Skim Lemmy and now Bluesky, play solitaire games, watch videos, go for a walk, contemplate the meaninglessness of existence, write, play video games, work (if I’m at work)

Meh. I knew going into the election that my vote would have little to no impact on this state, but I didn’t realize a good portion of voters were just going to sit things out in the swing states, what the fuck was wrong with those people? Of course Republicans were going to vote Republican, but I thought I could count on people to turn out to save our country and vote against a dictatorship. Obviously not, and here we are.

The only possible thing working in our favor at this point is how utterly incompetent Trump and his ilk are, they’ll be just as likely to infight amongst each other as they are to destroy the government.

I just hope that Ukraine can hold out or secure some kind of semi-favorable terms for peace out of the whole thing, they’re the real ones that are getting fucked out of this whole thing. They’ve fought harder for their freedom than anybody else and we let them down.

These are apparently called “Desire Paths”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path

It sounds like a weird sort of backdoor religious movement, like they’re taking vows of chastity or something. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not being pushed by Conservatives themselves. Sure, go ahead and ignore Conservative men, they deserve it, but taking a vow of chastity is kind of weird.

Bananas, pickles, onions, mustard. Now it’s like, “Whatever, just shove it down my throat.”

About an hour in 2020 I think. I’m in a semi-rural Republican-leaning district that won’t ever vote Democrat, but I still show up to vote anyways. Usually, I’m in and out pretty quickly every election, maybe 5-10 minutes at most. For some reason, guessing because of its importance, 2020 the line just took quite a bit longer. Every other election, presidential or otherwise, there’s never a wait.

That’s perfect, that’s where I communicate to people what the voices are telling me! I expect they’ll just start showering me with money when I begin the ritual ejaculation.

Homeless, I just spend all day at the public library. Where do we go to to trade in all the upvotes for cash?

I think it happens all over and sometimes it really kind of depends on how long your argument is and the general impression people get from the first part of it. If you’re making a devil’s advocate argument in the first part, but then the twist comes later on, people are going to think your first devil’s advocate argument is the gist of it and downvote you based on that alone without getting into the nitty gritty. If people can form a knee-jerk reaction within the first few seconds of reading your post, they will, nuance gets lost.

Palestinian supporters are free to keep bringing the issue up and I think they should keep building momentum around it. It’s certainly relevant as the genocide is ongoing, nobody said they should “just shut up about it”, BUT given the current situation in American politics right now, it’s fighting for attention with everything else going on. At best, it’s noise that people can easily tune out because Americans are FLOODED with political messaging right now. At worst, some on the Left may even be somewhat dismissive because it’s assumed to be a disingenuous argument being made by bad-faith actors to divide the Left’s vote.

I realize how heartless this all sounds when people are literally dying by American weapons, but that’s where we’re at. After the election, the dynamic changes and you have less infighting within the Left around protesting about Israel and trying to split the vote and a much better chance of organizing around the issue. Don’t shut up about it, keep the pressure up, but the better time to turn up the heat is after the election.

You vote for the conditions of your protests. If Harris is elected, you have somebody much more likely to cave to sustained public pressure to withdraw support from Israel and who is less likely to violently crackdown on protests. If Harris gets elected, that’s when you ramp up pressure on the issue with sustained protests. It’s idiotic that Biden/Harris are still maintaining that support for Israel in the first place, but I suspect there’s some realpolitik bullshit and Biden’s traditional outlook on American foreign policy behind that support and maybe there’s a substantive shift after the election.

If Trump is elected, you’re creating easily a dozen or more other issues for yourself to deal with, on top of Israel and you risk fracturing any potential protests you try to do for the Palestinians. You’ll have an establishment that’s more aligned with Israel, who won’t cave to public pressure, and who will likely use increasingly heavy-handed tactics against protesters.

It’s little consolation for Palestinians, but it can always get much worse.

I just rewatched both Bladerunner movies with my son and, the first movie, while aesthetically it still looks beautiful and has some great individual scenes, the action and the dialogue get kind of non-sensical at times, it’s become the weaker of the two movies for me. 2049 feels just a lot more coherent and looks brilliant, it’s just an overall better movie that surpasses the original.

That sounds innocent enough that it could go either way. It could easily have been just an innocent thing to have another adult along to hang out with the kids, women tend to not think anything of inviting somebody out to do something like that and don’t necessarily have an ulterior motive. It could mean more though, but it doesn’t seem like a big enough data point to go off of.

That was one of the biggest things that took me out of that movie. They stage this huge operation at the Gotham Stock Exchange or wherever, everybody knows this giant crime is happening there, but woops, looks like Bruce Wayne has been magically bankrupted, there’s nothing we can do about it. It just took me out of it thinking, “I don’t think you can just bankrupt a billionaire like that.”

I think there’s a leap here that you’re not explaining or that I’m missing from the text. She sounds attractive and friendly, she’s apparently “available”, but what is prompting you to wonder about a course of action? What’s the trigger? Has she already behaved a certain way towards you that’s making you question if there might be something “there”, like she seems to be extra “nice” to you or whatever? Or are you just wondering in general, “Hey, there’s a person I’m attracted to and I want to see if she’s interested?” There just seems to be a disconnect in what you wrote and I’m not sure what prompted it to begin with.

To answer the question though, you can certainly try any of the things you talked about, or try to setup a meetup between your kids, but somehow include yourself and her in on the plans (go out to a movie together or some event) and see if she’d want to join you all. Personally, I wouldn’t try to force things too far and make it awkward, but if you’re trying to gauge interest, you should try to figure out ways to spend time around her or start finding reasons to text to ask about stuff. You also have the issue that should things progress between you two, do things get awkward between your kids anyways, even if you and her hit it off? It could potentially cause friction for them no matter what happens. Relationships are hard no matter what.

You just got to wear them down enough, break their willpower. They can learn to love in time.

I find happiness getting lost in projects, projects being anything & everything from writing to designing to stuff around the house to whatever. Just something that gets me obsessed for at least a few days or weeks. I can’t predict when it will happen, it just has to be a sufficient problem for me to look at.

I also find happiness with some people, but that sort of happiness is unpredictable as well since people have their own lives going on and feelings can change over time. Getting too close to people though can just as easily make my life feel meaningless and make me depressed when things turn sour. I tend to crave affection and physical touch, so this is a hard one for me to just ignore this.

If a girl doesn’t like you, but you just keep pursuing her, everything will eventually work out and you’ll be happy together.

Our boss just took us out to lunch and gave us four hours off the rest of the day to go out and vote, which is probably the most encouragement to vote I think I’ve ever gotten from any boss before. I’m sure I was entitled to it this whole time, but it’s never been encouraged like this before with this boss at any of my other workplaces, if anything, previous bosses probably would’ve talked shit if I said that’s what I wanted to do with my time.

Forgetfulness. Think how forgetful people get after having lived a normal lifespan, now go for a few thousand+ years and you’ve probably forgotten whole centuries of your life. This is actually the premise of a solo journaling game Thousand Year Old Vampire, you have to cross out and forget memories as you progress through the game, just forgetting whole parts of your life.