If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

-Lyndon B. Johnson

Nice composition! I love that the ficus tree is named Ben.

Pica?

Only 49% of us seem to live in the real world, apparently.

It used to! Kids would steal wood, break down fences, take outdoor furniture, and use it to build a big bonfire in the center of their towns. They would egg houses and run wild.

Modern trick-or-treating and Halloween parties were invented to counter this destructive behavior, actually. Tasting History did a pretty cool episode on it.

So, are you wanting practical basics, esoterics, or both?

Practical:

1. What that other person said about debt is and isn’t good advice. Without debt you can’t build credit and without credit you can’t get big things like houses, mortgages, etc. More and more of society seems to rely on credit scores to judge a person’s worth, too. Which is concerning, but this is the world we live in, not the world we wish it was, so… On the other hand, with debt it’s easy to get into a ‘pay later’ or ‘rob Peter to pay Paul’ mentality and get yourself into a bad position. So, better advice would be: never take on large debts unless you absolutely have to. Get a credit card, buy one or two things with it a month, and pay it off every month. That way you can build credit safely.

(Obviously ignore this advice if you’re rich.)

2. Learn basics. I was taught cooking, cleaning, how to properly do laundry, basic electrical wiring, basic home repairs (attach things to studs, how to patch drywall, etc), and sewing. All of this has come in handy once I got my own place. Learning simple car stuff like changing oil, changing tires, and perhaps redoing spark plugs and belts can help you too, especially if you want to save money on car maintenance.

3. On a related note to that, cars, houses, and boats are all basically giant pits you toss money into. (That’s why people often take on debt to get new cars; a lot of the expensive maintenance is covered under warranty.)

4. Be careful with student debt. An education is important, but you can be stuck with that debt for a very long time, and owing that much in an uncertain economy like we have can be dangerous. So plan your education well.

5. With the understanding that there are some things people call ‘hobbies’ that are just them being gross (ogling little anime girls because they’re ’really 700 years old so it’s fine!’ comes to mind), in general enjoy your hobbies and don’t be ashamed of them. If, say, you like doing drag, and one of your friends says nasty things about it, that person is not your friend and you don’t need to feel ashamed of your hobby to make them feel better. If it makes you happy and doesn’t harm anyone, then just have fun. But, in counterpoint to that, don’t fall into your hobby so hard that you start gatekeeping and being an ass about it, or ruining your health about it. Remember, other people are in the hobby to have fun too, so who cares if so-and-so’s drag wig is a little basic or messy?

6. I hope you know this already, but it’s astonishing how many people don’t: bathe every day. And wear at least moderately clean clothes. No-one likes stinky people and it’s easy to become inured to your own smell.

Esoteric:

1. Like that other person said, read. Terry Pratchett, Mark Twain, Richard Feynman… plenty of people have put amazingly good thoughts down on paper. I especially like Pratchett’s definition of sin.

2. Learn history, and not just the basic ‘approved’ things taught in schools. For example, our school ‘neglected’ to teach about the Tulsa Race Massacre, or the brutal Union fights in West Virginia. I’ve found, for good summaries of more ancient history, Overly Sarcastic Productions does a pretty good job. It’s impossible to know where you are going until you know where we have been. And of course that old adage ‘those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it’ is very true. See: the US right now.

3. Learn what a cult looks like and avoid them like the plague. Doesn’t matter how lonely you are, how much ‘esoteric knowledge’ they offer, they will destroy your life and probably your family’s lives as well.

Grief is love.

These articles are nothing but copium bait for the left.

I mean, they’re not, if you actually pay attention to politics. One group are actual racist shithead Nazis, for one thing.

But the other group are apologists for the Nazis, as long as the nazi’s donors give them money too, anyhow. Because they’re rich and white, so who cares about consequences right?

The issue is that looks close enough that people who don’t pay attention to politics (and let’s be real, that’s most people) just… don’t care. We see it, but the news makes sure they don’t, and even in the case of Faux News feeds them an alternate reality narrative.

The big issue isn’t just the Republicans, really; it’s how the Democrat leadership shuts down anyone who isn’t pro-Israel and pro-rich-donor. They’re so old-boys-club that they’re totally out of touch with voters.

And so people see one Nazi-party and one reach-across-the-isle cooperate-with-the-Nazi-party and just… walk away.

I mean, Schumer’s said flat out his only job is making sure the Democrats support Israel. And all the rest of the leadership talks about is how they don’t seem to be getting support… so they should quit supporting trans rights and stuff, and go court republicans.

It’s fucking infuriating. And Newsom is just cut from that same insipid cloth.

Mamdani lol, or Colbert

Or AoC

Or even Walz, at least he knew to call a spade a spade and a weirdo a weirdo (until his own party muzzled him).

If we get Newsom it’ll just be more of the same hooray-for-rich-donors-to-hell-with-the-rest-of-you let’s-head-over-and-court-the-far-right bullshit the Democrats have been doing for decades and I’m fucking sick of it. We need a president and congress that sits for the people, not just the people that bribe them.

The same guy who had Charlie Kirk on his podcast a little while ago to kiss his ass? Hell no. He’s better than Trump, but a wet pile of dog shit is better than Trump.

The case was settled for £58 million, leaving the claimants with £12 million after legal costs.

Ewwww

lol yes. I remember Tolkien snarking about that once to some officious Nazi back in the day.

Hitler thought the Proper Aryan Look was blond with blue eyes. If you’re not hard-mode cognitive-dissonancing, you’re not a fascist. They live in a fantasy world inside their heads. The problem is they want to force that world to become reality.

Yeah, it’s the same thing as all those articles that came out when that Joker movie did about how there was always the chance that people seeing the movie would be moved to random a acts of violence, and oh wouldn’t that be terrible, and maybe people shouldn’t watch the movie because what if that happened…

Honestly it’s laughable how transparent they were being in trying to encourage violence in order for them to have a real reason to ban the movie.

Speaking as an owner of five snakes, they definitely have individual personalities. Although I wonder if it’s regional too? Most of the ones where I live seem to be lazy more than anything else.

True lol

Their ‘free speech’ seems to mean ‘freedom for me to be a bootlicking asshole and for the rest of you to shut up’

r/Conservative unironically thinks it’s great, so they probably do too.

Fox told them it was, after all. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

Yup. These stories are just copium articles for the left so we keep letting this shithead do whatever he wants.