Advertising is absolutely morally reprehensible. It is propaganda that exists only to manipulate people into buying shit they didn’t want or need. And it turns out that mindless consumerism is destroying society and our planet.

Next you’ll tell us Putin’s Russia is as strong as ever

China didn’t have to steal anything, the west handed them all of our trade and engineering secrets on a silver platter just to boost their profit margins.

You’re not completely wrong. There are many aspects of our system that are deeplh undemocratic: the way that the donor class gatekeeps who is able to run, the way politicians serve lobbyists and donors over the public will, and the way that oligarchs own 95% of our news media all create an environment where the interests of the people are not represented by our government

The supreme court and congress has put the executive branch in its place before.

The SC betrayed democracy with Citizens United and again when they gave Trump immunity for his countless crimes while in office. Don’t forget that the SC openly take bribes from billionaires.

I mean, Russia has been a fascist country for 30 years now and they haven’t collapsed

80% of Nazi casualties happened on the eastern front by the Communists. But yeah, the Soviet Union no longer exists, Russia has fallen to fascism, and now the US has too. The world is fucked.

Old appliances broke, but they were made to be easy to fix so our grandparents could just swap out the broken parts. I helped my dad replace the compressor on an older fridge as a kid and the heating elements on my grandma’s toaster. I remember my dad taking me to some locally owned mom and pop hardware store where we could buy replacement parts for old appliances off the shelf. My parents still have the toaster, but that store closed down and new stuff isn’t made to be fixable anymore (most likely due to planned obsolescence thanks to late-stage-capitalism).

On a tangent, when you think about it, throwing an entire toaster away because one heating coil burned out or throwing awag an entire fridge just because the compressor gave out is not rational. But if you tell people we should have the freedom to buy repairable appliances then they look at you like you are crazy. To me, it is the other way around. Sustainability isn’t political or a luxury, it is an inevitabe, unstoppable force of equilibrium.

My Milwaukee tools were made in China and they are fantastic. Sure, some cheap chinese made stuff is crap but the higher end chinese products are every bit as good japanese or western made now.

I hate breathing in pollution so I keep a car’s length between me and the next car at traffic lights. Cars themselves are a huge storming waste of space and I hate being in or around cars with all my heart and soul so if I make traffic worse then I will consider it a passive form of protesting against car dependency

Maybe they just really love the smell of exhaust and are trying to get high off of your emissions

Brake check!

Yeah, I follow the 3 second rule and try to keep 3 seconds of travel distance between me and the car in front of me

Too true. I would give my right hand to live in Europe rather than the US.

When I worked in healthcare there were days where I clocked in at 7am and was forced to keep working until 11pm without any lunch or dinner break. Worker rights in the US are almost completely non-existent and the way some workers get treated is hellish

Paying for early access == paying to be a stress tester.

Good point. They even have the same amount of number of syllables.

Also, Butterfly sounds too much like Butt-fly

The Soviets built cost effective, durable homes for all their homeless (tens of millions since most of the destruction in ww2 happened on the eastern front) and the world will never forgive them for it.

But then most of them would die from suffocation

I solve that by sometimes saying “upvoted” so it is clear that I am not downvoting them even if we disagree