[the broken]

Maybe we'll see if this underwater data centers actually works. first. It's all very speculative. They literally say they're not sure what the consequences might be yet.

There's much more focus on the things the West has done, because the West doesn't care about the plight of the Uyghurs. We know about all those things, but it is important not to forget about things that happen in other nations.

Quote

Who made them such? The USA and other western countries don't get to stand back after having DECADES of manufacturing moved there (there USA began doing this in the SEVENTIES FFS) that DOES the polluting, and then stand back with their hands up and say, "they are the worst, why would they let it get so bad"...

Agreed, this is why moving their manufacturing back to Western nations is important, so pollution gets reported better and can be brought under control. Rare earths are not actually rare, they're just very polluty, it with be much better for China and the world to bring them closer to home so it can be more strictly controlled.

Information out of China is censored, so we don't get to have a like for like comparison.

[Macros]

And back on topic.

Cuntyballs has just used the war powers act to greenlight building coal fired fucking power plants.


Seriously America

[QuickTidal]

I'm waiting for The End of Return of the Jedi day...it's gotta happen at some point and the party will be LEGENDARY.

[amphibian]

This is said in an attempt to level set, not to be gloomy:

The end of the Trump administration will be celebrated, but the work to repair things like the Congressional power of the budget, the Supreme Court, grant funding, education, rooting out bigots in power, restoring LGBTQIA+ rights, getting out of wars, voting, the government workforce itself etc will take a full generation (25 years).

That work will happen and there's people organizing on the community levels, county levels, and somewhat on the state and national levels.

That work does require celebration and to be occasionally fun.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 05 June 2026 - 01:10 PM

[Tsundoku]

WTAF? The rot sinks ever deeper. Project 2025 rattles along.

Fury as Trump donor with no spy experience chosen to lead US intelligence community
The President’s decision to appoint a loyal ally with zero experience to a crucial role has sparked outrage within his own party.

https://www.news.com...58f263211b14aa8

Amph - I wish I shared your optimism.

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 06 June 2026 - 01:07 PM

[Abyss]

amphibian, on 05 June 2026 - 12:44 PM, said:

This is said in an attempt to level set, not to be gloomy:

The end of the Trump administration will be celebrated, but the work to repair things...will take a full generation (25 years).
..

the problem i see in your theory is that more or less the same assholes, different flavour, will be elected in 8 years.

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 08 June 2026 - 01:56 PM, said:

amphibian, on 05 June 2026 - 12:44 PM, said:

This is said in an attempt to level set, not to be gloomy:

The end of the Trump administration will be celebrated, but the work to repair things...will take a full generation (25 years).
..

the problem i see in your theory is that more or less the same assholes, different flavour, will be elected in 8 years.

This.

The overhaul necessary to PREVENT what's currently happening from happening in 4-8 years is maybe impossible in how the US government is built. So many "traditions" in place of laws, and laws being ignored for decorum or unity reasons.

You all needed to try and hang every single southern civil war dissident, soldier, and general....that's when this rot set in. Nixon should have been imprisoned. And Trump should have been jailed for Jan 6th by the DOJ under Biden. Ect. Every single feckless Democrat administration has enabled this to get this bad by being "nice" to the previous criminal republicans...or hell CURRENT criminal republicans.

I don't know that it's fixable now.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 08 June 2026 - 02:21 PM

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 08 June 2026 - 02:21 PM, said:

...
I don't know that it's fixable now.

That is the question. The US is so polarized, so divided i'm not seeing the opportunity for a long term fix, except possibly a situation where the right splits between it's more/less radical elements and needs long enough to recover that the Dems can actually accomplish something resembling recovery.

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 08 June 2026 - 03:16 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 08 June 2026 - 02:21 PM, said:

...
I don't know that it's fixable now.

That is the question. The US is so polarized, so divided i'm not seeing the opportunity for a long term fix, except possibly a situation where the right splits between it's more/less radical elements and needs long enough to recover that the Dems can actually accomplish something resembling recovery.

People high up in the Trump Admin will need to be punished. That's job one. If the next Democratic admin does NOT do this, then the Republican 4-8 years later will be SO much worse because they will know what they can get away with.

No one has been punished for anything. congresspeople and heads of state break laws, or perjur themselves, and nothing. They ignore lawful subpoenas. They do what they want, and they know no one will hold them to account.

So whoever the next Dem leader is needs to hammer at everyone who broke a law in this admin, Hegseth should be tried in The Hague, for example.

[Cause]

Its sadly easier to destroy than to build so it will take more time to undo the damage than it took to make it, undoubtely. In the case of America's standing in the world, relationship with Canada, Nato etc, it may be too late to ever go back to how it was. Bad for America, but perhaps better for the world overall if we end up with a multipolar balance of China, USA and Europe, rather than bipolar or unipolar. All my strategy video games growing up suggests this is the natural way of things anyway

Thankfully some damage can be reversed quickly. Because they do everything improperly or by executive decree because their congress is so dysfunctional a lot can be reversed by a stroke of a pen too. However, yes, we cant just rehire people who got fired because they will have moved on. Programs cant just be restarted in full swing.

The two biggest issues that will take a long time to repair are faith in American elections, and the supreme court (Abortion is just a subset of this). Rumors are Alito will retire, given trump another Justice. History will show him as one of the most ineffective, damaging politicians in America or world history but sadly also the most influential because of how many supreme court picks he got. Hopefully Dems fight as dirty as possible, if there is even a chance to stop it, but if they don't pull out the 'McConnel precedent' or actually make plans to pack the court America is hamstrung for decades. I would suggest they start by workshopping a different wording than pack the court.

Half of Senior DOJ will lose their bar licenses when Trumps Term ends but Quicktidal is right, that wont be enough. They need to be investigated, tried and convicted. By the states if they all get federal pardons. The new president will have to work with congress to allow the presidential right to pardons to be curtailed. All the political appointees will need to change asap. The new head of the IRS needs to finally finish the 20 years long audit of trump. Todd Blanche needs to be investigated. Pete Hegseth and his promotion board interference need to be investigated. Critically for breaking American law. No US citizen will ever go before the Hague, you should have no expectation that this will ever happen. The US is not apart of the ICC, though it has signed the Hague conventions. He can be court-martialed only by the USA. Not sure if as Sec-Def if he would be recalled so he could be court martialed or face a civilian court.

This all depends on I guess two things. Will we have free and fair midterms (that this is even now a question) and whether future Republican candidates are Trump but more effective with less baggage or if we can hope for a return to more 'normal' gop.

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 08 June 2026 - 03:37 PM, said:

...

People high up in the Trump Admin will need to be punished....
So whoever the next Dem leader is needs to hammer at everyone who broke a law in this admin, Hegseth should be tried in The Hague, for example.

Agree w the theory, skeptical on the execution bcs it opens a door for it to happen to the next guy.

[worry]

I wouldn't worry too much about it.

[amphibian]

Abyss, on 08 June 2026 - 01:56 PM, said:

amphibian, on 05 June 2026 - 12:44 PM, said:

This is said in an attempt to level set, not to be gloomy:

The end of the Trump administration will be celebrated, but the work to repair things...will take a full generation (25 years).
..

the problem i see in your theory is that more or less the same assholes, different flavour, will be elected in 8 years.

The national candidates on the Democratic side are shaping up to be drastically different from the current administration. I'm unsure at this moment which approach will be taken by the eventual nominee - one closer to Biden's Justice Department under Garland (trying to move on and not spend a lot of time relitigating) or what AOC and Van Hollen etc have been saying (to crush this corrupt set).

There's a struggle to win certain Senate, House, Governor, state Senate, judgeships etc that is on going and does not necessarily lead to "same people get elected". Trump v1 lost the popular vote. Trump v2 barely squeaked it out. This isn't a dominant party and his endorsement has not been a great indicator of political success - especially as he goes against incumbents who vocally support him (Cornyn/Paxton being the most recent high profile one).

[QuickTidal]

So billionaire Wormtongue Peter Thiel has a secretive "Dialog Society" group chat...

Notable people on the Thiel's List pulled from the Bluesky post:

Chamath Palihapitiya

Neal Mohan, CEO of YouTube

Charlie Songhurst, board director at Meta

Peter Brown, CEO, Renaissance Technologies

Sarah Bond, President of XBOX, Microsoft

Manuel Bronstein, chief product officer of Roblox

Greg Brockman, Co-founder of OpenAI, fmr CTO of Stripe

Mike Cannon-Brooks, Co-founder of Atlassian

Scott Cook, co-founder & chairman at Intuit

NJ Senator Cory Booker

TX Senator Ted Cruz

CO Governor Jared Polis

CT Rep. Jim Himes

MD Gov. Wes Moore

Tom Tugendhat, Member of Parliament, United Kingdom.

Tulsi Gabbard

Julian Castro

Jared Kushner

Elon Musk

LEONARD LEO

Grover Norquist

Bret Stephens (Associate Editor of the New York Times)

Larry Summers

Ezra Klein

Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent

Nick Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic

Jon Levin, President, Stanford University.

Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Fmr. Prime Minister, Pakistan. Founder, Airblue.

Stan McChrystal, Founder & CEO, McChrystal Group. Fmr. General, U.S. Army.

Rachel Brand, Chief Legal Officer & Corporate Secretary, Walmart. Fmr. Associate Attorney General, U.S Department of Justice.

Quote

It's a big club, and you ain't in it" ~ George Carlin

Also reminder that Thiel named his company after the lost seeing stones Sauron and Saruman use in LOTR to spy on people...and he literally said:

Quote

"Gandalf’s the crazy person who wants to start a war. Mordor is this technological civilization based on reason and science. Outside of Mordor, it’s all sort of mystical and environmental and nothing works."

Like it is so BLINDINGLY obvious who is in the right in LOTR and this thud still got it wrong....Tolkien would have hated his absolute guts.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 17 June 2026 - 12:04 PM

[Tiste Simeon]

The one that surprised me in the list is Joseph Gordon Levitt!

And these people alter facts and history all the time so the "Sauron is actually a good guy" isn't that surprising.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

QuickTidal, on 17 June 2026 - 11:59 AM, said:

Like it is so BLINDINGLY obvious who is in the right in LOTR and this thud still got it wrong....Tolkien would have hated his absolute guts.

Tolkien wrote back to Hitler's government telling him to do one because he didn't like his ideas about race. He'd be spinning in his grave thinking anyone could misunderstand LOTR to that extent.

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 17 June 2026 - 01:36 PM

[amphibian]

Tiste Simeon, on 17 June 2026 - 12:23 PM, said:

The one that surprised me in the list is Joseph Gordon Levitt!

And these people alter facts and history all the time so the "Sauron is actually a good guy" isn't that surprising.

I think he's the right amount of naive and willing to talk to people that he gets pulled along for cover by a whole bunch of people.

[Cause]

That quote seemed too stupid to be real. I can’t find the actual interview, apparently it’s from a magazine piece, and he was talking about the ‘last ring bearer’ which a fan fiction book written by a Russian author in 1999 in which Sauron rules Mordor on the cusp of an Industrial Revolution and the elves are hippy eco terrorists trying to destroy it.

I still can’t find the full context so don’t know what point he was making

https://en.wikipedia...Last_Ringbearer

Edit:I have no idea what the point of the book is even supposed to be.

If it wasn’t from 1999 I’d say the fact that it’s Russian and a theme is that the orcs are really just humans and orc is a racial slur used against them it could be some weird political take on the Ukraine war. I have never heard orc used for Russians until Ukraine war though?

This post has been edited by Cause: 17 June 2026 - 04:36 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Cause, on 17 June 2026 - 04:26 PM, said:

That quote seemed too stupid to be real. I can't find the actual interview, apparently it's from a magazine piece, and he was talking about the 'last ring bearer' which a fan fiction book written by a Russian author in 1999 in which Sauron rules Mordor on the cusp of an Industrial Revolution and the elves are hippy eco terrorists trying to destroy it.

I still can't find the full context so don't know what point he was making

https://en.wikipedia...Last_Ringbearer

Edit:I have no idea what the point of the book is even supposed to be.

If it wasn't from 1999 I'd say the fact that it's Russian and a theme is that the orcs are really just humans and orc is a racial slur used against them it could be some weird political take on the Ukraine war. I have never heard orc used for Russians until Ukraine war though?

The magazine is defunct, but someone apparently found a physical copy and posted screenshots on Bluesky:

https://bsky.app/pro...t/3lk4u55ahqc2r

Here are the pages with the quote:

https://cdn.bsky.app...zz2qmeadasabxua

https://cdn.bsky.app...pr6pobg2tqbbhti


Edit: here's the paragraph in which the quote appears:

Quote

Thiel's reputation for contrarianism is well founded. Forever the chess player, he revels in trying to outthink the competition, in devising the unexpected move-the seemingly absurd but devastating maneuver that no one sees coming. "Most people think that if something's written, if it's shared by the majority of people, then you'll look like a black sheep for challenging it," says his friend Gary Kasparov, the Russian chess grandmaster. "Peter doesn't have any problem with that." A devoted J.R.R. Tolkien fan from an early age, Thiel is equally enamored with Kirill Eskov's The Last Ringbearer, a retelling of The Lord of the Rings in which Sauron is a beleaguered victim and the elves are bellicosely bent on world domination. "Gandalf's the crazy person who wants to start a war," Thiel explains, "and Mordor is this technological civilization based on reason and science. Outside of Mordor, it's all sort of mystical and environmental and nothing works. Anyway, it's really clever." He's willing to cite Howard Hughes as a role model, with certain caveats ("It's not worth emulating him...all the way to the last years in Las Vegas"): "There was this incredibly powerful visionary aspect, a sort of risk-taking, a new-frontier aspect to Hughes that it would be good for us to look up to without having misgivings about how it all ended."

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 17 June 2026 - 05:17 PM

[Cause]

Your Search-Fu is strong