Organize. Find strength in numbers. Join PSL or FRSO or whatever organization is happening near you. We may or may not not be able to avoid this one but we can still struggle together to right the wrongs in our society that led to these events and strike while the iron is hot.

Israel Keyes admitted to at least one of these but probably did tens if not hundreds. Had caches across the country of supplies and weapons. He was only eventually caught cause he got sloppy and I think had a body or something on his property at some point. Didn’t admit a lot to the police cause he didn’t want media attention and for his daughter to find out, a lot of information is gleaned from missing persons that coincided with where he happened to be at the time (phone pings, plane tickets, etc), and he traveled a lot.

There’s a long-running podcast detailing what is known about him, called True Crime Bullshit.

You have to admit he makes a very handsome woman

I mean yeah between Ukraine/Russia and Lebanon/Palestine/Israel It’s not hard to see why a bunch of capitalists would be bullish on defense right now. Don’t really need to look at the stock market to know that.

The learning lesson there is just how much money is invested in seeing war break out and creating need for more weapons. Anyone pushing for war very likely has a vested interest in seeing it happen, especially those with the means to shelter themselves from the consequences of war. Add in the fact that capitalists are very good at getting what they want from the US government, and even better at sheltering themselves from consequences.

So, is the war just “likely”, breaking out on its own out of nowhere, and capitalists just have a 6th sense for it, or is it being pushed and funded by capitalists who want the public to feel like war is inevitable so they will consent to escalating military intervention without much resistance?

Welcome to capitalism, are you new here?

Theres just too many rules that completely blow the game if you break them. People tell me there’s room for strategy but everything feels predetermined by the cards you get and of course there’s that guy over your shoulder telling you “can’t do that” every time you try something and oh great the other team knows my cards now, game over. Like yeah lol fuck this you guys can play without me.

This has been my experience all 6 times I’ve tried to learn euchre.

That’s news to me

I wasn’t implying you were talking about defense, I was just saying that if you’re only about money then you can make a lot of it developing weapons for the government.

Different universities specialize in different things. I went to an engineering university that issued mostly engineering degrees, plus a few business degrees. Both of my state’s public universities also have fairly large colleges of engineering with quite a few engineering programs run by them. You’re also not only competing locally, but with remote, outsource and H1B visa workers. There is plenty of supply.

God forbid you have to train an employee in the specialization you’re looking for once in a while.

After telling a generation of kids to get stem degrees or they’ll be doomed to flip burgers, I feel I have the responsibility to say this is no longer the case. The jobs still pay well but; between ghost job listings, recent layoffs, and every entry level job wanting like 4 years of hyper specific experience; I have observed it being nearly impossible to enter the job market or move around it right now, and the whole thing feels very oversaturated.

Unless you’re willing to build bombs. Don’t know much about that end of it cause I’m not interested in developing things intended to kill people. but that’s where the money is if that’s what you’re about.

Why are you making that assumption?

Making everything about money and power when there’s a child and feelings involved is pretty insecure, yeah. Some benefit of the doubt is warranted.

Your analysis that they’re just “flexing” by doing a nice gesture for a child of a divorce that they are involved in, says more about you than anyone else in this situation.

Why bring the kid at all then? They already had a free and eager babysitter right there.

I feel differently. I don’t know the ex or their partner of course but I see it as an olive branch. They share blood through their child together. They’re going to have to be around each other regardless of how things ended. The only person who loses with this grudge being held is the kid between them.

I yield that I have never been in the position of loving someone and being betrayed like that. I know it evokes strong feelings and I’m not minimizing that, but it doesn’t really matter at this point whose fault it is or who chose what. None of these bad feelings will ever change what happened or who that person is. The only thing you can change is your own behavior in the future and to manage your own feelings and expectations with that person so it doesn’t happen again. Fool me once, fool me twice and all that.

So I’m not saying you have to forgive and forget. I wouldn’t ever put the ex in a position of personal closeness or trust ever again. If that’s what this is to OP then 100% stay home. However, if I am correct in seeing this as a chance to acknowledge what happened, move on, and lower tensions between them for the kid’s sake, then I think it can be positive. It’s also a valuable lesson for the kid to show them the ideal way for an adult to behave after interpersonal conflict, how they as an adult should ideally work through tough feelings.

It depends on the person though. If you can’t move past those feelings, if you can’t model the ideal, which would be completely understandable, then the best thing is probably not to go. Work together with the kid to help them understand the situation. Might be time for a heart to heart with them and to let them in on the feelings you’ve been dealing with so they can fully understand what’s keeping you from going.

It’s a 14 year old kid, they’re mostly self sufficient at that point. Whether you’re “stuck” babysitting or get to relax on your own I see it as a win-win. If the couple want to squander their vacation time solely with each other (in which case, why did they take the extra week from OP instead of just leaving the kid with him the whole time??) while OP gets to bond with their child on a free vacation, I just don’t see how that’s a punishment.

Leave it up to the kid, they’re the one that wanted their dad with them and the whole reason he’s invited.

Abandoning your kid, making them feel like a burden, to go fuck around with strangers, just to get back at an ex who happens to be the mother of your child, seems like an asshole move here. Please don’t do this OP.

Edit: OP is the father, my bad. Editing now.

Definitely don’t introduce a stranger to your child on a family trip just to make your ex jealous and/or take advantage of their new partner. This is a shitty thing to do. Just spend the free vacation with your kid or don’t go if you can’t be civil.

I got the impression they skipped the hello world cause it was too easy and they wanted to get right to writing their app, so they moved on to more advanced stuff without having a real grasp of the basics

More than a few teeth/entire jaws were lost over this I reckon

Doesn’t negate literally anything that I said.

I’m not downplaying anything or suggesting we’d be going back to the current status quo in four years, and if you actually read what I wrote in a slightly less cynical way you’d understand that.

I’m telling you now that things will decline under trump and you will vote for the new status quo that will have been wrought about in four years instead of pushing for a platform that even expresses a desire to make things better, and you will fight against anyone telling you we should work together to achieve that end.

I’m not going around calling anybody anything, and I’m especially not denigrating their intelligence. We’re not allowed to question your candidates and you’re so convinced of your own righteousness that anyone who disagrees is a dipshit or a fascist that deserves everything bad coming to them. But sure, you guys are definitely morally superior to MAGA and totally different from them in every way.

Also, voting for democrats is not “taking action against the Republicans”, it’s taking action for Democrats, because a) that’s just the reality of how voting works, no matter how much you libs cry foul and doublethink yourselves into believing it’s not, and b) the Democrats are not taking action against the Republicans. If they were, they would have done something in the last 4 years to prevent the Republicans gaining ground or at the very least run a campaign that wasn’t objectively bad and ceded the framing on every issue to the Republicans, making themselves look incompetent.

This outcome works for them, the DNC, just as much as it does for Republicans. They don’t give a shit about winning elections and they don’t give a shit about you or trans people or minorities or any people who will actually suffer under Republican policy, no matter how strong of a hallucination you get from them being the only alternative to the Republicans you’re allowed to consider in our quote-unquote “democracy”.