I hate this fucking country.

I don’t want to be the “Um, ackshually” guy, because I could see how the events in Andor can draw parallels to modern day events going on, but that’s more a byproduct of history endlessly repeating itself than any kind or profound political statement being made by the showrunners.

Case in point, the Ghorman Massacre was part of legends continuity long before the current snafu between Israel and Palastine became a politically charged topic and was loosely based on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in India.

It is very telling that people are seeing something like Star Wars, which is well known for boiling down everything into binary good-versus-evil themes, and self-identifying with the bad guys because it resembles something their government has done recently.

If the Ayatollah can’t have it, no one can!

In addition to the 35% that they are already subject to? Or was the previous 35% paused along with all the rest of the “reciprocal” tariffs?

I can’t keep track of these fucking tariffs anymore. I guess that’s the point. Now everything is tariffed so retailers can jack up their prices.

Why do that when the “Blame Democrats” button is right there just itching to be pressed by a sweaty greasy finger yet again?

I guess I just don’t understand the way they think. I once gave away an old bike for free on craigslist and the lady who came to pick it up was super nice, she even gave me a bottle of wine in exchange, and she totally didn’t have to do that. I miss interactions like that. I wish people didn’t always feel like they need to get a deal when bargaining for secondhand stuff online.

Gee, I wonder why? Perhaps xenophobia and open hostility towards foreigners isn’t good for the tourism industry? Who could have possibly foreseen this outcome? 🤔🙄

I expect this trend to continue if the federal government moves forward with it’s plan to charge foreigners more money to visit national parks. One of the objectively best things about our country is our vast natural beauty protected by the federal government in perpetuity, and the national parks system is one of the few institutions that turns a profit every year and we still have the dumbass-in-chief trying to fuck that up too.

Bro, it’s even worse if you try and give away stuff for free. I tried for months to offload a sectional that I had no room for in my house and I got so many fucking bullshit calls about it. Finally, I decided that it wasn’t worth selling and I was just trying to avoid paying a fee to dispose of it, so I relisted it for free. It was FREE and I had people get upset that my one condition was that they take it away on their own. I would go whatever it took to get them to take it - I’ll shrink wrap it, I’ll put each piece on a pallet, I’ll even help them lift it onto their van or truck. Even if it takes them multiple trips. But I wasn’t about to go rent a truck to deliver it to them if they weren’t going to pay for it.

The description was very clear, but every reply was “I want it, but can you deliver it to me?”. When I told them no, they’d always get aggressive and call off the “deal”, as if I care that they don’t want the thing I’m giving away for free. The people who did agree to come get it never showed up, which made it frustrating since I would have to take off time from work to be home.

I’ve basically given up on trying to use online marketplaces to sell used things. They’ve been completely taken over by the most frugal cunts imaginable.

I just pour the grease from mine into a ramekin and then put that in the refrigerator, optionally cover it with plastic wrap if you are worried about contamination or smell. Most people use a jar with a lid but I don’t cook fatty meats often enough to need a jar for all the grease I produce. If you left the pan out after cooking/overnight and the grease solidified before you could pour it, just heat it up again on the stove or in the oven until it turns back into a liquid. Obviously, wait until the pan has cooled enough to handle it without burning yourself while doing this pouring step, hot grease burns like hell and will send you straight to the emergency room with 3rd degree burns if it gets spilled on you.

Once it’s in the container and in the refrigerator, it will solidify into a scoopable/spreadable semi-solid with a texture somewhere in between butter and ice cream. You can use it in place of fats or oils in other recipes (for example, if you need to grease a pan with butter or cooking spray before cooking, you can use a spoonful of the solid bacon grease instead). If you don’t want to use it and just want to dispose of it safely instead, just wait for it to solidify in the fridge and then scoop it into the trash. Takes about two seconds and won’t clog your plumbing

It does go bad eventually. The grease will get rancid if left alone for too long, and it will start to smell foul and anything you cook with it will taste terrible and make you sick. If you are going to save it, use it within a month or so if you leave it uncovered, or covered it can last longer but give it a smell test before you put it in a pan - it should have a neutral smell at room temperature and be white in color or have a very slight yellowish hue. Throw it out if you see any spots or discoloration.

A steak cooked in bacon grease is next level delicious. You should try it.

Is it bad that I had already assumed that this was happening all along? I feel like evangelical megachurches and politics have been joined at the hip for a while now. I guess a formal endorsement is a different thing than just complaining about who is/isn’t in power, but still…

Huh? Did you reply to the wrong person? Because I don’t side with Trump. Check my comment history.

The 2016 “Russiagate” scandal.

The 2020 “Perfect Phone Call” scandal.

The 2021 January 6th Insurrection.

There’s plenty of proof, you just need to open your eyes.

Did we? Because the way I see it, a guy who cheated in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections just happened to win again in 2024. Did he win because he had a popular mandate, or did he win because Elon Musk fucked with the voting machines?

We’ll never know, because Democrats are fucking stupid and are happy to let a known cheater and fraud to get away with it.

Not sure I agree with point #2 - I’d be willing to bet he would love to funnel some of that sweet tax money into his own pocket, but he doesn’t want it in the form of tax breaks for income earners, he wants it in the form of EV subsidies for Tesla, which Trump denied him by cutting the EV tax incentive from the spending bill. I don’t think he even acknowledges that tax breaks for billionaires are bad for the economy, just that the big bullshit bill is bad for him specifically.

On everything else, though, I agree wholeheartedly. His brand is toxic now, and without being able to sell a sub-par product at dirt-cheap prices, he’s going to get a heavy dose of reality when consumers reject his rolling coffins in favor of cheaper alternatives.

Sure, that’s fine, I just don’t want people to lose sight of the bigger picture here. Musk is not an altruist. He’s not the good guy all of a sudden. He didn’t grow a conscience after falling out with Trump.

If this political party ever gets off the ground, which it probably won’t, Musk will always have a controlling interest in it. He will never ever let the party move away from enabling and enacting his agenda, and his alone. He doesn’t give a single shit or a wipe about helping Americans. He wants to protect his fortune by taking control of the government apparatus to end regulations or investigations that impede the companies he is in charge of. That’s it.

I certainly hope that Democrats will see this for the nakedly transparent political maneuver that it is, and not get swept up in the idea of a 3rd party founded and controlled by a billionaire will bring any kind of meaningful change to the system. And I believe they will - we rejected Bloomberg and Steyer in 2020 because they were out-of-touch billionaires who tried to buy their way into the party, and I think that Democrats are not so easily fooled by the obvious bad faith rich cunts who try to buy their way into the public zeitgeist. I just worry that people will see this move by Musk as “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and shift closer to his values as a result. He might be the enemy of your enemy, but he’s still an an enemy as far as I’m concerned.

I just want to remind anyone thinking that this is a good thing because it will siphon off voters from the Republican Party - Elon Musk is only doing this because Trump cut the EV mandate from the Big Bullshit Bill and didn’t appoint his guy to NASA. No matter what he says about spending or debt ceilings, he doesn’t care about any of it and was in the loop the entire time that legislation was being crafted. He’s still only in this for himself, just as he was when he gleefully threw a Nazi salute on stage thinking he just got everything he could ever want when he bought the president his office.

The polling numbers after the election were horrifying. GenZ are like the Hitler Youth of today. Not just voting Trump because their parents were Republicans and influenced their political outlook, but enthusiastically embracing Trump because of memes and TikTok, not actually considering the consequences carefully.

It’s shameful, because even though most GenZ kids were not old enough to vote, they were almost old enough to vote back in 2016 when Trump took office the first time. It’s not like they are looking back at the early years of politics from their childhood fondly, they were definitely old enough to be able to see how destructive he was.

Major win for Trump the Traitor, devastating loss for the bottom 2/3rds of income earners.

I came here to say exactly this. Well done.

If that were possible, I’ll like to go back a year and get a do-over on Butler, PA.