Xenophobia and racism, mostly. And yes, it’s a solution to the aging demographic crisis many countries face (at least in the medium-term).

I remember seeing a video of a presentation back in the Bush years by some neo-con group that advocated for immigration to Pentagon or DoD officials or something. The argument for immigration was mostly the same: we have an aging population, so we could integrate immigrants (who are statistically younger) to solve this issue. I didn’t agree much with the broader idea of the presentation though. The broader idea was that there were still some parts of the world not a part of the global U.S.-led hegemony (mostly the middle-east and Africa), and we must spread democracy and capitalism to them. The argument was that globalism/capitalism ensures peace, and that both WWI and WWII happened because globalism was falling apart shortly before those wars. So, to ensure world peace, we need to globalize the entire earth and bring all countries into the the U.S.-led hegemony, even if that means starting wars to spread democracy, lol.

Poor countries, such as the countries people are immigrating from, have a more terrible environment and higher birth-rates.

Kamala isn’t very likeable, and I saw a recent interview (about Biden’s debate performance) where she acted pretty unhinged. She talked at Anderson Cooper like he was a child, had a wierd speech cadence, and smiled psychotically.

Only thing I know about her is she was a DA and prosecuted a lot of people for cannabis.

I’m actually not sure if she’d have a better chance at winning than Biden.

If, somehow, Biden wins, I’d bet she’d be president soon after. Rumors are Biden’s sundowning, and isn’t very coherent after 3pm. That’s only going to get worse, forcing him to step-down (or one would hope).

Harris would probably be a status-quo (i.e. actual conservative) president. Not good, but not as bad as a fascist president.

If they ever flip back to a Democrat majority, it’s going to take decades to undo all the damage this court has done (and they’ll still have the incentive to not undo stuff like this).

I believe this happened, and is still happening in regards to Texas ignoring the SC ruling about letting federal Border Patrol agents access to certain parts of the border.

I’ve never liked their videos. They do a lot of juvenile stuff, like mocking impressions, which is kind of grating to me. They’ve also been doing a lot of sus stuff lately, such as crime fearmongering, making a big deal about the term “birthing-persons,” and running for president. Makes me think there’s some amount of grift their doing.

This seems like the most plausible explanation. Only other thing I can think of is they want to develop their own CoPilot (which I’m guessing isn’t available in China due to the U.S. AI restrictions?), and they’re just using their existing infrastructure to gather training data.

Just listing reasons why small towns are shitholes… or at least that particular small town. People there are at a high risk of drug addiction because of “shit-life syndrome,” (which is arguably caused by the low wages of the factories).

If you just want it for emergency purposes or irrigation, rain water harvesting can be fairly cheap and easy. Even a proper cistern, with a pump, and plumbed into your house is probably cheaper than whole-house off-grid solar. Probably want good filters for PFAS though.

The town I grew up in is in the middle of a cancer cluster. The largest factory (where most people work) got caught illegally dumping chemicals in the ground. They were just made to pay a relatively small fine. The corporation was threatening to move the plant somewhere else if it became too expensive to operate there, and all lawsuits were dismissed.

That factory, and most other factories in the area primarily just hire “temp” workers that they keep as temps for years, never actually hire them full time, and pay them near minimum wage with no benefits. Many young people who do end up staying in that area become drug addicts and die in their 20s or 30s.

There’s a lot of corruption in the local government and police as well. The police harass anybody they don’t like, and they know pretty much who everybody is and what they drive. A few people in government got caught embezzling money. A sheriff tried to frame somebody for murder. Also, I think the people in the courts have some kind of deal with the juvenile detention center, because they give kids very long sentences for minor things (6 months for being 10 minutes late to school while on probation in my case).

Small towns, in my experience, are shitholes with corrupt and authoritarian local governments, and are exploited by corporations in ways similar to third-world countries.

I wonder what is the general use for the Mac Mini, MacBook Air, iMac, and MacBook Pro? People generally seem to do all the lightweight stuff like social media consumption on their phones; and desktops/laptops are used for the more heavy-weight stuff. The only reason I’ve ever used a Mac was for IOS development.

I was looking at notebooks at Walmart the other day, and I was amazed that they almost all had less or the same amount of RAM as my phone.

I think SSDs are also soldered to the mainboard on most apple products.

My electricity company says 76 is a good target, and I’ve grown accustomed to it. If sedentary, it actually feels a little cold. People acclimate to their local climate (last summer, daily highs were 100-110 for something like 3 months straight where I live).

Lol, good catch.

Wary of the bill. Seems like every bill involving stuff like this is either designed to erode privacy or for regulatory capture.

Edit: spelling

Where I live, I would still need to pay for a VPN to use torrents. I’ve been banned from an ISP before for torrenting (thankfully, I had multiple ISPs available for me).

At the moment, I just “pay” legally because I get a few “free” streaming plans from my mobile provider and ISP. Occasionally, I just use a free streaming site if I really want to watch something that’s not available to me. Every once in a while, I try anonymous p2p such as Tribler or torrenting over I2P, but it’s still extremely slow, unfortunately. I’ve never used Usenet, but I think it’s about the same price as a VPN or seedbox would be?

I can understand capitalism resulting in slavery, because it wants to minimize labor costs, so slavery is the logical conclusion (also, slavery is still used by capitalists). I don’t see anarchy resulting in slavery, because slavery is inherently hierarchical. I also don’t see socialism resulting in slavery because the workers own their means of production/businesses/workplaces.

What a “man” or “woman” is changes over time and by culture. Some indigenous cultures have more than 2 genders. “Boys” become “men” at different ages, depending on the culture. It is a social construct (though I’d argue constructs are “real”).

It’s very unlikely they’ll control the Senate. I don’t even think they’ll control the presidency.