Says you. I plan on living forever and so far I have been highly successful.

Okay not highly successful but technically I'm not Dead yet. Technically.

They already are. China is ramping up ram production. You won't be able to buy any of it because the big three will make sure that there are 10,000% tariffs on Chinese ram or that it's just plain blocked entirely. Some of it will probably make its way into apples computers albeit through illegal supply chain shenanigans. None of it will be designed to protect national security or the consumer it'll be about maintaining the big three triopoly.

And we will somehow keep voting for the same imbeciles who do this to us every year either because they're really good at pushing our buttons or because we somehow fall for the overwhelming amount of propaganda.

I don't necessarily blame somebody for falling for the propaganda you can't just decide to be smarter. Hell I wish I could just turn up my IQ points at times but I can't. Some people can't see past propaganda anymore than I can understand particle physics.

But the people who indulge in moral panics like transpanic or satanic panic or the freak outs over comics or if you want to go really far back penny dreadfuls. Those people can fuck right off.

So I understand that you can only read at about a fourth grade level because well, you're a bot trained on Americans talking on the internet and all.

But Jesus Christ could we please improve the quality of the bots around here? They are starting to get embarrassing. I frankly expect better technical skills from the sort of person who runs a bot on a dying web forum.

What difference does citizenship make? I continuously see Americans claim rights only apply to citizens, which is fucking weird.
I looked up the 5th Amendment just in case it mentioned citizens. To quote,

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Second word, "person". Has someone bought some RV's for your Supreme Court Justices and they ruled only American citizens are people?

And nobody batted an eye.

Even if you make the argument that one of the eight fired a gun that might have hit a cop you've still got to contend with the other seven who were just at a protest and are now rotting in prison until the day they die unless a Democrat president happens to pardon them, either that or they can come up with a couple million dollars each to buy a pardon from Trump.

I guess what I'm getting at here is you already gave up your civil rights. Or if you didn't then your neighbor did for you.

It is possible you will get them back in two or three years. But is it stands right now you have absolutely no civil rights in this country. At any moment the current administration and the courts they packed with corrupt judges could decide you're a terrorist and you're off to Federal pound me in the ass prison for the rest of your life contingent on the Democrats winning an election and having the political Capital available to pardon you.

So it's not even news that some guy who tried to exercise a basic civil right is going to jail now. If he gets off it will be because he lucked into the unique combination of a judge that wasn't corrupt and a jury who can read above a fourth grade level. And those aren't odds I would want to take.

A very tiny amount of homework can be beneficial. We don't give a very tiny amount of homework. When my kid was in high school which admittedly was going on a decade ago now I think, I mean they just hit grad school for fuck sake also Christ I'm old, my kid had sometimes 6 to 8 hours of homework on a fucking school night.

From what I heard the local chamber of commerce AKA a bunch of asshole rich businessmen who never worked a day in their fucking lives, lobbied the school board to drastically increase the amount of homework. Enough parents complained that they dropped it to around 4 to 6 hours per night. It wasn't uncommon for me to get up to go pee at night and find my kids still studying.

Anyway to get back on track we know homework isn't effective or useful at educating kids. We all have Google you can find the studies I mean I hope you can. Maybe try chat GTP.

But what homework is really good for is when you have a shitload of kids and you have more kids who are perfectly capable of doing useful work for society then you have opportunities you want to bother giving those kids because we don't have kids do useful work for society we have kids do useful work for ultra wealthy psychopathic asshole billionaires.

Basically it's a way to sort people into how useful they're going to be for billionaires. You dump a bunch of work on them and you see which ones break. The ones that don't break get to move on with their lives and maybe have shelter and healthcare and that they're really lucky when they're too old to work anymore we let them die in peace.

It's like the sorting hat from Harry Potter but somehow still even more fucked up and dystopian when you think about it

Who just spent the last 50 years blowing off democracy for nonsense moral panics and their particular interpretation of some dumb book somehow think that when the screws start to tighten on them that all of that machinery of democracy that they have cheerfully allowed to be dismantled is going to save them.

People like me have been warning people like that for years that eventually the psychopath doing this will get around to them. How George Carlin warned them.

And here we are and all I've got to say is I told you so.

Unless they're going to completely overhaul their POS it's going to be a clusterfuck every time somebody tries to pay with that crap. It already doesn't work at places with much much newer stuff and much better stuff but along the ancient crap Walmart uses. Some of them don't even have tap and pay for Christ's sake.

And somehow I doubt the cheapskates running Walmart are going to pay to overhaul their entire system. So they're going to use a bunch of really old hardware that is really flaky. And I get to sit in line waiting for somebody to give up and pull their real fucking credit card out of their wallet

It's a tiny system on a chip. The screens are annoying as fuck though. When I'm driving around at 60 plus miles per hour I do not want to have to fumble on the screen to adjust temperature control or change the radio station.

As for the rest of the computers and software that's why you're able to drive a car.

People insist on having cars that can accelerate like mad but get good gas mileage overall. Even if you don't personally care about gas mileage we have to force you to have a fuel efficient car or everybody would drive gas guzzlers because they're so gosh darn cool and the price of gas would become prohibitive. Folks do not realize how big an effect all these fuel economy saving features have had. Also and you think this would be important for nerds who are prone to asthma but we need software to manage emissions reductions.

I like my presidents to not be pedophiles but you do you I guess.

Data centers are going to add about $500 to $600 a year to my energy bill. That is a lot of money to take out of my pocket so some billionaire can try and fire me and replace me with a bot.

The problem is if you're over 60 it's been working just fine because they have made it a point to leave you out of all the really nasty stuff they do to everybody else so that you will continue to vote to screw over everybody else.

Now that is scheduled to change in 2032 when social security benefits get cut by $500 a month minimum. With the basic idea that if the Democrats manage to save democracy then they have a mess the Republicans can use to get more concessions by threatening to kill people as per the usual and if the Democrats don't win in 2028 then that's it for democracy and the billionaires can do basically anything they want to any of us and they will.

Meanwhile I know for a fact that is a bunch of dipshit old people on this forum who think they are going to be just fine because they bought a little bit of rental property before prices went crazy and don't have a fucking clue what's coming.

Honestly it must be nice. It's that whole sweet summer child thing where you have no fucking idea. Or like the libertarian house cat thing. Fiercely convinced of their independence while being utterly dependent on a system they neither understand nor appreciate.

Whatever the case when the healthcare system collapses and the price of the drugs they need to not die of a heart attack goes from several hundred dollars a month to $10,000 a month they're going to find out how worthless that little sliver of rental property they have is.

Or maybe the Democrats will save them yet again. But it's getting harder and harder for the Democrats to save these motherfuckers from themselves. Frankly they can all fuck off and die as far as I'm concerned but they keep dragging me down with them

If the Saudis weren't buying basically everything that the rest of the billionaires didn't already own and if I hadn't just watched the 90% billionaire owned news media spend an entire election cycle sane washing Donald Trump while giving multiple weeks of coverage every time Joe Biden so much as coughed.

I mean I know that psychopaths are constantly beaming propaganda into my eye sockets to make me do stupid shit having one more group of psychopathic assholes doing that is hardly news.

While you're correct about the most brazen shoplifters. Which the stores have responded to by making it hard to go out the in door etc.
There is also the casual shoplifters who cheat the self scanners in various ways such as entering a code for a cheaper good and even as someone was telling me the other day, leaving a big expensive bag of dog food in the bottom of the cart and often having the cashier not notice and therefore not charge for the goods. This one is quite safe as you can claim forgetfulness.

Apple will get cock blocked by Trump and tariffs after some bribes. Even if the Democrats get back in charge they will probably keep those tariffs because they're nervous about China.

Even if a miracle happens and apple out bribes The Big Three memory producers which is possible they have a fuck ton of money apple is just going to make sure they have supply. That's not necessarily going to help you or me. They will take advantage of the elevated RAM prices to raise the base price of their hardware to match everybody else who can't afford the spin up an entire ram production facility in China and then bribe the ever-loving shit out of the Trump administration to keep the tariffs off.

The problem you're having is you still think the economy is for you. It's not. Things have fundamentally changed. If you have less than a million dollars in your bank account as cash then you're going to get screwed. And even a million may not be enough.