They’re out of money and this is their cover story.

Even putting aside that it’s not nearly enough of a bribe to be worth keeping the GOP in power, there’s literally no chance of this actually happening.

$5,000 to every US adult is about $1.5 trillion. The entire US government budget deficit for 2025 was 1.85 trillion. They’re already cutting into the core entitlements like Medicare, while at the same time trying to find another half a trillion for the military. Where in the actual fuck do you think this money is going to come from?

The only realistic option is to add it to the debt, which would mean a bigger deficit than in any year of the pandemic spending.

There is literally no chance that any Republican or Democrat votes to approve a budget like that. Trump cannot do this on his own. He can fuck around - often illegally - with existing spending authorized by Congress, but he cannot unilaterally authorize new spending. And Congress will not authorize this. Not a chance in hell.

Literally the easiest pump and dump ever. Company failing and you want to dump your shares at a good price? Announce you’re doing AI! How? Who cares?! It’s AI!

They should invest in some NFTs while they’re at it. I hear those are only going up.

This is a drop in the bucket for OpenAI. They already make $40bn a year in revenue, and that’s not even close to enough to cover their staggering capex and compute costs.

Also, for anyone who doesn’t know, an “annualized” figure means you take a single month and multiply it by 12. If I sell my car for $15,000, I can claim an annualized income of $180,000 when in reality the money I made from selling cars that year is still only going to be $15,000. It’s a number that allows them to cherry pick one good month and then act as if every month is like that.

As for the claim that it shows “excellent growth”, this is equally meaningless. It’s like me extrapolating that my three month old puppy will be the size of New York City in three years based on their current growth rate. Growth doesn’t just continue in a flat line forever.

Oh hell yes! Awesome update.

Consider this; if a guy says he’s straight, that means he’s into women, right?

Which means he’s attracted to every single woman who has ever existed, regardless of appearance, body type, hair, age, skin colour, weight…

Obviously not. That would be insane. So these categories aren’t absolute or all encompassing.

What about a guy who says he likes blondes. Does that mean he’s never allowed to be attracted to a redhead? If his blonde girlfriend dyes her hair, does she suddenly become absolutely repulsive? If a girl he otherwise has no attraction dyes her hair blonde is he automatically going to find her sexy as hell?

So if someone says they’re straight, that’s really about as meaningful as saying you like blondes. It, broadly, expresses a preference. Nothing more.

The only difference is that societally, we’re taught to treat one of these things as absolutely fundamental to our identity and the other as largely inconsequential. But in truth they both carry about as much weight.

The reality is, you’re attracted to who you’re attracted to. That’s all there is to it. The idea of trying to define your sexuality, in any absolute way, is completely pointless. You are you. There has never been anyone else exactly like you in the history of the universe and there will never be anyone exactly like you ever again. Your preferences are as unique as you are. So whether you prefer the term gay, straight, bi, pan, queer or anything else just doesn’t matter. It’s only a way of communicating a general concept, nothing more.

Now, I want to be absolutely clear about something here; I am not suggesting that these words are not important. They are, because the ideas that they communicate can change someone’s life. But they’re only important as a tool for communication; they don’t define, and they should never constrain.

So if you think of yourself as straight and then one day you meet a pre-op trans woman and think she’s the hottest person you’ve ever met in your life, it’s up to you to define for yourself what that means. It’s absolutely no one else’s business.

I’m curious about what the client would be in this context. Does it require a desktop environment, or just an X server? Are you using an existing web browser, or are you rendering web content directly in the app?

“Now please stop asking us about Iran and Epstein…”

Came to say this.

Most importantly, love requires both partners to be emotionally vulnerable, right? So then under gender roles, men can’t love women, only objectify them? Wouldn’t this make society one giant trauma factory where men are traumatized into detached sociopathy and women are traumatized into servitude?

Yep.

So what the hell are conservatives doing in relationships?

Exactly what you just said.

Are they all loveless relationships, or did all of the men cheat their gender role to develop romantic feelings?

A little column A, a little column B

If men didn’t cheat a little in the past decades where gender roles were the strongest, shouldn’t we see a kind of generational trauma so severe that violent crime is rampant and secure attachment is very scarce?

*Looks around at the state of the world…* Yeah, sounds about right.

(Most of that violent crime is in the form of unreported domestic violence, and that lack of secure attachment is masked by relationships held together by obligation.)

Glibness aside, you’re 100% correct, and the reason you’re struggling is because oh boy is it hard to be slapped in the face by this realization all in one go.

Is love possible under rigorously enforced traditional gender roles? Yes, of a sort, but it will never be healthy. It will never be truly free and alive.

But when we say “traditional gender roles”, do note how I added the “rigorously enforced” there. Breaking out of the conservative mold does not require you to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

I work in IT, I dress, look and act very masculine, I have a basement full of power tools, I know more than anyone should about guns, I play violent video games, I have a dog, I like to fire up the smoker on a Sunday and cook some ribs… There are plenty of ways that I fit the ideal of traditional male gender roles. And there are plenty of ways that I don’t. I could talk about the small ones, but the most significant would be that I’m bisexual, and I’m married to a woman who is in the army. And not, like, a clerk or something, she’s infantry. Could kick my ass ten times over, and I’m very comfortable with that.

The thing about traditional ideas of gender is that once you understand that they’re bullshit, you’re no longer required to accept the bad with the good. You get to pick and choose what you want from the buffet. My wife is one of the toughest motherfuckers you will ever meet, and a lot of her interests skew more “manly”. She likes military history, she’s a gun nerd, she plays shooters and complicated strategy games. But she still likes to dress up pretty and put on makeup, and she still likes to curl up in my arms and be the little spoon. I can cry at sad movies, but I can also be the tall, strong man who will wrap her up in his arms when she’s sad or stressed.

It’s not an either/or. It’s a whatever you want. Be the person you are most comfortable being, whatever that may. Because the best part is, when you are your most genuine self, people will be drawn to that. There is nothing, nothing more attractive than someone who truly knows who they are and gives zero fucks what anyone else thinks. The more you shed the rules that were imposed upon you, and the rules you imposed upon yourself, the more you grow into a version of you that makes you happy, the more people will be drawn to that. Don’t worry about trying to be someone else’s ideal. Be your own ideal. The rest will happen naturally.

A snail goes into a pub, comes up to the bar and orders a beer.

Bartender says “You taking the piss mate? We don’t serve molluscs here.”

Snail, outraged, asks why not.

The bartender refuses to elaborate, and just tells the snail to piss off.

“Listen,” says the snail, “I’m not leaving until I get my beer.”

At this point the bartender has had enough of this. He picks up the snail in one hand and hurls him out the door.

Two years later, the bartender is there, getting ready for the evening rush, when the same snail appears in the doorway.

Bartender looks at him and says “You again?”

Snail looks back and says “Hey man, what the hell?”

I"m not sure how much stuff out there counts as far left to you, but Doobus Goobus is very funny, and generally seems to come down on the right side of things.

You might be familiar with “States rights to do what???”

That last part is key. Data centres use up a huge amount of real estate and produce incredible strain on local infrastructure, but they produce an incredibly small amount of employment. It’s mostly just a few low-wage security guards. You could fit dozens of other businesses, employing thousands of people, into the space taken up by one data center.

• What’s New Pussycat - Tom Jones
• What’s New Pussycat - Tom Jones
• What’s New Pussycat - Tom Jones

The Arrogant Worms, and Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie. Canada stays winning.

While I agree that “settler” is too soft a term, “terrorist” is a completely nonsensical substitution in this context.

What I think you’re reaching for is more like “invader” or “occupier.” This is why many people refer to the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) as the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF).

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A Desolation Called Peace. It’s the sequel to A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. Very strongly recommended. Really excellent political SciFi thrillers with amazing world building, really good character work and a lot to say about the nature of culture as a form of power.

Yeah, hi, um… Fuckface McParasite… You have literally zero fucking say over what people do in their home you fucking moron. If that means your precious fucking lightswitches wear out faster, too bad, so sad.