This is a wild-ass guess, as I’m no religious scholar, but Paragone’s profile pic appears to be a statue of The Buddha, the emoji may represent the way Buddhists hold their hands together when bowing.

A four year degree, for the most part, proves you can hand in coursework and pass tests. It does not demonstrate the ability to apply any of that education in the real world, nor does it demonstrate any ability to acquire and apply new knowledge outside of a classroom setting.

When you look at careers where the application of knowledge and critical thinking are vital to the work, all of them tend to have some kind of post-graduate schooling or follow-on apprenticeship where one works under an experienced professional, and even people in those fields can be pretty fucking stupid when it comes to things outside of their specialty…

It’s like an expansion pack for flat earthers.

Yup.

There won’t be a front line or pitched battles like people are fantasizing about. Something will kick it off, maybe a riot, an assassination, or maybe an opposition leader gets life in prison or even executed on fabricated treason charges and people start shooting/bombing about it. Then there will be a round up of “terrorists” and probably some lynchings that go unpunished after all the current surveillance tech out there miraculously “fails”, all followed by a protracted insurgency as a response to these acts.

Sounds like exactly what I’m looking for.

Neil Postman was right.

Our educational models and methods are changing for the worse.

TV and the internet are terrible mediums for public or political discourse and this has exacerbated many of our existing issues.

Our culture has become more shallow and has started to lack something profound because of how we utilize technology for education, business, and entertainment.

Things will not improve until we change our relationship with these technologies.

EDIT: several words.

Cartoonish levels of villainy.

Locksmithing/access control is an industry that is sorely lacking new people…

Interesting. I was considering locksmithing as a way to get some supplemental income later in life. I’ve done skilled labor and light IT work most of my life and it seemed like a good fit for my skill set. I’ll have to move that to the top of the pile of possibilities.

Absolutely intentionally designed to be that way by the GOP and blatantly obvious when you look at their voting records.

One of their main arguments against taxes is that government will always waste tax dollars due to corruption and incompetence… Which is a self fulfilling prophecy, as they’ve proven to be some of the most corrupt and incompetent political leaders in history.

Slightly off topic, but does anyone have experience with there being a tradition of researching family histories and genealogy among later generation immigrant families in nations outside the US?

I’ve had multiple friends and relations start researching their family history with the intent of finding the first ancestor to immigrate to the US and their country of origin. As some others have said, I don’t believe these people consider themselves to truly be a part of that culture, but it’s a fun bit of personal trivia and some fresh new traditions to explore, so it gets talked about.

I wonder if that’s universal, or if it could be more of a phenomenon in the US and contributing to what the OP is observing.

Depends on where the shit is getting real.

If it’s getting real at arm’s length, I definitely need my glasses.

If it’s getting real on the other side of the room, I’m gonna have to take my glasses off to see it properly.

Yes… I am old.

The US is a manufactured culture war distracting people from what should be a class war.

Attacking him ought to clear up those misgivings. I mean, when I’m uncertain about something, being verbally attacked by a person in favor of that thing usually brings me right around to their side.

“I don’t know about all this police brutality, Donny…”

“You’re the dumbest person, a real loser, and not popular with the ladies if you know what I mean.”

“You son of a bitch, I’m in.”

Expect selective enforcement or even some kind of DHS/ICE reserve officer program as an excuse to keep MAGA voters armed.

The message should have been “take accusations seriously…”

Right. Are we doing this yet?

Or are we still just complaining about “the left’s” sloganeering and wringing our hands over false accusations and the woke mob coming for us?

I was there

So was I.

Maybe they seized on one dude being pissed at his ex and making some accusations as a catalyst, and I’m certain well meaning folks got caught up in something they weren’t fully aware of, but that’s sort of the point with this kind of op. No one approaches you online and says “do you want to attack feminist game developers and entertainment journalists as the opening salvo in a culture war that will install fascism in the west?”

Even if it was co-opted, it was co-opted very early on and that doesn’t change what it was for most of its miserable time as part of the public consciousness or the damage it did.

Yeah, but if I misjudge and one of my friends turns out to be vehimently anti-bike, I don’t have to orchestrate a massive cover-up, conduct a decades long propaganda campaign, and install one of my other friends as the leader of the free world in an effort to avoid the legal, social, and political fallout from biking (literal biking, not a metaphor).

Seems like Epstein’s party planning would have required a little more thought than my Sunday rides.

Then again, all the evidence seems to show they were able to operate with a depressing lack of opsec, so maybe they just ask each other or there’s not enough people opposed to child rape in their world.

I have to wonder how these guys find each other. Do they crack an off color-joke and see who laughs? Do they catch each other looking at underage girls at a party? Is there a webpage that’s like tinder for pervs?

I can barely get four friends together for a bike ride on a Sunday afternoon, but somehow Epstein was able to connect with just about every wealthy pedo in the western world.

I’m still convinced that Gamergate was a trial run to see if open misogyny could win widespread support in the west and be used to indoctrinate young men into far-right ideology.

It worked.