Bullshit.

EA did what they’ve been doing for 30 years: buy a competing game studio, release a few token cash grab titles under their beloved name, then shut down the studio and lay off all the developers. EA mediocritized Will Wright’s original vision for Spore, and trashed the last SimCity game with their always-online, closed architecture and slapdash support.

The really insidious part is that EA does make fun games, but they have remade the industry in their image: closed source, online only, DRM-infested, yearly release, day-one “expansion”, cash grab software that inspires none of the community and creativity that used to foster legendary franchises. And, they’ve killed countless game studios to create a quasi-monopoly to do it with.

I am still bitter over what they did to Maxis. I will never buy another EA game for as long as I live.

The B-52H equips four upward firing ejection seats for the pilot, copilot, electronic warfare officer, and gunner, and downward ejection seats for the radar and navigation officers. Each seat independently ejects. Given the low altitude at takeoff over the runway, it’s conceivable that at least two of the five person crew did not make it out of what appears to be a non-survivable crash.

B-52s have been flying sorties over Iran, but today Edwards Air Force Base is home to mostly Air Force testing and educational facilities. The only active groups there that operate the B-52 are the 411th Test Wing and the 31st Test and Evaluation Squadron. So, it’s probably unlikely that this incident was a direct result of the Iran war.

All my hopes for the safe return of all crew members onboard.

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The one-off test involved 10 AI-controlled “Terminator” drones on the front line of the Ukraine war.

Trumps “justification” is that your economic suffering is necessary so that Iran does not obtain a deliverable nuclear capability, and that he “loves inflation” because it means this strategy is working, and that inflation will decrease when the war “ends”. This is narcissistic delusion:

• “Economists have warned that, even with a swift resolution to the war, it could take until 2027 for the normal flow of goods through the Strait of Hormuz to be restored.”

• By executive order, Trump withdrew the US from the JCPOA, an effective and good faith treaty that facilitated IAEA inspection of Iranian nuclear facilities that the Iranian government agreed to and was following at the time.

• Iran’s enrichment program has been set back or moderated through historically more effective means, with Iran further hastening development when pressed by force. There is no evidence that Iran’s enrichment program constitutes an imminent risk for war by executive order.

• The neutering of Iran has been an aspiration of the US and Israel since the Iranian revolution, but full scale war with Iran has always been avoided due to Iran’s long known, strategic capabilities to prevent freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.

Narcissists insulate themselves from criticism by surrounding themselves with people who they can control and manipulate to their advantage, and Trump has appointed leaders solely based on this quality. War with Iran and Trump’s response today is not just some strategic blunder of a fallible commander-in-chief. It is the institutional insanity of a system so large, complex, and powerful that its organizational inertia cannot be sufficiently mitigated to prevent its own destruction by maliciously incompetent actors at the top. In other words, a train wreck.

The Narcissist’s Prayer

That didn’t happen. (Prices aren’t increasing)

And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. (Inflation is temporary)

And if it was, that’s not a big deal. (Inflation will go down after the war)

And if it is, that’s not my fault. (Biden caused inflation)

And if it was, I didn’t mean it. (We had to stop Iran)

And if I did, you deserved it. (I love inflation)

Afraid of what they might preach?

Government becomes more fascist, tech companies become more fascist.

People don’t like surveillance advertising, and most reject it when given the choice. Unpopular policies are squashed when the people are represented, and the Republican policies and interests of forced and extreme deregulation are being represented here, not the people’s.

That, and I believe advertising is inherently fascistic in the way that it distorts realty, and intrusively attempts to modify thinking with punitive, insulting, and psychologically coercive methods - it is corporate propaganda, and when it is combined with surveillance and purchased by the State, it becomes fascism.

I can’t wait for them to try and make ad-blocking illegal. We’re seeing a similar trend with the age verification firm Yoti “reporting” GrapheneOS users to “the authorities”, whatever the hell that Gestapo bullshit scare-tactic means. If FOSS software and ad-blocking are tools of privacy and freedom from thought manipulation, and those concepts are being attacked by a State-backed corporate entity, then the State no longer represents those values. Chrome, like so much other corporate software that has sunk to surveillance advertising with a healthy side of selling data to the government, is now just another fascist tool to punish democratic resistance.

Freedom from advertising is a human right.

If Apple and Google are sending kids nude images, then their parents are showing them porn by giving them phones.

Let me guess, the solution is age verification for everyone?

Eating a meal? A succulent Bar-B-Que meal?

It’s not about the money, it’s about sending a message… that shareholder value will always increase to perpetually borrow against tax free!

Ironically, the things that matter the most to Trump matter the least to our actual condition. We’re still putting innocent people in concentration camps, murdering God-knows-who with military boat strikes in the Caribbean, dismantling healthcare, disenfranchising American voters, and blowing up schools in Iran.

However, Trump’s failure to break the resistance with these measures has caused him to retreat into the only attention seeking activities that make him feel good: pissing all over DC with his trashy, botched, pet real estate projects, contrived fascist rallies, and lame parties thrown in Trump’s honor… by Trump himself. When you’re the President of the United States it’s easy to stumble into problems that no one on earth can save you from, something that has never happened to him before. Chipping away at his last narcissistic comfort zones with the symbolic rejection of scrubbing his name from our monuments will probably send him from the deep end and into orbit.

We’ve seen some truly, truly insane things from Trump, but they have been in the context of an American presidency. I don’t think Trump’s ego has an upper limit. If the midterm elections deliver the shellacking that appears to be coming, Hormuz is still shut, and they take away his toys? I cannot wait for a front row seat to the unimaginable display of unmitigated narcissistic rage from the world’s biggest ego imploding like a dying supermassive star.

By the end, the secret service is going to have to drag him in handcuffs kicking and screaming from a White House bunker while he wonders aloud why they won’t bring him the nuclear football.

When I was in fourth grade, in the morning, we would sit and listen to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” from an old tape deck in lieu reciting of the pledge. It felt more meaningful, and I suppose that’s why our teachers chose it as the daily patriotic ritual.

I like to think someone like Lee who possesses the heart of a musician that could create so much meaning in song, perhaps just can’t see past his own career, or through the thin veneer of simplistic patriotism, or that he simply can’t turn down his fans or an adoring crowd. He certainly doesn’t seem to be short on cash, and he performs at Trump events for free (which is probably why Trump likes him). And, he doesn’t seem to have the angry, bitter, and resentful spirit that has gripped the modern conservative movement.

Just what the hell is it that can make people blissfully embrace what Trump claims to represent while somehow letting the very real horror of what he does pass right through them?

EDIT: I suppose Trump ruining childhoods shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. :/

The number of people who think their opinion about someone else’s marriage or gender matters is simply astounding. I can’t believe people get to vote on this stuff.

Fuck your attitudes, give us our rights.

I think this is a pretty clear indication that Trump has burnt through all of the people close enough to moderate him. Even a sane president wouldn’t manage their own social media.

He’s resorting to this stuff because he can’t get a political win to supply his narcissism: Iran is intractable, the reflection pool is a disaster, the funding for his unfinished ballroom is collapsing, anyone with a shred of credibility is ditching his trashy UFC party, and his concentration camps are churning out un-ignorable human rights violations by the day.

Look for more absurd narcissism as his presidency collapses. I don’t think there will be a ceiling.

I would add that we keep producing leaders with our values, but then they get shot down by the super rich people who are actually in charge. Which then results in no leader. :/

Why do this when you can just put your phone in the microwave and charge your battery by electromagnetic induction? I’ve charged my last 67 phones this way and it’s never been a problem.

No tears for this onionpilled veggiecel in his layermaxxing phase. Sprout on yellow king.

NBC “news” everyone. Jesus, everything about this is just a big fuckin’ dumpster. It would be better if the dumpster was on fire because then at least it might be entertaining.