing people do called lying.

It would not collapse.

I don’t know how you can be so certain, but you could be right. It doesn’t make any difference, though, because that’s not what’s happening. Trump isn’t going to prison. If there’s something you think you can do to change that, go for it.

I think the political establishment is more concerned with maintaining stability than pursuing justice. They’re desperately trying to hold together a system that, as you point out, is falling apart. It may very well be a futile effort, but I understand why they’re doing it. Especially since our system was never really set up to prioritize justice in the first place.

I get that a lot of people are ready for the whole thing to just burn to the ground, and that might have always been inevitable, but if/when it does happen, it’s going to suck. A collapse of the United States wouldn’t be pleasant.

I would.

I know, but clearly not everyone would, and those are the people making the decision.

Yeah, but you can see why people who don’t want to see the US federal government potentially collapse into chaos wouldn’t want to try it, right?

I feel like the courts hands were tied here. How do you put a man who was just elected to be the next president in prison, or even on probation? Ultimately, the decision was made by the American voters.

That being said, even if Trump had lost this election, he still probably wouldn’t have done any time in prison, since he still would have been a former president, and that would have been a tricky enough situation.

“Climate change risk is real, just much slower than alarmists claim,” Mr. Musk wrote to his 211 million followers on X, the social media site he owns.

What the hell does that mean? The risk is slower than alarmists claim? Who is making claims about the pace of climate change risk? Can he name a single, credible person? And which risks, exactly? How far up his own ass did he have to reach to pull this out?

“We sound like a broken record but only because the records keep breaking,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which monitors global temperatures…They will continue to break until we get emissions under control."

To be clear, “get emissions under control” means reach net zero emissions as quickly as possible.

But the world is not getting emissions under control. In fact, last year countries released record amounts of planet warming gases into the atmosphere, even as the consequences of climate change have become painfully clear.

Because we have built global civilization that runs on fossil hydrocarbons. And it wasn’t an arbitrary choice, they contain a lot of energy, and we need energy. A fuck ton of it, and more every year.

What we need to do, more than anything, is to start thinking about energy. Everything takes energy, and we treat it like it’s free and infinite. It ain’t.

Over the past few months, I’ve spoken with psychologists, political scientists, sociologists, and technologists about America’s anti-social streak. Although the particulars of these conversations differed, a theme emerged: The individual preference for solitude, scaled up across society and exercised repeatedly over time, is rewiring America’s civic and psychic identity. And the consequences are far-reaching—for our happiness, our communities, our politics, and even our understanding of reality.

I’ve become more and more isolated as I’ve gotten older. I’m in my early 40s now and I sometimes go several days in a row without interacting face-to-face with anyone other than my wife. I text with my brother pretty much every day, but he lives 1,000 miles away.

I have plenty of opportunities to be around more people, but I rarely want to. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t like to interact with people more, it’s that I don’t want to interact with just anyone. I want to spend time with people I want to spend time with, there just aren’t very many of those people around me, and if my only options are: spend time with people I don’t enjoy spending time with or be by myself, I’ll choose to be by myself. If there were a third option, to spend time with people I like spending time with, I would take it because that would be my preferred option.

…people are still talking about rules, laws, ethics, the constitution, and everything else that USED TO matter.

That’s because they still believe in the existing institutions that were designed to uphold laws, rules, and ethics, even though those institutions are obviously failing, and have been for some time. I suppose the erosion of said institutions has occurred gradually enough that the full scope hasn’t necessarily been apparent to everyone, but it should be by now. Anyone who still believes that these institutions are sufficient for maintaining a stable liberal democracy is just delusional, at this point.