They’re such adorable little genetic dead-ends!

[Pug noise]

It is a bit disturbing that we bred a dog variant with the ability to scream.

Around there, yeah.

Maybe Musk will die of dehydration in the Billionaire Milking Machine before he can reach that number.

There are a ton of different year calendars. The BC/AD calendar is very much a Western/Western-derived thing, stemming from a Catholic Christian estimation. It’s convenient, because it got widespread, but it’s only one system of many.

Many ancient systems judged the date by the regnal year of the ruler, ie “Third year of the rule of Agum the Third”. It’s much less convenient for figuring out when something happened than systems that continuously count from a single starting year, but exact chronologies of events in the distant past were less important for most people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_era

The EU could make the wise decision to make the same demands to those companies that the US made towards TikTok. For our own safety.

I mean, they absolutely should.

Google has told the EU that it will not comply with a forthcoming fact-checking law.

Perfect time to implement sky-high fines for non-compliance.

non-maga right wing

How many of those are left? Two, three?

I remember before 2016, I had respect for some right-wing folk online who, while far from agreement with me, I regarded as simply legitimately misguided (in a “Free markets because gubmint bad”) kind of way.

It was… eye-opening to see how many of them went mask-off in the Trump years, and how fast and fiercely they did it.

Sometimes history DOES have a happy ending!

Same. I won’t complain if he dies, though. Bonus points if it’s death by gold

Explanation: Marcus Licinnius Crassus was one of the richest men of the Late Roman Republic, and an extremely influential politician. He was a ruthless businessman, but at the least, he had guts and smarts. One of his most famous - and successful - schemes was to create the city of Rome’s first firefighting force - a private firefighting force, which he would use to buy houses on fire at fire-sale (dohohoho) prices, and THEN put them out.

If the owner refused to sell? Well, Crassus would wait. Then offer less money. And less. And less. Until the house was burned down, as it would have without his intervention.

Immensely shitty on a human level, but brilliant business sense. Very active fellow.

Thought you lot would appreciate that Musk fails to look human even next to aristocrats of literal antiquity.

The continuous US states are 8,080,460 square kilometres.

Europe is 10,186,000 square kilometres.

In what world is that “not far off”?

We have vacation days?

“all of Europe could fit inside the 48 continental states alone” - are you sure about that, fam?

Not far off.

I can’t be certain of that until I try it

Someone shroom my lazy ass up

It’s funny. This was my relationship with my mother for most of my life, with as little ‘telling her anything’ as I could. Now we’re both in therapy and have a much better relationship.

He was arrested for US healthcare’s sins.

Sure, as soon as we all agree on what form of government to have and what actions it should take, or at least the point at which we are all willing to not take up arms in opposition against it, we can get rid of these artificially conceived borders.

and fixate instead on a handful of retaliatory strikes against US interests.

Downplaying 9/11 as one of ‘a handful of retaliatory strikes against US interests.’

The Battle of Mogadeshu, which involved Black Hawk helicopters obliterating Somali mosques with hellfire missiles.

Not even vaguely what fucking happened.

The brutal occupation of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, from 1992 to 2001 as a US-backed narco-state.

Fucking all of this.

The entire Iran-Iraq War, sponsored by US arms dealers and double-dealing diplomats, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Arab and Persian young people.

That we sold to both sides of the Iran-Iraq War is undeniable; the idea that the war itself was our fault and that 9/11 is just ‘blowback’ for that is fucking insane.

The occupation of Saudi Arabia by a western-backed military dictatorship going back nearly a century.

Christ, I don’t even know where to begin.

The violent overthrow of democracies from Indonesia to Egypt in pursuit of neoliberal international trade policy.

We were involved in the violent overthrow of many democracies throughout the years, this I agree on. But funny enough, Egypt isn’t one of them. So this had potential to be a good point, but failed by being posted by someone utterly detached from reality.

9/11 didn’t happen in a vacuum any more than the Brian Thompson assassination or the aborted coup in South Korea. These have long historical tails that trace back to a geopolitical policy that’s racked up a staggering death toll.

'Whatabout’ing 9/11 by implicitly arguing against it as a ‘violent act of terrorism’ as originally quoted, and then trying to justify it by the implicit comparison of 9/11 with the French fucking Revolution of the oppressed lower classes finally striking back against their oppressor.

Do you really not see any of these as objectionable.

Jesus fucking Christ. Utterly unhinged.

Probably on DB0.