That was then, this is now. The Nazis don’t respect the law, nor court decisions, and do whatever the fuck they want. The law no longer exists, and states can do anything they want. If the serial killing insurance companies want to sue over interstate commerce, then the states can simply prohibit them from doing business in the state - problem solved.

Besides, who cares if they sue? Ignore them, ignore the decisions (unless its a win), and do what serves the PEOPLE, not the corporations. Then raise the state corprate taxes to 100% of revenues.

Fuck the corporations, fuck the Sociopathic Oligarchs who own them, and any MAGA Nazi traitor that supports them. They are the enemy, and we have no obligation to do anything that serves their interests in the slightest way.

One way to fight the corporations is to stop worshipping at the altar of blind consumerism, and embrace the concept of “Reuse, Repair, Recycle.”

Stop buying stuff you dont need. Keep using what you have, sell/buy used items, repair things, and if it cant be fixed or repurposed, then recycle it.

Repairing things is a big one. Often repairs are remarkably easy. My wife has been ready to replace numerous appliances over the years, and I figured it was worth taking a shot at fixing it, if I can save a few hundred bucks, and successfully extended the life by years.

Very satisfying, and it forces your wife to rethink her conclusion that you are an incompetent dolt.

Just being “alive.” We become alive, some sort of “spark of life” pulses through us, and at some point, that “spark” leaves us, and we are nothing more than a rock. What is that “spark?”

Everything is either animate of inanimate, so how did things become animate? At some point, something had to get that “spark,” and become alive, then spread that life around. How did/does that happen?

Is this “spark” unique to Earth, or is is possible to exist elsewhere? Did some nearly impossible combination of factors all happen to line up and cause “life” to emerge, like a room full of monkeys randomly typing Hamlet, or do those factors exist in other places?

Of course, many people would assign a religious explanation to that “spark,” our Soul or whatever, but that’s just making up a silly story to explain something we don’t understand.

12 years, 900K+ karma, Permabanned soon after the inauguration for repeating a statement I’d made many times before.

Came to Lemmy and found lots of recently banned veterans. Many of us were high volume posters for over a decade, and never got banned, then suddenly we all turned into monsters that had to be permabanned in the same month.

I prefer Lemmy in many ways - no puns, fewer trolls, no bots, no Russian propaganda farmers, etc., but some of my favorite subjects are badly lacking. Reddit has several very large and active guitar subs, for instance, while Lemmy’s guitar forums are small and barely used.

On the other hand, the political subs are far more radical, and allow real discussion of political options more than Reddit. They are not doing themselves a service by suppressing radical speech over there, they are only driving it underground, where it will become even more radical. When it happens they’ll be surprised because they buried it instead of addressing it.

The Conservative Propaganda Machine.

Another interesting example is a story by singer and Gershwin scholar Michael Feinstein. When he was a teen, he fell in love with George Gershwin’s music, and discovered that his brother, Ira, the legendary lyricist who supplied the words to most of George’s songs, lived nearby.

He went to Ira’s house and knocked on the door, and introduced himself. Ira was happy to talk to the kid about he and George’s old songs. During the conversation, Ira opened up the piano bench, and it was filled with old manuscripts in George’s hand of totally unknown songs that had never been published.

Feinstein ended up being the annointed by Ira as the unofficial Gershwin scholar, and he later recorded many of those unknown songs.

He also told this story on NPR’s Fresh Air:

In 1982, there turned up in Secaucus, N.J., at the Warner Brothers Music Warehouse, which is the place where Warner’s kept all of their stock of their published music that they would sell. Suddenly somebody who was working in that warehouse, a guy named Henry Cohen (ph), found these boxes and boxes of music that looked like manuscript material of not only George Gershwin but of Victor Herbert and Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Schwartz and Cole Porter and Vincent Youmans and on and on and on. And we were called - we, being Ira Gershwin, for whom I worked in 1982 - he was - what? - 83 or 84 at that point. And they said, there are these manuscripts of George’s here and lyric sheets of yours, and somebody better come and look at them. And Ira said, oh, no, that stuff was destroyed long ago. There’s - that’s a mistake. So he sent me to look and see what was there only because of the insistence of the folks in New Jersey, even though Ira was convinced that we would find nothing. And it turns out that I found, amongst all these boxes, 87 original manuscripts in George Gershwin’s hand plus copies of scores that had been lost for 50 and 60 years. For some reason, they were all there, and it turned out to be one of the greatest musical theater discoveries of the century.

I Googled “Unknown Stravinsky Work Discovered,” and found a bunch of articles, including these:

https://stringsmagazine.com/igor-stravinsky-work-found-amid-stacks-of-hidden-manuscripts-after-100-years/#%3A~%3Atext=Russian-born+20th-century+composer%2Cold+manuscripts+at+the+St.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/a-rediscovered-stravinsky-work-from-before-he-made-his-leap-into-the-unknown

A few years ago, a researcher started going through a large stack of dusty old music manuscripts in an east European archive, and discovered an unknown work by Stravinsky, over 100 years old. I wonder what was in the rest of rhe stack.

Booker’s speech was an audition for Schumer’s job. He laid out his vision of the Democratic agenda, and showed strength doing it, contrasting with that craven, corrupt, simpering, weak, vile, weenie Schumer.

Schumer is in the way, and needs to retire immediately, and make way for AOC to take his seat.

If Schumer leaves, Booker become Minority leader, and AOC goes to the Senate, that speech will have acvomplished a lot.

My mom loved Schwann’s mostly because she liked the driver. Then they changed their delivery model, and she quit.

The stuff was pretty good, but it was about the same quality as the frozen stuff in Publix, and Publix is about half the price. I’m glad she stopped buying from Schwann’s, and is saving money. There’s still a lot of stuff in the freezer, some we’ll never eat - why would she order frozen fried rice? She hates Chinese food.

That’s his “number.”

So his version of HitlerPig’s John Baron?

Half of America are horrified by it, and the other half think it’s something to be proud of, because they’re ignorant neanderthals.

Children, this was the Internet prior to 1995.

The MuskRat should get Big Ballz and the boys to program a video game, so he can have a new revenue stream to replace Tesla when it goes bankrupt, which sure looks like the future of that company.

I was a 12 year member with nearly a million karma. I was permabannef right after the inauguration, for repeating an anti-HitlerPig opinion I’d repeating numerous times before he was elected.

I came to Lemmy and found out I wasnt alone, i was part of a bloodbath. I’ve seen posts from many people with 10+ year accounts who were banned. We’re the people who built that site, and made it what it was. Somehow we managed to be active for over a decade without a problem, but suddenly we all became violators in the same month, and need to be banned.

Now we find out Spaz wants to buy TikTok, AND The MuskRat threatened him. No doubt the threat was that if he had a prayer of being awarded the privilege of buying TikTok, he was going to have to obey, and violate Reddit’s foundational free speech mission. The classic Reddit is dead.

Try out Mongolian Metal. They combine metal and throat singing.

I habent seen anything like the bot action on Reddit.

I miss some great subreddits, especially a lot of cool guitar subs. I still look at them, but it does bother me that Im not able to give advice to new guitarists, or even tell luthiers how beautiful I think their guitars are.

Don’t feel bad, Reddit has been sliding for a long time. Lately, every thread started with dozens of bad puns, followed by Russian bots.

I used to visit certain subs just to out the Russian Karma Farmers. I got so good at finding them that finding them became almost a game. When I identified them, I would address them directly, I would identify them for everyone else in the thread, and make fun of their lame propaganda.

Then I would address their supervisor, and tell them that this guy was terrible at his job, that I clocked him within a few hours of his registration, and hed be better off at the beet processing factory. They would disappear almost immediately, with no pushback, confirmation they were frauds.

Lemmy has fewer people, but so far all we’re really missing is the worst of Reddit.

I was on Reddit for 12 years with nearly a million Karma, and I got permabanned soon after the Inauguration for repeating an anti-MAGA opinion I had posted numerous times before he was elected.

I came over to Lemmy, and discovered that I was only one victim of a bloodbath, demonstrating that Reddit had decided to forego their free speech mission, and grovel for their new masters. Pathetic punk ass corporation.

I never wore a Reddit shirt, but I’d happily wear a Lemmy shirt.