But Palau? WTF … lol … I’ve never heard of them as a country

Noice … but in a French accent

By tossing their salad

I saw wood paneling and heard CCR on the radio when I read this

What do you expect? It’s Amish

You had me worried. Reading the headline I thought this post was going to be such a dull man thing bordering on psychotic if they are making paper to eat.

I’m a dull man but not so dull as to want to eat paper.

Happy to see it wasn’t the case and that you made something neat.

So … we’re building the instruments that will destroy us and win the world for them?

The thing fascists and authoritarians always forget is that there are more of us than there are of them.

It doesn’t mean it’s a nice contest or a heroic fight … it’s terribly ugly and horrible when the fighting starts but there are always more socially minded people than ignorant ones. It’s been the case for thousands of years and I don’t think we’ll break that pattern any time soon

hours … a thousand hour Reich … which is roughly just over a month.

I also find that I’m using Youtube less and less and just watch full professionally made programs, documentaries or shows. I’m getting to the point of wondering why I watch a bunch of mindless junk while being interrupted by even more mindless junk advertising for hours on end.

It’s weird because I feel like I’m taking back my time to watch all the shows and stuff I wanted to watch in the 90s over cable TV but never had access. If I cut all the stupid time I use to watch junk on Youtube, now I have time to watch all that stuff I wanted to watch a long time ago.

The stupid part is that the world’s most powerful government, with the biggest military, billionaires and the world at their disposal … and they still use public washrooms with a dozen other people.

These guys are so wealthy and powerful that they should all have dedicated toilets just for themselves or to install individual private toilets without having to interact with anyone.

Public toilets … going to take a shit like a regular pleb

I don’t use ad blockers … I’ve gone back to my old cable TV habits from the 90s … use the mute button and take a toilet break, get a drink from the kitchen, check your social media feed, knit a sweater, talk to your spouse … then unmute and keep watching.

The bonus is that if you happen to miss the restart, you can rewind back to what you missed … we never had that in the 90s. Sure PVR existed but not everyone had one.

The leadership, organizers, managers and promoters were all our mostly highly educated people who knew how to organize a political campaign. Whenever a group like this grows in prominence, it doesn’t happen by accident is by design and through the hard dedicated work of very organized, very intelligent people. Intelligent people who are very misguided, selfish and lacking empathy

Even without this historical reference … everyone understands what he meant.

Do we allow private enterprise total control over social media who then use their control to flood society with their propaganda use their power to blackmail, control, bully or worse.

OR

Do we allow government agencies total control over social media who then use their control to flood society with their propaganda use their power to blackmail, control, bully or worse.

At least with the publicly controlled government option, we would all have some measure of control or regulation. It would take a lot more organization and complication for bad actors to manipulate the message because they first have to take control of government.

Leaving control of social media in private hands means we’ve already given up control because bad actors can just buy whatever message they want and push it to everyone. Their message and manipulation guides everyone to the government they want. Bad actors win because they have control of social media and can win control of government.

The game is already set. We want to argue that the government shouldn’t have control of these things because we don’t/won’t/can’t trust government … but we are more than willing to put our trust in private for profit corporations.

One way around this is to nationalize social media companies. Use public funding to run the service instead of private companies and run the service in the same way as licensing a vehicle to drive on the highway.

Social media has essentially become a public necessity that everyone wants and needs, it should be run and regulated like the public water system. It should be run, controlled, regulated and monitored by a system like the postal service where it isn’t designed to make money but instead concentrate all is activity into just providing a critical independent service to everyone.

Beautiful post … it’s exactly what this community is for.

If they do start to secede or actually secede than it just becomes an expensive and complicated mess that doesn’t help anyone. Because even if they are forced back then the larger federation has to work ten times harder to keep them in place and cooperative and in the end becomes a net negative where they have to decide if it’s cheaper to let go or keep paying to stay together.

Ask a Canadian what it means because we’ve had that discussion many times with Quebec and less often with other regions. It’s far cheaper for everyone to be cooperative and mutually benefiting one another on good terms than to threaten anyone into a corner … and even when things are working, it’s still not easy.

CIA Pigs In Space!!! … starring Foster Dulles and his younger sister Allison Dulles

… btw … I always loved the Muppet Show and ‘Pigs In Space’ … Waldorf and Statler calling from the balcony ‘YOU CALL THAT ACTING!!’

Yeah … I messed that up … autocorrect doesn’t like playing nice with Star Trek names or words