I have four kids - thankfully I’m not in the USA. Trust me here? The meltdown isn’t about the cinnamon toast and neither do you have to buy it. Your own rage also isn’t about cinnamon toast, or your kid - these are the triggers not the cause.

Make sure you let your kids know that you love them and you care. Be on their side emotionally, even as you’re saying no to something. Direct your rage at predatory capitalism for your exhaustion, not your kid! They will forget the cinnamon toast but they won’t forget that you were angry with them if it happens a lot. Your relationship with your children is precious and delicate, and not worth wrecking for any amount of money.

Good luck, you are stronger than you know!

Reverse number the days and count them down until it’s finished? You’re almost done, hang in there!

This is the thing the fascist supporting members of the public need to understand: that everyone gets thrown under the fascist bus and nobody earns safety by cooperating with it. Not even the upper echelons of fascist leadership are safe. Fascism ultimately means that everybody is in great danger of death no matter who they are.

I am really sick of fascism! We haven’t learned the lessons and I’m not even sure we can any more. Human beings have probably been dealing with fascists forever and will need to remain vigilant until the end of time. This year has been educational and not in a good way.

I will die before I will be quiet about it, but we’re all on the list anyway so whatever.

The shitter is that Britain is a few years behind the USA. Tr*mp will be gone, but Britain will continue to elect fascists beyond that. We haven’t even started here yet and we’re the originators of the problem. Ugh!

Say Cancel now, or remain silent to confirm…

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Anywhere touched by the British empire is still recovering from the experience. The East India Company were practising fascism “a merger of state and corporate power” [1] centuries before Mussolini even named it as such.

Fuck Britain, a nation of “excellent table manners and genocide” [2] we are the original fascist hellmouth and fascism has been our chief global export since forever.

I can’t apologise enough for this shitty nation, we are trying to sort it out.

Signed, A British Peasant

Quote refs: [1] Benito Mussolini: “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

[2] Terence McKenna: “What was created by the era of the proper gentleman was excellent table manners and genocide over most of the surface of the planet.”

Names like that are not common here.

Besides their real family name is “Saxe-Coburg and Gotha” but it was changed to Windsor in 1917 due to WW1 resentment towards the Germans.

At least we got the following joke in (famous British TV series) Blackadder:

“Look, I’m as British as Queen Victoria!”

“So your father’s German, you’re half-German and you married a German?!”

Particularly as we’re probably planning to prosecute him ourselves in Britain. It’ll take a while but people here are pissed off that the “punishment” so far is to be stripped of some bullshit titles and get to live as an immensely wealthy member of the public. He’s going to prison because wealthy pedos are universally detested here and he can’t become president in order to dodge prosecution.

What gets me is that Musk isn’t even particularly clever. I don’t understand why so many people are so swayed by his alleged intelligence? The guy is a complete muppet and should be being called out for his obvious idiocy a lot more often.

Honestly I’m only moderately clever (I got a computer science degree once upon a time lols) and I would absolutely trounce Musk in a discussion about almost anything of any seriousness. Not because I’m necessarily “cleverer” than him but because he’s operating in a delusion that he’s some kind of super-intelligent genius when he categorically is not.

He’s not even as clever as many of the people I know in my immediate friend circle, who would wipe the floor with Musk any day.

Meanwhile Musk’s thinking process lacks one critical thing (among others) - honesty!

His thinking is too internally dishonest and lacks the self-reflection for him to be anything other than rigid in his beliefs and delusions about himself.

As a martial arts person of only medium stature, I also know that whatever seems big, strong and rigid can quite easily be overcome by embodying the complimentary opposites of those (or any) qualities.

You bet Musk is terrified of empathy and “woke” because a few hundred million people deciding we care about each other a lot more than we care about him would be enough to topple him and his ilk almost overnight!

Even their bunkers and cryptocurrency stashes won’t be enough to save the billionaires at this point. They all sense they’re swimming in a pirhana tank but they think they’re too special to get eaten.

They are gravely mistaken - there will come a time when they are rounded up and killed. We may not live to see it, but the ultra-wealthy know that day is coming and it’s only a matter of time.

They also know deep down that the only thing they need to do to avoid this future day of reckoning is to give away their billions, help people, just be a regular part of humanity!

That they won’t do this tells enough about their operating intelligence levels.

They are addicts. No amount will ever be enough!

As an addict myself, I pity them, because I can grow the servicing of my main addiction in a plant pot these days.

Dunno what I’d do if my addiction was likely to result in billions of people following me to the ends of the Earth with various sharp and pointy agricultural tools.

I would not be a billionaire… for any amount of money! No sane or intelligent person would allow themselves to become a billionaire without rectifying the situation in haste.

They are far less intelligent than they think, and neither time or history are on their side.

Particularly when there is a global population who already don’t have as many hopes and dreams left to live for. The distractions aren’t working so convincingly any more and we can’t eat AI generated food.

The billionaires are a coming season’s dinner.

Welp, that’s a fuckin stupid idea. Next!

So glad to read your comment @SparrowHawk. This is exactly it, and why I am no longer a hardcore atheist. We can’t connect with anyone while we’re in the middle of telling them that they’re wrong - even if they are completely wrong about factual matters. It’s essential to build connection first, then conduct any education through the connection. Without connecting it’s wasted effort.

The educating can’t come through coercion or condemnation either, because those shut people down. If we don’t offer something better then we push those people away. We might write them off and say “fuck em, who cares!” and that’s how we end up at political deadlock and perpetual war.

This is why the fascists are so terrified of empathy, because intelligent, educated people (lots of those around!) who are highly empathic (not so many, it’s a harder skill) joining together and building connections with and between the masses, already have all the tools to dismantle the whole scam we’re living in.

Empathy and education, from kindness not condemnation, is unstoppable. Though I will grant that there’s not much in it for rugged individualism, but lots in it for diverse, individuality-celebrating collectivism.

Of course we’re supposed to be arguing - we’ll never get anywhere that way.

Empathy lets you say “I absolutely disagree with your view, yet I still value you as a human, so am committed to your long-term wellbeing” and other similar bits of “radical hate speech” which, put into action will dismantle capitalism, fascism, authoritarianism, religions, prisons… you name it.

But it can’t be passive, it is something for each person to be putting into action all the time.

That’s my spiritual practise and I don’t feel personally affronted if someone disagrees with it or doesn’t understand it any more, because it’s just with myself and how I want to be in life with myself and others anyway.

There are billions of us humans and we’re unstoppable when we put aside our petty differences and work together for common dreams.

…besides, if you don’t agree with me, you’re wrong! /s

I’ve been combining eggs and my interest in Go (the ancient board game) to similar effect.

1. Invent incredibly dumb device.
2. Brand it as “Smart” to lean into Dunning-Kruger effect sales.
3. Profit!!

Extremely destructive to the future of the company, you say? Go on…?

Thanks! I’m still a Lemmy account noob though I’ve been lurking for a year. Ex-Reddit - finally deleted my account there, it was time!

Part of what took me so long to sign up for Lemmy was ADHD and trying to choose an instance to join! So in the end I picked a geek/coder/anarcho/punk/egalitarian seeming one.

Hadn’t really thought about people blocking the whole instance. I mostly just like to help answer questions and engage in some online banter.

Is this the point in my Lemmy life where I decide to create a second account on another instance just in case!? Probably, lol!

Oh shit I’m on dbzer0 - just seemed like a good geeky instance. Is it a problematic one? Thx!