And suddenly all the people who voted for Trump “for the economy” are suddenly fine with it.

I mean he literally murdered someone in the middle of midtown Manhattan (I know Lemmy is really into the “Luigi is Innocent” conspiracy theories but I legit think he did it). Even if you think what he did was justified, that doesn’t mean it’s legal. We can’t have a functioning society where you can just extra-judiciously kill people and get away with it even if they’re doing something bad. He knew what he was getting into when he did this, and knew that he’d probably get arrested and convicted. If he gets convicted it will be justified, even though I completely understand why he did it and don’t feel bad for the victim. If he is found not guilty, then the prosecution really fucked up and that’s good for him.

Even within the perspective of religious philosophy, the existence of ghosts in the sense of a spirit that stays on Earth and causes noticeable effects is difficult. Mainly- ghosts would not be made of matter, but could interact with matter. Within the realm of religious philosophy there are all sorts of explanations for the “mundane” version of this question of how a spirit attaches itself to the matter of the body in the first place, but all of those explanations kind of go out the window when the spirit sticks around and starts interacting with other matter. If ghosts only appear in sensory visions and do not truly interact with matter (I believe this was the view of Aquinas), then you have a major problem in proof and then ghosts effectively do not exist for practical purposes. The Catholic Church believes that the dead can appear to the living in visions but takes no stance on physical manifestations.

Within science, of course, there has never been a scientific observation of any supernatural being such as a ghost or effects it might have. But that doesn’t disprove the idea of purely spiritual apparitions. Then again, it also doesn’t disprove that Zorlon the Gorilla God appeared to me in a dream either. I think we can pretty conclusively say that you can live your life under the assumption that ghosts don’t exist and be completely 100% fine.

The past few months have really made it clear just how much bigotry is literally the only thing that the Republican base cares about. States rights? Gun rights? Free trade? Stopping interventionism? “Protecting children?” Turns out none of that actually matters to Republican voters after all when they can beat up and murder minorities or have other people do that on their behalf. I must admit I have been shocked at just how much of what they claimed were long held beliefs they have been willing to give up to fuck over other people they see as lesser.

Because their real answer of “Because you dumb fucks will buy it anyway” wasn’t nice enough for the press lol. Seriously as long as you dumb asses keep buying old ass games from Nintendo for way too much money they will keep letting you do it.

Perhaps a privileged take but I’d be completely willing to pay way more for games with no micro transactions or other “live service” BS. Like if economics make it so that it doesn’t make sense to sell most high budget games for $70 without micro transactions then sell me one at $100. Video games were way more expensive when I was a kid and prices haven’t risen with inflation at all. Consider that Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time retailed for $59.99 in 1998 while Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom cost $69.99 in 2023. That is a 16.7% increase over 25 years, or an average increase of 0.619% each year. Meanwhile, average CPI inflation is usually ~2% per year.

There areodern pictures of these because some places have moved them to museums or left them up as a lesson of how bad things were within living memory.

If you’re in the US this is sad

I love all the people scrambling to come up with some reason other than racism that the halftime show was bad because literally everything else they’re criticizing also applies to every ither halftime show in the past 30 years

That’s from the Epstein Files. The way they were pulled from the emails messed up the formatting so half the emails in the Epstein files have weird random equals signs.

I recommend Mint if it’s your first time. It’s really easy to set up and use and there are thousands of guides online for fixing any issues you encounter with it. I do not recommend Bazzite like others are recommending because you literally can’t change anything with it. That is fine if everything works out of the box and you’re basically just using it for gaming, but if literally anything is wrong with your install or you have a device where the drivers that come with Bazzite don’t work, you literally can’t fix it. Not as in “it’s really difficult” I mean it literally won’t let you do it. Updating drivers on Linux is notoriously frustrating, but it’s very often required especially if you have older USB peripherals you want to use.

I think they like the idea of kid rock, a famous musician who loves Trump and fascism as much as they do. The actual music doesn’t matter. They’ll give him money and support him just because he likes Trump.

I’d probably carry a gun as a delivery driver in some neighborhoods too

The Netherlands doesn’t have more guns than people though. The US does.

Edit- this is not excusing cops shooting people, I am just saying that gunless cops makes more sense in a country where everyone isn’t armed to the teeth

I explain that isn’t really what socialism is about and actually engage. Most people don’t actually know what socialism is in practice and especially in the US their ideas are from actual propaganda they had in schools. Even self described socialists in the US often fall into the “socialism is when the government does things” trap and most people believe the lie they were told in school that socialism is necessarily the complete abolition of private property and money without questioning how that would even work in practice. I would say fewer than 10-20% of the US population even has a functional knowledge of what socialism even is in practice despite having extremely strong opinions about it.

Things like the quote in the OP are “thought terminating cliches” that serve to stop thought and dialogue before alternate ideas actually get discussed rather then form the basis of actual ideas themselves. For this one in particular I ask if they have ever actually read what Karl Marx believed and if they know that even Marx agreed with the premise that capitalism breeds innovation and economic growth, at least at the start. That this is true is not a problem for socialism intrinsically. You’re never going to change someone’s worldview or undo a lifetime of propaganda in one conversation, but you can crack the door a little and maybe spark some doubt or get someone curious enough to read on their own.

Ah I didn’t see what was tripping you up. In this case, this is normally not noteworthy at all. Consider a case where a local car dealership owner is accused of committing tax fraud. If he was taken to court over it, the judge would issue an order like this saying not to destroy evidence that could be used. The noteworthy part is that our judicial system, particularly Trump appointed federal judges, has been mostly unwilling to reign in Trump’s abuses at all and so something like this feels like a win

Are you familiar with how common law systems in the US and other former English colonies work? Essentially the way it works is

1. Party A does something they believe is within their rights under the law. In this case, trying to destroy evidence. Now, the crucial part here is that Party A can be wrong about their claim, but our legal system determines that courts are the ones that have to decide whether that is true.

2. Party B sues in court claiming that Party A did something illegal. In this case, the state of Minnesota is claiming that Ice is trying to do something illegal by trying to destroy evidence

3. The judge looks at the facts of the case and determines if Party A did in fact do something illegal, taking things like precedent into account.

4. If the judge believes that Party B is right and Party A’s actions were indeed illegal, like they did in this case, they issue a judgement that both parties must abide by.

In this case, it is blatantly obvious that the actions are actually illegal but our legal system is set up in a such a way that this must be proven in court.

That is the job of judges- to interpret existing law. The news here is that a judge agreed that it is illegal and told them not to do it.

I have listened to Hakeem Jeffries a lot in interviews and the strangest thing is that I legitimately believe that he is a true believer in the Democratic project, and not a cynical opportunist. Somehow he believes that the neoliberal project from the 1990s that has already failed is truly the best way forward. Dude is a bit of a moron but I legitimately think he believes everything he says and does is right.

Tbh this is largely consumers’ faults. I know so many people who make a lot less money than I do and have similar needs from a vehicle but they still go out and buy big ass trucks and SUVs that cost 2-3x what my car would today. Yes there are systemic problems at play but ultimately the American public are not very good at making good decisions.