Fair point. But there did used to be three branches that checked one another. The reason DJT can effectively do whatever he wants through the DOJ is because those checks and balances are no longer in place. If Biden had tried to do with DOJ what Trump has done (which I still would argue that he absolutely should not have), the USSC would have had something to say about it—similar to how they checked him when he (with Sec of Ed) attempted to forgive roughly half a trillion dollars of student debt.

To be clear, I’m not saying Biden (or his executive branch or the 117th congress or the USSC) was effective or… idk, good? They absolutely weren’t. I’m saying that for Biden to weaponize various departments and agencies (even for the arguable benefit of Americans), he’d have had to have engaged in the same slide into authoritarianism that Trump has.

He didn’t “sit on the files”. They were under DOJ’s purview, because there used to be three separate branches of government that checked and balanced one another. I’m not saying the DOJ under Biden didn’t absolutely drop the ball, because they did. I’m just saying that Trump’s weaponizing of the DOJ is antithetical not to “decorum”, but to democracy. Biden doing it first would have constituted executive overreach just as much as Trump doing it now.

You’re not being realistic. There is no “working class vs ruling class” when a portion of the working class doesn’t see the rest as human. It’s not just that we sane Americans are unwilling to side with Nazis to take down billionaires (though certainly that is true); it’s also that someone who calls me a removed is never going to stand and fight next to my black ass. The only way you get the entire working class to engage is if they are willing to stand with us, and that’s not gonna happen by us welcoming Nazis into the fold, it’ll happen when they, ya know, stop being Nazis. Even if what you’re saying is possible, you’re preaching to the wrong side.

So your argument is “why didn’t Biden become a dictator first”?

“Slandering police” lmaooooo

Everyone with a brain knew what you meant, don’t worry.

Do you mean that the issue is the fact that they’re brothers or that it’s been printed in a newspaper with their faces on? Because if they’re two consenting adults, they cannot reproduce with one another, and they didn’t grow up as siblings, then I too am struggling to see what the issue is, considering that the usual incest-related issues (inbreeding and consent/coercion issues born of familial bonds/hierarchies) are addressed. Seems the only remaining issue is that it’s been publicized, meaning they’re liable to get shit on by the people for the rest of their lives for something they weren’t aware of, had no control over, and hurts no one.

Do they not advertise in Brazil? Cuz if y’all can go a day without seeing an ad of a floating laptop doing pirouettes in an endless white void to an overproduced pop song masquerading as indie, I might be down to move.

If this is a genuine question, then my answer would be: a whole bunch of stuff I was taught that wasn’t actually true.

The way American history was presented to me (and I assume lots of other Americans) in school was the rosiest tinted glasses version of our history that could possibly be constructed. We spent a whole lot more time talking about “breaking bread” with the native Americans rather than slaughtering them, and focused more on our early economic growth rather than the slaves on whose backs it was earned. Our involvement in various wars was characterized as “aid” or “ally-ship”, or even stepping in as the “savior” who made sure the good guys won. Our sociopolitical progress (women’s suffrage, the Civil Rights movement, etc) was framed as the goodhearted majority fighting against a smaller group of hateful bad actors, who all sort of magically disappeared whenever progressive legislation won out.

Simply put, it’s revisionist history designed to retroactively affirm all the “land of the free, home of the brave” shit, when in reality this is a nation whose economy was built on the backs of slaves from all over the world, and whose sociopolitical ideology has always been steered by a small group of cruel and cowardly men who want endless personal power and wealth, to the direct detriment of their fellow country-folk.

There are things I’m genuinely proud of. Like all those who came before me who made it possible for me to vote/get an education/walk down the street while black, female, and queer. There are great American artists, academics, inventors—all sorts of people who’ve made meaningful contributions to the world. Like any other people, we are not all the worst of us.

But holy shit the worst of us are SO worst. And they’re so loud, and they’re so rich, and they’ve stolen so many of our resources, and they’re doing so much fucking damage to practically everyone on earth, not to mention to the earth itself. And they’ve controlled the narrative for a very long time, have taught us (sold us) so much bullshit for so long that a lot of the things the average American is proud of are almost entirely fictional.

It’s… disheartening.

I think the real problem is that you don’t seem to realize/care how gross and rapey you sound. That’s… maybe something to work on.

Yes, friend, I read the post. But frankly I don’t like keeping all my eggs in one basket, particularly considering how shit went down with Booklore.

I joined the new discord, and will make a donation once there’s a means to do so, but I’m not sure how long it will take them to get something up and running. The original dev also joined their discord and immediately started talking shit to everyone in there, so that was interesting. And the mods there also asked for logo ideas, and it pretty quickly devolved into an AI slop fest, which was disappointing. So. We’ll see how it goes.

I’ve been using Calibre (not the web version tho) to fetch metadata and better covers and create .opf files before I upload to my server anyway. Kavita’s documentation says it will import metadata from an opf in the same folder, so it should work out of the box, yes?

Honestly Calibre has a LOT of features that I don’t ever use, which is why I wasn’t planning on running CWA. I don’t have any comics, but between Komga and Kavita, which would you say is better for books (most of mine are epub format)?

Oh goddamn it, I deployed this like five days ago. Been working on digitizing my whole collection for the past week cuz I liked it so much. Fuck lol.

Uh, anyone know any good alternatives???

Completely unrelated, but Simple Sabotage Field Manual was a fun little read.

I think the problem is that, at some point, the powers that be decided that “better” is synonymous with “more appended zeroes”. We (and presumably any society) could ostensibly have kept growing indefinitely, provided we agreed that the ever-increasing personal wealth of the few (to the detriment of the many) does not constitute growth.

I think what Jeff is pointing out is that it isn’t uncommon for someone to be misinterpreted as a misogynist and, when called out, decide to lean into the misogyny rather than away, even if it wasn’t their original intention. In this instance, it’s a miscommunication that the OP handled in a way that made me laugh out loud, but I think Jeff is right, that there are also people who, in the same situation would have responded something to the effect of “I was talking about her vision. Maybe if you women weren’t all so [insert twitter-typical misogyny here]”, etc etc. Obviously that isn’t what happened here, but it has been known to.

Can you ask her to write a tutorial on how to enjoy getting ate out pls, cuz I can suck dick all day long, but the second there’s a face anywhere near my twat, I’m instantly closed for business. And I know my husband wants to too, I just… ¯_(ツ)_/¯

The genre of pop music was built off using instrumentation and song structures common in popular music, hence the name. Not sure why this is confusing, but I’m also not interested in talking to you anymore, so ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I’m not saying that all pop music is actually popular, I’m saying that the origin of the term “pop music” is “popular music”.

It literally does stand for popular music.