2024 LC Thread

Oh yeah, and these quotes by Carl Sagan too (we should compile a list of these):

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…

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And of course:

If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.

—David Frum

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

—Upton Sinclair

I always look at the current world through the lens of these quotes. I think about them constantly.

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That’s bad, but Ethiopia isn’t in the top FIFTY. That’s completely bonkers.

I am ashamed to admit I’ve been arguing on Nextdoor and I needed these to help stop.

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You’re doing it for the lurkers.

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Cliffs?

Local stuff. Wannabe Proud Boy fascist is trying to get onto our school board, I am engaged in the fight against him. They cooked up a story about our guy that he stole money from a teacher’s association and are posting it places and saying “Concerning!”

IMO, this is a good fight. Definitely nothing to be ashamed of and certainly no need to stop, unless, of course, the whole thing is too disturbing to your mental state to continue.

ding ding ding

I had been doing a great job of staying focused on the task at hand and feeling really good. Canvassed Thursday and it went well. Friday I saw a TON of illegal signs his people had put up in the area around my son’s school and lost my shit a bit. And it’s been raining, so no opportunities for me to get my feet on the ground and talk to voters.

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Well, still nothing to be ashamed of. Either for arguing or for stopping.

Is it this guy?

Pub I’m at is playing a country song with the lyrics “I got tiki torches in the bed of my truck”.

Shitty country music, you’ve outdone yourself.

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Charlottesville reference?

Upon further listening the song seemed to be an ode to Tiki Bars (lol?). But yeah how does anyone hear that and not think Charlottesville. Or maybe I’m just way too political minded (objectively true).

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Yes.

I think we have similar tastes, where simple fresh ingredients properly combined reigns supreme.

It’s amazing what a person can not know by simply not caring.

I stand firm in my belief that this ranking nonsense is totally unnecessary and downright harmful. There’s good food available in all the countries on this list, I’m sure. The key to living is to find the good stuff and enjoy it, not to find the good stuff and rank it.

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https://twitter.com/bigcontentguy/status/1763967537333600604?t=fSveS0hRhmk2RE8ra9ajaA&s=19

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Didn’t make me think of Charlottesville

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