Tickling a little bit is fine if you know for certain you’re dealing with a kid who is having fun - ie: they keep coming back after a little bit of it. If the kid doesn’t want you to do it please fucking don’t. Speaking as a kid who hated it, it was like torture and it’s a curse, because you can’t help but laugh while it’s happening so it seems like good fun even when it’s goddamn well not.

Yeah, there would be no disconnect here, goth subculture is pretty broad and in any case it’s super inclusive and just fun as shit. They would get a kick out of this.

Meanwhile the geriatric class is being taught the same lessons through Fox News and their ilk. My mother loves to spout the praises of the latest exploits of Elon Musk every time I talk to her and I’m just like “mom, Elon Musk is a billionaire, which automatically means he a piece of shit.”

Are we, the in-betweens - going to be the only ones who remember now that they’ve co-opted all channels of “information” - for young and old alike?

This just in: The United States is a wholly owned vassal state of Russia.

Not for nothing, but I’ve been to Texas quite a lot and it basically sucks. Geographically speaking, it’s ugly, scrubby and obnoxiously humid/hot. I wouldn’t entertain the idea of living there even if its government weren’t full of regressive dumbshits. But holy shit is it ever. The median IQ of the citizenry must be pretty low because they keep voting these idiots in even as they live in a state that has a higher effective tax rate than California.

I’ve seen this movie before.

It is, as we have noted, all too possible to see in this case an incipient crisis, but it may present an opportunity as well. We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.

You stupid motherfucker, you and your kind caused this. Sit there and act like the Executive are a bunch of civil-minded policy wonks instead of a bunch of deadly jackbooted criminals empowered by YOUR GODDAMN RULINGS. What a load of horseshit.

haha wow, I didn’t expect these to be real.

And of course whatever they want to be true will be true.

It the right really comprised 100% of self-loathing homosexuals and their beards?

MAGA people can’t feel shame over any of this, they are incapable. This is a wealth and religion thing, you’ll notice MAGA people are nearly universally either wealthy, religious or both.

Particularly in America (because of the historical confluence of wealth and religion) these two types of people don’t experience shame the same way normal people do. Wealthy people’s sense of superiority over their position in society has bred in them the notion that shame is for their lessers. The richer they are, the worse this is. Religious people feel that nothing in the world is more righteous than sticking it to nonbelievers and no effort put forth in pursuit of that goal can be considered shameful. In fact, the opposite. In any case their shame quotient is sodden with their own repressed sexuality.

You might think you do, but the stock market is wholly price controlled. Even the Great Recession will never happen again. The market is controlled by huge banks and hedge funds using HFT algorithms and dark pools. Price means nothing and big drops are in any case performative.

The following weeks will demonstrate this, as the bounce(s) will take back the great majority of the perceived losses. Behind the scenes, of course, these same institutions love being given the opportunity to display this performative disapproval, as they make untold fortunes using the stock market as their own personal pump and dump.

Anybody notice that Trump doesn’t give the Scaramucci treatment to people in this go-around? He was hiring then firing left and right in his first term, but this time around - nothing.

Saying “I would have no way to know” is not the same thing as “I’m a moron and can’t look shit up.” You have to think you don’t know what something means before you’re going to go look it up.

I never looked up unalived, because I didn’t know it had some stupid context that would set somebody off and it’s meaning is plain. If you think that makes me an idiot, then I guess that’s just how it has to be. I think you should maybe relax a little.

♬♩ barely getting by ♩♫

Well, you’ve made an assumption and I get it now, but it’s wrong.

Aside from Lemmy and Reddit, and mostly Lemmy these days, I’m not on any social media at all. I’ve never been on TikTok. I quit Facebook a year after I joined it - horrified by what it was doing - in 2007. I’ve never been on Twitter, I’ve never been on Twitch or Instagram, I’ve never been on any site where I had to avoid a filter, ever. In my life. Before reddit it was something awful and before that usenet. I’m fucking old.

So I didn’t use the word because I am capitulating to capitalist censorship. I used the word here - and iirc I have used it in the past - as what I thought was simply a wry euphemism implying state-sponsored spycraft/murder. I consider the word assassination to be too “bottom-up” of a term - citizens assassinate presidents, not the other way around. Murder is too generic, murder is what criminals do or people do in crimes of passion. So I used “unalived” because I’m talking about a state actor doing something to a citizen.

I did not know that it carried any other meaning, nor that it came to prominence from circumventing censorship algorithms. I would have had no way to know.

Edit: I would never use some goofy shit like “seggs” for “sex” ffs, so I do see people here and on reddit who are in the habit of circumventing filters - but there’s nothing about “unalived” that screamed anything other than “wry euphemism” to me.

Why not? Why do you feel compelled to apply peer pressure to make sure other users’ language conforms to that which you approve? Who can say.

Edit: perhaps I’m just going about this all wrong. Let me ask you: are you trying to help me? Do you think my life would be improved if I used the word “assassinate” in this context instead of “unalived?” Or is it just that it grates on your nerves so much to see people use terms that are commonly used to get around filters that you feel obliged to correct me so I won’t do it in the future, materially improving your life? Because this issue seems to be really important to you and I’d like this conversation to end amicably. Maybe you can convince me why it’s in my best interest to not use this word and words like it.

No shit.

I’m literally saying the Russians had a reason to kill this woman and could have done so, but OK comrade.

I didn’t use the word because I was trying to bypass filters. I like the fucking word.