And suddenly all the people who voted for Trump “for the economy” are suddenly fine with it.

Despite having a very similar sounding last name, Ali Khamenei (the guy who was just killed) wasn’t related to his predecessor, Ruhollah Khomeini. These two guys have been the only leaders of Iran since the revolution so it is actually a change to pick someone’s son for the job, but it is still an election by clerics rather than a strict hereditary monarchy.

I mean he literally murdered someone in the middle of midtown Manhattan (I know Lemmy is really into the “Luigi is Innocent” conspiracy theories but I legit think he did it). Even if you think what he did was justified, that doesn’t mean it’s legal. We can’t have a functioning society where you can just extra-judiciously kill people and get away with it even if they’re doing something bad. He knew what he was getting into when he did this, and knew that he’d probably get arrested and convicted. If he gets convicted it will be justified, even though I completely understand why he did it and don’t feel bad for the victim. If he is found not guilty, then the prosecution really fucked up and that’s good for him.

Even within the perspective of religious philosophy, the existence of ghosts in the sense of a spirit that stays on Earth and causes noticeable effects is difficult. Mainly- ghosts would not be made of matter, but could interact with matter. Within the realm of religious philosophy there are all sorts of explanations for the “mundane” version of this question of how a spirit attaches itself to the matter of the body in the first place, but all of those explanations kind of go out the window when the spirit sticks around and starts interacting with other matter. If ghosts only appear in sensory visions and do not truly interact with matter (I believe this was the view of Aquinas), then you have a major problem in proof and then ghosts effectively do not exist for practical purposes. The Catholic Church believes that the dead can appear to the living in visions but takes no stance on physical manifestations.

Within science, of course, there has never been a scientific observation of any supernatural being such as a ghost or effects it might have. But that doesn’t disprove the idea of purely spiritual apparitions. Then again, it also doesn’t disprove that Zorlon the Gorilla God appeared to me in a dream either. I think we can pretty conclusively say that you can live your life under the assumption that ghosts don’t exist and be completely 100% fine.

They both look like Very Important People guests

There areodern pictures of these because some places have moved them to museums or left them up as a lesson of how bad things were within living memory.

If you’re in the US this is sad

I love all the people scrambling to come up with some reason other than racism that the halftime show was bad because literally everything else they’re criticizing also applies to every ither halftime show in the past 30 years

Well relatively speaking. Up until the Trump era both major parties in the US were essentially liberal parties before the Republicans became a far right party. The right wing nationalists in other countries would probably be moderate Democrats by US standards.

This reminds me of a hilarious side quest in The Witcher 3 where a wizard gets locked out of his tower because he didn’t know it was equipped with a Defensive Regulatory Magicon (DRM) when he bought it and the only way to fix it is with Gottfried’s Omni-opening Grimoire (GOG). GOG is the game store started by CD Projekt to sell DRM free copies of old games.

It’s because Americans don’t give a shit about anything. Europeans actually have the balls to do something if their governments but Americans will just let their government do anything as long as the marvel and Disney slop keeps flowing into their troughs.

That’s from the Epstein Files. The way they were pulled from the emails messed up the formatting so half the emails in the Epstein files have weird random equals signs.

I recommend Mint if it’s your first time. It’s really easy to set up and use and there are thousands of guides online for fixing any issues you encounter with it. I do not recommend Bazzite like others are recommending because you literally can’t change anything with it. That is fine if everything works out of the box and you’re basically just using it for gaming, but if literally anything is wrong with your install or you have a device where the drivers that come with Bazzite don’t work, you literally can’t fix it. Not as in “it’s really difficult” I mean it literally won’t let you do it. Updating drivers on Linux is notoriously frustrating, but it’s very often required especially if you have older USB peripherals you want to use.

I think they like the idea of kid rock, a famous musician who loves Trump and fascism as much as they do. The actual music doesn’t matter. They’ll give him money and support him just because he likes Trump.

TFW people realize Squid Game and Parasite are social commentary and not just fun meme shows

I explain that isn’t really what socialism is about and actually engage. Most people don’t actually know what socialism is in practice and especially in the US their ideas are from actual propaganda they had in schools. Even self described socialists in the US often fall into the “socialism is when the government does things” trap and most people believe the lie they were told in school that socialism is necessarily the complete abolition of private property and money without questioning how that would even work in practice. I would say fewer than 10-20% of the US population even has a functional knowledge of what socialism even is in practice despite having extremely strong opinions about it.

Things like the quote in the OP are “thought terminating cliches” that serve to stop thought and dialogue before alternate ideas actually get discussed rather then form the basis of actual ideas themselves. For this one in particular I ask if they have ever actually read what Karl Marx believed and if they know that even Marx agreed with the premise that capitalism breeds innovation and economic growth, at least at the start. That this is true is not a problem for socialism intrinsically. You’re never going to change someone’s worldview or undo a lifetime of propaganda in one conversation, but you can crack the door a little and maybe spark some doubt or get someone curious enough to read on their own.

Ah I didn’t see what was tripping you up. In this case, this is normally not noteworthy at all. Consider a case where a local car dealership owner is accused of committing tax fraud. If he was taken to court over it, the judge would issue an order like this saying not to destroy evidence that could be used. The noteworthy part is that our judicial system, particularly Trump appointed federal judges, has been mostly unwilling to reign in Trump’s abuses at all and so something like this feels like a win

Are you familiar with how common law systems in the US and other former English colonies work? Essentially the way it works is

1. Party A does something they believe is within their rights under the law. In this case, trying to destroy evidence. Now, the crucial part here is that Party A can be wrong about their claim, but our legal system determines that courts are the ones that have to decide whether that is true.

2. Party B sues in court claiming that Party A did something illegal. In this case, the state of Minnesota is claiming that Ice is trying to do something illegal by trying to destroy evidence

3. The judge looks at the facts of the case and determines if Party A did in fact do something illegal, taking things like precedent into account.

4. If the judge believes that Party B is right and Party A’s actions were indeed illegal, like they did in this case, they issue a judgement that both parties must abide by.

In this case, it is blatantly obvious that the actions are actually illegal but our legal system is set up in a such a way that this must be proven in court.

That is the job of judges- to interpret existing law. The news here is that a judge agreed that it is illegal and told them not to do it.

I have listened to Hakeem Jeffries a lot in interviews and the strangest thing is that I legitimately believe that he is a true believer in the Democratic project, and not a cynical opportunist. Somehow he believes that the neoliberal project from the 1990s that has already failed is truly the best way forward. Dude is a bit of a moron but I legitimately think he believes everything he says and does is right.