I’m on book 4, love the series!

I appreciate the recommendation, I’ll look into it thanks.

There are a few channels like that I watch, one is “History to fall asleep to” or something like that.

I just downloaded NewPipe, and on there you can turn off the screen and just have the audio playing, so that’s awesome.

It’s tricky for me, because if the show is too boring, my mind will wander and I’ll start to get anxious, thinking about things I shouldn’t. Conversely if it’s too exciting, I’ll get too into it and it’ll wake me back up lol

I know, I’m kind of a mess.

To make matters worse most sleeping medicine doesn’t work at all for me, and the only one I’ve found that does gives me dry mouth to the point it gags me.

I tried flagging it as such when I asked them to stop showing me the ad. Either they are fine with it or the advertiser found some loophole to get around the TOS. It’s possible they edited the ad copy so that the SA is only implied now, I don’t really pay attention anymore.

I also didn’t even mention the bullies SA the protagonist as well, at least they heavily imply it and mention the blood in his underwear. Gross.

The next option is to have Trump become vice presidet (the presidential term limit doesn’t seem to apply to VP), then have the president resign and make Trump president instead, claiming that the 22nd only limits being elected twice…

That might have worked, if not for the 12th Amendment, which has this clause “But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”

which might be ok with the letter of the law, but only an idiot or a tyrant would interpret it that way.

That may end up being where we run into issues. I have seen no evidence that the majority in the SCOTUS has a problem being either. And since they have lifetime appointments they are under no pressure whatsoever to do a good job. One of the main problems with our constitution.

The third option would be to have the president use the appointment clause, which is very vague about to what exact offices the president can appoint someone. It doesn’t explicitly state that the president can’t appoint someone else to the office of president.

It does actually, the Appointments Clause appears at Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution and states:

“… and [the President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law”

“Herein” in this case refers to the Constitution itself, and it definitely does ‘provide’ for the “appointment” of the President.

I’m not at all surprised that their evil plot revolves around them not understanding the constitution, many Republicans like to pretend they love the constitution when in reality most don’t understand it, and the ones that do think they can simply ignore or change the parts that they don’t like.

Basically Trump only really has 2 options if he wants to remain in power. Have the constitution amended to remove the term limits established by the 22nd (which again isn’t likely) or do something illegal and have the SCOTUS back him up, which is sadly a little more likely.

I almost hope he tries something like that and that there are enough decent people in the Military who would actually uphold their oaths to the constitution to make such a coup impossible to sustain. That might wake people up enough to realize how they came to installing a dictator, and maybe move enough people Left that we can actually do some things to fix our broken system. It would be great if we would get rid of the Republican and Democratic parties and/or at the very least get rid of our atrocious “First past the post” voting system (along with the Electoral College) which is where a lot of the problems in our country can be traced back to.

Better yet I wouldn’t mind if we scrapped the whole “Liberal Democracy” idea altogether and wrote a new Constitution that treats all people as if they are equals and not slaves to the rich and powerful, but I wont hold my breath hoping for that one, we need to educate people first. We have been the victims of hundreds of years of propaganda (which really ramped up in the 20th century), and you can’t reverse that damage overnight.

Awesome, thank you. I just installed it and it seems to be working great.

Also signing up for PeerTube as well. 👍

I swear, YouTube uses the camera on my phone/tablet to detect if I am facing the screen or not. It doesn’t have ‘permission’ to access the camera, but the behavior is too consistent to be a coincidence.

I can’t fall asleep to silence. I have to have something playing to keep me from being alone with my thoughts, or I will literally never sleep. So I watch YouTube videos while Im tying to fall asleep. I skip every ad as soon as it will let me when facing the screen. Every time, and I mean literally every time I turn over so my back is to the screen, YouTube will start playing one of those long ass ads, ones that will go on for 1/2 hr or more if I don’t turn back over and hit ‘skip’. It’s just too consistent to be random.

The best is when it’s the ad for the stupid ass ‘superhero’ audiobook where the main character is the only person who doesn’t have a superpower and gets picked on, and by picked on I mean they force him to watch as they SA his girlfriend. I have done the thing where you can request they don’t show you that particular ad at least a dozen times now and it never helps.

I already know that guy will get his superpower eventually. I already know that he will get his revenge on his bullies. Its about the most obvious, 5th grade level writing you could imagine. Nothing about it appeals to me, I hate that fucking ad with a passion.

It’s a little of column A, a little of column B

Yes, it’s true that some dog breeds have been bred to be more aggressive- but aggressive can mean many things.

I was roommates with a guy who had a Pit bull. Awesome dog, great with the kids. Never seen her so much as growl at a person. Animals though she did not fuck around with. And that makes sense, they were bred to fight other animals. So while they are aggressive, they aren’t (naturally) aggressive towards humans, though obviously you can train them to be.

I had a different roommate who had a Chihuahua, Chihuahua’s were bred for two things, to be fearless rat hunters and to be burglar alarms. They also have a personality quirk where they typically only bond with very few people, and even then it can take a little while for them to gain your trust. For about the first month after he brought her home she would bark at me every time I entered the room she was in. After she got used to me, she was the sweetest little pup you could imagine. If anyone else came by she just couldn’t handle it. If I picked her up and held her while talking the other person she would eventually calm down some, but she still didn’t like it. You usually just had to put her in a different room. She didn’t nip at them or anything, but if they had tried to pick her up it probably would have been a different story.

Not all Chihuahua’s behave like that, but it’s typical.

I’ve lived with a Doberman who was a total coward (and neurotic the poor thing), and a Rottweiler who was perfectly fine with me, until her owner was out of sight, and then she acted like she had no idea who I was. As a kid we had a German Sheppard who was a total sweetie (the kitten thing was an accident), and I used to own a Chow/Lab mix who literally loved everyone and everything.

The breed plays a big role in their behavior, but so does training/ socialization. People who blame it solely on one thing or the other are just wrong imo. Some dogs will never be perfectly chill, but you can train them not to be assholes.

Fortunately, that doesn’t work either, there are several issues with that logic.

We are still (nominally) a type of Democracy. That means our ‘leaders’ must be elected. The 22nd only addresses term limits, the constitution itself spells out how the President comes into power in the first place, and that is by being elected. Nowhere is the President granted the power to appoint someone else to the office. The 25th amendment lays out who is to be president in the event that the current one is unwilling/unable to perform their duties.

Still, we are talking about if he at least wants to have the appearance of legitimacy. He’s certainly argued that he can ‘creatively interpret’ the constitution to suit his agenda. For example, despite the 14th amendment stating that “…all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” the Trump administration has tried to claim that ‘all people’ do not include people who’s parents were ‘illegal immigrants’, despite the Supreme Court precedent that it most certainly does include them.

I do have some faith that Americans would not stand for that though. That would be the final straw for many of us. If I am still around and something like that happens, I know it will be the final straw for me. I was born in a ‘free’ country, and I have no issues dying to help ensure it remains that way.

That being said there is nothing really stopping him from being the ‘de facto’ president in the case one of his lackeys gets elected and is willing to let him do so. For example if Vance were elected he could allow Trump to attend meetings and press conferences and speak on his behalf. He could be appointed an ‘advisor’ and Vance could follow his ‘advice’ every time. Hell he could allow Trump to sleep in his bed and use his toothbrush if he wanted.

Hopefully the DNC will pull it’s fucking corporate boot licking head out of its ass and put up a candidate that’s actually worth a damn for the next election, but that’s about as likely as Trump stepping down gracefully.

It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. I wish I believed in God, I would ask you to pray for us.

What do you define as a centrist in that context.

I’m referring to people who vote, but they claim to be the ‘reasonable’ middle ground between Democrats and Republicans. They are right wingers who don’t feel strongly one way or the other, because they are either completely ignorant about politics, or get their information from American mainstream media (pretty much the same thing).

Basically they have no real values and only know that they are satisfied with the status quo and will vote for whomever they think will maintain it. There is a lot of overlap between these pseudo-intellectuals and people who boot lick Musk.

From an European viewpoint, most democrats are right-wing politicians, some of them even far right.

I’m not a Democrat I’m a leftist, so I view it that way as well

Bernie Sanders is the only one that comes to mind that could be seen as center-left

AOC has had some pretty decent takes, but like Sanders she is a politician in America and has to play the game so who knows what she actually believes in. I believe her heart is probably in the right place at least.

And politically disinterested people don’t sound like a relevant political force…

They’re not. I wasn’t trying to imply Musk would run for office or anything. I’m just saying they are likely to be the type of people ignorant enough to continue to support him.

If there is another election and they are going to pretend it’s legitimate, Trump would have to overturn the 22nd amendment to the Constitution to be eligible to run. A constitutional amendment requires a 2/3 vote from both houses of congress, and that is not likely to happen.

That doesn’t mean the dumbass won’t try to pull some sketchy shit and I honestly wouldn’t put it past him to try.

Neither the neoliberal technologists and futurists he charmed nor MAGA are on his side any more.

This is true. The only people that will remain loyal to Mush are centrists/ politically disinterested people. I think that will turn out to be a lot of people, but not enough to really do any damage. I can see some neolibs who bought Teslas stanning for him in the hopes they will regain some of the value in their vehicles.

I’m more concerned with Musk’s wealth, he can do a lot of damage with that still. Not as much as the government can do, but not insignificant either. If he feels like he is being attacked, I can see him doing some really disgusting things to get revenge.

I’d be curious where Peter Thiel stands, the handler of Vance.

My guess is as long as Trump plays by the rules and continues to chicken out on the Tarrifs, people like Theil will be content to stay in the background, silently pulling the strings. As soon as he starts actually hurting peoples bottom lines, that’s when we will see dissent. That is almost certainly why Musk cut and ran.

If Thiel backs the impeachment Thiel will become president and that might align with their goals to dismantle democracy in the US.

I think people like Theil and Trump are equally committed to dismantling democracy (in practice if not in name), so I don’t think it matters who is running things. They have to be careful about it too, since they have propped him up and Trump is a megalomaniac who actually thinks he deserves to be where his and his base are rabidly, stupidly obedient to him.

I’d say that Musk was just as big of a part of MAGA as anyone else. Quite a bit more than most really because he ran a whole ass government agency so he and Trump could harm their political/business opponents.

Even though the Leopard ate his face, he still voted for/ promoted/ worked for/ and donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the Leopard. Musk is in no way a victim here.

Sure, he got ‘chewed up’ (I guess), but so did Hitlers supporters when they outlived their usefulness. It’s really not surprising.

Nobody on the Republican side gives a shit about him.

Name anybody (besides themselves) that they do care about? Caring about people isn’t exactly the Republicans strong suit.

I agree it’s not really a ‘turning point’ but don’t underestimate the number of people (MAGAt’s or not) who are Musk ball lickers. Those people will ‘pick a side’ and not everyone will choose Trump. They are both Fascists though, so the people end up losing either way.

Pop-Os gang!

There’s nothing more satisfying than quitting in person so you can look your boss in the eye and tell him he is a piece of shit, making them so mad they threaten to call the cops on you for trespassing as you are literally walking out the door lmao.

I don’t mind giving a 2 week notice normally, but at this particular job one of my coworkers put her notice in and they fired her that day. They immediately lost their 2 week notice privileges from me with that slick move.

I love how companies expect you to give them 2 week notices, but how many of them give you any notice before laying you off or firing you? None- that’s how many. They literally value their own profits over human beings, fuck them.

Lol,

I was ‘taught’ by my 5th grade Geography teacher that Iceland used to be called Greenland, and vice versa and they switched the names during WW2 to “confuse the Nazi’s”. I thought that was interesting but never really took the time to think about it logically. I repeated this ‘fact’ to a friend when I was in my early 20’s and she laughed and called me an idiot. Talk about embarrassing.

Once again, I’m not guilt tripping anyone. I’m just stating my opinion. If you don’t think your post comes off as self righteous and superior, I’m not sure you know what those words mean. I also never claimed to be a victim.

You had zero sympathy in the first place, you said it yourself, and once again I really don’t give a single fuck what you think of me. I don’t know how I can make that any more clear to you.

I have read up on second hand smoke, which is why I don’t smoke around other people. I rarely even see other people unless I’m shopping, and you can’t smoke in stores.

If you think that the studies on second hand smoke say that simply catching a whiff of cigarette smoke every once in a while will instantly kill you, you should probably reread them. Those were about prolonged exposure in confined areas, not walking past some dude on the street.

Maybe think about if your attitude plays a role in your miserable life.

We’ve already established how you are perfect and completely flawless in every way. I’m sure your sanctimonious attitude contributes to a perfect life full of joy and happiness. Good for you.

I’m not trying to guilt trip anyone. The self righteous superior people clearly dgaf what I think and the feeling is mutual.

… killing others by blowing smoke into their faces on the street.

Ah yes, the age old tradition of going up to a non smoker and blowing smoke directly in their faces. Fun times.

I’ve been a smoker for a very long time and I’ve never seen that happen, unless you count shotgunning cannabis, and that was always consensual.

Let’s get real for just a second. What you actually mean is occasionally you catch a whiff of cigarette smoke while outside. I’m sure you don’t go stand next to smoker, and I’m positive that they don’t “blow smoke into your face”.

Even in my backwards ass state, you can’t smoke indoors in public places, so it must be outside.

If you are so concerned about your health that you think simply smelling cigarette smoke and walking away will kill you, I sure hope you never leave the house, attend a BBQ, or go camping, because you will likely be exposed to other smells just as likely to kill you as that.

I have very little empathy for people…

That much is clear

Maybe start with empathy for poor people that struggle surviving because they are being exploited, or people who are systematically suppressed

Who says I don’t? Who says I don’t fall into those categories myself? Having empathy for one group of people does not preclude you from having empathy for others. I’ve never shot heroin or smoked crack, but I feel bad for people struggling with those addictions.

I don’t condone smoking indoors where non smokers live or around non smokers if they are outdoors and can’t walk away for some reason, I just don’t think someone should be treated as if they are human excrement simply because they are a smoker. You don’t agree, that’s fine as long as I’m not forced to be around you or have to listen to your sermons.

I appreciate it. 🫂

Why would you mow the grass right after it rains?

Edit: You are comparing an unrelated “pleasant” smell (I’m neutral on cut grass, but I get your point) with something that people already know how it’s supposed to smell.

With fragrances, neither males or females naturally smell like flowers. A lot of women seem to enjoy smelling/smelling like flowers.

As a man I also enjoy smelling flowers (but I’m not big on artificial fragrances in general) so I don’t feel like a grass smelling cake is a good comparison.

How exactly would they “Get in trouble”? Are we talking like bans or something?

For the record if anyone is in that position, I encourage you to PM me and we could talk there. I certainly don’t want to cause problems for anyone.

Exactly, I actually hate politics with a firey passion and would love nothing more than to be able to ignore it. But I hate the current state of affairs even more, so I am forced to pay attention.

It’s like how I dislike wiping my ass, but I love having a clean asshole. Sometimes you have to do things you don’t like to get the preferred outcome.