Yes.

If you want high star rating from me, make a science fiction movie and make space silent and soundless, as it should be. Bonus points if the people in the spaceship don’t magically stick to the floor.

Even more points if it doesn’t just follow the “Aliens” formula with some stupid variations on the theme.

I used to have a higher bar, but shit has gotten so bad I can’t even. I don’t even know where to begin. I just want ONE good thing, is that too much to hope for???

Back in the old days, when we were young we did a thing where we would meet another young person in real-life, not chat or text, and we would go hang out together in their actual real-world house, and play and do stuff that was so much fun that we wanted it to go on and on, so we would sometimes do a thing where we would sleep at the other person’s house so we could spend more time together and continue to talk and laugh and play into the night.

Sometimes it required the permission of both sets of parents and often parents had concerns that we didn’t as children, so the trial of asking for this temporary arrangement was always one of stress and anticipation, and sometimes even bargaining.

I don’t know why but I’m reminded of the only moments of satisfaction I ever got in life fighting corporate America.

Wells Fargo, objectively one of the worst banking institutions in the world repossessed my vehicle despite me getting payments in, citing that they were late payments so they didn’t “meet contractual obligations” but apparently they REALLY wanted my truck that was already breaking down so I woke up one day and it was gone. The loan-agent manager that I talked to literally made implied threats against me, and we had weekly shouting matches on the phone up to that point.

Whatever, it was gone. Another massive wrench in my life I had to deal with. Cue my Uber Years.

Fast forward five years or so later and suddenly I start getting checks in the mail. First a hundred here and there, with notes that I was being refunded for “overpaying” and some vague legal BS.

Then I got like, $500, then $1000, now with wording that the whole department was facing a class-action settlement and trying to repay customers that had been wrongly overbilled and then I suddenly got a check for over $10k, which was the remaining balance of the loan on the truck, and basically an “apology” of sorts that my truck was “improperly seized.”

Apparently I had signed up for a class-action suit and didn’t even remember it, it was just one more thing to sign in a stack of bullshit, so I never really paid attention. I mean, last class-action case I decided to get in on, I got less than $3.00.

edit: entire 10k went into a family member’s cancer treatment so there’s that. 'murca.

You’re right, but the other groups are usually actually actively working towards and succeeding at saboating the US’s entire social discourse and putting oligarchs in power.

Tankies on the other hand don’t really want to work that hard, or get it all out of their system posting AI-written manifestos on lemmy.

I get exhausted on Lemmy in particular trying to explain to the nihilistic, cynical teens here that such an outcome would in fact, be a bad thing.

In the Hearts Of Iron IV store you can trade them to have your custom fursona painted on the side of your SU-122.

Technically the company owns it, I ain’t gonna burn out my good ones on work.

Almost every currency, crypto included is valued against the USD, I just don’t see everyone moving to dogecoins if suddenly it costs $340,000 to buy a hamburger. There is very real incentive to throw every possible resource behind keeping the middle-class complacent and comfortable for as long as possible.

Self-care in the 2020’s:

Rotating your chair away from your work monitor to your recreational monitor after a horrific day of being abused over zoom to watch the news on your other monitor until you’re a wreck, then playing some video games you actually hate.

I mean, if the US dollar does collapse it certainly won’t be a forever thing, but the people with the most money in the world have a LOT of resources to keep things the way they are. I’ll be surprised if the keepers of the cash let the cash become devalued.

The vast, vast majority of this country who are only marginally invested in politics combined the needs of capital to secure that stability will override whatever political ambitions any leadership has in the long-term. All of the current crisis is still just a flash in the pan, it will pass, the pendulum will swing the other way and the cycle will continue. I’ve been watching it a long ass time, I have seen nothing yet that makes me believe the country will experience wide-scale change.

It’s going to get more authoritarian broadly, it’s going to have more unrest and reduced rights, particularly as the climate changes and the immigration situation gets a lot more inflamed as refugees start piling up to get in, but right now, unless a LOT of people make a lot of huge changes to their media consumption habits, we’re going to see a rougher, nastier status-quo for decades to come.

The USA is a HUGE boat that turns slowly, it’s not one country, it’s 50. And because of that, small changes have huge consequences but only decades down the line. Few people who haven’t actually traveled the nation really get the scale involved and what has to change before we see lasting change.

Can’t do that without revolution.

Which is still about a century away.

The US is unlike every other developing or even developed nation that has gone through revolution for two huge reasons:

1. It’s not one big country, it’s 50 smaller countries, each with its own power and systems and elections. If you’re going to collapse a system you have to do it 50 goddamn times perfectly.

2. Nobody here is even remotely close to an actual “revolution” on either side of the political spectrum. Despite the huge marches and protests and violence the world sees out of the USA right now, the vast majority of the hundreds of millions of people here are mostly tuned out. The economic machine is grinding away harder than ever, and powered by a vast segment of the population who get all their news from 30-minutes of facebook memes on a Sunday night while getting ready for bed.

Yah it will get you Tankiepoints™ out the wazoo to say you pray for the collapse of the USA but with every other country’s economy tied to the US dollar, that outcome will be less than ideal when you want to go to your local market and buy food or medicine in almost every other country on Earth.

I get downvotes when I remind people of this fact like I’m making an argument for something. Talk to your local leaders about why they have invested so much in the US, not me.

Which is also a cute segue to remind people that all the loot and cash that Trump’s people are scooting out the back door of our treasury? That’s YOUR money also Mr and Mrs Europe, Canada, Mexico, etc.

If everyone did it, we would change the world overnight.

Tame.

I genuinely can’t look at zootopia the same way.

It was a mistake allowing nearly a decade to pass between the first and the sequel, the internet had too much time to saturate in “content.” If I go out to watch the sequel with family I’m going to be looking around uncomfortable like someone gonna drag me out of the theater.

I like your style. Thank you for the support.

Nah, you’re too reactionary, I’ll pass.