When there are Jewish students participating in these protests, there should be no room left for the “antisemitic” argument. But here we are.

Israel played the religion card, and by doing so they did a great job of establishing the narrative that opposing Israel means you are an antisemite. The word has been weaponized. Actually antisemitic people like Trump who support Israel for political reasons get to hide behind it as a shield, meanwhile semitic people are being labeled as antisemites.

Nothing makes sense anymore.

“Jesus lived in poverty and he did alright.” - A (thankfully former) coworker who disagreed with my assertion that minimum wage should be livable.

Jesus was also murdered by his government, Ian! That’s not what I’d call alright!

Definitely the latter. They don’t want to risk anyone else defecting in the meantime after repeated failures that make them look bad, so they’re looking for some other way to coerce the votes.

It punishes people poorer than me, who are only poor because they deserve it. Right? I mean, if I’m an evil oligarchic asshole, but God loves me enough to let me have all this money, they must be even more evil than I am.

True, another valid point.

They probably can, even if it means spending billions more in the end to hire out private contractors to do the work they can’t find enough sycophants for. The whole point is grift.

I mean, DOGE is already an example. They’re just hiring conservative kids fresh out of college for peanuts because they believe blindly serving the Trump admin is the most alpha resume builder one could ask for. The government is basically being run like one big racist fraternity.

And if they can’t find enough people to do the actual work, they just do things like give NASA contracts to SpaceX so Elon and his billionaire bros can get richer off the taxpayer dollar.

No, he wants to pull a Reagan part 2 and fire any government worker who goes on strike. Trump has an army of loyalists willing to do whatever he says, who would be more than happy to scab any strike to inefficacy. Even if they’re terrible at the job, all that matters is that they’re loyal.

No, you don’t get it, this is his fault (and Harris’s). Genocide Joe, right? We sure taught the Dems a powerful lesson.

If only we knew at the time how prophetic that damn commercial would be…

Yep. Protests are just being used at this point to root out dissidents. Mutual aid and sabotaging oppressive institutions where possible can be more effective ways for folks to participate in organized resistance without risking life and livelihood.

Once upon a time, I would have thought this sort of thing unthinkable around here. This is practically my backyard.

They’re targeting northern states on purpose.

Anyway, the replicants as depicted in all incarnations are clearly biological constructs and not mechanical, so while they’re certainly artificial the notion of whether or not they’re “robots” to begin with is highly debatable.

I would say it’s not even debatable, the issue at the heart of the conflict in the original Blade Runner and continued in 2049 is that the Nexus-7 was made so close to humans that they basically are humans, at least in a biological sense. Maybe the earlier models were more android-like, but later they’re basically just manufactured people.

This is why in 2049 we see >!Deckard, a human, and Rachael, a replicant, were able to conceive a child, who was otherwise born perfectly normal other than not being able to inherit an immune system from her mother.!<

Guessing the Supreme Court ruling last year against Colorado undid all that. Since they ruled that states cannot make decisions that impact federal elections, it wouldn’t surprise me if the fed can now legally demand voter registration records or else refuse to count those votes.

Thanks, Trump.

There was a show in the 80’s-90’s called Quantum Leap, where the aforementioned character keeps waking up in other people’s bodies at different periods of time. The premise is that he needs to solve some sort of problem for them that changes the course of history before he is able to leap to someone else, in the hope that he changes enough to one day “leap home.”

In this photo, Kash Patel looks panicked and confused, which mirrors the character’s behavior when he suddenly finds himself in someone else’s body and has no idea what’s going on.

A lot of fiction made up by people is not about war and greed and other causes of suffering. With that in mind, what makes the Bible less fictional than the Dhammapada, or the Lotus Sutra, or Paddington Bear?

You’re not wrong but I’d also look at it from the perspective of “We’ve been making statements like this for years now and the situation has only gotten worse, so what else should we be doing?” Status quo isn’t really just the result of people giving up, it’s about things remaining the same (or worse) even after trying, so what else should be tried?

South Korea’s government managed to successfully impeach and convict him first, though.

Trump has been impeached twice (which is already unprecedented for an American president), but it failed both times because the bar to pass is 2/3 of the senate voting to convict, which simply cannot happen while Republicans control half or more of the senate.

Kinda loses its sting given how many years Germans have been making floats of Trump like this, though. Good sentiment, but I wish it amounted to something.

Not to say it’s a waste of time or they shouldn’t do this, but I’m just tired, boss.

Ah, so this is why the news this morning was randomly reporting on Abercrombie’s “comeback” featuring totally real and not-at-all astroturfed Tiktokers talking about how hip the company is again while putting on makeup.

Gotta control the narrative however they can.

An unproven fighter jet made by fucking Boeing of all companies.