I can't believe the fucking NEW YORKER feels more left leaning than the democratic party these days.

post updated to be extra funney

this but unironically a little bit

Friendship is fascist because friends are an in group contrasted against the outgroup of non friends (/s)

yes but what else will i do on christmas if not view everything through a lens if moral absolution

i also have to say my post isn't as funny as i intended in retrospect so im gonna try to rework it

sure there are problems with the way the us treats christmas but i mean just let me chill and hang out with my found family and give them tasty home-smoked foods. not everything has be looked at through a lens of moral absolutism

unironically this a little bit though

(EDIT: im rewriting this post to be funnier. if u see this post with this message, please pretend it has more jokes)

edit 2: in lieu of a joke i have instead simply downvoted my comment. i will upvote it when it is funny

edit 3: i am adding jokes in bold. please laugh

i think u will probably like christmas if it's the only time you get off to spend with a family. but if you're observing it from the outside, like a snowglobe, it's pretty thoroughly awful

christmas is all wrapped up in the capitalist american fantasy dream. it's the destiny that was manifested. it's the beautiful loving white grandpa all americans strive to become. and by god, the best way to prove you love your children more than other parents is to bring financial ruin upon your family.

don't forget the lies. the most important thing is to lie to children. (edit: ignore the rest of this paragraph, lying to children is funny as it is.) everyone must maintain the lie. santa claus is real. if you disagree and a child hears you, it is acceptable to make threats against your life. that's christmas baby

the best thing about christmas is it's capitalism denouncing itself. christmas giftgiving is theoretically and empirically an economic inefficiency. there is an argument to be made that gift-giving can provide value in a paternalistic or knowledge-transfer sense (e.g. if you're a tech nerd, a six hours of work and a few $80 retropies can provide $100s of value for ur loved ones). but that doesn't balance out the deadweight loss. (edit: it would be funnier if u just gave people gift cards to shops that are not around in the area)

it's the largest trickle-up-economics machine imaginable. the yearly US christmas spending is about $250B. that's about 1/4 of the yearly US military budget.

can you imagine what we could do with a fraction of that money (edit: i bet u can think of something funny to do with the money. todo, come back and do this.)

for me personally, christmas was the eerie eye of the storm of a familial-abuse torment-nexus. i'm free from that now, but the atmosphere is still so cloying and overwhelming. christmas is inescapable, and if you want to escape, people will think less of you. and i'm speaking as a white american with practically no assimilation pressure! (edit: this one isn't a joke. i've heard some harrowing things about people unfamiliar with the us holiday canon, almost all of which about christmas, and one about halloween.)

don't forget our troops. they're overseas so that you can eat santa cake. the same "ugh, people who hate christmas are annoying" is the same sentiment wielded against people who decry the salvation army, or the US army.

but the main thing is what christmas does to people. i think there's something to be said about the stress does to people, the stress of the darkest, most financially-stressful, work-crunchiest, parents-in-law-iest times of the year. (edit: i saw a child break down when it could not sit in santas lap and then i saw the parents break down too. it is unclear if this is funny or not.)

i spent christmas with my in-laws last year and i'm happy to say it didn't make me aggressive. but my in-laws are christian Christian. like, unironically-believe-God-is-real white christians. (edit: this, too, is already funny. please laugh) i stopped tracking calories because i didn't even clear 1000 in a day, and i spent too much time asleep to worry. they wouldn't even let me put my erotic rudolph art on the trees (edit: the rudolph art part is a joke. they couldn't stop me if they tried)

christmas turns people into their worst selves

so unironically this but only a little bit though. it's not really more fascist than the rest of the united states

it wasn't. the person doubled down with some screed about the evil of hierarchies (they were a turbo-anarchist) when somebody was like "what are you the fucking grinch?"

this might have been someone mocking a classic tweet. I hope so at least

The smiles on the faces of children are fascist. The warmth of a fire and the love of your family are fascist.

thank goodness he got those pesky rail workers back to work

the train

it is bewildering to me that the entire democratic party has lined up behind this guy. they had 400 candidates in the 2020 primary but now that he's been Weekend at Bernies-ed through four years of governance nobody will say a word against him. the dems are a gerontocratic personality cult

Hey, thank you for posting this. I haven't called congress before but I'm going to do this now.

done!

This was my first time doing this. A lot of things caught me offguard and this took me 1.5 hours in total, but if you are a functional human being and comfortable reading a script, it would probably be closer to 5 minuntes.

Things that might catch you off guard:

• Scripts: The site provides you with a script right as it calls you. This caught me off guard and messed me up, as I tried to adapt my script live. I usually write my own script and take three or four rehearsals before I can make calls. I have copied the provided scripts below.
• You might reach someone: I did not expect to get reach someone so quickly.
• They might request your contact information: I'm proud to put my name down when begging to stop war crimes, but I didn't expect them to ask for this information.
• Senators and Representatives: I'm a smart person, but I accidentally got these mixed up when trying to adapt to the script and I think I lost legitimacy in the eyes of the office for it.
• Adapted script: I used the numbers on the Wikipedia outline of the war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_the_2023_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war), and I compared the number of displaced Palestinians in proportion to that of my district.
• iPhones are difficult to call with: If you're used to landlines or Android phones, and are not familiar with the iPhone dialer, be warned. I absolutely fucked this up, and I'm someone who regularly uses the mainstream desktop and mobile OSes.
  • iPhones can and will allow other audio to take over your call at any time. I have no mental model for understanding it. Close any other app you have open, and do not interact with Airpods if you are using them (since they can invoke Apple Music).
  • I don't understand how phone calls are supposed to work on this phone. The numberpad in the phone app is not the same as the numberpad in the phone call you receive.
  • EDIT: Turns out this is true on Androids too. There is nothing to obviously indicate that you have two different numpads. I am going insane

Scripts copied below:

Script 1 – For House offices My name is {Your Name}. I am a constituent of {Representative's Name}. I am calling you regarding the unfolding crisis in Gaza. It is absolutely urgent that the Representative join H.Res 786 calling for a Ceasefire Now and for humanitarian assistance to be let into Gaza. I also ask that they oppose sending any more weapons to the Israeli military as it carries out mass atrocities against Palestinans in Gaza. The only way forward is addressing the root causes of violence: Israeli military occupation and apartheid, and ending U.S. complicity in this oppression.

Script 2 – For Senate offices

My name is {Your Name}. I am a constituent of {Senator's Name}. I am calling you regarding the unfolding crisis in Gaza. It is absolutely urgent that the Senator call for a ceasefire, call for humanitarian assistance to be let into Gaza, and to oppose sending any more weapons to the Israeli military as it carries out mass atrocities against Palestinans in Gaza. The only way forward is addressing the root causes of violence: Israeli military occupation and apartheid, and ending U.S. complicity in this oppression.

Script 3 – For House offices sponsoring Ceasefire Now Resolution

My name is {Your Name}. I am a constituent of {Representative's Name}. I am calling you regarding the unfolding crisis in Gaza. I want to thank Representative {Name} for standing up for humanity and calling for a ceasefire. The Representative's courage in calling for peace and de-escalation will save lives.

Good post. Done

china did this in the mid-'90s as a country-wide strategy during the reform, by the "good communists"... as a side note, i understand, like on an intellectual level, that the US fucking hates communism. but man, the amount, like, of hate is unfathomable to me

this is a bland observation but it is deeply fucked up that billion dollar companies can choose to pursue a different strategy, sell off a subsidiary, etc, and in the process severely disrupt the lives of thousands of people for nothing but dollars

I know 404 media articles require (free) signup but they're a legit place owned by the writers who were laid off when vice declared bankruptcy so I'd say it's worth it

all magistrates are bastards

ya i dont give a FUCK about the magistrate

I'm gonna cancel a bunch of business deals with him due to these accusations.

I believe the AI. If the AI makes an accusation, that person is definitely guilty

good

oops i meant to post this in /f/technology but honestly vote_satan works too :P

No private property, respect my intellectual property.