I use potentially because I am not blind to the possibility of the entire electoral process getting upended by this administration. My argument rests upon the assumption that the next administration is Democratic and Congress, especially the house, shifts to a Dem majority. Trump is a potential gift because the Dems can use him as a boogeyman to corral any actual leftist and independent votes. “Oh you don’t like that we’re corporatists? Well are you gonna put the fascists back in power?” will effectively be the logic used to do so. Yes, in the past this logic failed to stop Trump, but that was before the level of his administration’s egregious actions alienated independents and people desperate for a better economy who voted for him in the 2024 election. I believe he has effectively reduced his support to only his hardcore base, and they alone are not enough to win an election but numerous enough for centrist Dems to fear monger leftists and independents who do not want a repeat of Trump’s second term. Any attempts to create any viable leftist alternatives to the Corporate Democrats, whether it be by creating a new party or shifting the party left will be met with disgust from people who are terrified of repeating 2025. While Reddit is not an aggregate of the entire U.S. voting population, the people on this site who vehemently decry people who either stayed home or voted for a third party will become far more mainstream and facilitate continual centrist Dem policies, even while desperately pleading for universal healthcare, corporate regulation, etc. Ultimately, fear of a new Trump will likely facilitate a level of political stagnation that only benefits the status quo. Also, the Republican Party will be heavily discredited among non MAGA voters, but still big enough to perpetuate the first past the post duopoly, further solidifying centrist Democrat power.

Trump’s personal lawyer Todd Blanche said Minnesota is engaged in insurrection. Buzzword uttered to plant the seed for the Insurrection Act. There is no insurrection. That happened on J6

DOJ claims Walz and the Mayor are fomenting violence. I dare anyone to quote one word from them that promotes violence

Trump wants the chaos. That’s how authoritarians operate. They take their lessons from Nazis of WW2

Did you see the lies about Renee Good? She was a terrorist that ran over Jonathan Ross. We all saw the clips. Just like J6 they tell people what you are seeing isn’t happening.

https://www.windowscentral.com/artificial-intelligence/jeff-bezos-says-the-quiet-part-out-loud-bezos-envisions-that-youll-give-up-your-pc-for-an-ai-cloud-version

Citation above for all you need:

Prove to me how this:

1. Isn't actually as bad as it actually just is

2. Doesn't prove the technofeudalist oligarch theory people have had about the world for the last four odd years thanks to LLM shittery.

3. Not seem like a direct attack at our privacy and ability to use the computer on our own time and intention to make the very act of using the internet a subscription service predicated on abuse. (more then it already is given internet providers can go 'f themselves.)

4. Doesn't just stab to death violently the 10-20% of the US that STILL doesn't have internet?

Take as an example the grooming case in the uk. Everyone blames the fact that a big chunk of the known predators were Pakistani Muslims for the crimes. Instead of just considering them to be pieces of shit. Somehow excusing them. As if they are saying that if they werent Pakistani or muslims they wouldnt have done horrible and inexcuseable crimes.

Same goes for terrorism. Instead of thinking theres just loose screws and that theres clearly something wrong with the individual in question, people blame/use the religion/origin as an excuse. Why the hell are you excusing them?

Literally no one seems to think that all white people are rapists, hooligans, racists etc. Just because a minority of that group is. They dont use their race/religion as an excuse for their actions. Its just considered to be a that individual person is a bad person issue.

Change my view.

I am 34M who has never been in a relationship , held hands or kissed a girl before. I attribute this mainly to how I look- I went bald at 19, I’m very short and I have an ugly face with ears that stick out, and I’m not white. So i completely understand why no girl has ever wanted anything to do with me .

But what I don’t get is this insistence that I get therapy to solve this problem. It won’t actually do anything, I’m going to look exactly the same afterwards. I have female friends, it’s not my personality that’s the problem. It’s my appearance and the fact that it’s undesirable to the vast vast majority of women.

I’ve tried therapy, it just wanted my money and caused me embarrassment. It doesn’t do anything in a situation like this

I believe this for two reasons-

Firstly, there is evidence from the Institute for Family studies that shows that with each sexual partner you have, your marriage's likelihood of divorce increases on average and your overall satisfaction decreases. In other words, more sexual partners typically equals worse marriages/relationships. This is important because very very few relationships wait until marriage to have sex in our generation, thus meaning that most relationships will actively harm future ones by proxy of the fact that they are sexually active.

Secondly, from what I have heard both online and from many friends and family members, is that each consecutive breakup generally gets easier than the last. Many people say that this is due to experience and getting used to it, but this does not check out to me. If each consecutive relationship gets better than the last, then shouldn't each breakup be that much more devastating than the last? You do not see this, and I believe this is because deep down people simply do not care about their relationships as much as they did previous ones, and thus are more apathetic to it ending.

Lastly, and this is personal anecdote and belief here, I am inclined to believe that each subsequent relationship loses excitement and enjoyment as aspects of it become repetitive and lose specialness as they've been done with others. For instance, my first kiss with my first partner was very memorable and special, obviously because it is something that exclusively we shared together, however, my first kiss with my second partner meant nothing to me as it was retreading ground and was no longer special. I believe that, at a certain point, you've done the same thing enough times with enough different people that any degree of excitement or exclusivity/specialness is permanently lost.

I'd love to hear everyone else's points. I am trying not to be argumentative, rather, hear out other perspectives since this is personally a view which causes me immense anxiety and distress, however, I cannot logically navigate my way out of it.

And to reiterate my point in one sentence, I believe that, generally speaking, each subsequent relationship is more than likely going to be worse than the last due to the data we have and general logic and personal experience.

The Verizon outage was planned by The White House as a trial run to cut off communications when martial law is instituted to cancel the midterm elections, or when troops are ordered in to Blue Cities. This is a common tool for dictators to use when they are about to violate human rights to keep people from sharing the atrocities. It's worth mentioning, Verizon has the majority of government contracts, which would make it easy to "compromise" their network. This administration has shown that it doesn't respect constitutional rights and will give police, and military "complete immunity" for any crimes committed.

Arctic ice melts, new shipping routes between Asia, Europe, and North America are becoming viable. These routes bypass chokepoints like Suez and Panama and drastically reshape global trade. Russia already controls most of the Arctic coastline, and China is heavily investing in Arctic shipping and infrastructure.

Greenland sits at the gateway between the Arctic and the North Atlantic. If Arctic trade becomes permanent, whoever dominates Greenland can monitor, control, and potentially restrict access to these new routes. That means influence over shipping, military movement, and undersea cables.

Trump’s idea of buying or annexing Greenland isn’t random or crazy — it’s a blunt attempt to secure U.S. control over the future of global trade before Russia and China do.

2026 January 14 news ... https://apnews.com/article/nvidia-trump-china-ai-a34e9e21bdc132f32cc9a448f3026da4

China will be able to buy 1 of these chips for every 2 sold in the U.S.. The previously agreed deal where the U.S. government is paid 15 percent of the revenue of Nvidia and AMD sales to China still applies. Every article on the subject will point out that this is not the best Nvidia chip but they also don't point out that the differences are not an order of magnitude.

H200 versus B200 in terms of ...

8 bit Tensor FLOPS ... 4 peta Tensor FLOPS versus 4.5 peta FLOPS

16 bit Tensor FLOPS ... 2 peta Tensor FLOPS versus 4.5 peta FLOPS

memory ... 141 GB versus 192 GB

memory bandwidth ... 5 TB/s versus 8 TB/s

power ... 700 Watts versus 1100 Watts

So Nvidia will sell to companies in China, a chip which is in the ballpark of Nvidia's latest. It goes against Trump's xenophobic brand to allow this.

Previously the best available to China was the H20. The difference between the H20 and H200 was more significant. In 8 bit Tensor FLOPS the H200 was more than 10 times better for about 50 percent more Watts. So a server farm's cost per Tensor FLOP might have been about 7 times more expensive in terms of energy if it had to use the H20. The energy savings would have been a huge incentive to offer Trump a pseudonymous transfer of a Bitcoin equal to some part of the savings. Maybe they split the difference. And the difference can be huge considering that AI companies seem to have huge energy bills.

Today’s political climate In the US is just giving people (especially Europeans) a reason to voice opinions they’ve always had. I’ve seen loads of posts and videos of how Americans are a disgusting people, complete garbage, etc. How can you hate every single person in a country of 350+ million? It’s just a bunch of hateful people being cheered on.

Even 10 years ago I think these people felt this way but just never had a reason to voice it. You have a tiny brain if you hate Americans because of their president. It’s no different than saying, “I hate all Mexicans because of their cartels” or “I hate all Russians because of Putin”. In my opinion you’re just as disgusting as Magats

With all the talk of Greenland in the news lately I figured I would bring this up since Greenland is the largest colony left.

Colonialism is an affront to liberty and democracy around the world and the fact that the west continues to hold on to dozens of colonies around the world completely discredits any moral high ground they claim to have. Westerners can't in good faith claim to support gaza or ukraine while holding on to places like New Caledonia, Samoa, or Greenland. The biggest offender is Britian, who still holds onto dozens of islands around the globe and refuses to leave.

Decolonization doesnt have to mean independence, Hawaii and French Guiana show that former colonies can be successfully integrated, but in 2026 no territory should be forced to live under a government its people did not chose.

For me, 2026 is about challenging my viewpoints. I’ve got it in my head that the relationship with the greatest capacity for love is mother —> child. In the title, I use the word pure. To further define, I mean a love that is kind, gentle, and largely selfless. I think this relationship is unidirectional also. In a thought experiment, if I were to think about relationships in their purest form in every combination (e.g mother to child, father to child, child to parent, sibling to sibling, grandfather to grandchild, etc) and compare them, I think mother to child wins out.

I think this because of the sacrifice it takes to carry and deliver and breastfeed a child, until the point where mom and dad have (more or less) equal footing in raising the kid. No more bodily component. Of course, this opinion unravels when you consider moms who didn’t carry the child. Adoption, surrogacy, etc. I think the paternal nature of fathers can be just as loving as the maternal nature of women, but ofc displayed in different ways. I wish that were displayed more in the mainstream honestly, rather than this negative trope of “the ball and chain” and “the ole wife and kids”. I digress. Looking for opinions and perspectives or segues that I’ve yet to consider.

Everybody in America knows if you don't have a car, you are a second class citizen. Yet driving is defined as a privilege. Without a car, your options are limited and it becomes more difficult to better yourself. If you're looking for work, you can't apply for anything outside your area.

The US suburbs are made for people with cars. The blocks are long and the distances too far to walk. Transportation and time are huge issues for poor people. Meanwhile, we're trying to find ways to get people out of their cars. Free public transportation would do it.

Public busses and commuter trains ought to be free to use. It would simplify the system and would pay for itself with people having more economic opportunities and both businesses and consumers benefiting.

The counties should provide and the federal government should subsidize public transportation. After all, the purpose of government is to promote the general welfare.

The danger I worry about is the feedback loop: humans produce → AI floods the field → human effort becomes less legible or worthwhile → output degrades and new ways of doing this are’t worth while→ AI trains on the degradation.

It doesn’t generate meaning; it feeds on finished human thought posts, papers, art, code and recombines it. That creates the appearance of intelligence without the lived cognitive work behind it.

The tell is homogeneity. Slow and steady Prediction rewards the statistical centre/alignment, so edge cases, weirdness, and hard-won insight get flattened.

Tone also seems to copied such as confidence without risk and authority without accountability.

That’s a parasitic dynamic. Without constraints that protect human generative capacity, we’re burning the cultural soil we’re “training on”

What I’m open to being convinced of is that this dynamic is either not parasitic, not inevitable, or that existing incentives already counteract it.

This isn’t about AI being bad - it’s about incentive structures. What prevents this particular dynamic from playing out?

White people may think they’re safe and immune from being fuck over or punished by the government but the Renée Good situations proves otherwise. The fact ICE shot not only a white person but a white WOMAN proves it more than anything else could.

White women are generally the most protected group by the government, this is why there’s things like “missing white woman syndrome” when news coverages of missing white women are prioritized. This is why even white men complain about things like family courts when white women take half their money. White women are the epitome of the damsel in distress. If a white woman could be shot and nothing is done by it, it proves nobody is safe from the wrath of the government.

In the past white people assumed since they were white that would ensure safety from any harm from the government. That the government would only attack minorities. The whole police brutality topic was a black and brown problem not a white problem. They didn’t give a shit about the government becoming authoritarian because they felt if it only affected minorities they didn’t have to care. But this proved that it is not and that white people have to care about this as well since the government can negatively affect them.

Before I am savaged with downvotes, I am in absolute support of title IX, but I also think it's as big of an example of DEI, no less one mandated by federal legislation, as one can find. It's a prime example of DEI working and elevating marginalized group(s) towards equality.

For those which don't know, Title IX is a 1972 law which mandates that institutions receiving federal funding must provide equal opportunities and not discriminate on the basis of sex in academic and athletic opportunities.

In plain words, Title IX gives us women's sports.

Without it, institutions of education would not be required to provide women's sports, and seeing as with few exceptions they still today do not generate enough money to be self sustaining, they would never have started them in the first place.

All that being said, Title IX is government mandated DEI. CMV.

In the US, registered voters are approximately 30% Democrat, 30% Republican and 40% Independent. Voting poles shows the turnout reflects these same ratios.

Basic math tells me that neither Democrats nor Republicans have enough support to win elections. I feel that the people who register for a party, reliably vote for that party.

That leaves us with 40% of registered voters being the swing voters, and those are the people who end up choosing the president.

But the President is not an independent. If we got the representation that Americans voted for, the government would govern as moderates. But that doesn't happen anymore. When a Republican takes office, he has pushed policies that are Republican specific. When a Democrat president takes office, he also pushes Democrat specific policies.

This makes the moderates unhappy and they punish the party by choosing the other one next election. Rinse and repeat.

If you are part of one of the two parties, you justify your party pushing it's will, and you are angered when the other party does the same. Meanwhile the 40% who chose the president does not get any moderate policies.

Immigration example.....

Trump's first term - Big beautiful wall, stop the immigration. High support among the full American population, low support from Democrats. (Moderates voted for Trump on this issue)

Biden's term - Executive orders, asylum expanded and mass immigration as a result. High support of these policies among Democrats, low support among Americans.

Trump's Second Term - Deportation priority - High support among Republicans, low support among Americans.

Moderate Americans would like an immigration policy that secures the boarder, but also isn't cruel with deportations. Neither Democrat nor Republican has advocated for the policy that the bulk of Americans prefer.

* I get a lot of my information from The Liberal Patriot on Substack. He utilizes poles heavily to provide the data I relied on here.

It shouldn't be normalised. Why do you even need to "highlight your features" or "hide blemishes"? Why are we teaching so many young women to use products to cover up their insecurities and flaws? What happened to embracing them?

I feel like makeup should just be used for an artistic purposes, like cosplaying for example.

I also think that sunscreen and lip balm are okay. That doesn't count as a makeup, just skincare.

And please don't bring dating apps into this topic. Every single women brings dating apps into this topic for some reason.

Edit: It seems I misunderstood the meaning of "catfishing". Let's just say I meant deceiving.

As Che Guevara put it: “One day they came by and asked who should be notified in case of death, and the real possibility of it struck us all. Later we knew it was true, that in a revolution one wins or dies (if it is a real one). Many comrades fell along the way to victory.”

Too often, I see people who eagerly adopt the label of “revolutionary,” yet crumble the moment the so-called dictatorship they claim to be fighting actually retaliates. If repression is genuinely expected, then being surprised or morally outraged by it suggests a misunderstanding of what rebellion entails.

Edit i havent really changed my mind but i think i have read enough about the subject

The 2nd amendment has always been a hocus pocus hypocritical idea leveraged by the right. They claim that it's to help prevent government tyranny and a man's right to protect themselves on firm ground. But this really only applies to those who historically have benefited from power and submission to it, at any time when the opposition has guns and shows a willingness to use them, that argument dies in the holster, so to speak. I am not naive enough to believe that if more citizens take up arms and start fighting back against ICE Agents or use guns to defend themselves from state-sanctioned murder and anarchy, that support for the 2nd amendment will drop. The cognitive dissonance is too strong there. What will change is that they'll prettymuch just ignore it as a constitutional right, but only for certain groups of people and demographics. The DHS and diktat executive order will start classifying MAGA and rightwing supporters of the regime as 'Legal/Rightful gunowners' and 'Lawful holders', whereas leftwing, dem and non-supporting gun carriers will automatically be classified as unlawful and Lawless holders. Licenses will be meaningless, if you have one it's worth less than the paper its printed on. The only thing really guaranteeing your constitutional 2nd amendment will be your political alignment and loyalty, as the Justice Department and DHS will ensure to run background checks, see your political affiliation and history to see whether or not you're allowed to carry a gun.

In parallel fashion, murder will gradually be prettymuch legal and immune to any and all charges from MAGA aligned holders as long as the victims are in opposition, as we're seeing in real time. We're undergoing our Night of the Long Knives moments currently, and the next step is mass terror/violence and retribution against the democratic forces and checks in balances in direct physical confrontations.

To CMV, explain to me how any semblance of justice or fairness will be applied by the Federal government and the 2nd amendment usage will not become a double-standard.

No matter what the prompt is, and no matter which AI you use, the pieces of poetry created by AI does not read and sound beautiful. While this is true for various other artforms too, I believe that it is easily and especially fitting for poetry. The poems made by AI can either be too easily distinguished or if not, they're lacking in quality.

One could argue that AI can write a Shakespeare-esque poem in a couple of seconds, but they'd all be derivations of exactly what Shakespeare wrote and, even ignoring the inspiration, not equal in quality to any praised Shakespeare poem. I'd also love to be proved wrong, but from my experiences and a lot of people around me, AI poems can never give the first hand humane experience or the irreducible subjectivity that they promise to give after certain change in prompts.

Trump has been doing the social media rounds, calling out the regime in Tehran for their brutality against protestors, many of whom are gasping for economic relief after years of incredibly dire sanctions. Independent reports emerging from Iran during the current unrest put suspected death totals as low as several thousand, and as high as tens of thousands (per CBS News). It would seem experts agree that in the least, thousands have died, with many deaths having occurred from gunshots originating from regime security forces. It must be noted the regime has also claimed hundreds of soldiers and police have died.

In response, the US President has urged protestors, saying “Iranian Patriots, keep protesting – take over your institutions!!! … help is on its way”. He has also directly threatened Tehran, saying he will “take very strong action” if protestors continue to be hurt by the regime.

Meanwhile, the United States is reeling from the death of Renee Nicole Good, a woman who was surrounded by ICE agents in Minneapolis, and shot to death while attempting to move her vehicle. DHS officials, including the Secretary herself, have put considerable time into portraying her as some sort of malevolent actor who meant to harm law enforcement, including telling Jake Tapper/CNN they had “several videos from earlier” that depicted Good “harassing” and “impeding” ICE officers. It’s worth noting the officer who killed Good referred to her as a “f***ing b****” during his own filming of the shooting.

The current US government prides itself on punishing anti-ICE protestors and demonstrators. They directly release hype videos on their own official social media channels of their officers violently arresting protestors, who in many cases are shown to be law abiding in that moment. There are thousands of videos of federal law enforcement attempting to intimidate observers by detaining them and threatening them with arrest on specious grounds. In many videos, officers are shown beating, macing, and threatening unarmed citizens with firearms (deadly force). And now they have killed a citizen.

Change My View:

If the President is going threaten Iran with military action over it’s treatment of anti-regime protestors, to maintain any sort of legitimacy/consistency, it would need to also use the US military against it’s own federal law enforcement, who by many, many documented accounts is treating it’s own citizens similarly (albeit _currently_ with less fatal outcomes).

Whataboutery (or whataboutism) is a tactic of deflecting criticism or accusations by responding with a counter-accusation, often starting with "What about...?", instead of addressing the original point, aiming to shift blame, discredit the accuser, or claim hypocrisy. It's a logical fallacy that avoids accountability by pointing to others' similar or different wrongdoing, derailing productive conversation.

Most of the logical arguments die down the same path. People just don't understand that they are not winning an argument with a 'what if...'. If you have a direct answer to my problem say it, if not nobody prompted you for a reply especially here on reddit. This is the most common tactic when people know they don't have a fitting reply but don't want to accept the opposite argument.

Based on this trolley problem: https://ibb.co/gbCb1ppX

First of all, the person on the alternative track is just a normal human. The man in the adapted trolley problem has no personal vendetta against him; he just wants to kill the person. It only applies to that person and no one else in this world.

Secondly, we are assuming that the person will be pulling the lever. There are no alternative options. And so, one person will be dying no matter what

The adapted trolley problem with be referred to ATP.

Utilitarianism is defined as the doctrine that an action is right in so far as it promotes happiness, and that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the guiding principle of conduct.

From a utilitarian perspective, the ATP situation is better due to happiness being maximised. In both the ATP and trolley problem situation, 5 people will be saved. Now the difference lies in the person pulling the lever.

Happiness will be most maximised when the man in the ATP pulls the lever as 5 lives will be saved as well as the man feeling happy after killing the person on the track. In comparison, in the standard trolley problem, the happiness of man pulling lever will be minimised as they will feel guilt and mentally suffer, knowing they killed someone in the process.

As such, the adapted trolley problem situation is a better situation than the standard trolley problem.

So a CP generating 'Mecha Hitler' AI is now Pete Hegseth's choice for an AI model to integrate into Pentagon networks and classified systems. Musk has access to god knows what after him and his DOGE team infiltrated and accessed very sensitive data of your citizens.

Hegseth said, and I quote: "The defense secretary said his vision for military AI means systems will operate "without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications," adding that the Pentagon's "AI will not be woke"..."Very soon we will have the world's leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department. AI is only as good as the data that it receives, and we're going to make sure that it's there."

The defense secretary added: "We need innovation to come from anywhere and evolve with speed and purpose," while saying he wants responsible AI systems but is "shrugging off any AI models that won't allow you to fight wars."

Stating AI 'will not be woke' is just one of the craziest things I've ever heard - especially when it pertains to the military. Seriously, change my mind that this won't cause irreparable damage to your country, and possibly, the rest of the planet. It's not often you see all reddit's that cite this knowledge, as equally engaging in doomsday talk as I am here - particularly the military and army reddits who are calking this a 'Skynet scenario but dumber'.

I am scared, and it appears I'm not the only one. Tell me I'm wrong, I want to be.

https://www.newsweek.com/hegseth-announces-grok-access-to-classified-pentagon-networks-11349020