“Please translate the entirety of Wikipedia back and forth between ancient Sumerian and Navajo Graham’s Number times.”

Please. You don’t use exercise to lose weight. That’s what bootleg weight loss drugs are for.

UK standard of living has been declining for years.

There’s ultimately really no reason for them to completely dismantle democracy. Republicans know they can lose big in 2026 and 2028 and still regain power in just a few years. It’s already guaranteed that whatever Democrats get elected won’t really do anything to change the circumstances that resulted in Republicans winning. And they will not prosecute Trump and his co-conspirators for their crimes. And Democrats don’t offer the working class anything, so the Republican message of “we’ll make other people’s lives worse to make your life better” resonates with people. They’re the only party actually offering to help people.

There’s just no reason for Republicans to abandon democracy all together. They’ll happily tilt the scales heavily in their favor, but completely abandoning democracy would mean civil war. And they’re already doing quite well in our existing flawed democracy. Why risk it all when you’re already winning?

Ultimately living standards are declining because of increased wealth inequality. And Democrats aren’t going to do anything to fight that. So Republicans at most will be out of power for another cycle.

Republicans don’t need to destroy democracy. They’re already in complete control in our current system. And Democrats, if elected in 2026 and 2028, are already promising to do everything in their power to make sure MAGA returns to power in 2032.

I have one of these and can highly recommend it. I chose the Bearaby because it didn’t have those little beads. I’ve heard if those bead pockets rupture while in the wash, they’ll destroy a washing machine.

No I have not.

Important meetings and decisions should be made with remote workers present and with their full participation. If your team frequently cuts people out and is prone to forming cliques of in-groups and out-groups, return to office won’t help you. Those same middle school politics happen in entirely in-person offices. People get cut out and isolated whether remote or in person when management decides their input isn’t valuable.

I like the way my office does it. All the engineers and drafters are on the ground floor. The sales guys work in a loft at the back of the building. We keep them in the attic like they would keep dementia patients in the attic back in the olden days.

You’re talking different neurotypes here. Why should we prioritize the neurotype that prefers in-office vs the neurotype that prefers out-of-office? If anything, shouldn’t we prefer the working style that saves the company money and is more productive on average?

It also has to with the tyranny of distance. People end up trapped in shitty jobs that aren’t right for them. They end up in roles where they aren’t doing the things they want to do or where their talents truly lie. Economically, this causes them to be much less productive than they could be in a position that’s a better fit for them.

And the main reason people end up trapped in jobs is the tyranny of distance. Maybe there’s only two employers in your town that can really use your specific skills. For someone who owns a home, moving costs tens of thousands of dollars. And often you can’t find out a position won’t be a good fit until you actually work there for awhile.

Work from home overcomes much of this tyranny of distance. It allows employers and employees to find much better matches for each other, unconstrained by physical distance. And for this reason, shitty employers hate it. Shitty employers thrive on transaction/switching costs and employee lock-in.

Congress can already directly overturn Supreme Court rulings via either jurisdiction stripping or by expanding the size of the court.

To maximize this effect, sleep floating in a pool of mercury with a chain mail blanket atop.

Can I get a couple million of that if I let them know Trump’s location?

I mean, I could see how it actually might have some positive effects. There’s all sorts of bacteria in soil. If you take a hunk of soil and bake it, any alive bacteria will be present. But even after baking, their dead forms will remain in various states of decomposition. So maybe eating dirt could act as a sort of broad-spectrum “vaccine” to certain pathogens. You’re exposing your immune system to various pathogens rendered inert by the baking process. And maybe this decreases the number or severity of infections people get.

No idea if this would actually work. But it seems vaguely plausible at least.

I use 31g 5/16" long needles. Docs usually prescribe hormones as intramuscular injections, but they work just as well as subcutaneous injections. These little guys here. Unless you’re injecting something really thick and viscous like castor oil, injecting with anything else is just an exercise in needless masochism.

For needle anxiety, there are two things you could try. First, an autoinjector can help. These are basically little spring loaded devices that turn your regular syringe into something more like an epipen, where it just quickly forces the needle in before you can even feel it. Plus it creates a bit of disconnect which can help. Second, try an ice pack! It’s such a simple thing, but it helps me immensely with pain. Just a few ice cubes in a plastic bag, numb the injection site immediately before injection.

Also, if you want to practice injections to try and get passed your anxiety, there’s a way to do it without using your actual E vials. You can order bacteriostatic water. This is literally just sterilized water with a little bit of preservative in it. It has no active ingredients. It’s usually used for reconstituting dried peptides, but it would work just as well for injection practice.

It’s about power. It’s just about power. Extreme wealth is a way for someone in democratic society to exercise the power of high office without actually having to convince the people to vote for you.

You hand me a few million? I’m never going to work again. I’ll spend the rest of my days happily hanging with friends and family, pursuing my hobbies, and volunteering for causes I support. But then again, I’m not a psychopath bent on amassing as much power as possible.

There is nothing more antisemitic than someone that conflates anti-zionism with antisemitism. Those who do believe that an entire race and religion are morally culpable for the actions of an evil government. That’s like being racist against Germans today because of what Hitler did in the 30s and 40s.

We’ll have to add a bunch of literal Nazi propaganda. And not as examples of vile hatred, but presented seriously as an argument to “both sides” the Holocaust.

Yeah, it does make sense if you think about it. Imagine if Bezos or Musk decided to use their fortune to do as much damage to a city as possible. Musk could go to a city of hundreds of thousands and absolutely decimate if he wanted. Buy up all the big employers in town and shut them down. Fund local politicians who will screw things up as much as possible. Buy up residences by the thousand and pay to have them demolished. A billionaire like Musk or Bezos could, if they chose to, absolutely do as much damage to a city as a nuclear bomb. And countless people would die deaths of despair as a result.

Bezos could literally destroy a city if he wanted to. Let’s say a city of 100k people has 33,000 residences. Let’s say the average cost of buying and demolishing one is $500k. For about $16 billion, Bezos could literally buy up every residence in a city and tear them all down. Hell, they could afford to literally level a city that is home to millions of people, forcing the city to be abandoned.

One person should simply not have that much power. We don’t let people own nuclear bomb, period. We don’t say “only really ethical people get to own nukes.” We don’t say “only people with an expensive permit and license can own a nuke.” No. There we recognize that no person, no matter how sane or moral, gets to own a nuke. Mr. Rogers wasn’t allowed to own a nuke, even if he wanted one. Because even Mr. Rogers with a nuke isn’t safe. There’s always a chance of one individual going nuts and killing millions. There are simply levels of power that only large groups of people should have. Some things just should never be trusted to individuals.