Depress_Mode
@Depress_Mode@lemmy.world
- Comment on Man, their reputation really has gone to shit 10 hours ago:
It’s true, but intelligence and counterintelligence is kind of their whole thing, isn’t it? They’ve certainly had a long list of laughable fuckups, like their many failed assassination attempts on Castro, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Iran-Contra, etc., but they’ve also successfully toppled governments in South/Central America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Asia, etc. Apparently they’ve made at least 70 attempts at regime change since the end of the Cold War, according to Wikipedia. I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the CIA as a non-threat, personally, especially if they’re going to be following the malevolent orders of a Trump loyalist. I fear the CIA will turn more inwardly to our own country and use their efforts against US citizens (more than usual, that is), specifically against those who would oppose a Trump regime.
We already saw FBI agents engaging in 60s-and-70s-style surveillance of BLM activists in 2020, where they and other feds went around in unmarked vans snatching random activists off the street and traded literal baseball cards they made about different individual activists for fun. Those feds were also sent in at the express direction of Trump. With that in mind, I have no doubts the CIA would do the same in heartbeat. I know they already conduct domestic surveillance operations, but I’d predict a substantial increase in that under the current administration, especially given the ways things have been going after only the first couple weeks with Trump demanding absolute fealty throughout the government and vilifying all opposition. It’s just frightening that Trump had a ready-made intelligence org that was so easily converted to his agenda and seems poised to be his personal secret police. I think that’s probably even scarier than the CIA of old. At least for right now, I might somehow prefer a CIA that says, “Sorry, Mr. President, but we don’t follow orders.”
- Comment on Man, their reputation really has gone to shit 11 hours ago:
CIA, too. I thought they kind of did their own thing and kind of aren’t really beholden to the president. People think the CIA is such a rogue organization that some people have suggested they killed JFK because he sought to shrink the org and make them more accountable. Whether that’s true or not, apparently all it takes to completely take it over is just to change around some personnel, though.
Like, my head cannon is that the new leaders would be figureheads only and that there’d be someone secretly chosen to keep things running behind closed doors and pulling the real CIA strings to resist such changes (and maybe have an encore, pretty please?), but that’s based on nothing at all. I’m no fan of the CIA or anything, but I do fear what such a shadowy government org might do when wielded by Trump cronies even more than the stuff they usually get up to.
- Comment on I'm just a 20 year old guy, AMA 5 weeks ago:
Forgetting how it works and having to relearn it again
- Comment on Steal Her Look 2 months ago:
Also, despite what some mushroom books will say, it’s not the 🤮😵 kind of poison (except in rare cases)
It’s the 😵💫🤤 kind of poison
- Comment on Poop Knife 4 months ago:
In his 1953 autobiography, Danish explorer Peter Freuchen claimed that in 1926, he became trapped in a blizzard while running a dog team and was forced to take shelter under his sled for 30 hours while snow built up and froze around him. When he tried to emerge, he found he was entombed in ice and unable to break free with his hands alone. Thinking quickly, he took a shit right there, shaped the turd into a chisel, and allowed it to freeze solid. He then claims he was able to use his newly made tool to chip his way free and make it back to camp. Peter was the only witness to his supposed escape. The study mentions it’s based on an Inuit ethnographic account, however. Maybe Peter, having spent much time in the Arctic with Inuit peoples simply took the story for himself. With the runners of the study finding that they were unable to replicate such a technique, it lends credibility to the claim that story may have been fabricated.
- Comment on Come back to us, stripey dog 4 months ago:
Good thing we also have more thylacines than ever before, right?
- Comment on Come back to us, stripey dog 4 months ago:
Nah, son. Thylacines have, in a way, become cryptids since their extinction, complete with cheesy travel shows where some bogan tells you all about how they totally saw one time and they’re 100% sure it was a thylacine they barely saw from a distance running away through the tall grass after sunset. I’ve seen similar shows about Bigfoot, Nessie, Mothman, and others. They don’t exist anymore, making your chances of seeing one alive no more likely than seeing Bigfoot, which is the point I was making. Animals thought to be extinct being officially rediscovered is a pretty rare occurrence; I assure you it doesn’t happen “regularly”. It’s a big deal when it happens because it’s quite rare. Yes, I’m familiar with the stories of all the other extinct species you mentioned as well. The ivory-billed woodpecker is still considered by most ornithologists to be extinct, and the last widely accepted sighting of any individual was in 1987, despite some supposed (but not universally accepted or entirely conclusive) sightings every once in a while. In 2020, a guy working for Fish and Wildlife claimed to have ID’d one in video footage, but it must not have been very compelling because the very next year Fish and Wildlife proposed declaring it officially extinct. People claim to have sighted the ivory-billed woodpecker not infrequently, much like the thylacine. What is infrequent is any compelling evidence whatsoever, however.
- Comment on Come back to us, stripey dog 5 months ago:
There have been many sightings and footprints found of Bigfoot, too.
The last widely accepted sighting of a wild thylacine was in 1933, over a hundred years ago. Even if any tiny, isolated pockets had managed to escape extermination (which is unlikely on an island without much mountainous terrain or dense forest when everyone and their grandma was out hunting them for the bounty the government put on their tails), they’d be in big trouble owing to genetic drift by now. You always hear people say “I know what I saw,” but do they really? It makes me circle back to the Bigfoot thing.
- Comment on Now you'll be able to purchase sunlight at night! 5 months ago:
“‘By precisely reflecting sunlight that is endlessly available in space to specific targets on the ground, we can create a world where sunlight powers solar farms for longer than just daytime, and in doing this, commoditize sunlight.’”
- Comment on Americans Are Sharing The "Normal, Everyday" Aspects About The US That Are Actually Dystopian, And I Can't Believe We Tolerate Some Of These 6 months ago:
Lmaooo what a pathetic response. If you’d ever pick up anything more advanced than a coloring book, you’d know paragraphs can be longer than 4 sentences. In any case, a single sentence is never a paragraph, so you obviously don’t know how to use paragraph breaks. You’ve shown once more that you’re completely unable to string two sentences together. Also, you’re still a monster with dogshit opinions and you’re very conspicuously trying to steer the conversation away from that fact.
is the point you are a clown? i agree
You argue like a 10 year old lmao. That’s the best you could come up with?
- Comment on Americans Are Sharing The "Normal, Everyday" Aspects About The US That Are Actually Dystopian, And I Can't Believe We Tolerate Some Of These 6 months ago:
if its author knew how to correctly break the text into them
It’s hard to take this seriously coming from the guy who can’t even go 2 sentences without a paragraph break. My points still stand.
- Comment on Americans Are Sharing The "Normal, Everyday" Aspects About The US That Are Actually Dystopian, And I Can't Believe We Tolerate Some Of These 6 months ago:
You went out of your way just to tell everyone that you think former drug addicts aren’t deserving of medical care? Not even people who currently do drugs (who are also all 100% deserving of medical treatment btw), anyone who used to do drugs is disqualified, too? It’s an absolutely insane take to say “they used to do drugs, so they don’t deserve to have teeth.” And what of all those people who didn’t do drugs, but still need and can’t afford dentures or implants? If you can’t afford reliable access to dental care from the start, you’ll likely be stuck with preventable problems down the line that then become even more expensive to fix. The situations of these people aren’t different from former addicts in any meaningful way; they need dental work, but can’t afford it. You’re ignoring the core issue that important and completely necessary dental work (and medical treatment of all kinds) is too expensive for almost everyone, not just current or former addicts. As a result, many are forced to go without that treatment. That’s a bad thing. You saw someone complaining that dental work is unaffordable, and all you could think to say was “Yeah, but they’re druggies, so there’s no problem here.” You’ve justified a terrible system to yourself because you view the people who were quoted as being beneath you. What’s truly dystopian is both that medical care would be out of reach of so many, but also that people would be ok with that as long as it means the “undesirables” don’t get to have any. The societal disdain for marginalized human life and the moral superiority complex that fuels it are both absolutely appalling.
- Comment on The History Channel, now in the fantasy section. 1 year ago:
When I was a kid, I definitely remember a more history-centric focus on the History Channel, although I remember even then (early 2000s) that they seemed to lean pretty heavily on WWII documentaries. It seemed every time I switched to the channel, one would be playing. It’s more or less been the way it is for the last decade or so, though.
- Comment on The History Channel, now in the fantasy section. 1 year ago:
Nah, it’s not much better during the day, either. HC runs either crackpot history/paranormal docs, reality shows, discussion about niche topics such as toys/modern architecture/etc., or war docs almost 24/7. In case anyone is wondering, here’s the next three days of programming scheduled for History Channel.
Saturday (Veterans Day):
12:03-1:06am - The UnXplained
1:06-3:04am - The Proof is Out There
3:04-4:01am - The UnXplained
4:01-7:00am - Paid Programming
7:00-1:00pm - WWII in HD
1:00-7:00pm - Vietnam in HD
7:00-8:00pm - Special, Variety Salute to Service 2023
8:00-10:03pm - Beyond the Battlefield
10:03-12:03am - Special, 761st Tank Battalion: The Original Black Panthers
Sunday
12:03-2:04am - Beyond the Battlefield
2:04-4:01am - Special, 761st Tank Battalion: The Original Black Panthers
4:01-7:00am - Paid Programming
7:00-3:00pm - Modern Marvels
3:00-12:03am - The Toys that Built America
Monday
12:03-4:01am - The Toys that Built America
4:01-7:00am - Paid Programming
7:00-12:00pm - History’s Greatest Mysteries
12:00-4:00pm - Ancient Aliens Special Presentation
4:00-9:00pm - Ancient Aliens
9:00-11:05pm - Ancient Aliens Special Presentation
11:05-12:03am - Ancient Aliens
- Comment on Checkmate round-earthers 1 year ago:
Humans evolved to walk on Earth
Human feet curved
Earth round confirmed
Checkmate, flat-earthers!
- Comment on Safety First 1 year ago:
Yeah, those kids aren’t even at the camp anymore, they all went out for a morning-after pill.
- Comment on Something we can all agree on! 1 year ago:
You’d think the internet would have come up with a new punchline than “Australia upside down lolz” since literally 2011, but here we are well over a decade later making the exact same jokes and pretending it’s still funny.
This shitposting community consistently disappoints me. Way too often, the actual shitposts only get a couple dozen upvotes. Meanwhile, we get tired, generic memes like this voted to the top. A shitpost isn’t just some random iFunny meme, but that’s all I ever seen to see coming out of here. The other top post right now is a years-old webcomic, not even edited to be a shitpost or anything.
- Comment on There is a chance that birds accidentally sing a known musical motif 1 year ago:
Meanwhile, Steller’s jays:
- Comment on [OC] My feeling as European reading news on Lemmy/Reddit 1 year ago:
Sounds like Europeans need to step up on being a dumpster fire if they want as much coverage as us. Be the change you want to see in the world!
- Comment on There are identical twins out there whose parents confused one with the other and now they living their life with the name of the other sibling, never noticing because it doesn't make any difference. 1 year ago:
Exact same plot in an episode of Suite Life of Zach and Cody
- Comment on If the afterlife has bureaucracy, I'm going to ask to speak to the manager. 1 year ago:
There’s an ongoing medical study I’ve been participating in for the last several years. Each year, the questionnaire asks all kinds of crazy questions like if I’ve ever died or ever been shot in the head, among others. If one is actually unsure, perhaps the answer is actually “yes” lol
