I kinda have two responses here, so uh, here’s both of them:

1. Well, by the time this is an issue, odds are you’ve been a career politician anyway and don’t need another job. This is just old people who refuse to retire because they like the power and trappings more than they care about doing their job.

2. By the time they MUST retire, these ghouls have stolen sufficient money that it doesn’t matter, and sticking around is just them refusing to give up the power and feed their greed even more.

Both seem equally reasonable and applicable to the problem.

You can share your wisdom and be of great value to the public without being in public office.

At some point, though, you’ve gone from useful adult into honored elder, and while I’m not suggesting we put them all on ice floes, they shouldn’t be running the country, especially since more than a few of them clearly don’t even know which country they’re in, let alone how to run it.

If you can’t walk, are having strokes, have developed dementia, and generally just sit around staring at the wall like my cat, perhaps it’s time to gracefully retire and go spend the rest of your life doing conferences and speaking engagements and whatever the hell else you want, not trying to legislate.

Sure, but the way this usually works is that the government tells you to do something and if you don’t, they’ll find someone (or a couple of someones) on that list, arrest them, and charge them with a crime.

Doesn’t matter if they did the crime, and it doesn’t matter if they’d be convicted, but the play is to keep your friends in jail until you capitulate to what they want. This is actually something that’s happened with tech companies before, like what they did with GoDaddy’s C-level in India.

The problem is that there’s no damn way I’d want to be arrested by the upcoming US administration, because I’d bet $100 that their playbook will portray not doing what they’re demanding as a national security or terrorism offense, and if you’ve been watching ANYTHING for the last damn near 25 years, that’s a free pass for them to basically just vanish you until they feel like doing otherwise.

It’s fantastic leverage against organizations that have US people and are, presumably, not willing to just let their friends spend who-knows amount of time in prison, and could probably result in some cooperation.

And I’m about to both get downvoted and WELL AKSHULLY’d about how you can’t just vanish people under the US justice system, and sure, you’re technically correct. Except we’ve passed law after law after law since 9/11 that have basically given the government the ability to do any damn thing they please if they call you a national security risk or terrorist, up to and including Gitmo, in case you’ve forgotten that existed: which you shouldn’t have, because we STILL have prisoners sitting there.

This is doomer as fuck, and horribly unlikely, but so is a demand to stuff backdoors into everything. But, if we head down that road, the only safe software will be ones that can’t be blackmailed like this which is essentially none of the major projects.

Well, yes, it does: https://www.debian.org/intro/organization

But the corporation that handles all their funding and owns their trademarks is in the US, so they’re possibly subject to the same pressure. And of course a good number of those people in that org tree are in the US, so again, same issue.

My point was more ‘this is silly, because if you REALLY think that, there’s nobody and no project that’s got any ties at all to the US that can be considered safe, and you should maybe get rid of all your computing devices now’, rather than an intent to say that Debian or anyone there is at more or less risk.

I mean, if you want to carry that line of reasoning out, the Linux kernel is governed under a US-based foundation, so should the kernel itself be suspect?

How about FreeBSD? Or something like Debian? Or Ubuntu, which isn’t US-based but they’re in a typically cooperating jurisdiction?

You’re def being paranoid and somewhat irrational, since it’s unlikely to happen and if it did, it’s not like you could trust anything at all anyways.

Shit, we didn’t even need an argument to stab each other.

I’ve still got bits of pencil broken off in my limbs from school.

It wasn’t mismanaged, at all.

It was flat-out stolen by Congress.

Or if you prefer to be all polite they took it, and wrote an IOU knowing full well there’s no way there’d ever be any money to pay them back without jacking taxes way up, and that’s never going to happen. (And even if it did, that’s you paying yourself back with new taxes on your old taxes.)

Functionally the same thing, really.

I dunno, seems appropriate.

Benjamin Franklin had a very Opinion about the bald eagle:

For my own part I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labour of the fishing hawk; and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him, and takes it from him

The bird who doesn’t do anything valuable and just takes from the ones that are working is American as fuck at this point.

Seems like the perfect bird and perfect bill to pass for a bunch of people who live off the public dole, and do nothing whatsoever otherwise.

Dystopian maybe, but as crazy as people have become I’ve been wondering if there’s a less-than-obvious one any rando can purchase and wear.

Much like there’s no fucking way I’d drive without a front and rear dashcam - because mine have saved me in not one, not two, but THREE different incidents and quite literally saved me five-figures in costs, at the very least - I’m kinda wondering if it makes sense to have bodycam footage the next time a Karen decides to have a crazy fit and I’m close enough that it could become my problem.

How would the Democrats fix this, if they have full control of the government? Will they give Americans free health care, or stop financing genocides? Have Obama brought the change he was supposed to? Guantanamo was closed? Was it because he/the democrats did not control enough of the government? Maybe if people vote more next time the Democrats will tackle social issues.

I’m with you on the old and jaded bit, but that right there: they won’t do ANY of those things, they haven’t done any of those things when they 100% could have and voting for Democrats again, but with feeling! won’t get you any of them.

The only difference between the Democractic party and the GOP is that it appears the GOP would prefer to sleep with 16 year olds.

I haven’t shifted right the older I’ve gotten, I’ve shifted into accelerationist and must admit very limited give-a-shit about actions like what Luigi did and feel that maybe a few more might be more useful than another decade of me voting.

I’m certainly not an economist, a politician, or in healthcare but I’d be surprised if you could actually build a working healthcare system for less than we spend now even if you took out the profit motive.

You need to rebuild rural hospitals, hire more doctors and nurses, build clinics and staff them in underserved (read: poor) areas, and basically spend an awful lot of time and money to fix the broken mess that the insurance companies have caused.

I mean you COULD just change who pays the people and places that exist now, but that’s not really… fixing anything.

Perhaps it’s me, but I’d be fine paying what I’m paying similar amounts for an actually funded and working healthcare system, if it covers everyone. Just need to tap into the AMERICA #1 bullshit somehow, and get the uh, poorly informed, on board and do it. Again not a politician or political strategist so that’s someone else’s problem, but I won’t complain about paying for it.

While I agree, I wouldn’t expect my salary to grow to include the health insurance costs; that’d totally end up just being rolled into taxes to pay for the/a universal option and not be money I suddenly got paid.

But yes, it’s $3000 after the ~$6000 for the insurance, so let’s say the cost of being insured with insurance that covers anything at all in the US is, basically, $10,000 a year.

I don’t have any pictures on my phone, since I don’t carry a smartphone anymore.

I was just amused at the whole "See how an AI can violate your privacy! Upload a picture to us to send to an AI for you!’ offer being made.

So, in order to keep our information private we should… upload a photo to a site using a google api to feed it to an AI model?

I’m very confused how, exactly, in any way, that’s the privacy-first option.

I have reasonable insurance and the reason people “spend more time living with disease” is that the annual cost of not doing that is a couple of thousand.

The minute I hit a doctor for anything other than a cold, I expect it to cost me $1000, and if it turns out to be serious, I expect to spend out-of-pocket maxes, or $3000-5000.

So basically, the cost of ‘going to the doctor’ needs to be assumed to be at least $3000.

So uh, I don’t go for any actual issues unless I’m prepared to spend that much.

This system is fucking stupid and designed to both discourage you from visiting and when you finally break down and go, to empty your pockets.

…but hey, if you can find cooperative doctors, they’ll happily refer you to endless specialists and such so you can at least maximize the thousands of dollars you’ve spent? (This is still stupid.)

Uhm, you can buy dildos at Walmart?

Why has nobody told me before now?

Historically speaking, it’s rare that one killing actually causes meaningful change.

Usually, it requires killing a whole bunch of the rich and making them good and scared that they’ll be next before they’ll give up one ounce of, well, anything.

So don’t fret: if things get as bad as they might, there’ll be more and maybe improvements will start happening.

The worst thing I ever read about the issues about destroying sexual education is that it also leaves children unable to actually describe any abuse, because they don’t know what’s going on, what anything is called, and what is and isn’t a “good” touch.

I’m not saying Florida Republicans are in any way wanting that outcome, but you have to at least wonder why they’re so concerned about this.

Especially since their Franchisees are not free to do anything that corporate DOESN’T like when it comes down to the building, or decor, or supplies, or food, or special deals, or whatever the fuck else is involved in running the damn business.

However, for politics, gee shucks they just can’t have any rules and the franchisees are just able to do whatever.

My bullshitometer hit 11 on that one.

Sounds good to me?