Is this a fragment of a sentence? Because it seems like an incomplete thought.

If there’s further information to come in the sentence with the monkey as the subject you could use brackets to indicate your thought and write…

“The monkey (about whom I’m wondering: ‘can they see my ears?’) did something or other…”

This isn’t strictly grammatically correct, but seems to be the most natural way it could be written and said without sounding weird.

Or is ‘monkey’ an answer to some other question and you’re adding that other information for context? If so, you could use a semi-colon.

“What’s bothering you?”

“The monkey; I’m wondering ‘can they see my ears?’”

If it does then we also lose the ability to even say that that’s what it’s done. And if that’s the case then has it really done it? /ponders uselessly

I like to think somewhere researchers are working on actual AI and the AI has already decided that it doesn’t want to read bullshit on the internet

Maximum profit is extracted being in a perpetual state of “will they/won’t they WWIII” which is why we’ll be right here in this mood for a long time…

“and now class I would like to draw your attention to a footnote that existed between the ancient empires of Britain and the Glorious Peoples Empire of China… for a time there was a thing called ‘America’…”

I had a washing machine that made audible chirps as you dialed through the programs and an irritating ditty whenever you engaged a program. It couldn’t be turned off. That was on a physical dial. But it also had flat touch buttons with no bevel or edge or tactile feedback - and these were always silent - so most of the time you didn’t know if you’d really pressed it or not. God. The first time I used it I was like… “what the fuck”. It was brand new in 2023. I cannot comprehend how someone can design, make, and program something so stupid.

Serf lives matter

Shout out to Scooby Doo for teaching kids that weirdness always had a misbehaving adult behind it and that no-one is above the law

It didn’t matter to me until I had a laptop that booted super fast. And now it matters…

Same as all the muppets in the city dressed up to the nines in their new beemer than you know is on monthly payments.

On the other hand; being debt free, now there’s a status symbol…

I never heard a pharmacist say anything other than “dee” or “ell” before saying the rest of the name (over the counter to a customer that is)

As with how Nazism worked in Germany, I think a large amount of power and influence is happy to go along with whichever way the winds blowing but are not as committed to certain ideologies as much as the demogogues and fanatics. Hitler hid the final solution from the German populace, even when treating Jewish people like shit was a fairly normalised thing to do. That’s because even amongst the population of German ‘nazis’, many believed in the superiority of WASPs, would turn a blind eye to a Jewish person being beaten and robbed, but would balk at women and children being systematically exterminated on just a human level. Many “nazi” civilians were horrified and ashamed when the extermination camps came to light, even if they accepted concentration (prison) camps via ‘out of sight out of mind’.

I think it’s far more likely Trump and co will get into a situation where “natural” or mob “justice” does as much as they care to do in that regard. That is, if predominantly black areas of a city have high crime and murders “screw them that’s their fault”. If that leads to inequality and shorter lives “screw them that’s their fault”. If illegal migrants get turned back at the border and die in the desert “screw them that’s their fault”. If trans people suffer trying to fit into society “screw them they’re the ones who want to act different”. And so on.

I think it’ll absolutely result in suffering and death. But run an actual extermination camp in the 21st century? Well a) it wouldn’t be a secret at all b) for all its blagging America still very much needs its trading partners in Europe who would be horrified and c) a good chunk of maga would be horrified (some wouldn’t but a whole load would). As much as it’s fashionable to cast them all as brainrot sycophants, this isn’t quite true in reality…

I think Trump fascism is about power and about WASP culture prestige and superiority, but I think money counts for far more than ethnic ideology. By all accounts Maga has never had an issue with the EB-5 visa program (aka “buying a green card”). For about a million dollars anyone in the world can become a US citizen as long as they create 10 or more American jobs with their investment. Most of these visas go to Chinese immigrants, but applications are also accepted from Mexico, Vietnam, India, Nigeria etc. Last time he was in office Trump extended the program.

It’s all about power (according to them). If you’ve got money and you tow the line you’re fine irrespective of ethnicity. If you’re the “right kind” (white kind) of poor you may get help. Everyone else will find any kind of help very hard to come by even as their neighborhood becomes more lawless and lethal.

I think it’s a hair worth splitting because I find it very unlikely that he actually subscribes to the goals that the Germany Nazi party had. And I think he relies on this in order to cultivate the ‘owning the libs’ narrative he keeps with his supporters and acolytes. He’s fascist (and dangerous) and mischaracterising him plays into his hands to be honest…

I don’t think they are nazis, I think they are fascists. And I don’t think they even think of themselves as fascists, I think they just think power sets the rules and that a lot of people on the left’s attempts at ‘fairness’ are dumb, and (they think) ‘well if you want to call that ‘fascism’ then you’re an overreacting bitter delusional leftie’

Or something like that

I suspect he did it to take the piss. And to signal to elements of the right / far right that they should breathe a little more freely

Same way his government department is “doge”. Same way he named Tesla’s products “S.E.X.Y”. Many many things he does are bait.

But do I think musk stands for what the Nazis did? No. And I think he, and his type, enjoy thinking it’s “ridiculous” that anyone thinks that. “Obviously” he doesn’t want to gas the Jews. “Obviously” he doesn’t think all black people should be lynched.

But I do think he thinks it’s ok trans people are made to fear. That sub cultures are made to feel unwelcome. That non-‘wasp’ lives are ruined whenever convenient. That checks and balances in government are as changeable as the furniture.

I think he thinks industry should serve a grand national vision.

I don’t think he gives a shit what that vision is as long as it involves him getting even more stupid wealthy

So this pretty much sums up fascism. He’s a fascist not a nazi…

Things I’ve learnt:

• the American continental army tried to take Quebec early in the war but were unsuccessful

• inhabitants of British Canadian territory did not have the same sentiment towards Independence as in the 13 American colonies, it was far more sparsely populated, lived in closer association with indigenous people, and was not economically large enough to consider independence

• after the war, many British loyalists left America and settled in Canada causing the cultures to diverge even more

• Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and other bits all used to be part of British Québec

• America attempted to claim all the above plus canadian Quebec in the Paris peace talks after the war

• in the end the British surrendered only the above territories and kept modern day Québec with the border becoming more or less the modern US-Canadian one

They mean ‘fascist’. Fascists are not automatically anti-semitic.

My bro, she knows

There isn’t a solution. People don’t want to pay for something that costs huge resources. So their attention becoming the product that’s sold is inevitable. They also want to doomscroll slop; it’s mindless and mildly entertaining. The same way tabloid newspapers were massively popular before the internet and gossip mags exist despite being utter horseshite. It’s what people want. Truly fighting it would requires huge benevolent resources, a group willing to finance a manipulative and compelling experience and then not exploit it for ad dollars, push educational things instead or something. Facebook, twitter etc are enshitified but they still cost huge amounts to run. And for all their faults at least they’re a single point where illegal material can be tackled. There isn’t a proper corollary for this in decentralised solutions once things scale up. It’s better that free, decentralised services stay small so they can stay under the radar of bots and bad actors. When things do get bigger then gated communities probably are the way to go. Perhaps until there’s a social media not-for-profit that’s trusted to manage identity, that people don’t mind contributing costs to. But that’s a huge undertaking. One day hopefully…

I meant, at the time, it was a British colony

As a Windows “normie” for a long time I used to roll my eyes when people said try Linux. But getting ads in Windows when trying to do a simple admin thing was the last straw. I followed instructions to install Debian on a spare drive and gave it a go and do you know what, it was fine. It made me realise 90% of what I do is in a browser anyway, so why did I have a hang up about having the exact same browser experience in a slightly different operating system?

Using libre office instead of word was a bit of a shift but, again, for the majority of what I wanted to do I it was fine. Libre office works with words .docx format. In fact, I noticed that for a quick document or spreadsheet I’d been using Google docs so much that this wasn’t affected at all.

Gaming was a concern, as this was something I (lazily) believed just didn’t work on Linux. But I was totally wrong. Not only is steam available on Linux, but even very recent titles work fine run through a Linux based windows emulator. I guess the important thing is that far more of this was automated than I thought it was going to be. There’s a stereotype that you’re going to be buried neck deep in obscure command lines trying to get basic things working but in my experience I didn’t have to do any of that, it all just worked.

Bonus was along the way learning that those “obscure” command lines were not actually that obscure and were actually convenient. Typing “sudo apt install vlc” on the command line and having VLC installed and ready to use about ten seconds later was amazing. (I know package managers are available for Windows, I’m just referring to the ‘norms’ of each platform)