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☁ INAUGURATION THREAD ☁
I was going to post this to encourage Americans to participate in our show of civic unity. Let the messages of unity and American exceptionalism wash over you. Pay no mind to the commentators muttering about President Biden's last-minute preemptive pardons, or to the persistence of each Democrat speaker in reminding everyone that the Constitution exists and definitely binds the hands of the executive, too.
Kavanaugh has sworn in VP Vance. Now for the President.
Here's to four uneventful years. May the new administration succeed in delivering on their promises.
Edit: some of these promises kind of suck. I sure hope we don't do anything stupid over the Panama Canal.
Days like this I kinda wish I was still on Reddit because I couldn't resist telling them how badly they screwed up for things to get this far and reminding them how utterly powerless they are to stop what is coming (whatever that is, I can't even say for sure), and if they had an ounce of self-awareness and the ability to reflect, this might cause them to change some of their beliefs about the world but no, they will be stuck in a cycle of learned helplessness because they can't even exit the echo chamber that has rendered them completely incapable of interfacing with the reality on the ground, and the beliefs 'normal' people hold anymore.
And also Sotomayor has a decent chance of dying or retiring in the next 3 years so lol enjoy having that shoe waiting to drop the entire time.
I'm not really sadistic, but that site has really become a pustulent sore on the Internet's face. I want to keep poking it until it pops. At least 4chan has the decency to stay hidden on the internet's ass.
One of the great internet disappointments for me, Reddit. It was so good in its day. Perverted in parts, poisonous, like a loaded gun ready to go off--though even loaded guns are harmless if you know how to handle them. But also brilliant, funny, expansive, daring, poetic, a real scope into the lives of others, worse and better, and of course of our own familiars far off.
Now it's like an IV where you push for more stupidity and lies, push the button, push, until it euthanizes you.
There are still rare flashes of the old (dot) Reddit. Floating among the river of bravery posts on /bestof recently was this post where an industrial press mechanic answers a question about the shapes on the lids of tin cans.
It feels like that sort of thing used to happen frequently on Reddit. A small insight into some overlooked aspect of modern culture brought to the fore and given a human voice. Of course given the medium much of that was tech adjacent, like a '90s games dev popping up to explain how they exploited the hardware in a console to pull off a novel graphics effect, but also these more unexpected interactions that only happened because Reddit's userbase was so big and broad.
It's a shame that AMAs which began with people like that mechanic (or a pathologically upvote addicted biologist) inadvertently hijacking a thread to spontaneously answer people's questions on a slow work day were formalised and turned into cynical PR appearances for attention starved celebrities.
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