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LillyPip

@ LillyPip @lemmy.ca

Posts
24
Comments
859
Joined
3 yr. ago

Sci-fi & horror author, UXD, software dev, composer/engraver, gamer, seamstress/tailor, nerd, etc; she/her. Aroace.

  • Project 2025 leader confesses deep Trump ties in damning interview

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  • I actually don’t think he’s lying about this. He’s a moron who famously doesn’t read, and he doesn’t need to be included in this. Project 2025 is the Lovecraftian baby of the Heritage Foundation and other fascist groups lurking in trump’s shadow.

    Trump is not the driving force behind this fascist movement – he’s just their carnival barker. If he dropped dead today, it would only make a minor dent in this movement.

    I think it’s actually dangerous to focus on trump as though he’s the mastermind of this stuff. He is not, and the danger won’t be over once he’s gone.

  • Debate wrap up: No one has ever so thoroughly dominated Donald Trump

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  • It’s a fine line to walk, between drilling deep into each of his faults and failures and presenting herself as the capable adult in the room – especially when his lies per minute are so high, he’s just spouting a firehouse of bullshit, and they’re limited to 2 minute responses.

    I think she did a fantastic job of baiting him into anger and incoherence without seeming petty, and delivering her points concisely. Trump is a challenge to debate, not because he’s good at it, but it’s like trying to wrestle a pig – his only strategy is to drag you into the mud with him.

    Even when she was muted, she got her response across very effectively with her facial expressions of disbelief, astonishment, and incredulous amusement. Her reactions where she didn’t even speak are already becoming memes.

  • Debate wrap up: No one has ever so thoroughly dominated Donald Trump

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  • /r/the_dumbass still exists? I thought it was banned years ago.

  • Tuesday 9/10 Presidential Debate Megathread!

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  • There are undecideds, though. Every election, millions and millions of people turn 18, and they were under 14 the last time this lunatic was in office, too young to really understand. Many may have been raised in conservative households and are just now forming their own opinions as they enter the real world.

    It's about getting people to VOTE.

    And you’re absolutely right about this, which is why the right is desperately trying to make that as hard as possible right now.

    e: can’t spell

  • Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris

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  • That cat is drop-dead gorgeous.

  • Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris

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  • and some have criticized her in the past for not speaking up or for leaving her views ambiguous in a way that left room for the right to coopt her image.

    This seems important to her, especially considering her timing – she mentioned that the right has been circulating deep fakes of her falsely claiming she endorsed trump.

  • Tuesday 9/10 Presidential Debate Megathread!

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  • Harris’s campaign needs to meme the shit out of these moments and sound bites. So much good material.

  • Tuesday 9/10 Presidential Debate Megathread!

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  • In other words, I’ll just give Ukraine to Putin.

  • Tuesday 9/10 Presidential Debate Megathread!

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  • I’ve already lost count of trump’s lies, and we’re not even 10 minutes in.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

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  • The chicken vs egg question has never been about chronology or science.

    It’s been about religion vs science.

    Science says the egg came first: something nearly imperceptibly not quite a chicken laid an egg that hatched a chicken. That’s how evolution works, with the egg coming first.

    Religion says a god poofed a chicken into existence. The chicken came first, and only ever laid pure chicken eggs. The eggs will forever hatch a chicken and nothing but a chicken.

    That’s the chicken vs egg thing. It’s not a puzzle at all, it’s just science vs religion.

    e: simplified. I’m too wordy by default.

  • Psychologist says Trump's latest rally 'consistent with a diagnosis of dementia'

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  • But wait! He was able to name a rhinoceros and do differential calculus! Person woman man camera tv!

    He brags about ‘acing’ that test, but here’s the actual test:

    The most difficult maths problem is to subtract by 7s.

    The answers to the 5 words memory question would never be ‘person woman man camera tv’, because they’re always carefully chosen to not be related in any way, because that would defeat the purpose, since related words are easier to remember. They’d be things like ‘daisy chair monkey water picture’. Even from his very first retelling, he didn’t remember the words, he was just naming things he saw in the room at the time, and he was bragging about passing a test that if you fail, you may be deemed unable to care for yourself.

    We know this is the test, because he talks about the rhino part, then says it gets hard from there (eta: in his own words, 3 years ago), and now says almost nobody can pass the rest. And he says the doctors told him he’s one of the only people they’ve seen pass it.

    This is himself recounting the story last month, January 2024. (e: Sorry for the Twitter link; I couldn’t find a better one.)

    And his cult cheers this shit. It’s utterly bonkers.

    e: Link, and another link. And one more.

    e2: I couldn’t help but add this. I am so sorry. If it must be in my head, now it’s in yours too.

  • Why Republicans are fighting the basic-income programs many cities and states are adopting: 'Is money a birthright now?'

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  • I think the core problem is we’ve been giving all the power to sociopaths who use pretty words to fool the masses into allowing them to leech the fruits of their labour whilst contributing nothing themselves.

    We need to start valuing empathy over bravado, intellectualism over shallow emotional stimulus, and humanity over populist fervour.

    That would be a massive cultural shift that would require changes in our approach to many facets of society (education, media, religion, politics, etc), and we seem to be going in the wrong direction, unfortunately.

  • Need a rust version too.

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  • You seem very excited so now I have to check it out.

    e: holy shit, it does

  • JPEG

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  • Yes, and that’s stupid.

    It’s not ‘Jraphical Image Format’. Gah!!!

  • Mike Johnson's campaign contributions from company tied to Russia

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  • You mentioned the Holocaust, which is the most egregious recent example. I’ve yet to get a satisfactory answer to where the good Christian Germans were during that?

    Where were they during the Crusades? Where were they during the Inquisition?

    Where are they now?

  • What is a well known 'public secret' in the industry you work in that the majority of outsiders are unaware of?

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  • Their practices are so scummy, I’m surprised they’re still allowed to operate at all in Canada. Glad they can’t do their worst in Ontario, that’s a small win.

    You’re right about their abhorrent manipulation – I still have binders in storage from my sales training; I should dig them up and post some of it. It’s still, 35 years later, the most disgusting emotional manipulation I’ve ever seen. After all these years, it’s only got worse in the US from what I hear.

    You were supposed to ask them to relive their most recent familial death experience under the guise of polite conversation, then hone in on whatever detail was the most unpleasant, and hammer home how if they didn’t buy a package, their children would go through worse. Have they considered how much emotional and financial pain they would cause if, god forbid, they died tomorrow? Don’t take time to think about the money you don’t have, because every hour of delay raises the chances your kids will be left with a financial mess when they’re grieving you. You’re basically heartless for doing that to them.

    The graveside pitch was even worse. It’s so sad you lost your baby last month, but what if your six-year-old died tomorrow? Are you prepared for that? Like jesus, I can’t imagine the paranoia a grieving family faces after losing one child, constantly afraid for their remaining child. Let’s rub salt in that wound and scare the shit out of them for a few thousand dollars. It should be illegal everywhere.

  • What is a well known 'public secret' in the industry you work in that the majority of outsiders are unaware of?

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  • Not so fun story:

    One of my first jobs when I was barely 18 was with one of the big funeral home/cemetery providers in the US. It was positively horrible, and not for the reasons most people think.

    As a new hire, you’d start on the cold-calling phone banks, which was bad enough. Nobody wants a cold marketing call from a cemetery. But it got worse from there.

    After a month on the phone bank, I’d done well enough to be promoted to field sales, which meant going to the most impoverished areas of town to follow up on the appointments the phone bank had made, basically trying to scare poor elderly people into handing over what little they had to ‘pre-plan’ for their deaths, with the pitch that if they didn’t, their family would suffer.

    After a few appointments it was clear I didn’t have the stomach for that, so they moved me to on-site sales, which was somehow worse.

    On-site sales included helping to host the Mother’s Day open house at the large main cemetery. They set up a greeting station at the entrance with refreshments and ‘in memorium’ wreaths that could be bought by bereaved family (on that day, mostly children of the deceased, but also mothers who had lost their children, some at a very young age). It sounds like a kind thing to do, because many young mothers/fathers coming to visit were so distraught, they hadn’t stopped for coffee or thought about flowers.

    I was not stationed at the welcome station. I was a ‘roamer’, meaning I was one of several staff expected to meander through the graves and check on families graveside – to ask if they needed anything and to upsell them pre-planning packages for themselves or their other children. I am not kidding, we were expected to do that.

    I had to be prodded to approach my first mark (a young couple ‘celebrating’ the woman’s first Mother’s Day at the grave of her several months old child, and I couldn’t stomach it. It felt barbaric, to even try to sell someone who could not stop crying at the grave of her young child. I couldn’t do the pitch, obviously, and backed out as soon as possible, then hid by the skips behind the main building until the end of the day when I quit.

    I’ve done many jobs in my life, including cleaning bowling alley toilets, but I’ve never been asked to do anything as vile.

    I’ll bet everyone in the funeral industry can guess which company I’m talking about.

  • Megathread, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith Indicted Trump on 3 more felony charges.

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  • 57 now. Woo!