Honestly, I think it might be a deal breaker for me in November. I'm willing to put up with a lot of meat-brained nonsense, but dead children so out soldiers can have an easier commute to kill more is a nonstarter.
If I do decide not to vote in a few months, and not voting gives Trump the presidency, it's what we deserve.
I wanted to be a filmmaker but was forced to choose a different path when my grandfather (who had set up a small college fund for me) refused to pay for school unless I chose something more practical. I caved and majored in journalism (my mom was a photojournalist before I was born) but was so heartbroken I dropped out in my first year. I tried a second time to go to school but I couldn't stay engaged after learning the thing I had been working towards since middle school was no longer an option.
I ended up going to work in tech instead. In my late 20's I thought I would figure out making short films on my own wrote a script, bought some gear, but when I looked at how bad I was at social media and how much I wanted someone to see my work, I thought the odds were against it.
A few years ago some unrelated mental health issues made it impossible for me to work and I am writing a script for an audio drama which is hopefully cheaper to produce and a zine about Utopia while I recover.
Bailing on my dream wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Most of my problems and regrets are related to the undiagnosed and untreated mental illness that destroyed my already struggling career a few years ago. Not making the elder millennial version of Point Break sucks, but maybe if the audio drama works I can parley that success into a streaming series (Archive 81 style).
I mean if you have monies you could get into spec miata racing. You're in it for like $10k with car and track fees and stuff, but you don't have to be a professional to compete and driving a gutted miata around a track is a lot of fun. Or go karts, though if you wanted to compete, the miata is cheaper.
Yeah I mean project 2025 is not his thing, it's the heritage foundation's thing they've been scheming for years.
Personally I'd recommend focusing your time and energy on the things you can control. As an individual, there is nothing you can do alone about it. If you feel strongly enough about it you could join or start an advocacy organization about the part of the problem you find most galling. But the truth is unless enough people both want change and are motivated to take action to get it the world will continue its decline unchecked.
Volunteer if you can, but try not to let it get to you. The impersonal brutality of our world sucks butts. Some horny french guy would tell you that life is absurd. If everyone agreed we shouldn't burn fossil fuels, we wouldn't. But we can't ever all agree about anything. Most landlords aren't malicious, they just don't understand how their greed affects others and don't care enough to try. The horny french guy's drinking buddy and metamore would say you can only laugh at the absurdity of existing at all. If you look hard enough the entire universe seems in on how fucked we all. Do what you can, but find something else that makes it bother you less (like a hobby, not a meth habit). I like writing weird stuff and being the model maliciously compliant tenant.
You totally have a move with the landlord. Follow the rules of your lease chapter and verse. I bet there is a specific clause in there about you being responsible for any unreported maintenance issues. And there is also a clause saying something about the landlord's responsibility to perform maintenance. There is usually some wiggle room, but there is probably like a two week window in which the landlord is required to fix any issues with their building.
Report everything. Get on a first name basis with the maintenance folks and whoever answers the phone for your landlord. I had a roach problem because my next door neighbor was a hoarder and left my landlord voicemails every night updating them on all the new locations I have found roaches and my efforts to eradicate them myself. Once the roaches were dealt with my landlord was very willing to overlook those maintenance fees because it's cheaper than court.
Edit: and was probably grateful not to deal with that tenant.
I always thought of prophets as particularly charismatic mentally ill people. Jesus may not have set out to start a cult, but like, delusions of grandeur and distorted self-image in someone charismatic and intelligent usually ends in a cult. In his lifetime they were basically anarchist hippies (at least as recorded by the bible), but like all cults, today the center has rotted and it's just toxic brainwashing.
Pfft you might be, that just makes it funnier to me. Chuck Norris is an actor and a white guy who knows karate. That's already like the height of unseriousness, add poo-brained conservatism and it's comedy gold. Like have you ever watched an interview with him. He is 100% that guy who talks about his hands being registered weapons but has never been in a fight as an adult. The point of those memes was that he was a washed up joke.
On a technical level, no. You're right. It would not be possible to capture the protocol entirely. But meta has serious cash to spend on marketing Threads. If they can capture enough of the ActivityPub market and were to collab with Bluesky and use their protocol (I forget the name), or make their own, it's only a matter of time before the drop activitypub and force users either to join threads or lose access to their users.
Threads and Bluesky are kind of an existential threat to ActivityPub given Meta and Twitter's track record with Open Graph, bootstrap, and public api's.
It's feeling very, "worst so far" these days. You might need to prepare for reality calling your bluff.
Embrace, extend, extinguish.
How hard is it to field a presidential candidate that is not a senior citizen and who doesn't wish to remain allies with countries engaged in genocide?
Not sure I love the sound of "drastic reforms to the government". But if we're stupid enough to give gim the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania again, it's what we deserve.