Fun fact: the detergent packs are DRM'd, so you can't refill them and you have to buy from the company.

Another fun fact: somebody made a "Bob Rewinder" that lets you reuse existing cartridges and fill them up with extremely cheap dishwashing liquid.

"politically motivated assassinations?" like the two Democratic politicians who were just murdered yesterday in Minnesota?

the amount of consumer goodwill that statement bought easily pays for any losses from the hotdogs. companies seem hellbent on torching their brand reputation for short-term gains these days. little gestures go a long way.

it's legislative shitposting/meme magic. one of them gets an idea for the meme: adding "Trump Derangement Syndrome" as a mental illness to troll the libs. it provokes a reaction in us, because it's 2025 and for all we know the damn thing might pass at the rate the fascists are consuming the state, and the Republicans' base feeds off of our panic and grief, fueling their schadenfreude. Republican voters are the real trolls; these legislators are just their proxies.

basically, this is the meme magic formula that took 4chan from "ironic" Nazi trolls to an outright fascist resurgence across the West, that took Trump from a meme candidate to the Oval Office, that took the 51st State rhetoric from obvious hyperbole to deadly serious. it's "just a joke" when you're defending it, it's "just trolling" when you're pushing it through, and it's "owning the libs" when you're executing on it.

so, NATO's surrender then.. as a condition of a cease-fire with Ukraine.. which isn't a NATO member.. which Putin invaded ostensibly to prevent it from joining NATO. right...

sure, I think we can do that. no Western troops, no problem! we'll just give them each a few dozen hydrogen bombs, and call it even.

I have no clue what to do. I'm American. I'm trans. I voted for Harris. I live in a blue state. I've gone to protests. I've talked to state senators about legislation. I've canvassed. I've talked to Trump supporters and tried to get them to change their minds.

it all feels totally useless. nothing I've done has had any effect. my own mom voted for Trump three times. it's like being chained to an anvil and thrown overboard. I'm swimming but I'm still drowning.

ran a Tor exit node. chatted on Bluelight. took over a (small) botnet. tripped on research chemicals.

eh, sorta. the books the Nazis burned in that famous photograph were the library of Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish sexologist who studied and supported trans people, and who even hired some as his assistants. did the Nazis burn his books because he supported trans people, or because he was a Jew? both, I think. the Nazis practiced intersectional hatred. they accused Hirschfeld of promoting degeneracy to undermine Aryan society, an anti-Semitic trope that continues today.

gay and trans people were sent to concentration camps, but not usually to the death camps.

likewise, the predecessor to the NSDAP specifically singled out Jews in its founding document, but (afaik) not homosexuals.

this is my recollection anyway, as a trans woman who's a potential convert.

💯%. the US was heavily isolationist at the start of WWII, and pretty anti-Semitic. for example, the St. Louis, a boat full of Jewish refugees, was turned away from the US and Canada in 1939 - and turned back to Europe, with many Jews eventually imprisoned and murdered by the Nazis. there were also the blackshirts in the UK, who were pro-Nazi, and PM Chamberlain had a peace treaty drawn up with Hitler. and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with the Soviets, of course.

so if the Nazis had been content to murder only German, Austrian and Czech Jews, they would have gotten away with it.

on the other hand, Nazi ideology (e.g. "lebensraum" and their belief in the destiny of the Aryan race to conquer the "inferior" races) drove them to war, to invade Poland and to break their pact with the Soviets. and they also spent tons of resources on the Holocaust, at the expense of their military.

so basically yeah, isolationist Nazis would have totally survived, but otoh Nazis aren't isolationists.

Larry David's humor is perfect for this. what a mensch.

I had a bong as a freshman. I cleaned it with acetone. I then had several tubes instead.

HRT should be available to trans kids. it seems I'm increasingly alone in this belief, depressingly, looking at the political situation around the world.

it could be a bad RAM chip. we should start Prime95, check for ECC faults..

I've heard that some people have difficulty with hypotheticals in general. not just on political issues, like it's a surprisingly common cognitive issue.

is this Das?

I'll admit to it.

I used to think Tesla was based, since it paved the way for mass-market EVs to happen. I still think SpaceX is based because of the booster reuse and droneship recovery of Falcon 9, and the massive potential for Starship to make space massively cheaper, and Starlink for bringing Internet to rural areas/war zones like Ukraine (despite clouding the skies.)

On a personal level I found him disgusting, and as a billionaire I think he's the sickness at the core of our economy and society. The projects of his companies were genuinely useful, though.

So yeah, in 2015 he would have been closer to the bottom of my list of most evil billionaires, whereas now he's way at the top.

based as fuck. I'm so glad some Democratic governors still have our back.

a rare LessWrong W for naming the effect. also, for explaining why the early over-aligned language models (e.g. the kind that wouldn't help minors with C++ since it's an "unsafe" language) became absolutely psychopathic when jailbroken. evil becomes one bit away from good.

fuck Putin, slava Ukraini!

I kinda get why tankies would defend China (CCP is still ostensibly Communist), but why Russia?? it's literally a kleptocratic oligarchy led by a billionaire dictator/mob boss. ain't nothing Soviet about it.