reviewing my replies much later.

What you are doing is perfect. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” is normally a quote around material goods, but still applies to things like time and involvement. If you are uncomfortable calling your elected officials, that’s fine. Adding a person to a protest is still an addition that shows engagement.

Your points indicate you are not only voting in presidential elections. You have choices to make things better: ‘Vote blue no matter who’, ceding your choice of “who” to others more involved; or to become involved even though it’s uncomfortable.

I’m not talking to you alone, but also to all those who read your comment, identified with it, and then could use a prod to get involved. I’m also poking at those who vote once every 4 years and are unhappy at their options.

Don’t just hope, Act!

Find and join your local democratic organization. The initial cost in time is almost nothing. Just meet up and introduce yourself.

Once part of the conversation, you can help influence your local party and select candidates for local office that share your values. You can select delegates who vote in larger offices, and through them promote your goals.

It’s not perfect, and we currently don’t have a flawless democratic system, but participating only every 2-4 years during the major elections is not how you get the results you want. A lot of complaints exist online around weak candidates, or ‘opposition party’ that exists only to be a foil for the Right. Those things can only exist if we are not engaged.

The time to be engaged is NOW. Help find or support new House and Senate candidates for your state legislature as well as federal. Contest every office. Even if your precinct/district seems 100% red, not having candidates on the ballot is a huge disservice to anyone who would want to vote for them and hides our strength.

Now is the time to be loud.

I don’t know that ‘Conservative’ exists anymore. I’m American, but I think these comments work everywhere else, as Authoritarianism rises.

Growing up, I believed that liberal/conservative was just a difference in approach, but not a difference in end-goal. Both ‘teams’ wanted the country to prosper. In my 40s, now, I clearly see that we have different goals: Liberals want everyone to be prosperous, healthy, fulfilled. Conservatives value the prosperity only of those on top.

You may identify as conservative, little ‘c’, respect tradition and be careful with spending, etc; but I want you to closely evaluate the actions of people using that label across the globe. A vote for a conservative or right-wing candidate is a vote for the top 1% or less of the population of the planet. They may align with you on some topics, such as religion, abortion, fiscal policies, regulations, and more; but that is a ploy and they are absolutely willing to throw you away as soon as they have your vote and will cut everything you depend on once in power in order to pad their own pockets.

There are certainly perverse incentives and systemic issues that make even liberal politicians support bad policies, but the voter bloc that is ‘liberal’ wants to make things better for everyone. The conservative politicians, at least in the US where I’m paying attention, seem to be hell-bent on making things worse instead.

This has less to do with Trump’s actions, and more to do with how the convervatives behaved…

As much as I understand and support the sentiment, destroying things that are still functional is a very republican action.

Perhaps deface the mugs (sharpie marks generally survive dishwashers and can be reapplied later for new fun mustaches) and turn the shirts into dishrags or washcloths. (especially fun since in languages with gendered nouns, like German for example, a shirt is a neutral gender and a washcloth is masculine, thus making this really transformational.)

Slight modification… Billionaires deserve to live, but they didn’t deserve to be billionaires. There is no path to that much wealth that doesn’t involve increasing someone else’s suffering.

I’ll repeat and elaborate on something I said a few times before the election. As a preface, I fully understand your desire to not just ‘choose the lesser evil’, but the timing of your (the collective you, all the people who either sat out the election or, worse, convinced others to sit out) decision to make a stand is the part I take offense to.

The time to choose the lesser evil is when you have only those two choices and neither are good. You did indeed have a third choice, but that third choice was to walk away and potentially let the greater evil win – which it did. In that way, you are partially responsible for that greater evil succeeding. Had you (collectively) voted for the lesser evil, we would not be slashing federal staffing, waging cold trade wars, deporting people, and letting several idiotic and vengeful toddlers run this country into the ground right now.

The time to take your stand is actually, RIGHT NOW. If you are not engaged in trying to field a better candidate, then you are letting the “system” drive instead, and it will continue to present democratic leadership that is not aligned with your beliefs. You alone probably can’t make any significant impact, unless you happen to be wealthy and have tons of free time and want to go run for office. However, if all those people who were ‘BoTh SiDeS!’-ing in October would come back and continue to hammer on the Democratic party to put forth candidates that reflect their values, we might actually get somewhere.

The way to do this is simple, but hard:

1. Identify your local, precinct, Democratic party organization.
2. Join it.
3. (hard part) Engage and promote your values.

Either find candidates or run for offices. Failing that --which I’d admit is challenging; public service is not lucrative and is also very unstable, which is why we generally see already-rich old people in those positions – become an advocate for your policies and rise up through precinct, district and state to reach the national stage.

If you are not working on those goals, Shut the fuck up and vote for the lesser evil. You are not helping anyone by posting here.

I’ve done step 2. My values mostly align with my precinct Democrats, and I helped with Get-Out-The-Vote initiatives in my area. What did you do to prevent fascism?

Still here, not going to appologize, I stand by my statement, both of them are facist, …

I’d also like to point you to Wikipedia’s article on Fascism and see if you can provide a few examples of where Kamala Harris espoused those particular values. For each item in that first paragraph, I could quickly find you something where trump tells you that’s him. A lie will fly around the whole world while the truth is getting its boots on, though, and maybe someone else can take over if you need examples and can’t google by yourself… Kamala was going to at least stay within the system, while trump is going to destroy it.

Home-brewer here. I’ve used a C02 canister and keg to carbonate my beer for a while, since it’s simpler and more consistent than trying to add sugar to a bottle before capping it.

I also bought a $1 adapter that lets me connect my CO2 to a bottle and carbonate a few liters of water with a few moments of shaking. Add a few tiny bottles of flavoring and I can make a 12-pack of seltzer in about 30 seconds with any flavors I have on hand. Pear is my current favorite, but I also have cherry, vanilla, orange and others, and they can be mixed. My kiddos love the ‘dreamsicle’ that is a few drops of vanilla + orange. I rarely add sugar, unless I’m aiming for a more ‘soda’ vibe.

The CO2 canister and gas regulator assembly was probably $70-ish bucks around 10 years ago. Refilling the canister is $20 and I do it around quarterly, while making 5-10 liters of seltzer a week. I have a homebrew store nearby, but I’m pretty sure that I could find a food-grade CO2 provider too, since any bar needs one.

I have friends who use SodaStream, but their gas canisters are terrible for pricing when you can do it yourself.

I used seltzer to kick a soda habit. I swapped sugary sodas like Mountain Dew for a non-sugar fizzy drink. I just couldn’t go for flat water and needed the bubbles. LaCroix and its cousins were a step in the right direction and having the ability to make my own on-demand was perfect.

And down the rabbit hole we go!

I found stuff about LVAD, but somehow RVAD seems to be But maybe that’s what gets your heart racing…

Can’t figure out inline images in lemmy. This should be the joke: https://lemmy.myserv.one/pictrs/image/0990c4e3-e575-4824-a018-0ce119eb3ad4.jxl

Honestly, the ‘Talc and Sulphates’ convention sounds fun to crash at least once in your life. It’s only when a topic is old-hat that it becomes boring… I’ve always enjoyed listening to people who really know their shit talk about topics they like.

‘Implantable Medical Devices’ is either AWESOME or AWFUL depending on the kind/purpose of the device. Excruciating is definitely on the awful side, though, so pass on that one.

A company where the stated objective was to prioritize profit at the cost of human life. That’s a job to cause death.

The people working for that company are not likely to be in a position to quit over ethical issues, as they are trying to feed their families, but the CEO of that company made decisions that directly impacted other people lives and likely killed many. If he didn’t want to deny claims for care, he could have resigned. Instead, he profited.

His job was to cause death. As is the job of all for-profit health care companies.

I sure hope it’s not staffed with people that find CEOs repugnant…

There are no good billionaires and corporations are not your friend.

This is the part that hurts the most.

I canvassed, I rallied, I pushed people to vote. I did what I could to ensure the fascist didn’t win again, but he still did. Enough of my country either didn’t care, found some excuse to not vote for her, or wanted him to to be president.

I was denied a chance at a primary, but I was excited for Kamala. There is no person who can sit and represent 300 million people and make them all happy, but she was more on my side than not, and I’m willing to push for ‘better right now’ and then push for ‘better later’ too as distinct events.

As part of the now vocal minority, I don’t relish what is to come. I didn’t ask for it and I don’t want it; but lumped in with ‘Americans’, we sure seem to.

What does that mean?

This is the frantic typing of someone who is distraught; who has seen their country die and now has to live with the still-kicking remains.

That might be a bit hyperbolic, but to those of us with empathy for our fellow man, it’s not a major stretch.

They mean to say that so many people are about to die in so many places, both domestic and foreign.

When I woke up after election night, I wept for the uncountable number of people who would die because of that one night. Some will be killed soon by having critical care fully enshrined as illegal because they are women. Some will die later, because their healthcare benefits are cut and they can’t afford care. Some might die because they happen to have said the wrong things publicly. Many will die in a year, as we empower other fascists in other countries to do terrible things. Many more will die in a decade because of policies enacted by the incoming administration, which places vastly more importance on the increase in wealth of a few over the well-being of the many. And I can see a future where BILLIONS die because the people in charge prioritize power and money over the health of our planet.

The nation that I grew up believing in: the melting pot, the country that welcomed those in need has turned hostile and ugly. The first trump election was a fluke, a flaw in the system that allowed a “charismatic” “outsider” to gain power and abuse it. Biden’s election was a refutation, though only barely, and seemed to show we were better than that.

Trump’s re-election, however, is proof that we aren’t better. Enough people couldn’t be bothered to vote that we elected a criminal.

We, collectively, chose this and we will never be free of that legacy.

Here’s my complaint about this. Had trump lost the election, he would be demanding recounts in every possible place as well as launching lawsuits to delay and distract. We KNOW this, since he did it in 2020.

How unreasonable is it, then, that with all the questions raised by both his statements in public (such as “we’ll have it fixed so good you won’t have to vote” regarding 2028) and the statistical anomalies we can’t call for a recount in places where things seem amiss? If nothing is found, great, we elect a fascist; but if there was an attack/hack/fraud, then we find it and expose it. We have nothing to lose (we’re saving money over a trump loss and recounts everywhere) and Democracy to win.

I’m in a swing state and I definitely checked after the election to see that my ballot was counted. However, I can’t see the details as a private citizen, so I can’t verify it was tabulated correctly. I’m in NC, where the republican governor candidate was truly repugnant, but trump won by 3.39 points and Josh Stein won by over 14! In fact, more people voted for Stein than Trump. Maybe we could get Mark Robinson to request a recount…

I believe we are well and truly fucked.

Education and critical thinking is lacking in the majority of the electorate and the trend is that we elect leaders that reinforce that instead of mitigate it. Defunding education doesn’t improve this situation, and I feel we hit a tipping point where we might not be able to get these skills back in the curriculum going forward.

Same! My 15k lumen, 6500 Kelvin lamp is honestly one of my favorite things. My office is brightly lit regardless of the world outside. My wife hates it and demands I use soft white, 75w equivalent lights everywhere else.

I can live with the lights that imitiate candles, but I go to MY space if I need to see something clearly.

That’s some really neat context. I wasn’t overly concerned with Jeb at the time, since I had no interest in any of the R candidates, but the ‘please clap :(’ sure did the rounds.

I can see now, though, that Kamala Harris was certainly aware and trying to not hit the same landmine during the DNC. Watching her try to politely tell the crowd to shut up for what felt like an hour got quite painful.

Crowds: You need to let your speakers speak!

don’t trust polls.

This isn’t telling you to not be confident or to be scared, this is telling you to not assume victory is assured. Vote regardless of polling. Polling can be accurate or not. If the polling is accurate, and a majority would vote for A, but A is so far ahead of B that A-voters sit out the race, B can still win if enough voters choose to stay home.