This is why I avoid watching all commercials in America which inevitably take this trope to the extreme every chance they get. Usually referring to the man who is a doddering incompetent who must be ordered out of his “man cave” to perform some sort of yard or mechanical chore to prove his worth.

Yeah I’m happy for them, but it sounds like someone in the 1% had a very 1% experience

Hey sounds like my Dad too!

Completely agree! Taiwan is a gem. One block of Jiufen (the village that inspired Spirited Away) is more “thematic” and memorable than all of the countries in Epcot combined.

What an insightful rundown. I worked at a company in CA with some disney fanatics. They were very much the target demo that you referred to above. Not sure their kids match the same level of fanaticism especially considering they will undoubtedly be poorer than their parents and weren’t on any trajectory to be able to afford the price gouging trends. With no capacity growth or significant competition (Six Flags is worse), Disney appreciates, as every corporation and landlord in America does, that limited supply means they can do less while making more. All it takes is for the top 2-5% income earning families to continue patronizing them at higher and higher price points and they’ll never need to adhere to the values that earned that loyalty over the course of 25 years.

I can’t agree more. Florida is awful.

Yes! Linux Mint is such a great project - it made me excited to get on my desktop again.

If it’s any comfort, it took me a few tries to get it to work. It was over a year ago so the details are a bit rusty. I started out trying to install Debian, and it also crashed during installation, so I went back and tried some of the bug fixes. (One was something to do with the MOK). Debian didn’t work after that but Ubuntu did. It was a strange experience, and there’s nothing that would motivate me to switch after I finally got it to work.

Perhaps you can give it another shot sometime and it’ll work. If you hate the custom arch that’s on it, and you don’t use it, you might as well try.

Mint 21.3 as my main Desktop OS - almost zero complaints after over a year. Everything just works.

Ubuntu using Linux-Surface on my old Surface Pro. Breathed new life into a device I had abandoned (after all 8gb of ram isn’t enough for Windows malware these days). Gnome works really nice on a touchscreen two-in-one. Kudos to the Linux-Surface folks. They took one of the few positive developments from Microsoft (Surface hardware) and made it possible to remove the worst part (windows). Not that I’ll ever buy a Surface again. It also allowed me to retire my iPad.

Fedora Linux on a cheap Dell laptop as my media client. Fedora is nice and runs well, haven’t done too much with it other than Firefox and Calibre. Nice to see a different ‘branch’ in action.

I’m pretty basic and generally lazy so I don’t delve into some of the smaller distros or distro hop. Maybe later I’ll do it with VMs, but eh not sure it’s my kind of hobby. Too many other things to do.

Best of luck and let us know how it goes.

They also buy lots of guns from the US. This is one of the real reasons. Lockheed Martin’s profit margins would decrease by a significant amount if our relationship with SA changed at all.

Even if the Saudis and other major countries in the reason were able to decrease tensions with Iran, Lockheed Martin and its associated propagandists and lobbyists would start beating the war drums to increase tensions and thus sales.

Edit: *one of the real reasons. Added para. on LM ensuring tensions in the region always remain high even when the people that live there and their government’s reduce tensions.

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What made me think of making this meme was the Bloomberg article with Forbes and his network of 1% cronies pressing the fat Cheetoh to embrace the Flat Tax. Perhaps instead of “media” it should be “Right Wing Propaganda Machine”.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-17/kudlow-forbes-push-trump-to-embrace-17-flat-tax-fewer-tariffs

This is awesome!!

And duopolies or tri-opolies. Most American industries are dominated by 2-3 players that own the majority of their respective markets, acquire or crush anyone who dares challenge them and use their media and lobbying arms to maintain the status quo. Land of the unfree, home of the bootlickers.

I appreciate this, you totally get it. I hope you can hold onto that remote job. Makes it so much easier to tune out the hate and nonsense. I remain quiet and comfort myself by knowing that if the chance ever arises, I will do everything I can to undermine them. Which won’t be hard considering most of them have the intellectual capacity of a troglodyte.

Wow the more I talk about this the more I want to leave the US forever. There’s so little left here that matches my values.

Of course an ex American SF guy helped Coca Cola act in the most horrendous way possible.

I’m 100% with you. The deprogramming took years. It feels like I wasted so much of my life, and I’m still trying to figure out where I fit in. What’s almost worse than knowing so many vets are still so brainwashed is watching people who didn’t go through the same programming shill even harder for regressive destruction. I work on a construction site and have to listen to these overconfident fascist blowhards rant all day.

Emily the Criminal gave me butterflies several times. Aubrey Plaza was so perfect in that role. Past Lives was another recent one. The acting was emotionally intense without being over the top. Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World had some breathtaking and intense moments. It merits a rewatch every couple of years.

They should put an asterisk below the reminders **does not apply if your net worth is in excess of $3M or whatever point at which your lawyers outsmart the IRS annually

That’s exactly what I was alluding to but was too lazy to type in full haha