How awesome thank you!

The people cheering it on think it’s patriotism. Then there still seems to be maybe a third of us who think this was just another election we had in 2024.

The rest of us know, and are appropriately freaked the fuck out.

Stupid mother fuckers.

Anyone old enough to remember knows - politicians have been stupid and reactionary about public access to the internet from its earliest days.

Section 230 of the DMCA is probably the only reason social media as we know it was able to emerge past infancy. (You could argue about whether we might want to put that cat back in the bag, but the earliest discussion forums, leading to sites like Lemmy and Reddit, also could not have existed as we all knew them.)

And frankly, this looks like another part of the march to oligarchy to me. When the only social media sites that can exist are those with owners that have big enough pockets to hire enough people to become responsible for what users post and aggressively control it… (or, shudder what if the end goal is literally nationalized social media)

I absolutely love that Emby is such a third thought that they don’t even get a mention anymore.

💯

He and his nation are in a tough spot I don’t begrudge him any decision he makes at this point.

It just grinds my gears that if I go searching (which I refuse to do) I know it will take me 5 seconds to find a maga citing this as evidence that Trump’s bullying is clearly effective foreign policy and that Zelensky’s cooperation represents an admission that everything said to him in the oval office was correct and OK.

Yeah that effing sucks. I really didn’t think they’d bend the knee. I can’t blame them, but it still makes me sad.

Yeah it was rough. But in the same sense that I’m glad I didn’t own a sportbike when I was young (because I’m certain I’d have hurt myself or others with it at that age), it’s probably not a bad thing that I got some firm discouragement against that kind of experimentation. It didn’t end my experimentation, but it certainly helped me realize I wasn’t immortal.

(I do none of that kind of thing for decades now. Just nothing I want to mess with these days.)

It’s a great episode and late in the show - I’d suggest don’t skip to it. IIRC it’s an episode that will hit harder if you have seen everything that led up to that point. (Which will make sense when you see it.)

Clearly for some folks it’s great. I dunno maybe I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind. It hits you all at once, there is no buildup, and that may have contributed to me freaking out.

Don’t get me wrong, I intended my comment as a warning, but with a trusted sitter in a safe space maybe someone else will have a better first time.

My understanding is it’s not a particularly high risk drug, despite how intensely it kicks you (or at least me) in the face. (but again, don’t take my word for it)

I had no hallucinations - they may have been inhibited by my absolute panic.

It was a very long time ago for me but from what I can recall -

I felt immediately mostly disconnected from my body, and like I was constantly falling or about to fall. I essentially laid there starfished on the bed telling myself over and over that it was supposed to be really short and wondering if I’d just killed myself until it passed, then got up and decided I’d never touch that shit again.

Salvia Divinorum

At one point in time I could probably have been convinced to try a lot of things. Fortunately for me (probably) Salvia Divinorum was the first thing I tried after marijuana, and it so thoroughly destroyed any notion I had that I could control my experience that it put me off trying just about everything else I was curious about.

Thank god the entire experience is single digit minutes.