GooberEar @ GooberEar @lemmy.wtf

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My father's side of the family is super, duper, ultra hardcore "conservative" Trump-loving "Christian".

They love, love, love to bring up politics at every conceivable opportunity. It's one of those situations where I have loathed going for visits for decades and sometimes even making the obligate check-in calls plays heck on my "nerves".

But in the past few years when the conversation turns political, I've started hearing big shifts in tone when it comes to opinions on the ultra wealthy in the USA. The last time I was at a family gathering around the holidays, they were berating the Luigi situation and talking about how disgusting it was that anybody would do that, let alone condone it.

That conversation literally did a 180 once I pointed out how it was interesting that the school shooting that happened that same day (or maybe it was a day or two before/after) had received a fraction of the coverage. And it was interesting how murders of people who aren't rich don't get that kind of coverage. Basically, when people like you and me get killed for whatever reason, you don't hear about it. But a rich person is shot and suddenly it's national news and top billed news for weeks. Wonder why that is?

And those conservative "I hate liberals and liberals should be shot" relatives of mine were in complete agreement.

So, whether you think it sucks or not, you need to know that if you actually want change and actually want things to improve, you're going to have to forgive and you're going to have to find common ground with people that you otherwise disagree with on a fundamental level. Fuck you if you say otherwise, you are wrong. And I don't say that lightly.

I'm super jealous because I've wanted to have Canadian citizenship since back in my late teens / early adulthood when I realized that there was already a version of America that actually lived up to American ideals and which offered same-sex marriage as well as universal healthcare. That weed and apparently codeine are legal there make it so much more bittersweet.

The only people I've known personally to get citizenship are those who married a Canadian citizen. Which sucks for me because I'm already happily partnered and there's no way I'd give that up for anything, not even Canadian citizenship, awesome and appealing as it is.

Back in late 2023 or early 2024, I was doing chat support with one of the major US e-retailers due to a return & refund situation that I was honestly expecting to be a problem because that type of thing pretty much always is for some reason.

I ended up getting escalated to a higher tier tech named Muhammad who was miraculously able to quickly address the problem that his peers seemingly could not. At the end of our interaction, Muhammad thanked me for my patience and kindness, and replied something along the lines of "see you on the other side."

For some reason that random and otherwise meaningless expression has stuck with me ever since. Hardly a week goes by without me thinking about it at least once.

It was a reminder that our time here is limited. And while I'm not a big believer that there is another "side" like I assume someone named Muhammad believes, it was still somehow comforting and an important reminder of perspective.

Instead of: "They're a disgusting troglodyte" Say: They are clearly ingenious enough to recognize the utility of having a stable living environment to retreat to for protection that's superior to any structure they could possibly build using the technology and techniques available to them at the time.

Ssssssweety, are you losing weight because you look so sssssssskinny.

Looks just like me when I am fussing with my bond's eye tree.

And if it weren't for that fucking asshole fish, I wouldn't have to sell feet pics and host an Only Fans to pay my student loans.

If it's got platformer elements, then it's a platformer, right? Yes? Then Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is it for me.

I won't say it's my favorite, but I didn't see it mentioned, yet, and it definitely deserves at least one mention: Earthworm Jim

Thanks, Obama.

Not even trying to be edgy here, but I personally wouldn't consider buying a used apple product (that has a battery).

My Mac laptops for work have all failed before the standard 3 year auto-renewal period. Two failed hard drives in the earlier laptops, and 2 failed batteries in the newer laptops. My partner and his family are all iPhone users, and from the observation of a casual yucky outsider (aka Android user), there seems to be a high rate of failure with the batteries. Like, I went the first 10 years of my smartphone existence without even knowing that lithium batteries swell up and die, to now I hear about it on the regular because of Apple products.

I don't know what all goes into consumer confidence, but I can tell you that my consumer confidence has been very low and very pessimistic since November 2024 and that pessimism went into overdrive by January 2025.

I've dropped all discretionary spending on big ticket items, even the things I have been planning for and saving for since long before the election. I've also cut way back on spending for essentials, skipping out on preferred and "luxury" brands at the grocery store and instead going for generic and brands that I like less but which are cheaper, or just going without. I've also cut way back on services. If I don't know how secure my income is or how long my savings might last, then I'm not going to speed up my ruin by spending now.

Ironically enough, the only people I know who seem to be happy with the economy are the ones who were cheering for the "I did that" stickers and asking "why is eggs so expensive" under Biden but noticeably silent on those topics once Trump became president. Unfortunately for the economy, they are almost entirely low income folks (i.e. social security, food stamps, minimum wage part-time jobs) who aren't typically drivers of the economy to begin with and who are probably going to be hurt the worst if and when things get really bad.

I love, love, love, love, love hognose snakes!

I was a young kid the first time I encountered one in the wild. The hognose lifted the front half of its body off the ground, flattened its neck, and hissed at me like a cobra when I got a little too close. I was the type of kid who just HAD to catch them all, and I knew for sure it couldn't be a cobra, so I persisted. Then the snake rolled over on its back, opened its mouth, stuck its tongue out, and slobbered in an ill fated attempt to appear dead. It was so "dead" that when I rolled it back upright, it immediately rolled over on its back again. Like any dead thing would do.

Just overall super neat behavior and comical to say the least.

Certainly a much more entertaining deterrent than most of the other snakes in my area that just seem to shit themselves and emit disgusting smelling mess in the process.

I picked the wrong day to quit sniffing glue.

The version I like better for some reason: Pi day is just a fake holiday created by big math to sell more formulas.

Perhaps a couple of Lipitor? In my house we've started saving money by substituting Wegovy for eggs in our recipes.

I'll never have biological children of my own and I'll never get to use that benefit. From a strictly selfish standpoint, it stings a bit that pretty much all my heterosexual friends and coworkers, male and female, get a minimum of 12 - 36 weeks of paid time off that I'll never get.

Having said that, I'm genuinely happy that they get it, I think it's a shame that 12 weeks per child isn't a minimum standard for paternity & maternity leave. In the professional settings I've worked in that offer paternity leave, I've never experienced a coworker complaining or making fun of a man taking paternity leave, nor have I ever heard of a man NOT taking paternity leave when it's offered.

The places I've worked that offer it also usually offer flexible leave, so it's very common for new dads to take 4 - 6 weeks off at birth, and then work a reduced schedule for the remaining time until they're out of leave, after which they return full time. Even some of the moms are doing that as well, basically maximizing the amount of time that at least one parent is on leave and at home with the newborn.

But, outside of professional settings and particularly within conservative/Republican family and acquaintances, typically lower-to-middle class people, they act like paternity leave is ridiculous. My dad laughed out loud a while back when I mentioned I was taking over a new project because my coworker was about to go on paternity leave "What? Are you serious?" In my opinion, "toxic masculinity" aka stupid, ignorant, and useless concepts of overly rigid gender stereotypes is where this type of opinion is rooted. That and probably a good degree of jealousy.

A number of years ago, I was walking past a cow pasture when I heard a ruckus. The cows were mooing up a storm and there was a flock of geese in the pasture honking back in agitation. By the time I got to the top of the hill and could clearly see what was going on, I witnessed a good ole fashioned standoff.

Perhaps triggered by my sudden appearance in the distance, the geese spooked first. The honking intensified and they started retreating in a hurry as they prepared to take flight, cows charging towards them at full bovine speed.

As the last goose just lifted off the ground, one of the cows managed to catch up and stomp it out of the air mid-flight. Poor bird came crashing down underneath a barrage of hooves flailing on top of it. It tried to lift its head off the ground a time or two, but within moments of its body being crumpled, it was dead.

Everybody acts like Canada geese are bad-asses, not to be trifled with. A goose will leave you broken, but alive. Cows, on the other hand, are blood-thirsty, cold-blooded killers. Watch your back.

In the south we have an idiom "Birds of a feather flock together", which means people tend to associate with others of similar morals, ethics, beliefs. So, needless to say, I'm hardly surprised. Trump associate and pastor? There was almost no chance this filth was anything BUT a pedophile.

If things continue like they are currently, I would not be surprised to see a new Spiderman movie in the next 5 - 10 years that's just "Spider-Man" "The Spider-Man" or "Spider-Man One".

I kissed a sphere and I liked it.