First you spec into union construction or some kind of trade. Leave the retail shit alone. It’s bugged, you can grind it for literally your entire lifetime and never get beyond store manager.

From there you go into hunting and alcohol resistance. It’ll balance out the downsides of the construction class to keep you from having to get on pills just to keep your current level.

That’s pretty much all there is to it. When you hit 50, you can spec into auto mechanic and open up a shop which is only open 10 hours a week. Oh, and get fishing. You’ll be doing a lot of it during weekdays when your shop is supposed to be open.

Hope this helps. It’s not as complicated as it looks, from seeing the chart.

I should have realized that whenever Trump gets hyper-focused on some niche issue that isn’t on the tiny list of stuff his brain comes up with by default, someone smarter than him told him about it and hyped him up about what he should do.

When I imagine Trump in six months ordering the US military to invade Greenland and take it over, a small hopeful thought occurs to me that maybe this will be the wake up call that the aware-of-reality people really needed. That it isn’t going to be okay if we just keep doing the system because it’s always taken care of us so far.

Maybe it will turn out to be a good thing, in the long run. Maybe not.

Somehow I don’t think taking to the streets and escalating the political violence between the people with all the money and power, and the rest of us, is going to lead us to the bright future I would like to imagine.

There’s a reason the American Revolution wasn’t organized along the lines of assassinating Tory leaders at random, and hoping that would do it. Freedom of association, protest, organization, and the press are guaranteed for a reason, and freedom to take shots at the leaders you don’t like is not, also for a reason.

It bothers me quite a lot that all across the world, the masses are showing unified discontent with liberal governments and friendly acceptance to fascism or fascism-light.

Canada, France, US, UK. All places that are notable opponents of the people who are good with seizing the reins of Western social media and bending it to the opinions that they’d prefer that people hold about their liberal governments.

And then the person you’re talking to says, “Well I definitely recall and you are wrong.”

You caught me, that is exactly what happened.

What’s so weird about all of this is how strange and passive-aggressive it is.

If we’re assuming that Russia did, in fact, do this: You’re not going to cause any major long-term problem by cutting one power cable. It’s just annoying. It’s like China spraying water cannons and firing signal flares at “enemy” navy boats. It’s like, “You better let me do what I want, or I’ll bug you, and you’ll have to put in some overtime repairing some minor stuff that I did! And you can’t stop me!”

If you want to war, war. If you want to get with the program and stop killing Ukrainians, you can have your assets back and start to trade again. Don’t try to tread this middle ground where you’re showing the awesome might of the Russian military machine by assaulting an undersea cable, threatening to escalate to bombing trees and sabotaging all Finland’s saltshakers if they don’t start trembling before you.

Admins of your instance supported my ban for saying that Trump was going to be a catastrophe for the climate, and we should therefore vote for Biden.

I’m not saying you are wrong, as far as voters, but there are definitely some people around here who were helping pull this particular train off this particular cliff. Happy guys? Hope you’re happy with this outcome. You supported it.

But I was assured that Biden BETRAYED everyone by continuing to allow gasoline, and the only way forward was to punish the Democrats including Kamala Harris who is a whole new person. I thought we were winning? Now that we didn’t vote for the Democrats? I don’t know, someone help me out, I’m confused.

It depends. Are you looking out for the American people, and aware that your career forever if not your very literal physical survival over the next few years will depend on having people in important roles who are smart and tenacious and have some proven popularity with the people they are representing?

Or, are you a money-corrupted ghoul so addled by campaign contributions and sociopathic consultants that the very idea of someone who’s there for reasons other than fabulous wealth for you and your friends is abhorrent, to the point that you would never let that person anywhere near power, because the mere thought of her and what she knows you to be, inspires in you nothing but nervousness and hatred?

I don’t think “both sides” and I think we need allies in power right now, even if they are the Democrats. But also, if the Democrats were going to do something about Trump, they would have at some point in the last four years. They’re going to keep sleepwalking, most of them, until firing squads come into the capitol looking for them.

Russia: We’re so mighty that all must tremble before us, our economy is stronger from sanctions, NATO is on the verge of collapse

Also Russia: Ma make em stop they’re being mean to me on Mastodon

Real gangsters don’t sweat the jibber-jabber.

I think the game they’re playing is “You better give me what I want, or I’ll sink the whole boat by supporting your opponent. You care more than I do whether the country lives or dies, so it’s a credible threat.” Wall Street does the same thing whenever a politician shows a whiff of regulating them.

It is, interestingly enough, the exact same game that the people are playing who refuse to support Democrats because of Gaza. The Palestinian cause is a hell of a lot more noble and real, but the calculus is the same. “I’ll burn the world if you don’t do what I demand.”

It’s hard to make profit when you and your customers are dead. I think awareness of the reality of the problem has started to seep into the business community.

It’s a multinational agreement, many of the signatories of which Trump will not be in charge of in any sense. And, even the US agency impacted is in theory “independent,” which under Biden gave them some leeway to ignore his instructions to them. Although, Trump will surely mount an attack on that.

The point that I was making, which the article goes into more depth about, is that this is not just outside the executive branch, but a fully independent agency. Trump can attack it, sure, but he can’t “overturn” the OECD, and getting this accomplished is not at all just a gesture.

More information is in the article.

The talks are taking place within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, a group of 38 wealthy countries that coordinate on export credit terms to prevent any one country from distorting trade relations. The countries are trying this month to hash out a verbal agreement on how to regulate their export credit agencies.

If such an agreement comes together, it would force a sea change in policy for the United States’ own export credit agency, which is known as the Export Import Bank of the United States, or EXIM. This independent agency is among the last remaining channels through which the U.S. government provides financial support to fossil fuel interests overseas.

I feel like sometimes people just read the headline, grab for the most near-at-hand thought pattern that corresponds to it within their collection of prejudices, and click “Send.”

There’s also some discussion of what Biden did earlier in his administration, how the industry responded, why they’re trying to accelerate getting this into place right now, and so on. It’s actually a lot more complex than the headline. Who knew.

It’s part of a longstanding tradition of abandoning our less powerful allies once their usefulness to us is at an end. Our South Vietnamese friends, then the Afghans, then the Kurds, the Iraqis, the Afghans again, and now I’m sure there are some people in Syria whose day is coming due.

The difference is that Trump is planning to do it to everyone, on purpose, before their usefulness is even at an end, for no reason at all. Not just people who were forced into their alliance in a desperate time of need, but people who were doing perfectly fine in their civil society in whatever corner of the world, who opted on their own to help us out, are now going to be getting killed because they did. Maybe along with their families.

A Mandarin-language CIA video appealing to informants, shared Wednesday on YouTube, was careful to note that “your safety and wellbeing is our foremost consideration.”

Until Trump gets in, and sells your identity back to your government in exchange for a hot dog.

It’s not being dissolved into the water, which would raise the acidity, but instead being sequestered into particles which sink to the bottom.

I won’t say there is definitely no unintended consequence, but I don’t think that one is likely to happen.

In ten years, we’ll be lucky if all the food is still growing to keep all these people alive. Yes, including you.

People vastly underestimate the scope of what climate change is going to do to us, quite soon.

https://predicament.substack.com/p/what-most-people-dont-understand

They’re going to offset it right into the atmosphere, and probably figure out a way to claim a tax deduction for the “offset.”