Notices by RebelGeek99 (rebelgeek99@mastodon.social)

@FlashMobOfOne if all or nearly all your resources are tied up in staying afloat, that's not good for anyone. Especially not good for smaller businesses, though this also makes large corporations more vulnerable too.

So I heard from a friend who works at the local Indian casino, a glitzy gaudy (surprisingly well ventilated) entertainment center, they have been laying off some staff lately. Business is down. People just aren't spending as much money like they were "post pandemic".

There are fewer table games, a handful more slot machines. It's a little vignette into the #realeconomy. People are anxious about their present fortunes, less likely to be spending like drunken sailors dreaming of wealth.

An alternate reality keeps playing through my mind.

Imagine President Zero-Delegates Harris and her cabinet full of Republicans, flanked with a Red House, Red Senate, and the extant Rogue SCOTUS. Bill after bill to slash spending hammered through Congress, with the Blue Dog Caucus, AIPAC sponsored Dems like Fetterman, and other "centrists" crossing party lines to deliver veto-proof supermajorities for far-right legislation. There wouldn't be any protest, not a peep out of liberals.

@AnarchoNinaWrites @waitworry there's likely data science teams generating word clouds and training genAI models on which content was consumed most voraciously, to be used as a cudgel to force a return to normalcy. The "epidemic of loneliness" is a perfect example, it gets trotted out every time the RTO mandates are pushed.

I think I need to create a filter for Republicans. MTG is clearly resuming her role as a loudmouth distraction for corporate media, fanning the flames of the culture wars as the most prolific village idiot, keeping people locked into whatever nonsense she's spouting instead of organizing their communities.

Don't fall for it, Dem voters. Your attention is a resource. Do not comply, do not rely on the staged opposition complicit the last 4 years to show resistance.

#DefianceNotResistance

@hannu_ikonen it's the one time I'll hope the medical staff isn't wearing a respirator, so they'll get the full unfiltered stench drifting up their nostrils.

@ciggysmokebringer thoughtless thralls is a good way of putting it. that's like their ideal constituent. someone who wants to be part of something bigger with the branding of incremental change, yet deeming nothing fundamentally changing as acceptable and pushing for bipartisanship with fascists just "not Trump".

@ciggysmokebringer oh, i thought that was their platform - just calling everyone idiots .

@AnarchoNinaWrites and I am on the same page nowadays, no longer believe the party can be "fixed". They're paid losers. Their only purpose, as has been made absolutely transparent to me and many other progressive voters, is to occupy the sociopolitical space where actual opposition could exist, doing nothing or worse, like the enabling parent in an abusive alcoholic household. Thanks for your posts- some of us have started seeing the Pig Empire society too, just coming from different angles.

@AnarchoNinaWrites ah, well, propaganda is a helluva drug. Embarrassingly, I must admit I was a Blue MAGA in 2019-2020, driven mostly by fear and desperation, donating to all the worst shitlibs, VBNMW, la resistance, etc. Was never much for politicking after Obama '08 but fell for the propaganda, career was in science, later public health... the pandemic response under Trump was heinous, but to see Biden "finish the job" was horrifying. I know I'm not the only one he broke the illusion for.

@AnarchoNinaWrites @redrozalia do you feel it's gotten any better now that the election is over, and people no longer will just say "But Trump" as an excuse to complacently carry forward with policies just as heinous but less overtly caustic? I sometimes like to jump in with a "But Biden" nowadays when I hear folks despair about privatizing Medicare, dismantling public health, building Trump's wall, and pardoning white collar criminals - all merely extensions of the current admin, nothing new.

@FlashMobOfOne oh yes, by all means 🤗 happy to hear it. I intend to protect myself, also well stocked on K/N95's, KF94's, and ginger tea (a mild anticoagulant, antimicrobial, and antiinflammatory). I just meant that other than my volunteer efforts with the local mutual aid and MaskBloc I'm not going to concern myself with it professionally. If I end up working in healthcare again, I'm just keeping my mouth shut, head down, masking up, and avoiding the break room. It's just not worth it.

I'll be sitting out the bird flu pandemic, if it takes off. There's no real need for my skills using clinical data and science to predict disease and most people are comfortable with the forever plague. Smoke 'em if you got them, I guess is my only advice anymore. Good luck 🤞🏻

@AnarchoNinaWrites the US economic model would absolutely implode without immigrant labor. It is a nonstarter for any aspiring industrialist. The most optimistic fashy tech bros are drunk on AI, but if the bottom line isn't consistently and substantially lower than the status quo then they're SOL, in my estimate.

@GNUmatic @AnarchoNinaWrites Yeah, something like that. I mean, they can't effectively be a staged opposition party if they're very openly championing MAGA policies.

There always has to be an intermediary step to provide cover -- a rotating villain within the party (Manchin, Sinema, Kelly, Fetterman, Kaine), a pesky impartial Senate Parliamentarian, seeking the approval of seditionists their speaker seated in Congress... They want Trump policies but need a not-Trump to rally behind.

@GNUmatic @AnarchoNinaWrites It's always interesting to me how even in European countries with multi-party systems there's been a similar shift in power towards far-right coalitions, with "centrists" always siding with the conservative right and never the liberal left.

@Radical_EgoCom right on. I take everything he says with a large grain of salt after he led the charge to pack into crowded unmasked medical conferences starting in 2022, after which it became customary for a large fraction of attendees to post their positive C19 results on social media instead of actually practicing preventive medicine. I remain disappointed in him after that, but he is good at getting attention.

@Radical_EgoCom Dr Glaucofecalnoem is trending on YouTube, tone policing and bitter that his lighthearted jabs at the medical-pharma industrial complex have yielded far less. But he does get his clicks in.

I'm a #healthinsurance moderate centrist. While I acknowledge it's regrettable and unfortunate so many mouth breathing useless eaters feel the need to insist on for-profit health insurance companies to foot the bills for their various mysterious ailments, I'm open to meeting those people where they are and letting them eat COVID until they're too brain damaged to care.

@mook Reddit Dems will not catch up with this in time for the Midterms. And by 2028, if the Dem party is still in existence, they will be wholly indistinguishable from the 2000-2008 GOP.