Captain Howdy

It was planned to be a distraction so news coverage wouldn’t focus on all the protests today. Can’t show bigger crowds in rural America than whatever few bootlickers showed up to watch Trump’s birthday parade.

Convenient for the Trump administration that the (non-Fox) news is going to talk about this all day instead of the millions of people protesting him all across the country.

Because society simply has mixed standards and very little empathy for men.

Our culture has (thankfully) shifted very far from the idea of the male role as sole protector and provider for the family. While that’s great for women’s independence, society hasn’t changed the expectation that men should still primarily fill that role.

Young men are still expected to grow up to be financially successful, physically fit, willing to sacrifice their lives and happiness for their future families all while being completely emotionally invulnerable about all of it. Society is clear (and correct) that women can do any or all of that if they so choose, but it’s totally also fine if they want to be a “traditional” woman.

We’re at this halfway point where (compared to our traditional/conservative past) young women can choose any path they desire and it’s acceptable and celebrated (which is a great thing). We just need to have that same expectation for young men, and make it clear.

When young men have problems, they very often are told to man-up or change themselves in some way (get a job, go to the gym, buy an expensive car)in order to fix it, when they need to be told it’s okay to be upset, it’s okay to share your feelings, it’s okay to be vulnerable.

We can’t send mixed signals that women are primarily attracted to rich, ripped, emotionally invulnerable soldiers. We’ve got to stop only celebrating men who are billionaires or professional athletes. Boys need to see their nerdy English teachers or average looking artists as role models.

I don’t know how we can get there, but until we do our young men are going to continue this regression into toxic masculinity and far right ideologies.

This ended up way longer than intended, lol.

Regan sucks and Republicans even more so, but it’s not accurate to blame it all on them.

It’s the concept of neoliberalism that took hold in the 70s and has been steadily draining the working class to the point we are now where all power and wealth are concentrated on the few at the top.

Democrats, especially the Democratic presidents since Clinton, are also neoliberals. While they hold much better social views, they are still in on the policies that keep their donors rich and the working class desperate.

You’re an idiot or you’re trolling, I honestly can’t tell.

I went into Walmart yesterday for my annual soap/shampoo/mouthwash bulk purchase as they have the products I like at the best price (in bulk). I got to the section and it was all locked up behind glass…

I turned around and walked right out. No idea where I’m gonna get it from now, but I’m not gonna support that bullshit.

The claims of mass losses due to shoplifting have been proven false multiple times over. These are just racist store policies intended to make you spend more time in their store or to buy online or from mobile apps.

Enshitification keeps on keeping on.

The irony in this is fucking delightful. No one wants Americans using this kind of brain rot social media. Maybe that’s a sign…

What percentage of the gamers that you know would just be able to find and download an emulator from a git repo hosted on .onion or .i2p?

For me, that’s just me. None of my gamer buddies would put in that effort, they’d just buy a product or play a game from steam.

I think we’re still a long way from privacy focused protocols being mainstream in the way the web has become in the last 15 years.

I don’t think we can, honestly.

Like I want Trump locked up, along with any politician who claimed the election was stolen.

But the fact is, the orange shit won 2024 and in 9 days (uuuugh) will fully pardon himself making any punishment nullified be the president again (thanks for the correction, he can’t pardon himself from state charges.

If the various governments actually wanted to punish Trump (they don’t, unfortunately) they would have actually done something and took advantage of the FOUR FUCKING YEARS that there was a possibility of their cases making any impact at all.

Our broken justice system is slower than our corrupt political cycle, which lets those in power do whatever they want.

Xbox Game Pass for PC is an incredible value, even with the caveat of having to run windows (which sucks so bad). That’s always my top rec for PC gamers.

Elden Ring is still my number one game. It’s awesome and will run great on your new PC as well as your deck. It’s also got a lot in common with your listed games.

Grounded is a great game as well! It’s a reasonably difficult survival crafting game (like Subnautica). Same goes for Return to Moria.

Bingo!

I updated my previous comment with the details I had forgotten. Commenting again since you probably won’t see an update.

In summary: google Devon Arthurs. He’s a neo-nazi kid who converted to an ISIS wacko and then killed some people and took some others hostage. That’s one clear connection.

Yeah but people don’t dress up in ugly logo covered clothing and face/body paint and spend millions and millions of dollars to build and fill up specialized stadiums with screaming fans to watch strangers play chess.

A game is a game. The actual stakes are basically the same when I play Mario Kart on my couch as when a couple dozen dudes in tights smash into each other in the cold at the sports balls stadium. There’s a winner and non-winners and the outcome means basically nothing to the people spending money to watch and wear their overpriced matching fan attire.

Becoming very invested in watching strangers play games for money.

Actually the FBI has been recommending people use more secure communications lately due to Chinese spying through SMS network infrastructure.

I’ve seen some connections in my research recently, but can’t find the article mentioning it. I want to say there were ties between the remains of the AWD (after their leadership was arrested in TX/FL), the 09A (which is quite possibly bring run by state intelligence orgs) and ISIS. I’ll look through my notes more and see if I kept the link and I’ll update here.

Update: So my memory was kinda close. A kid from AWD, Devin Arthurs, was a neo-nazi who later converted to Islam and was a supporter of ISIS.

I think it is no small coincidence that this kid converted. The ideologies are much more similar than you would think.

Another scary similarity between these two factions is that they both actively trying to recruit from the US military and ask their supporters to join the US military to get training and intelligence access.

Correct.

But a concerning thing to me is that there has been a lot of crossover between some white nationalists and extreme islamist terror orgs over the last decade or so.

They have very similar (conservative) values and goals (accelerationism). One WN group that was recently busted up was called The Base, which is also the English meaning of Al Qaeda.

Though the American government is much more quick to label Islamic adjacent attackers terrorists than any white attacker.

We are social creatures, communication is a need not a desire.

He won’t be old enough, but that would be fucking incredible if he ran.

This actually made me lol