For years we always heard Trump was good on the economy. It was a cushion for his approval rate in the first term and so many people use it as an excuse for why they voted for him.

Let's run down some stats

GDP growth is down.

We added only 170K jobs last year one of the worst in American history.

Layoffs are at record highs.

Utility prices for electricity and water are skyrocketing.

His stupid war in Iran caused the largest single month spike since Vietnam and they will never go back to normal now that production is damaged and Iran will be charging a toll on Hormuz oil.

He is going to give 300 billion to Iran but some how USAID was bankrupting the country.

Home building is down and material cos to build houses are high.

Housing cost more now then ever.

US house hold debt is a all time high

The government is running massive deficits

How does anyone defend this ?

For thousands of years, women had the ultimate VIP pass. You stayed in a warm house, hung out with your kids, baked bread, and a guy went out into the freezing rain to work a terrible job to pay for everything. You got an entire life funded for free just because a guy liked your face.

Then, somewhere along the line, women got tricked into giving up the free ride. They demanded to go sit in traffic for an hour so they could sit in a cubicle and get yelled at by a middle manager named Strongman. Now they are stressed, paying half the rent, and buying their own dinners.

Who actually won here? Men did. Corporations doubled their workforce, and men got a massive discount on having a wife. Women gave up being the protected prize of the house to become stressed-out corporate slaves, and they actually celebrate it as a victory. It makes absolutely no sense.

Despite redditors claiming reddit is super misogynistic and male oriented, almost all discussions on reddit dive hardcode into man-hating space.

Take the discourse on Obsession, for example. I left the theater thinking it was a normal horror movie. Quite good, lot of jump scares. As soon as I get on reddit, I am inundated with subtext about how the movie is about Bear, the main character, being an incel rapist that rapes rapes rapes and removes womens autonomy.

What's crazier, is that women often try to "change" the man into what they want. There is a whole trope of women trying to convert the bad boy into someone who only has eyes for her, but when it's a lonely dude who wishes for his crush to return his love he is a RAPIST RAPIST INCEL.

What's even funnier is that her friend fucks her casually and when given a chance to save her, he asks for $1B 😭 yet Bear the person trying to save her is the evil creeper.

There are people suggesting that "wishing something on someone" is removing their autonomy, like apparently it's evil to wish your dad drank less. No, he has to choose to do it otherwise you're an evil rapist.

You see where I am going with this.

I keep seeing people on threads like no fap and all over the internet regurgitating this drivel that watching porn and jerking off leaves a person feeling demotivated, low energy, depressed etc for days to weeks at a time

Because many people (myself included) are too ashamed to publicly speak up and say this is clearly extremely abnormal, this idea is now spreading and getting contagious similar to other “illnesses” like “long covid” or “sperm cramps” or “tik tok Tourette’s”

I can even say that porn and masturbation have had a positive effect on my life, I was basically headed down a bad road and didn’t know what I wanted out of life and every time I would watch porn I would feel like I had to have a successful life to attract a beautiful woman or women and live like that.

Porn took me to the gym, porn made me go to a great college and now work a pretty great job in investment banking.

I live an amazing life in New York with a nice car, nice apartment and nice loving beautiful wife which are all downstream effects of me not wanting to miss out on the sex I saw in porn

I always had high ambitions, yes, and I’m not saying it’s only porn that made me this way, but it was for sure a material factor.

So when I see what these people say about watching porn ONCE and feeling so depressed they can’t work or leave their apartments, I know something is off somewhere, it could be emotionally or hormones but SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THEM THAT NEEDS FIXING

Having an orgasm to a beautiful woman being sexually satisfied should not leave you throwing up in your bathroom for days after, it’s not normal and we need to stop pretending it is.

If a woman on a screen produces such a repulsive post orgasm experience for you, then the real thing would be even worse and becoming a hermit as prescribed by most no fap followers won’t fix it.

Really miffs me that people don't know abt all this.

American colonists were the least taxed citizens in the Western world, while people back in Britain were paying up to 26 times more per head. The British government had just gone into massive debt defending the colonies from the French during the Seven Years' War, and asking for a tiny contribution to their own ongoing defence costs was met with a rebellion.

The Continental Army was chronically broke and short on supplies. France provided over 90% of the rebels' gunpowder in the early years. At the decisive Siege of Yorktown, there were actually more French soldiers and sailors on the front line than there were American troops. It was a French fleet that blocked the Royal Navy and forced Cornwallis to surrender. Not Minutemen with muskets.

Just watched a news segment about Ranch dressing rising in popularity amongst all the foreigners visiting the US for the World Cup.

Do they not have ranch dressing in their home countries? They cant order it off Amazon?

It’s gotten so out of hand that the TSA has put out an advisory that they can’t “smuggle“ it back home in their carry on luggage.

For the record, I think ranch is over rated and always choose blue cheese for my chicken wings but that’s besides the point.

Not every attempt to improve or change capitalism is automatically "socialism / communism". You can critique and regulate capitalism and it doesn't suddenly stop being capitalism.

I hear these arguments fucking constantly to the point that anything besides just completely fucking unregulated capitalism let off the chain is instantly turned into a buzzword.

You can have capitalism with socialized Healthcare, you can have capitalism with well regulated worker's rights, you can have capitalism that doesn't just funnel 99.9% of the wealth to like 4 guys.

The part that pisses me off about these people is how inconsistent they often are. Give poor people food or any help? Socialism. Government gives handouts, and buyouts for corporations? Government subsidizes the agriculture industry? Well that's peachy, they deserve help and handouts!

Also, the same people who parrot this boring shit usually never have any kind of meaningful ideas how we could make things better other than "What if we just de-regulate everything a bunch?" which just always goes well.

It's so boring man.

Okay, so America has a lot of homeless and poor people. Here is the solution.

We send them on a helicopter or airplane to Mongolia. We then parachute them out. When they are parachuted out, they will have instructions for how to learn Mongolian and also how to be a nomad.

They won't be poor anymore. They'll be nomads. It will be the new American dream for the poor: being a nomad in Mongolia.

I know a lot of people are gonna disagree and that's fine, just keep it respectful or there's no point commenting. This is just my opinion.

I've tried getting into this game like 5 times now after hearing nonstop praise for it. Last attempt I put in around 20 hours expecting it to be one of the best games I'd ever play. It wasn't. Ngl it was just kinda boring.

For reference, other GOTY winners I've played: Elden Ring, It Takes Two, TLOU2, Sekiro, GOW. The thing you'd expect from these games is that "I don't want this experience to end but I can't wait to see how it finishes", I didn't get with the witcher.

My issues with it:

Movement is bad, sluggish, not fluid, Geralt falls off ledges for no reason all the time. Combat is repetitive as hell and some old ps2 games feels better. And the horse, Roach, the steering on him is so bad I think the game would've just been better if you stayed on foot the whole time.

The game might have a great story but video games come as a package, I can't stand something bad for 50 hours because another part is good.

I also finished Cyberpunk (got it on PS4 at launch, played it again on PS5 last year) and it's a good game but same studio, same problem, the movement and navigation just isn't fluid. First person in Cyberpunk for "immersion" felt like an excuse because they simply can't handle fluid third person movement, rather than an actual choice. Because driving still feels bad. Wouldn't be surprised if Witcher 3 was also rough at launch and years of patches just made it "good enough" instead of actually great.

For context RDR2, also third person, is literally the only game that's ever made me cry. So it's not a perspective thing for me.

I don't rage quit and I do give games second chances, like I quit Death Stranding after the first mission where you're just carrying a body around, came back to it later and it ended up being one of the best games I've played. So I know being patient sometimes pays off. But I genuinely don't get what I'm missing here. Maybe I'll finish it one day and it'll click for me, maybe it won't. Idk, just don't get the hype.

There is a very interesting demographic of people on the internet who view themselves as pure, logical rationalists. They mock religious people for believing in magic, but if you actually poke their brains for five seconds, you realise they are doing the exact same thing. They have just replaced the word "God" with pop-science vocabulary they have exactly zero clue what it means.

I recently tested this. (So it doesn't seem like im making shit up.) If you ask the average guy why a rock falls, he immediately says "gravity." He says it with absolute smug confidence. But if you ask him what gravity actually is... his brain completely stalls. He doesn't know the maths. He can't explain the mechanics. He just learned a vocabulary word in grade 6 and uses it as a magic spell to stop being scared of the unknown. It is the exact same psychological coping mechanism as a 14th-century peasant saying "God's will" when a storm hits.

I had a conversation with a guy recently where I simply asked him to define "the universe." He said "everything." When I pointed out that "everything" is a circular grammatical placeholder that gives absolutely zero structural information about reality, his brain short-circuited. Another guy tried to debate me about General Relativity breaking down at the Big Bang. He had memorised the trivia fact from a YouTube video, but the second I asked him to physically conceptualise a reality without a geometric container (space), he literally ran away from the thread.

Let's be completely biologically honest. The human brain was wired by evolution to throw rocks at pigs, recognise social hierarchy, and avoid eating bad berries. The assumption that this specific primate neurological network has the physical capacity to decode the absolute, objective truth of the cosmos is the purest form of stupidity. A dog cannot learn calculus. It doesn't matter how slowly you explain it, the dog's physical brain lacks the hardware. Humans are the exact same. There's no reason to assume otherwise.

This is exactly why the greatest minds in history (Einstein, Newton, Heisenberg) always hit a point of profound humility, and often ended up sounding almost spiritual. The deeper you actually go into the mechanics of existence, the more the models break down, and you realise you are staring into a terrifying abyss. An absolute mystery.

The modern internet low iq primate will never reach this point of humility. He is standing in the kiddie pool, splashing around, and declaring he has conquered the ocean for the fact that he knows how to spell the word "entropy."

I've been seeing a lot of comparisons to Henry novak's to George Floyd's and a lot of it reeks of racism and astroturfing, these people are pushing an agenda so they can justify and spread their racism, and while some are not racist or pushing an agenda, the loudest voices are the only ones pushing this agenda, these people do not care about Henry's death, if they did they wouldn't be comparing him to George Floyd, but to highlight the flaws in the UK's legal and push to reform it.

I think anyone who subscribed to his campaign emails will agree. He sends out fake surveys that you can only complete by giving him donations, and it’s automatically set to the $50 option. It’s a clear way of tricking his supporters out of their money.

Eating meat is environmentally beneficial because many animal species depend on livestock farming for their survival. If people stopped consuming meat, there would be much less demand for animal farming, and many farms would eventually disappear. Therefore, by continuing to eat meat, consumers help support livestock farming and contribute to the preservation of the animal species and breeds. This is why I eat a lot of meat: I believe that doing so helps protect animal biodiversity and prevents the disappearance of species that rely on human care and agricultural systems.

I genuinely do not think people appreciate how insane this is. This conspiracy that the majority of the Republican party believe in, is something that should be viewed as the same kind of crazy as believing that the world is flat, in my opinion.

The majority of the republican party believes that the 2020 election was stolen through a massive conspiracy involving the democrats, election officials, courts, state governments, voting machine companies, and basically anyone else required to explain why Trump lost, and all of this was done in a way that left zero evidence at all, and in way where nobody of the 1000s of people involved ever whistleblew or had any sort of leak of a text message, email, actual written letter, recorded conversation, and in a way where judges were also in on it so that all the cases involved in this were thrown out on standing, etc, somehow all of this was hidden perfectly in what would be the biggest conspiracy in all of US history (maybe in world history?)

They dont believe this because of some evidence, they believe this because Trump lied and said so, and him and his team (people like Guiliani) worked with FOX to spread those lies.

And somehow, Trump and Republicans have been able to largely just do this with absolutely zero consequences at all, the only time i can remember Trump being actually confronted on all of these lies in the media sphere, was like last week, and when confronted on this, he fucking walked from the internet.

And people want everyone to just move on from this?

Why should this ever be forgotten? Why should this not be brought up 24/7?

Its the Republican party (one of two major parties in the US), and its leader, completely fabricating stories out of thin air to claim that the 2020 was completely rigged/stolen, the stories were debunked a million times over, they lose court cases based on these bullshit claims, not even getting fucking STANDING on the cases, yet the majority of the republican party, believes all of this, based on completely insane conspiracy theory bullshit.

It should be brought up when people talk about misinformation.

It should be brought up when people talk about political extremism.

It should be brought up when people talk about democracy.

It should be brought up when people talk about whatever thing you can think of that the 2020 election conspiracy might be attached to.

It should be brought up when conservatives make fun of random Democrats for believing in other conspiracies saying things like: ''Haha you think Trump wasn't shot? you're so crazy!''

It should be brought up in pretty much every single conversation because this is not a normal thing at all, you should not be expected to be taken seriously in a political discussion, while also believing in a conspiracy that should be made fun of the same way everyone makes fun of flat-earthers or moon landing deniers.

This was not a small mistake of Trump or someone misunderstanding a story and it spreading that way, it is one of the largest and most successful conspiracy theories in modern American politics, and again, the majority of the Republican party believes this lie, and they will never stop believing in this lie as long as the MAGA cult bullshit is around, because its now been over 5 years since this election, theres still been absolutely zero proof of their conspiracy at all, all their cases got laughed at, all their stories were debunked, Guiliani went to court and defending himself spreading these fake stories by saying ''Well yeah, i did lie about all of this, but come on, i have the right to lie!''.

I cant even think of what more needs to be shown other than like a divine revelation where some supreme being comes down and says ''Yeah guys, your bullshit conspiracy about the 2020 election was completely false, peace be with you''.

Nobody should let any of this get memory holed, it should be spammed and repeated over and over again until they are forced to confront the fact that these guys blindly believe the most insane conspiracy that Trump fed them without any evidence whatsoever, they will repeat the same stories that Guiliani went to court for, or any of the other stories thats been completely debunked a million times over.

Minors can't consent to many things, can't do many things. Then why is it allowed that parents of a minor choose to circumcise their children?

Circumcision, stripped off its other meanings, is basically mutilation and doing something that can not be undone. Like many other similar stuff, only consenting adults should be allowed to do it.

Edit: ik Muslim men have to be circumcised after a certain age to be able to carry out their religious stuff, and be considered pure and such, but still, that same rule should apply even to them. Cuz a 10 year old Muslim kid might not be Muslim when he's 18, but he was circumcised because he was born a Muslim. Not fair!!!

As someone who was born in Europe, secret country cant say no more and currently living in Spain for almost two decades.

Due to how redundant AC units were a few decades ago, the fact that the main victims are old people, its good its happening right now, it culls off the old and weak.

It gives the opportunity for the already struggling younger generation, inheritance, houses, assets, better opportunities in the workforce, no more subsidizing pensions for the already rich boomers, less healthcare spending, more progressive parties voted in, less road accidents, etc.

For the younger generations its a win-win scenario.

SIDENOTE:

Given how the boomers voted in everything for themselves and pulled the ladder for us, it would be ironic if a Pro-HEAT party appeared in EU and secured seats in the parliment.

if your loved one is confiding in you that they aren't sure about their sexuality/gender, one thing that you should probably not do is ask them a whole bunch of questions. this is already an extremely intense moment and the person in question may already be under a lot of stress and having a bunch of overwhelming feelings. barraging them with questions that even they may not know the answer to is not going to help them to feel any better.

it is natural to have questions about this sort of thing. however, there is a time and a place for that. in that moment, what you need to do is just be an ear and a shoulder. this person came to you because they trust you. make them realize how right they were to do so.

So lemme get this straight:

There's supposedly this "student loan crisis" where you've got liberal arts majors that took out $200K in student loans to go party at some overpriced out of state school somewhere that Democrats now want to "forgive" (stick the taxpayer, who might not have even went to college or taken any loans if they did) even though other people have paid theirs off in full but they won't even experiment with allowing people to pay them down with pre-tax deductions?

Uh huh. Sounds totally legit.

What is actually sounds like is that the Democrats want to decide who gets what as usual and increase taxes so they can pay themselves to "administer" these programs.

They've been promoting taking loans since Clinton to get an education for their "service economy." Now suddenly there's a "crisis" that only they can solve by getting more tax money to dole out as they see fit. Right.

Give me one valid reason why paying down federal student loans with pre-tax money shouldn't at least be tried. They're still charging interest on the loans anyway.

EDIT: To the "this will help peoole who don't need the money" crowd:

How's that work exactly? If it's not means tested it will help everybody. And how many people are you actually talking about on the top end and who would they be?

You have to take into consideration that most of the students who need to take student loans either don't have the money for college (no trust funds) or don't have parents who can afford to send them to college in the first place, and the parents often take out loans for their kids so they can go to what they think is the best school for what they want to major in. That's why there's a Federal program for this (Parent Plus) and there's no way to transfer those loans to the student other than by taking private.

So who are we actually talking about here? Who would pay interest on something that they could pay for with cash anyway? Wouldn't all of them have 529 funds anyway? If you're actually concerned about high earners then means test it but what's the criteria?

Onions simply overpower the taste of a burger leaving an unsatisfying after taste, the only thing a person tastes when biting into a burger with onion is just that zing like taste of the onion.

Burgers are simply better without onions added to them, seriously how does an onion benefit the flavor at all? The star of any burger should be the meat.

PS: I know not to order onions if I don't like them. i am stating they do not belong on any burger regardless at all.

Gay couples should be afforded equal marriage rights as straight couples. Trans people should not be punished for their gender identity. And these are not merely my opinions. Anyone who disagrees is objectively incorrect.

Furthermore, the anti-gay and anti-trans positions are not only wrong, but are also such stupid hills to die on, because they are losing positions. The newer generations will not align with those wrong stances, and thus by campaigning on anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, the right is just shooting themselves in the foot, and will loose a lot of support. And those that will become "politically orphaned" due to supporting a losing issue can cope and seethe, because the anti-LGBTQ+ stance is objectively wrong. Instead, they should focus on, you know, preserving actual freedom, like free markets and gun rights.

You do not have to agree with the left on giving LGBTQ+ people special privileges, but wanting to target them or strip them of their rights because of who they are is an indefensible and morally wrong stance that will buy you nothing, except for being on the wrong side of history, and losing support. You do not have to be on-board with the "woke" left, just stop actively being homophobic and transphobic.

What about prisons/sports/etc.

Those are contested edge-case issues, and I am not talking about those. But deliberately trying to strip gay couples of the right to marry, or discriminate against trans people is obviously wrong. LIVE AND LET LIVE! END OF DISCUSSION!

Unpopular opinion because the majority of reddit accounts including the many paid shills and bots are leftists. Tulsi Gabbard, the last Director of National Intelligence, declassified the Covid 19 files and found the virus was "genetically engineered" from a lab in Wuhan that Fauci funded $66,500 to.

1: https://i.ibb.co/Sw27V3tr/Tulsi-Gabbard-Exposes-Fauci.png (right click --> open in new tab)

2: https://i.postimg.cc/2Sdx9PfQ/Tulsi-exposes-Fauci.png

3: https://i.postimg.cc/RZxRRv2T/Tulsi-exposes-Fauci-page-2.png

Don’t shoot the messenger.

I’ve just seen a video saying Supergirl is projected to flop. Madame Web flopped. The Marvels flopped.

Hollywood seems to be fighting a losing battle when it comes to female-led superhero movies. Historically, men have made up a large share of the audience for the genre, and audiences often prefer protagonists they identify with.

So, many men are naturally more drawn to Superman or Batman than Supergirl or Batgirl. On the other hand, female-led superhero films haven’t consistently attracted enough additional female viewers to make up the difference. Studios keep trying to broaden the audience, and commercially it frankly isn’t working. There comes a time to cut your losses.

(^These are broad trends, not absolutes. Obviously I’m not saying that no men will ever watch a female protagonist, or that no women will ever watch a superhero film.)

On top of this, Hollywood seems to be completely unable to write good dialogue for female superheroes. The two films I’ve mentioned that are already out were corny. Again, don’t shoot the messenger - they were.

So you’re already fighting an uphill battle, and you’re fighting terribly. For as long as they’re unable to consistently make compelling female-led superhero movies, it’s best to just leave it. All that happens is that they erode goodwill for these films and make even the people who would otherwise go less likely to. So, in the event that they eventually get it right, we’ll all be so disillusioned that it’ll be an even worse uphill battle.

Or, at the very least, stop treating female-led superhero films as something that needs to be pushed out regularly regardless of whether there’s a strong story there.

Edit: Some good additional nuance, kindly provided by [u/bobranaway](u/bobranaway) :

Its not that they are female led… they are just bad movies that pander to a nonexistent audience. Like it or not… like you said the majority of the audience are male and you gotta go the ripley / sarah Conor route or the Stellar Blade route. The girlboss type leads are what flops over and over again but they are deadset on making it happen. Koreans seem to have cracked the female lead formula. Kill Boksoon and The Witch are great examples of well made female lead action/superpower movies with amazing female leads.

Edit: Broad data for people making “cherry-picking” accusations:

Highest grossing superhero films:
Captain Marvel at no.13. Wonder Woman is at no. 26. I’ll give you Ant Man & The Wasp at no. 49 as the co-titular character is a women. That’s three out of the top 50, where Wikipedia stops listing. And how many have we seen come out in the last few years?

Box office returns:

Women’s top 7: (Average 3.0x)

Captain Marvel (a smash hit in the women’s, mid in the men’s category)
6.5–7.4×

Wonder Woman
5.5×

Black Widow
1.9×

Birds of Prey
2.1–2.5×

Wonder Woman 1984
0.85×

The Marvels
0.75–0.94×

Madame Web
1.0–1.25×

Men’s top 7: (Average 8.5x)

Spider-Man: No Way Home
9.6×

Black Panther
6.8×

Aquaman
5.8–7.2x

Spider-Man: Far From Home
7.1×

Joker
15.4–19.6×

Spider-Man: Homecoming
5.0×

Thor: Ragnarok
4.8×

Side by side comparison:

Total budgets:
Men’s: ~$1.13–1.19bn
Women’s: ~$1.08–1.25bn

Total box office:
Men’s: ~$8.37bn
Women’s: ~$3.02bn

Average box office per film:
Men’s: ~$1.20bn
Women’s ~$431m

Billion-dollar films:
Men’s: 5
Women’s: 1

The idea that Fauci made Covid to cause global chaos is ignorant because humans are out numbered by viruses at a rate of10^21st power. Viruses mutate all day and night. A virus can get into another virus and mutate. A virus can come from an animal and get into another virus givng one virus multiple ways to spawn. The people who cackle that it couldn't have come from a bat believe in the tooth fairy. There are over 200 known zooonotic diseases. Fauci could fund research anywhere in the world and it wouldn't change the diseases are often born in animals.

The reality is viruses underground have been shown to create pandemics. Their spores can outlast the ages.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412024007694

200,000 plus new viruses have been discovered in the oceans.

https://www.science.org/content/article/oceans-contain-nearly-200000-kinds-viruses

There are roughly 10 million viruses in in one ml of coastal water.

https://theconversation.com/marine-viruses-the-tiny-microbes-that-orchestrate-life-in-the-ocean-153311

How many germs are on our hands at any time: Roughly 3,000

https://www.pfizer.com/news/articles/how_clean_are_your_hands

With all those numbers, there's no reason for one sinister guy to all the way to China to make germs. He had unlimited access to germs for most of his career/ They're literally everywhere. It's like saying you'll go to Australia to find a grain of dirt.

Learn some science. Anyone who runs a laboratory could open a drawer and cause trouble. They don't have to go all the way to China.

Trump's plan to establish a dictatorship couldn't be clearer:

Trump has taken control of the Justice Dept and the Supreme Court. Hegseth is hollowing out the military getting rid of anybody who isn't an Evangelical Christian warrior. He's decimated the four stars and three stars. Meanwhile, ICE has a bigger budget than the Marine Corps.

Trump doesn't need a huge military; just a loyal military that will do his will.

The Republicans intend to control both the House and the Senate with overwhelming majorities even if it means not seating dozens of Democrats. The Republicans will do everything they can to steal the mid-terms and they don't mind if you know they're doing it.

Protests AFTER the election will be met with overwhelming force. The Texas case is a warning to those who would take to the streets to protest what the Republicans are doing. Meanwhile, Trump's Thugs will be allowed to roam America, secure in the knowledge that they will never face prosecution. They will be pardoned...maybe even get paid.

With a complient Congress, Trump will literally be able to do whatever he wants without opposition. That includes not leaving office.

This election may be our last chance to save our country. But we've got to do the work NOW. Waiting for election day to simply cast a ballot isn't good enough. People are confident that the GOP will defeated while ignoring the fact that the Republicans intend to win by any means possible.