100%. The people who have turned away from the Republican party have only done so out of a distaste for Trump, and maybe Elon. They are almost certainly not opposed much of what is being done, just how they are going about it, and who is doing it.

Or, they’ve just had their faces eaten by leopards, and are upset that they’re suffering the consequences of their actions.

You don’t get to be a Republican in 2016 or 2024 without being ok with burning the whole system down, with dreams of it being to your own benefit. They just don’t trust the current would-be monarchs to be the ones to actually give them what they believe they’re due.

They also had their god emperor refusing to wear masks, and political leaders openly denying the disease.

They had support for their grievences.

They won’t get that over the economy. Instead, they’re getting “this is necessary” and “you’ll just have to make some sacrifices for the economy”.

There were plenty of positives. I just was ill suited to appreciate them because of the core experience of the day being so totally inverted. :-/

No, it has been. There hss just been disagreement on who is considered “the people”.

My fiancee was supposed to be going into town to meet up with friends today. They do a lunch and work thing every couple of months or so, and I love when that happens because it means I get the house to myself, at least while my step-son is at school.

But my step-son woke up with the sniffles and a sore throat this morning. Normally, he will race to the digital thermometer to check his temperature when he’s feeling even the slightest bit off, but today he just sat and had his breakfast. He seemed fine, he was resigned to going to school. I tried to cheer him up with some jokes, and it seemed to work.

Then his mom came downstairs, and he turned it up to 11. She pointed out the thermometer, he raced to it, and ta-da, he has a mild fever. He gleefully raced up to his room to play, while she announced to me that her plans were also cancelled because one of her friends is sick, too.

I really needed the predictability of everyone being out and knowing when they would be back. Work has been chaos this week, kiddo’s off school tomorrow for a PD day, and my fiancee has planned a big to-do about the start of March Break.

This was my day of quiet predictability.

Oy.

they have to follow all the similar communities

See, this compulsion needs to be killed off. Because no, they absolutely do not have to.

It sounds like community pruning is the better solution here. Users don’t need to find dead remote communities in their search results. If there are multiple active communities, that’s not an issue, and there’s no real reason to homogenize them behind lizard brain FOMO. If there’s one active community and 6 dead ones, there’s no reason for users to find any of the dead ones.

Forcibly merging communities that exist on completely different websites just because they run the same, or even just similar, software continues to scream “I want centralization”.

The CEO of my company knows I exist now, and has spontaneously dropped an important project in my lap. As much as I love recognition and an opportunity to show off, this kind of attention from someone with this much power over me is kind of crushing.

I currently have a job. One I’ve been trying to get out of for years, where no one will tell anyone what they want, and just gesture broadly towards abstract-sounding goals which can all be rephrased as “sell more”, even though I am not in sales.

People will often tell those who are unemployed that being unployed is the reason they’re not getting hired - that people want to hire those who are currently working - but that doesn’t seem to be true. Not in my experience, at least. And not since everyone decided to pretend the whole fever dream of a perpetual-lockdoen economy never happened.

It’s totally dried up. A couple of years ago, I had recruiters reaching out to me, and was making it pretty far through the interview process before getting tossed aside in the last step. Often the reasons for getting passed over were pretty weak at the time, but now no one’s talking to me at all.

Quick, someone recommend traveler’s insurance!

I don’t know. I don’t want to play apologetics for the tankies, but showing up in a tankie community and telling them that they’re supporting fascism just sounds like trolling to me. You know what you’re doing, and them taking the bait isn’t power tripping.