It is indeed dangerous to rely on any one country for too much

Cries in Canadian

At this point in Muskrat’s meddling, it’s reached the point of treason.

You don’t negotiate with traitors. You don’t reason with traitors. When all is said and done, you reach the point where the only thing that is done with traitors is to put them against the wall in front of a firing squad. If that’s the side your “friend” wants to pick, it’s on him.

Can I be nit-picky here for a second?

If you’re genetically modifying an elephant for cold tolerance and fur growth, you’re not “bring a mammoth back from extinction”, you’re creating a furry elephant. It may look somewhat like a mammoth, but genetically it’s not a mammoth at all.

It’s like saying you can genetically modify a homo-sapien to have a pronounced brow ridge and a hairier back and say that you’ve brought the neandertal back from extinction. No you haven’t, you’ve just designed a human who looks different.

I was raised on a parade of chili and soups packed and frozen in poor-man’s tupperware (reused margarine and yogurt containers).

It was Benito Mussolini’s headquarters in Rome during WW2

So…America…you guys really are about a step-and-a-half away from this?

Get your shit together. Christ.

The U.S. is like any other country; it has its share of assholes. But I generally avoid painting everyone of however many million people with the same broad brush.

There is a somewhat obnoxious level of patriotism to Americans in general that comes from simply being the biggest economy and a net cultural exporter to the rest of the world; think blue jeans and coca-cola, metaphorically. (I’m sorry, Americans, but it’s true. Put on your big boy pants and deal with the criticism like adults, please.)

But it only rises to the level of arrogance in those people who think that the rest of the world only exists because of them and should behave as some sort of client state to American hegemony.

That’s not all Americans. Heck, I’d say it’s not even most Americans. But they’re just really really loud and drown out everything else.

Trump doest see “allies”.

With the exception of Russia and China, Trump sees everyone else as “client states”.

My oh my. Check out Mr. Optimist over here thinking that they’ll be time to be “historians” in between scavenging for scraps and battling the nuclear mutants for the last bottle of fresh water at the bombed out Tesco.

gawddammit. I’ve been hoisted by own grammar petard. I’m usually pretty careful.

Our only hope is that his ego and stupidity prevent him from succeeding. Unlike Caesar who saw the need to consolidate his power with the people, Trump just assumes he already has or doesn’t need it, and instead is focusing on petty vindictive bullshit.

a sickened plutocratic oligarchy refusing to listen to its people for long enough that the people became directly hostile to the state

Exactly. The only real difference is that modern Caesar (Trump) happens to be an idiot. But it’s the same hostility to the status quo that gave him power.

Except that what we are living through isn’t the collapse of the Roman Empire. It’s the Birth of the Roman Empire and the collapse of the Roman Republic.

If we don’t put a stop to it at it’s beginning, we’re looking at a few hundred years of oligarchy under a line of emperors who vary from corrupt and stupid, to capable but evil.

I agree with you.

However…there’s an argument to be made that the post itself is a form of criticism and falls under the free speech rules where it regards political figures. In many ways, it’s not any different than the drawings of Musk holding Trump’s puppet strings, or Putin and Trump riding a horse together. One is drawn and the other is animated, but they’re the same basic concept.

I understand however that that sets a disturbing precedent for what can and cannot be acceptable. But I don’t know where to draw that line. I just know that it has to be drawn somewhere.

I think…and this is my opinion…political figures are fair game for this, while there should be protections in place for private citizens, since political figures by their very ambition put themselves in the public sphere whereas private individuals do not.

In the eyes of MAGA, the only qualification is loyalty to Trump.

What happens when I ignore the cookie preference dialogue on websites?

You get stuck with the leftovers; which is usually the maple flavour or those really really dry shortbread cookies that feel like dust in your mouth. And you’re not allowed a drink of milk to wash it down.

It helps to get in line early for your cookie preferences.

What? … Wrong cookies?

Sorry about that. I stand by what I said however.

For me it was because I was living in an apartment where the heat register was directly beneath the toilet paper dispenser, and so in wintertime when the furnace was running, if the TP was over it would flap around like one of the wacky inflatable tube guys you see at car dealerships. I started putting it under at that point and the habit just stuck.

But yeah, cats is absolutely the most common reason. Toddlers as well…dumb ones anyway. The smart ones figure it out regardless.

Looks like something i’d attempt in Kerbal Space Program before I understood what Centre-of-lift meant.

Some men just want to watch the world burn…

One of my life goals is to write a Broadway musical based on the life of Mata Hari.