I did this as a kid as well, though I never confronted my parents about it. I just quietly died a little inside as the whimsical magic of my childhood was eclipsed by the cold truth of our reality.

Wow, who could have seen that coming?

Thanks, Obama.

Obama Derangement Syndrome

If I see you compromising public safety because you think you're above the rules we set in place to keep our communities safe, then I'm calling you worse things than thundertwat.

Yellow means stop if you can. It's not permission to drive recklessly in order to save yourself a minute of time.

I've lived here since 2022 and while that is an unfortunate reality in some parts of the city it's typically concentrated near the city center, which is also where tourists tend to go.

Portland covers a lot of area and downtown is just a small part of it. There are plenty of other districts beyond downtown with parks, shopping, restaurants, etc. that embody Portland culture far better than downtown.

I live in the inner-SE side, less than 10 minutes away from downtown and I rarely encounter homeless people and haven't ever seen open drug use in this part of the city. I don't generally have any reason to go downtown as all my favorite restaurants/places to go are elsewhere.

I've lived in half-a-dozen cities over the years and to me and Portland feels the closest to ideal. Public transit could be better, I miss that about SF. But otherwise I think this city is beautiful and the people are wonderful. The summers here are by far the best I've experienced and the food never ceases to amaze me.

while the cops

For anybody who hasn't seen the video, we're talking at least a dozen uniformed cops all standing in a cluster looking dumbfounded, not knowing what to do with themselves as a woman lays sobbing over her puppy's lifeless body.

A dozen useless cops arrived at the scene for a noise complaint because they apparently had nothing better to do than to stare blankly at their victim as she grieved over what was taken from her by senseless, state-sanctioned violence.

And they have the audacity to continue to demand more of your tax dollars.

And it's just going to be a live stream of current events

Left behind? If you've deemed a system to be so necessary that refusing to abandon your privacy at its behest means you are condemned to live in obsolescence, then you're only reinforcing the idea that we must surrender our rights for the benefits of the system.

I'm old enough to have lived in a world without the internet and if it's going in a direction that demands I surrender my right to privacy then I'll return to a life without the internet. I won't be alone and just like Lemmy I'm confident we'll build an alternative that aligns with our values.

They'll never voluntarily release it because they know it'll undermine their existence as protectors of the community.

Sounds like you're trying your hardest to convince yourself that it's worth selling your soul for whatever they're offering. If that's the case then they've already won and it's only a matter of time before your freedoms are stripped away and you willfully become a virtual slave for fear of missing out on whatever prosperity is being promised.

The belief in American Exceptionalism isn't exclusive to how we perceive ourselves on the global stage. It's just as potent domestically within our society. We inherently see ourselves as better than any and all plebeian NPCs around us and above any rules established to keep our communities safe. It's the definition of toxic individualism and the single most deadly sin of American society.

What are you even talking about? If anybody is denying the existence of a challenge, it's you through your insistence that there is no future worth living without the unrelenting integration and consumption of technology.

Don't get me wrong, I rely on these technologies as much as the next. In fact, as a software engineer, it's my livelihood and I'm going to support any means to keep it aligned with my own values.

But I also recognize that I am a small fish in a vast ocean and that my most reliable weapon against tyranny is my own free will. If push comes to shove then I can and will simply refuse to follow society into the techno-feudalist hellscape we're moving towards.

You call it being left behind; I call it liberation.

Easy fix, don't buy from Amazon.

I remember hearing about basically this literally a decade ago. Nothing's been done about it since then. Nothing will be done about it now. Not unless we make a fuss about it at which point they'll pretend to give a shit about us and make grand gestures towards transitioning away from receipts made from hazardous materials. Meanwhile, they'll continue to knowingly expose us to some other hazardous material for the next decade until some independent research team uncovers how it's slowly poisoning everybody who comes into contact with it. And thus the cycle continues.

Under capitalism, there is no incentive to do anything for the benefit of humankind when it comes into conflict with the ultimate goal of accumulating as much wealth for yourself as humanly possible. It will always corrupt.

It's great to see the Democrats have learned absolutely nothing and continue to refuse to evolve.

For reference, $10M is 1% of $1B. Jeff Bezos is worth $225B, so that would be 1/225 of 1% for him to foot the bill. Considering there are many other multi-billionaires living on that island, that brings our fraction of a single percent of their collective wealth closer and closer to effectively zero.

The greed of billionaires is unfathomable.

How insurance should work: Disasters are unpredictable, are bound to happen and can be very expensive to resolve. So instead of each individual risking bankruptcy for participating in a system, everybody pools together money at a much lower individual cost. That money goes toward a statistical guarantee that the cost of any disaster will be covered.

How insurance actually works (under capitalism): For-profit companies use every tool at their disposal, regardless of ethics or legality, in order to take as much of your money as they can possibly get away with while simultaneously paying out as little as they can possibly get away with, and then pocket the difference.

The left doesn't worship their politicians as the second coming of Jesus Christ son of God.