It's impressive how all of these guys give off a different weird little freak vibe. I knew there were different types of weird little freak, but seeing five different types in one picture, fascinating.

Sorry to be such a pest about this but Hungary's presence in the EU is toxic. One, every two-bit dictator at the edge of Europe sees that the EU allows Orban and his cronies to conspire with the EU's rivals and enemies without consequences. They're thinking, we want to get on that gravy train too.

Susan albuhawa is a clown.

They mean you're a f - -

Sure, and I am a Santa Klaus😌

If you see this, post one image from your device with no context

you also see it with "downwardly mobile" career choices, e.g. "why do I (podcaster/DJ/webcomic artist/twitch streamer) not have the same lifestyle my parents (doctors/lawyers/investment bankers) have"

In the 1940s my grandmother gave birth to a baby who died within two days from hemolytic disease of the newborn. When my twins had the same complication after being born in 2015 the doctors just popped them under some bilirubin lights for 24 hours and then they were fine.

He explicitly encouraged the Capitol riot

trump wants to place urban america under occupation not because american cities are dangerous crime ridden slums but because theyre not.

there is something about how people define their success/failure in relation to their peers w/o any notion of what quality of life is globally or was historically and a permanent racial underclass relieves some of those anxieties

The sole issue with US weapons and Ukraine is that we have limited our contribution.

Armed struggle

--Gustavus Adolphus, 1625, probably

I ran across an account on here who said it was antisemitic that Israel calls its currency shekels because that means Jewish money.

Shekels are currency, you only think they're inherently sinister because you breathe Nazi memes

“bought and paid for, shekel style” is a melodramatic and meaningless phrase, coined by an otherwise boring borderline-antisemitic UK account

growing up rich and ending up upper middle class vs growing up poor and ending up upper middle class

like he works in some (presumably back office) finance job in south carolina. he’s upset it doesnt give him the lifestyle his parents have/had. his parents are very rich. he’s more or less lost his mind in response to that. many such cases.

They started printing nice designs on flour sacks because people were making clothes for their kids out of them.

Problems created by abundance are preferable to problems created by scarcity. It is better to live in a society plagued by overeating than a society plagued by starvation! I would rather be fat than dead!

you can literally just google things

what part of "most people can afford to buy more good stuff now than in the past" do you disagree with exactly

i wish it was possible to peer into the past to see if this hedonistic treadmill was as severe in past generations like were people in the 1940s smugly talking about how the spread of electricity isn't good evidence of economic prosperity

I spoke with a pediatric cardiologist about 10-12 years ago, a pretty young guy, who said they had a new problem in the field: how to treat certain heart conditions in adults. New because it used to be nobody with that condition *became* an adult.

Are things better for me than my grandparents? My grandparents were young adults during the Great Depression, of course things are better for me.

this is what I want people to assert:

Ok yeah this is some Downfall stuff.

Yeah the far left is doing exactly what I expected them to do: go from stanning Mamdani to making him Public Enemy Number One because he isn't 1000% FULL COMMUNIST, or antisemitic, or generally any of the sorts of raving nut they want him to be.

The regressives (broadly, the racist-and-sexist left, the pseudomarxists doing Chicago School economics But Leftistly, the various exvangelical sex-negative woo purveyors) are taking a long time to link up, but when they do, you're gonna be on the other side, trust me.

anyways to wind it back to mamdani what the right hates about rama duwaji is that she's not out there playing the part of the doting devoted political spouse. she's just like "okay zohran this is cool i also have my own career"

yeah I actually think the development of a staggering array of new medical procedures and treatments that are vastly more effective than what was available even a decade or two ago is a significant component of material prosperity that greatly improves quality of life, not just a joke

your parents couldn't imagine worrying about the cost of a continuous glucose monitor because it literally didn't exist yet you're pointing at evidence of the world getting better as evidence of the world getting worse

we have solved many of these problems so well that we literally can't imagine them being problems

Yes, there are beautiful articles of clothing and fancy recipes preserved from prior eras. They did not represent most people's daily experiences, because scarcity of both textiles and ingredients was a serious concern. Stop comparing yourself to "what if everyone was upper class gentry?"

The promise of enthusiasts isn't even just "what if everyone lived like rich people," it's "comparing the daily grind of today to the most meaningful, wonderful festive extraordinary things because that's the stuff that stuck in memory."

It's not even just that, though it is also that. It's also "the stuff people remember or preserve is the beautiful, the exceptional, the wonderful, the expensive, the rare."

Absolutely fucking deranged that placing property ownership over life eexpectancy is a leftist position now

American homeowner brain is genuinely a cancerous blight upon our society

I think some of the posters on Bluesky are also extremely invested in their identities as the downtrodden underclass, and evidence that they’re pretty well off, actually, threatens them.

I think that’s all short form social media, really, but it’s also genuinely a way that far right propaganda has crept into liberal/left discourse in order to shut it down. This idea that there exists in “the past” a preferable society where there was both plenty and “pure” is false and anti progress

A lot of people really have trouble understanding that the incredible improvements in life quality over the last roughly 100 years doesn’t mean “everything is perfect and nothing can be improved so shut up.” Not realizing that things have improved and how can be a barrier to more improvement though

people in the past didn't have to worry about how nutritious their food was because they were more preoccupied with eating enough obesity and its related health consequences is evidence that people are much richer in the modern day

and not in the ethereal stone age past your grandparents worried about this stuff! it's within living memory! food stamps as we know it didn't exist until the 60s! if you were broke you just didn't get any food!

it's an unbelievable luxury to be worried about food having too many preservatives

And how unhealthy. Even in grandparents' living memory.

“This thing I inherited from my grandparents is so much better and sturdier than things I buy today.” Yes, because *you inherited it.*. You didn’t inherit all the other stuff because it broke or wore out or was just junk that got thrown out when somebody died.

While I don’t ride or die for Pete Buttigieg, the vitriol directed at him is completely insane. “When I was younger I wished that I could have taken a pill to turn me straight; but I have accepted and embraced my identity now” is an *extremely* common sentiment from Millennial and older gay people!

*deep breath* Young people’s ignorance of how homophobic American society was 30 years ago is a welcome sign of progress. Young people’s ignorance of how homophobic American society was 30 years ago is a welcome sign of progress. Young people’s ignorance of how homophobic American society was 30 y

OK Wil’s point simplified. An e.g. Back in the day a pair of shoes would cost a week’s wages. Let’s call it $1000 Today shoes are cheaper approx $100. So today you could buy 10 pairs of shoes for a week’s wages. Someone who can afford 10 pairs of shoes is richer than someone who can afford one.