sp3ctr4l

Sorry to hear you’re in a similar situation with family, but at the same time, happy to hear your story, to commiserate, to have an impromptu therapy session haha.

I had a hunch, looks like I was basically right.

I… come from a family that’s… well let me just put it this way:

The last time I talked to my dad, I think 3 years ago now at this point, he was fully, fully down the QAnon rabbit hole, told me about how Tom Hanks’ son rapes and kills children, after extracting their adrenochrome… and he then proceeded to show me how he partially mills, taps, and assembles AR 15s and 18s in his garage, having sourced parts that don’t have serial numbers… thats what you call a ghost gun.

He is exactly the kind of person that does these 180 flip flops and … either doesn’t remember he did, or has an elaborate nonsensical excuse/explanation.

I am unfortunately way, way too familiar with basically nearly every right wing conspiracy theory that’s existed in the last 40 years.

… I actually have Jewish cousins, and … yeah, basically since as long as I can remember, he’s made bigoted ‘jokes’ either behind their backs or occasionally even actually at family functions.

My dad is my archetype for MAGA people: an abusive alcoholic narcissist asshole with no friends, who is never wrong, proficient in gaslighting, life didn’t go the way he wanted it to, and it’s all the fault of whoever right wing AM radio/ Fox News/ insane facebook posts and shit tier ‘journalist’ grifters told him to be mad at in the last week.

… thats all probably a bit more info than necessary, but I’m still pretty traumatized from a life time of that, and venting helps lol.

I don’t think that’s what is meant by that comment.

Back about a decade ago now, the USS Liberty ‘incident’ was a bugaboo of Alex Jones and many other right wing conspiracy theorist types…

…who were correct in that yes, that is a thing that happened, it was basically covered up for decades, and almost no one knew about back in the 00’s and 10’s, and that the Israeli government and AIPAC have a huge amount of influence over US politicians and political discourse generally…

… but were very incorrect in then just slap dashing it into their growing conspiracy centric view of the entire world, which very, very often actually was just anti-semitic generally, utterly oversimplifying and overnarrativizing their understanding of ‘how things actually work’ into insane nonsense.

Fast forward 10 years, and basically all the people that were really concerned about the USS Liberty attack, you know, anti-Israeli government/military… well now they are basically all ardent Trump supporters, they all love violent Israeli genocidal expansionist Zionism, but also somehow simultaneously think Trump is … anti-war or something?

I am of course guessing and cannot read Birch’s mind… but yeah, if you come from a right wing upbringing and then later realized how bs that worldview is, like myself, and possibly like Birch…

It is indeed quite notable how much of a total 180 shift that is, amongst the right wing conspiracy theory types, and I think that is what they are referring to.

I don’t think they are saying that those (mostly liberals, progressives and leftists) who’ve been vocally opposed to the Israeli genocide of Gaza (and everything else its now grown into) in the past few years suddenly changed their opinions about that in the last few months.

Link to the song, for those who don’t know the reference.

Fuck, that’s good news.

Kinda funny that the tried and true ‘works good enough’ method of boiling water to cleanse it also works for micro plastics.

I started putting aluminum foil, folded a few times to the size of a typical card, in my wallet, in each flap… a year or two after credit and debit cards started getting RFID chips (the things that let you tap as oppose to swipe), and thus could be scanned and cloned by a guy walking around with a device in their backpack… and one of my cards was cloned this way.

Everyone called me paranoid.

Faraday cages block radio signals… RFID works via radio signals.

Then, that form of cloning cards became more popular, and now, most wallets just feature a bit of metallic weave or layer in them somewhere to prevent that, or the ekster and ridge wallets that just are metal.

Huh, all the pods I ever found at grocery stores were plastic, back when I had a … pod-based coffee machine.

As far as I know, off the top if my head, there are not any affordable, attach to the tap in your sink type filters that actually filter out microplastics.

I may be out of date on that, been about 2 years since I last looked at filters… but yeah, afaik, we have no idea how to effectively filter out microplastics from water at an end user standpoint, as we do for other, older, mkre commonly worried about water pollutants.

… I guess if you fully boiled all your water to the point it is all steam, and then condenses back ti water, in a glass or metal recepticle, that might do something for reducing microplastics, but that is insanely energy and time intensive.

If you can find a way to do an at home soda making process that doesn’t involve the soda flavor packets being … in plastic… than that would be ideal, I think.

Similarly, time to go back to beans + grinder or grounds that come in a non plastic package for coffee… stop using keurigs and pods… thats all plastic.

…

I just stopped drinking soda regularly and switched over to 99% water a long time ago.

I treat soda as a dessert, like ice cream or a brownie, only have a few a week, or month.

…

Soda and bottled water also have absurdly high margins, absurdly high costs to buy per what it cost the company to make.

A fountain soda at a fast food place in America has about a 1125% markup / margin.

If you paid 2 dollars for the soda, the actual soda cost 0.18 cents.

Not 18 cents.

0.18 cents.

A fifth of a penny.

Bottled water is around 900% to 1000% markup / profit margin.

They are bad.

Get a ceramic mug, or canteen/water bottle with an aluminum or stainless steel internal lining, drink your tap water out of that, filter it if your tap quality sucks.

glass bottled soda > canned soda > plastic contained soda or fountain drinks

… maybe we will end up with a bottlecap psuedo currency after all.

A relative bright spot amidst a sea of bad news:

"Bottled water alone can expose people to nearly as many microplastic particles annually as all ingested and inhaled sources combined,” said Brandon Luu, an Internal Medicine Resident at the University of Toronto. “Switching to tap water could reduce this exposure by almost 90%, making it one of the simplest ways to cut down on microplastic intake.”

Dunno if anyone reading this is still drinking bottled water, but, uh, now you have another reason to not do that.

Yep.

He’s a corrupt, criminal bully.

His idea of negotiation is bullying.

The even shorter version:

Canada is following the trade deal that Trump signed into law in 2018, as it pertains to what Trump is confusedly crying about.

Part of that deal is that if the US exports too much dairy products to Canada, beyond an agreed upon volume, a higher tariff rate kicks in for that excess.

This isn’t even happening, because the US has not exceeded that export limit.

…

So… if by ‘cheating’, Trump means that the deal is being broken… no, it isn’t.

If by ‘cheating’, Trump means that the terms of the deal are fundamentally unfair … it was Trump’s fucking deal after he blew up NAFTA! … so Trump is then saying his own trade deal is fundamentally unfair to America, despite massively hyping it up as awesome during his first term.

Impossibly stupid?

Yes.

Impossible?

No.

Elbow, Leaders of the Free World

But the leaders of the free world

Are just little boys throwing stones

And it’s easy to ignore

Till they’re knocking on the door of your homes, yeah

My thinking isn’t driven, oh

But the music always gives me a lift

I’m so easy to please, yeah

But I think we dropped the baton like the 60’s didn’t happen, oh no

… and the AMOC will break.

The researchers also mapped some of the consequences of AMOC collapse. Sea levels in the Atlantic would rise by a meter in some regions, inundating many coastal cities. The wet and dry seasons in the Amazon would flip, potentially pushing the already weakened rain forest past its own tipping point. Temperatures around the world would fluctuate far more erratically. The southern hemisphere would become warmer. Europe would cool dramatically and have less rainfall. While this might sound appealing compared with the current heating trend, the changes would hit 10 times faster than now, making adaptation almost impossible (emphasis added).

https://cleantechnica.com/2024/02/13/if-amoc-runs-amok-life-in-the-us-europe-will-change-dramatically/

Hope NYC and Boston and DC and Florida are ready for a +3 foot sea level rise in like 5 to 10 years.

Here’s Paul Beckwith, the guy who coined the term ‘blue ocean event’, on this news.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LIGq040ReM

https://apnews.com/article/guatemala-honduras-mexico-immigration-border-patrols-917c0fea87c0a807b371da207d34c8cc

April 12, 2021:

According to White House press secretary Jen Psaki, Mexico will maintain a deployment of about 10,000 troops…

Mexico announced in March that it was deploying National Guard members and immigration agents to its southern border, and it has maintained more personnel at its southern border since Trump threatened tariffs on Mexican imports in 2019.

Unless someone can find a source that states that Mexico ever withdrew their 10k troops during the last 3 years… yeah, they already had 10k troops on their southern border, they’ve… just been redeployed to their northern border.

The posted article here from RawStory kind of alludes to how this is a nothing victory by linking to another of their own articles at the end of this one.

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-tariff-mexico/

“Mexico has made similar agreements without the threat of tariffs,” posted Sam Stein, of The Bulwark and MSNBC. “Here in 2021 they agreed to surge the same number of troops to help with migration. Here in 2022 they agreed to invest an additional $1.5b. Here in 2023 were 15 administrative actions.”

“It seems like the trick to negotiating with Trump is to realize he doesn’t have any idea what the current facts are,” said Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell. “‘Oh you want 10,000 troops?’ says world leader who already deployed 15K. ‘Great 10k it is.’”

This is why Sheinbaum has an ear to ear smile in the image.

Its not a joke, I am 100% serious.

I am disabled and live off of SSDI.

Spent most of 2023 homeless.

Maybe I would only qualify for residency via marrying a Canadian, but if Trump cuts back SSDI, in addition to all the economic damage he’s going to cause to the US economy, I will die starving, on the street.

As of right now, its still possible to recieve SSDI while living abroad… but who knows what will happen.