After this's all over, I hope the U.S. gov't bills Trump for the damage he's done to our reputation

[univalve]

His biggest issue seemed to be illegal immigration (they come here for free stuff and then complain about the free stuff, they don't pay taxes). Just a very superficial take on the immigration issue

exactly this leading to the rise of the far right here in Germany right now...

[Gone Fission]

And when a country doesn’t have replacement-level birth rates, it isn’t immigration that’s “national suicide”—it’s the lack of it.

[Seance]

Human migration is increasing globally due to climate change and the environmental and economic disasters brought about by climate change.
And the phenomenon is only going to increase as time goes by.

Climate change is also facilitating the ease with which pathogens travel and increasing the numbers of dangerous situations that can lead to pandemics.

But facts and science are "bummers" and a good number of people are sick and tired of them and they want to "return to normal" and by that they mean that they want to return to a mode of living in which they do not think about the consequences of their actions.

As long as pollution or wage-theft or forms of wage-slavery occur "over there", over the horizon, out of sight, happy consumers consume happily. But since earth is a globe (sorry Charlie! It's not flat!) there is no "over the horizon" or "over the hill" that isn't where somebody else is desperately trying to live and breathe and "make a living."

Lack of empathy isn't just a moral failure—it is a failure of logic. If you shit into the river, it is going to contaminate somebody's drinking water. How can you expect those upriver from you not to shit in the river when you shit in the river without a care for those downstream from you?

Sure... it's possible to try to play "king of the mountain" so that your shit flows into the source of the river. But the system of rivers are all connected and there are atmospheric rivers and the global atmosphere and oceans are all connected and the solution will never be found by cowering in the cult of those playing "king of the mountain" who keep screaming the loudest about how their right to shit in the river is being "violated." Which then leads people to the leap in illogic that if any "king of the mountain" is prevented or hindered from shitting in the river, then they too will be prevented from becoming "king of the mountain", at which point they will gleefully shit in the river until their eyes get sucked back into their sockets.

[Chankgeez]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vincS_wW0xM

[Seance]

[youtube]https://youtu.be/FedGgBn9giM?si=Y_SeGLJ98j6LaIVm[/youtube]

[youtube]https://youtu.be/jW0Vuh3PKUU?si=_Af0P9J5ukpwweTv[/youtube]

[youtube]https://youtu.be/6gBV-Nzq7Pg?si=0lbiFQZc-3wfAv97[/youtube]

[Seance]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tocssf3w80

[Gone Fission]

https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-a ... -sabotage/

[Chankgeez]

What's the best pedal for signal gates?

[Pepe]

[Seance]

What's the best pedal for signal gates?

I think they're using one of these connected by bluetooth.

[Chankgeez]

in stereo?

[BitchPudding]

I'm glad some of you can laugh. I really am.

Meanwhile, I lie awake wondering when my in laws will be dissapeared off the street simply for existing.

I sob late into the night wondering if my children will live to see adult hood.

I force away vomit through hyperventilation wondering if my and my wife will get to die old, happy and together.

I sit outside at 4am in my studio, staring at the sky towards San Francisco. Wondering when I'll see a sudden white flash followed by nothingness. Unaware as everything I know and love is wiped from history.

God I wish I could laugh. All I want is to laugh.

At least I can keep trying to sedate myself. A coma would be better than living like this.

[Chankgeez]

Oh, it's not at all funny. At this point, we've got nothing left but humor though.

[Seance]

The world is topsy-turvy. It's understandable to feel overwhelmed or angry/devastated. If you need help, reach out. It's there. If you feel some type of way, you aren't alone. Others are in the same or similar situations. Reach out. In person if possible

Things do matter. In the face of unspeakable cruelty and stupidity, each person has to hold onto their humanity and protect and nurture what makes them human. As bad as things are, human history is full of bad times (this one is just being fed by a swathe of society who don't want to confront the fact that human activity created a climate catastrophe that might destroy the ecosystem that keeps all of us alive because "change would be inconvenient" and so they are looking for easy answers that make them feel good and are trying to destroy anything that makes them feel bad—confronting reality, understanding cause and effect, addressing issues of inequality, etc.).

Given all of that, be a person who faces facts and addresses issues and institutes positive change even if it is difficult or inconvenient.

Humor, much like a poetic sensibility, weaves together several seemingly disparate conceptual strands at the same time in order to engage with how human perception and conceptions work and in order to illicit a human response based on wonder or the frisson created when two or more narrow conceptions are conflated in order to elucidate a higher truth about existence (and yes, this sometimes takes the form of a haiku or a fart joke and yes, sometimes they are equally essential to help us get through life). In poetry and in humor, the literal and figurative "meanings" from seemingly disparate linguistic and conceptual areas are woven together to show that, while human definitions are insufficient and incomplete, meaning exists and we can strive to achieve it when our words and actions are fueled by passion, emotion, thought, intuition and imagination.

The situation and its stakes in the current moment are real. But if you've read history, you know that people have been in similarly dire situations before. Do what you can. Be who you are. Read some Primo Levi or Robin Wall Kimmerer or Wendell Berry or Giordano Bruno or Ernesto Grassi or James Baldwin or Denis Johnson or Nikki Giovanni or Rabelais or Toni Morrison or Richard Powers.

Where do you find meaning and beauty in life? Connect with it, feel sustained by it and put everything you've got into sustaining that which sustains you.

Humor isn't escapism... humor involves seeing multivalent reality and speaking the words that your intuition calls forth from the crucible of your feelings, sensations, emotions and thoughts as you confront and reflect and are immersed in reality in the moment of now.

[dubkitty]

my favorite bumper sticker this past year was “THE DESPAIR IS NEVER-ENDING YET I REMAIN SILLY.” i think you’re conflating things more likely (people we know being personally affected) with unlikely things (the Bay Area getting nuked…the only possibility of that is from Putin who’s Trump’s pal). part of surviving almost to 70 in America taught me long ago not to buy into worst-case scenarios because that seldom occurs. is this going to suck? you bet. are we all gonna die? eventually. in the meantime i need to scoop the litter box. Reagan was going to immanentize the Eschaton for his fundie supporters, too. or at least that’s what they said on KPFA.