Yeah, do NOT watch end of Evangelion if you’re in a bad mental headspace. The original series ending might be better for you despite the “ran out of money and cobbled together a clip show” values, since it at least has a relatively upbeat tone. EoE starts with “all the main characters are comatose or going through a mental breakdown” and it gets worse from there.

They’re both extremely excellent. The original series is a fair bit darker and more depressing, and End of Evangelion is definitely a lot more WTF than anything that happens in the rebuild movies (which isn’t a bad thing necessarily). The rebuild movies,meanwhile, have much higher production values, and the fights are generally much better–most of the gifs of Ramiel you see are from the rebuild. The characters are also a lot more mentally stable–they’re all still depressed and dealing with heavy shit, but it’s “I’m taking my meds” depression instead of “untreated spiral” depression.

Watch up to the last episode, then watch End of Evangelion for the canon ending. And/or watch the rebuild movies for a condensed retelling that goes in its own direction.

The fuck is wrong with you? Why do you give a shit about what people enjoy? That’s pretty weird, bro

I think the mod v. user viewpoint is why moderators are so cagey and timid about banning the Usual Suspects. I remember when mods actually followed through and temp banned one of them (iirc it was givesomefucks?) and pretty much all of Lemmy lost their collective shit. If you just read that one thread, you’d have left with the impression that Lemmy mods were a bunch of far-right, protofascist, power tripping assholes hellbent on silencing dissent.

The lesson I took from that episode is that Lemmy has a sizable, vocal minority that either agrees with what the Usual Suspects are saying, or at minimum don’t think it’s banworthy. They might also think there needs to be a bright line rule violation (and either don’t recognize or don’t care that every good troll is well-versed in skirting the rules and gently pushing the line, but almost never clearly steps over them).

Yeah, there are so many moments I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and yell at various people while shaking their shoulders.

For the love of God, Barack, don’t make fun of Trump at the White House correspondent’s dinner, he’ll run for president to dismantle all you’ve built up in revenge and HE WILL WIN.

Please, Ruth, I beg you to step down now while there’s still an opportunity for you to be replaced with another liberal justice. If you don’t, your legacy will be undone I’m under four years and it will herald the end of American democracy.

Please, Barack, don’t let them steal a supreme court seat like this, you have to force the issue while there’s still time or else you will watch the heritage foundation gloat about the second American revolution against the left while a corrupt court anoints the president as above the law of the land.

For the love of God, Biden, please run in 2016, I know you’re still grieving over the death of your son, but if you don’t you’ll be grieving over the death of your entire country.

For the love of God, Hillary, please step aside and let Sanders be the candidate, I know you agreed with Obama that he would give you SoS in return for you running after him but the Republican propaganda machine has made you toxic.

Barack, you can’t sweep this Russian interference under the rug, it’s too important to ignore, please!

I beg you, Hillary, don’t ignore the rust belt, your numbers are weaker than they should be there and they are too important to lose, the literal future of democracy is at stake.

For fuck’s sake, Comey, don’t reopen this stupid email investigation two weeks before the election, we both know there’s nothing on that fucking laptop. You need to shut down the trumpy faction before they leak its existence because they are trying to interfere with the election, and if Trump wins he will reward you with a pink slip while gleefully dragging the country to a dictatorship.

This timeline could’ve been so easily avoided, if only one variable out of dozens was different. But here we are, with me wondering where I can even flee to in order to escape the coming dictatorship.

The hush money payments were before the election so they were still felonies. It’s possible Trump wouldn’t have bothered hiding them like he did if he lost, but in any case there wouldn’t have been the appetite to prosecute him.

As for the coup, he absolutely would have tried it, definitely through filing lawsuits, and probably up to the same fake electors scheme and the riot, but it’s debatable how far he would’ve gotten. Definitely not as far as he did in reality, though.

Hoo boy, it’s a toughie. On the one hand, Trump would still be around. He also wouldn’t be in as much legal peril as he is now (it’s likely there wouldn’t have been an appetite to prosecute him over the Stormy Daniels hush money payments, and the classified documents case would have never happened to begin with since he wouldn’t have had access). But he almost definitely WOULD have tried to pull off another insurrection similar to Jan 6th–he was foreshadowing that he wouldn’t accept the results if he lost even back in 2016, using the same language as he did in 2020 before he launched his coup attempt.

The world where Trump doesn’t attempt a coup isn’t very interesting, at least for this thought experiment–he slinks off, continues shitposting about Hillary on Twitter, but likely doesn’t try to run again (or loses in the primary because he’s a sore loser). Everyone ignores his hush money payments in the interest of “statesmanship,” and at best he becomes a minor kingmaker in the party apparatus. MAGA withers on the vine, and we largely continue with the late Obama administration status quo.

The world where he attempts a coup is much more interesting. The real question is, what would have changed after the failed insurrection attempt? It’s highly unlikely it would have succeeded or even gotten anywhere as close as it did, since a lot of the original plan relied on access to the levers of power (I.e. being able to withhold security to let the rioters overrun the Capitol). But how would everyone react to it long-term? In this timeline, Republicans genuinely distanced themselves from Trump and Jan 6th at first, likely out of shock over the realization that they were actually in danger and the very real fear that they could end up hurt or killed. But as the shock wore off, Republicans started shuffling back to MAGA as the propaganda machine did its work to downplay and normalize the failed coup, and they realized that their base saw Jan 6th as a good thing.

In a theoretical timeline where Trump tries a coup in 2016, it depends on how far Trump gets before he fails. If he’s thwarted to the point where he doesn’t (or can’t) hold the rally that stormed the Capitol, then nothing really comes of it at all–it becomes a footnote in history that is only cared about by political historians, pub trivia enthusiasts, and people who like to talk about politics on the internet. If he gets to the point where he holds a rally, but the rally is prevented from interfering with the certification process (complete with provocative images of cops in riot gear swinging at MAGA rioters), it’s likely that this downplaying and normalization would have been ironically amplified by virtue of the coup attempt being less successful. Without the visceral fear of hiding from rioters, Republicans would have no reason to distance themselves from the attempt, and they would almost immediately start using it as fodder to attack the new Clinton administration. In short, the hypothetical coup attempt would become another Benghazi scandal for Clinton–something that she had little real involvement in and largely wasn’t her fault, but that she gets blamed for anyway. Trump, meanwhile, would remain largely in the same position as in 2015–the dominant force in the party.

Aside from that, the court wouldn’t be as openly corrupt as it is now. It’d be filled by a moderate Clinton appointee if democrats have the 51 votes to abolish the filibuster for supreme court appointees (or held open by McConnell otherwise), and when RBG dies her replacement is decided by whoever wins the 2020 election. Roe v. Wade would still exist, the chevron deference would still be the law of the land, and we wouldn’t have the terrifying prospect of legally sanctioned presidential death squads.

Overall, I think we would be largely in line with the status quo of 2014-2015. Not great, with a worrying trend towards fascism and an establishment largely too busy huffing their own farts to address the vast majority of problems facing us, but a LOT better than where we are right now.

How about you fuck off and chug a diarrhea dogshit smoothie :^)

I’m at about 40% income to rent, and that’s with my living with two other adults. Landlord has consistently pumped rent by 20% every year, all while removing features (per-unit planter boxes demolished, fancy dishwasher & washer/dryer replaced with generic shit boxes, etc.).

I wish I’d never moved here

I think that’s just called informally splitting a mortgage, homie

At this rate we’re going to start getting memes about Lemmy reading comprehension lmao

Lmao, from an NPR article on the same topic:

They filed an affidavit from an insurance broker saying it is “not possible” to find a bond that big. The broker was an expert witness for Trump during the trial.

The trial judge already noted in his decision that this broker was a “close personal friend” of Trump’s and had a financial interest in the outcome. A decision could come from the appeals court later this week.

I’m sure the judge will give the broker’s opinion all the deference it’s due. /s

God I wish there was room for an actual threat from the left instead of “well I guess we’ll make everyone who isn’t wearing a maga hat worry about whether they’ll be up against a wall by 2028”

Trust me. Forget you heard about that. Trust. Me.

I’d bet the ticket slipped through the cracks–it might have been pulled by an agent near the end of their shift who thought “I’ll respond first thing tomorrow” and was let go the next day, or the ticketing system glitched and improperly took it out of the queue, or a tier 1 agent didn’t follow proper escalation procedures and reassigned it to someone who never bothers to check their ticketing queue.

I’d suggest submitting a fresh ticket along the lines of “Following up re: ticket 29XXXXX” and copy-pasting the original message into the new ticket.

Source: work for a different company’s support team that also uses a public-facing ticketing system

I think the horrible truth of the matter is that the cycle won’t stop until one side is dead, no matter how much we wish otherwise. There’s just too much bad blood for either side to trust the other, too many old grudges spawning new grudges that in turn result in more bloodshed. I legitimately, honestly, seriously don’t see a peaceful solution–the Israelis won’t give anything up because they (rightly) fear any concessions will simply be used to fuel further attacks by militants until they’re driven out or eradicated, and the Palestinians won’t give anything up because they don’t have anything left to give up, nor do they have anyone who will take them in, so they can’t even leave (which they don’t want to do anyway since they’d been living there for centuries).

The worst part is that deep down, pretty much everyone knows this, and they know that supporting one side means tacitly supporting the genocide and eradication of the other. But nobody in power wants to come out and say it, because admitting you’re supporting genocide is a surefire way to piss off literally everyone. So we get platitudes and high-minded speeches about preventing civilian casualties, and everyone hems and haws while we create our own little Hell on earth.

Mad Rat Dead is one of my favorite games in years, it’s a rhythm platformer on PS4 and Switch. Literally every track in game is an absolute banger!

Mmmmm, I don’t think I’d go that far, no. Feminist? Very much so. Unable to decide if the Mattel executives are actually antagonistic because Mattel didn’t want to make themselves look too bad? Probably.

Honestly I was the same way going into it, and after watching it my thoughts were “I don’t regret watching it, but I wouldn’t have regretted missing out either.”

The movie is great, and there were multiple moments where I burst out laughing. It’s also a really bizarre acid trip, and I mean that in a good way! But at the end of the day, it’s a hot pink version of The Lego Movie, down to Will Farrell playing a (less evil and more well-meaning) Lord Business. It’s a movie made by women, for women, about a series of toys designed for women. That’s not a bad thing by any means, and it’s not like men cannot enjoy it, but it also means it may not interest you, and that’s fine too.