You'd think so, but the war in Ukraine shows otherwise. The Russians suffered heavily early on due to using cell phones--and they kept using them even after figuring out they'd lost something like four general officers due to them/staff/bodyguards using their phones, causing even more losses. I can't help but agree with the GP, some assholes are always going to come to the conclusion that "everyone else shouldn't do it, but it will be fine if it's only me."

I realize we all like a good laugh at the expense of sneering elites who despise us, but I had a different reason for cheering this disaster. Because if successful, it would have made the wreck of the Titanic just another world tourist trap. Just like posing so you look like you're holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa or watching Main Street Electrical Parade at Disney World, or the one that really tore it for me, that famous photo a few years back of wealthy people standing in in line to take photos on the summit of Mount Everest, as though it were an amusement park ride.

The edge of space is already such a tourist trap, but maybe that's good because it's 1960s sci-fi made real. But taking a submarine down to the Titanic for photos would become just another European vacation: something previously sacred and awe-inspiring made mundane by modernity. It's as if we invented a warp drive so that anyone could get a ticket on the U.S.S. Cygnus and ride the event horizon of a black hole for a couple of hours and a few thousand dollars.

They didn't feel pain, which is good, but I would say that they almost certainly "suffered." They knew they were fucked for some period of time before they died, and they spent their last minutes sitting in their coffin in the dark two miles below the surface. I imagine the father/son duo had it particularly awful, with dad knowing that he killed his kid, and the kid knowing that his dad killed him. I wonder if they discussed that fact amongst themselves while waiting to die.

The US Ivy League openly and flagrantly violates the 1965 Civil Rights Act by denying admission on basis of race. Like all bigots, they're proud of it and will not stop even when the Justice Department sues them for civil right violations. They're the modern Bull Connor. Maybe if they go to Asia, they can get a taste of what they've been doing to Asians. I think this would be good medicine for them.

And boy, I look forward to seeing the looks on their faces when they discover Japan doesn't have McMansions or baseball diamonds. Lots of Americans have a fantastic honeymoon period and then just start getting bitter and racist when the reality of living in a country that isn't America sinks in.

Imagine going into a restaurant and being ignored by thestaff because nobody speaks English and they don't want the trouble of trying to communicate with you.

Of course you won't learn the local language - Americans never do. The world speaks English, remember?

By which you mean the media (they're not "mainstream", do people in the mainstream cover for child rapists like Jeffrey Epstein? ABC had the goods on him and buried the story, allowing his ring to operate for years afterwards.)

By which you mean the media has been caught red-handed, over and over, by individual Americans doing nothing more than using their brains and having a platform to point it out.

Most recently, the media covered up Biden's cognitive decline and the fact that a cabal seized the office of President and was forging his signature on documents. Why? Because it would have made Democrats look bad.

A lot of people say Democrats control the media, but I think it's really that the media controls the Democrats.

For all his faults and they are many, Donald Trump loves America and loves the American people.

That counts for a lot, at least among Americans.

We all just got a good, long look at the decayed hearts of Democrats and what they think of us. Rioting, spraypainting hate symbols on Teslas, state governors nullifying federal authority on their territory in a way we haven't seen since 1864, federal troops sent in to restore order like Eisenhower forcibly integrating your schools at bayonet point in the 1950s against the express wishes of state governments and the state's population, attacking police, setting our cities on fire, proudly waving foreign flags in front of the fires you set, and in general a contemptuous hostility towards the AmeriKKKan people(your spelling) and a rejection of us in favor of foreigners who think nothing of impregnating 13 year old girls and whose machismo makes our own toxic masculinity look like a men's bowling club.

At least Donald Trump loves Americans and knows what a woman is. I mean, Tampon Tim? What were you thinking?

Trump will destroy democracy, say the people who held no elections for their candidate. All the while a cabal, including the President's wife) had overthrown our elected President in a silent coup, operating the office of President by forging his signature. A mentally incapacitated President happened before and we were so shocked and repulsed by being controlled by his wife that we passed an entire Constitutional amendment dealing with precisely this issue.

Meanwhile, the media, guardians of democracy, refused to report Biden's dementia and covered it up because that would affect their side's grip on power. That the media even have a side is offensive to Americans, they're supposed to report facts, but as the CEO of NPR, a publicly funded media, has proudly stated on the record, facts get in the way of getting things done.

Now that the internet is finally fulfilling its original promise of allowing We The People to talk back to power, and we are in a new age of radical government transparency. DOGE has turned on the lights in the kitchen and we have seen all the cockroaches swarming around at last. It's horrifying what was being done in the dark behind locked doors, and when our people arrived with a warrant from the (elected) President demanding entry, the head of security of the agencies barred the way, showing that these agencies answer to nobody but themselves.

But you go, silence us, do what you do best: speak truth to the powerless.

Don't play dumb. The law of our land has been declared null and void in California by Governor Newsom.

States shouldn't have to follow laws they don't agree with.

Trump even had to federalize the National Guard to take away a rebellious governor's armed force before it could be used against Union forces. We will enforce federal law at bayonet point if need be. Just like when Eisenhower ordered Alabama schools integrated and used the US Army against the AmeriKKKan people, against the explicit wishes of the government and people of that state.

Sucks to be you, rebel. That's why your flag is a hate symbol, just like the swastika.

We will crush you just like we did before.

We will march through your territory and burn down everything we find in an attempt to genocide you, just like the true American hero General Sherman did on his famous March to the Sea.

Only this time, black-eyed peas won't be around to save you, traitors.

Make no mistake, rehabilitating you traitors was a big mistake last time. We won't make that mistake again. There will be no Reconstruction, only a Denaturalization Act to make you into stateless persons, followed by deportation. We'll give gigantic bribes to any country that will be bribed(a lot of them). I hope you end up in Africa somewhere, so you can be with your preferred people.

We might even land the plane first before shoving you out the door.

The professor said very clearly said that fascist states could not survive without external enemies to blame for their own failings.

Thus, they often invaded other countries and without those invasions, they would collapse.

Are you calling my professor a liar? You're telling me a man who specialized in oppression theory was a liar? No, you're the liar. Liar.

Why is Trump ready to invade Greenland?

LOL are you triggered?

Yup, it was all "ethnic slurs are forbidden" right up until you told us that yourselves were exempt from your own rules. Remember Jeanene Garaofolo and her blackface photo? Not a problem. Or Ted Danson and his blackface photo? Not a problem.

And then Justin Trudeau's blackface photo was revealed and you voted for him anyway. Not a problem.Anyone else, that would have been a career-ending move. And when we examine Critical Theory, we find exactly that. The rules you devise are never for yourselves to follow.

Now you're using the bowdlerized N-word and that's no problem, either.

The whole world doesn't want to play with you. Nobody likes you woke. You know that, right?

Well, you had a nice long run. The enshittification will now begin. Sure, they're small ads. At first.

Then they'll be animated, because you people love clicking on animated ads.

Then they'll be the kind that takes over the screen and shows a slot machine, and you'll click on those because who doesn't enjoy flicking the bar on a Skinner box?

God damn I miss USENET and its high barriers to entry.

Can someone create a new social network that requires high technical skill to even get on? That worked really well. Until the nakba, the day that America On-Line was joined to the greater internet.

We all said that was the beginning of the end. And we were right.

I mean, it sounds like you have bad neighbours. I live in a townhouse, and my neighbours (co-owners, really) are great. We help each other out. I can ride my bike for a few minutes in any direction and be out on a beautiful trail or out by the lake. Don't get me wrong, I've very deliberately selected a city to live in where access to nature is trivial. That was a priority. But I'd be happy enough to live in an apartment here if I needed to, the only thing that stopped me in the first place is the rules/laws surrounding pet ownership (I had 3 cats at the time, 4 now).

I'm much more in favour of being communally rich. Whole forests and lakes are available to me, not just a yard and a backyard pool or whatever. There are lots of ways to have peace and quiet and beauty, and only a few of them are living out in a field, isolated from everyone else. I'm a pretty introverted person, but when the park is big enough, you don't have to talk to anyone to enjoy it.

I think to be fair, it has both a problem with not enough taxes and bad priorities. Unless one of the priorities you're talking about is corporate welfare and low taxes on the rich. Certainly it is the case that they (and Canada) could raise enough money if they would actually just enforce their tax laws and implement wealth taxes on the ultra-rich.

The International Space Station is a giant boondoggle and has no reason to exist, frankly. In this age of near-government bankruptcy due to our many foreign wars that do not benefit the American people one bit, they're looking everywhere for cuts. The ISS is one: just playtoys for whites and white-adjacent Asians. It provides no benefits for the undocumented community or the LGBTQP+ community.

Fascism isn't totalitarianism, liar.

"The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom.
-- Benito Mussolini

Fascists don't care what you do in your personal life. None of you have ever read The Fascist Manifesto and never will. You're IGNORANT. And proud of it. Just like the Republicans you despise. Pure psychological projection.

Here's another "guess this one": What's it called when state governors nullify federal laws on their territory? They tried that in 1864 and look what happened.

California alone doesn't have much chance of defeating the powerful Union forces.

If only all the states that nullify federal immigration law could join together in some kind of...alliance..or coalition...or something. Some help with the term again?

They even used the same argument in 1864, liberating their class of second-class citizens would create too much economic disruption and make businesses that rely on that labor unprofitable, causing widespread economic disruption and was non-viable on those grounds alone.