I don't get how libs can tolerate being taken for granted like this. They're not being mature or practical - they're accepting mistreatment by an establishment sworn to serve them.

Trump and his supporters aren't better, but at least he's telling them what they want to hear. He at least made sure to get checks out to people and had his signature stamped on them.

I dunno, at least there's a strategy there. And Biden has had four fucking years and he's done nothing to get people motivated to vote or even register to vote. Not even going into his participation in genocide, it's just a lack of strategy to the point of self-sabotage.

And the entire Democratic party is complicit in all of it. It's like they want to lose, because all I'm hearing are about how bad trump is/was. And it's like, I was fucking there. And after three years, all they can offer is to give him a verbal reprimand and coverage on every major news network, speech, and social media posting.

It's just mind-blowing to think of the wasted time and energy on the part of the US political system.

I have a couple of older relatives who only communicate via phone call and I hate talking on the phone. My other relatives don't stay in contact as often as I do, so I feel bad not reaching out and keeping them company.

Do you have any strategies to manage the energy drain from phone calls?

Or just feel free to talk about it.

My profile picture is the Magician enemy from the game Persona 3, based on the major arcana.

I kept the picture because it reminds me of when it's rounded.

What about you?

I'm happy to see anybody unburdened by the US legal system, but there's something underwhelming about the most powerful politician in the country only now deigning to use his executive power.

People are cheering and memeing in unsurprising fashion and I'm like bruh, he could have done this and more. Years ago. And they're talking about the necessity of voting and how bad trump would be. Like where do you think Brandon was when drafting the anti marijuana bills?

That said, I don't want to come across as unreasonable when good things happen. If a lib approached me and shared this news, what would be an appropriate response?

Link because I got that bird box disease where I want to make people to see the thing.

I would pick Magneto from the X-Men comics. I think if he was written by better writers and comics weren't the vessel of a lot of fascistic ideals, he wouldn't come off as 'villain who goes too far'.

His backstory is so much more interesting than what powers he has. He survived the Holocaust as a child and when his powers developed, he sought out other people like him to prevent future atrocities. He formed the Brotherhood of ~~Evil ~~ Mutants and opposed humanity's attempt to kill or control mutants. He's long-lived because his experience as a Holocaust survivor is integral to his character. With that age, he's been well-read, studying science, history, literature, and art. He's educated and due to the way comics keep the timeline contemporary, he's bound to have strongly formed opinions on whatever is happening.

Having incredible power on top of that makes for such interesting questions.

"Why don't you just more often?"

"How much more efficient are trains when you can move them with your mind?"

"What are your thoughts on the concept of dehumanization?"

I dunno. Sometimes I see interesting characters and get frustrated that they're not talking about their lives or experiences. They're restrained by capitalism and you don't get to see cool interpretations of characters who you're supposed to believe are real people.

I'd love to helm a rewrite of Magneto to make him aggressively anticapitalist and antiracist I know. But it's like this character has studied the world on how to prevent fascism and genocide and he's still not calling out the contradictions of capitalism. He's not pointing out how oppression is used as a tool for profit. I want to see the guy who read Marx and then got superpowers.

I thought it would be funny if I cropped out the author's name on the article, but I decided grace, citing my sources to avoid the irony singularity

I just mean things you do or can do for yourself as part of self-care?

Here are some of mine:

Relaxation Break - 10 Minutes: Like if you're sitting at a desk, or have some time where you can steal five minutes away from whatever's bothering you.

Little Chore - 5 Minutes: Some small productive thing you can do in that time and no longer. Like if you want to do some dishes or you want to replace the toilet paper roll.

Listen to Music uninterrupted - ? Minutes: Pick a song or an album and just let it rip without getting up to do anything. This one is really hard for me where even doing a 2 minute song was hard.

Watch something - 2 Hours: Movie, video essay, anime, whatever. Challenge - Impossible: Do it without doomscrolling.

Like no shit, I'm going to make my one safe place look nice.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Thanksgiving_Turkey_Presentation

This originates from an annual tradition from the 1940s where the turkey presented by representatives was later killed and eaten. It wasn't until the 70s when they started sparing the turkeys. During Bush Sr's presidency, it became a formal ceremony with a pardon and everything.

It's this big ceremony on TV where named turkeys are brought to the White House to get ceremonial pardons. Some have food-related names like Marshmallow or Drumstick.

Charlie in 1987 trying to finish what John Hinkley Jr. started. He spent the rest of his days at a petting zoo.

The first president on record issuing a "pardon" to his turkey was Ronald Reagan. Reagan had been sending the turkeys presented to him to farms and zoos since at least 1982, and 1987's turkey, Charlie, was likewise headed to a petting zoo. At the time, Reagan was facing questions over the Iran-Contra affair, on whether or not he would consider pardoning Oliver North (who had yet to be tried for his involvement in the affair); Reagan conjured the notion of the turkey pardon as a joke to deflect those questions.

Reagan did not make any pardon references in the 1988 presentation, but his successor, George H. W. Bush, instituted the turkey pardon as a permanent part of the presentation beginning his first year in office, 1989. The phrase "presidential pardon" in that ceremony was apparently inserted by a speechwriter; Bush initially was indifferent to the terminology, saying "'Reprieve', 'keep him going', or 'pardon': it's all the same for the turkey, as long as he doesn't end up on the president's holiday table."

50-80 turkeys are selected based on their behavior from a pool of turkeys up for slaughter. The 10-20 best looking and most behaved turkeys are selected, then two are finally picked and get named by the president.

This year, Jennie-O brand is bringing two currently unnamed turkeys for Biden to pardon.

For those curious about the fates of the turkeys. It's not great. In a fashion that's particularly telling of the US:

For many years the turkeys were sent to Frying Pan Farm Park in Fairfax County, Virginia. From 2005 to 2009, the pardoned turkeys were sent to either the Disneyland Resort in California or the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, where they served as the honorary grand marshals of Disney's Thanksgiving Day Parade. In 2010, 2011 and 2012, the turkeys were sent to live at Mount Vernon, the estate and home of George Washington; Mount Vernon stopped displaying and accepting the turkeys due to the fact that they violated the estate's policy of maintaining its own historical accuracy (Washington never farmed turkeys)

For many years, the pardoned turkeys were documented to have very short lives after their pardoning, frequently dying within a year of being pardoned; for comparison, heritage turkey breeds have lifespans on par with those of wild turkeys, at least five years.

Emphasis mine:

The lifespans of the pardoned turkeys have steadily improved in recent years, frequently having lifespans of over two years and occasionally reaching three years of age, an improvement attributed to better choices of homes after the pardons; rather than serving solely as tourist attractions, the turkeys are now placed in the care of experts who make conscious efforts to maintain the turkeys' health for as long as possible.

So yeah, in the spirit of aesthetics, the US president puts an animal on TV, promises it life and then leaves it to survive the machinations of an empire in violent decay. All the while the rest of them are condemned to die away from the general.

It just really makes a mockery of so many things the US pretends to care about.

I'm sorry if this is isn't the appropriate comm, but I'm curious about why the angels sided with Lucifer in a fight they knew they would lose?

Were there things Lucifer said to get angels on his side or did they just follow his example and refuse to subjugate themselves to humanity? Was there any context like that in the Bible?