We’re going to go back to the era of child support or jail for the men again.

The jail is going to be especially lucrative now that the private sector is running prisons. Can you say “slave labor”?

SO many men that are all gung-ho on “punishing” women for having sex and getting pregnant always seem to fail to realize that in the conservative, paternalistic society they want to live in, they’re gonna be leaned on the hardest for child support.

Esp. if they’re poor… and white… won’t make a difference.

Now that Trump and Co. have started the process of dismantling social support, that axe is gonna land hard.

Unlike how it was when I was a kid, we got computers and digital tracking now, so none of these tomcats are gonna be able to skip out and deadbeat it like they used to do in the 70’s.

I do not see this ending for the men at all like they think. The women wont love them and will just take the money and kick them to the curb.

Hell hath NO fury…

Ah, yeah. Times and terms change.

I still will pick up old CD’s at thrift stores and flea markets fr a few bucks and rip them to my computer system.

I have a monstrous music library. (don’t even get me going on the vinyl LPs I’ve got)

Had a friend give me a used service drive from a computer repair shop and it had a customer’s backup music library on it as large as my own at the time. 80+ GB of stuff.

Incorporated that in a heartbeat.

For years I did repairs and drive replacements for the kids in the neighborhood and often they’d be more than happy to let me duplicate their music libraries. I didn’t charge a lot so it was a win/win situation.

That and finding a shocking amount of music on dumpster dive laptops… esp machines from the 2008 - 2012 era.

Know a family (fairly well off) that sold a summer home a few years back and they moved on a ton of stereo equipment and one was a crazy big Sony CD changer that had a carousel of 100 disks in it… Guess what was still filled with CD’s?

Granted it’s “grandma” music, and lots of stuff like Burt Bacharach and Barbara Streisand, but some of that is actually really good, solid songwriting. Not my favorite kind of music, but given the AI slop online now, it makes it easy to hear how shitty that is.

What, if I may ask, does „Ripping“ mean to you?

Am always interested in different takes on words.

The 4G one she’s got from her service provider offers some form of limited access. Not sure, maybe the fancy ones have it? My mom will occasionally text me links to news items she’s found.

When i’m saying “Older mostly” am talking about people in their 70’s and 80’s that don’t use their phones for much more than texting and email.

NGL, at 61 I can’t use my phone for much more than that. I just cannot SEE it well enough for it to not be a massive frustrating ordeal.

Just wait until presbyopia strikes. It’s a bitch when the collagen breaks down in the body and the lenses in the eyes start to stiffen. Hit me in my mid 40’s. Fuck.

Indeed! Of all things, uncle turned me on to higher bitrate 320k VBR, highest quality .mp3 rips.

I got his CD collection after he died (his own music was lost as the drive had failed while he was in the nursing home) but before he passed, I took a few weeks and re-ripped everything for him. Gave him a junker MacBook and loaded up it and his iPod with his favorite music.

The last day I saw him - 3 days before he died, he was already seeing people that weren’t there and talking to them, which is part of the dying process I’m told…

I put his iPod on him and played him his favorite artist - Miles Davis and he stopped when the song Générique (go listen to it, it is a beautiful song) came on and he looked at me - SAW me - and smiled and said it was his favorite Miles tune.

We chatted for a few minutes more and he fell asleep and I told him I loved him and gave him a kiss and left for work. Passed away the day after the Eclipse in 2024.

Best gift I got was that jazz library from him.

Grandparents owned the summer camp.

Grandfather was a union electrician for over 40 years. Retired in 1994. Made fantastic coin and bought the camp in the mid-70’s, for less than $20k. Landlines only that far north into Vermont. Grandparents were both in their late 70’s early 80’s when the internet took off, so it meant nothing to them. Both were gone of old age by 2020.

Aunt was the black sheep of the family and her husband - the uncle - were old alcoholic hippies that lived hand to mouth. Welfare recipients with drug and alcohol problems who both died - one of alcohol fueled dementia (Koursakoff’s Disease) and the other of sepsis (bone infection in the foot) from unmanaged diabetes - at the start of 2024.

Your point is?

Some years ago, I was using an ancient (even then) Dell laptop that I took with me to my grandparents summer camp for two weeks vacation. Northern Vermont, landline phone service only. My dad had sent me Win 7 Ultimate and I installed it sitting on the camp deck. I called in the activation.

Not Windows, but I’ve reinstalled my Mac laptop OSes many times when I’ve swapped out a SSD. Also at camp. I did a full - unsupported no less! - install of Mojave macOS on an ancient MacPro that my aunt and uncle used to run their music and movies on. They had no internet and rented DVDs and ripped their own CDs. Once I showed my Uncle how to edit the track info in iTunes, he was off and running.

I know lots of people - older mostly - with computers that only have internet access on their phones. FFS, my mom only has text on her flip phone, (her phone provider switched over to 4G and they sent her a smartphone of some kind which she could not use, so she sent it back and they got her a 4g enabled flip phone) and I’ll mail her big USB sticks with movies and tv shows on them so she uses her laptop. No internet, no electricity even, unless it’s from their solar panels.

Pretty much anyone off the grid would phone in activation or roll with an OS that doesn’t require it (like macOS and Linux).

Since they are not “real” is it child porn in the eyes of the law?

Oh hell yes!! If it creates what the courts call a “prurient interest” with images of children, real or simulated, yeahh, you’re gonna go down for facilitating creation of, or creation and distribution of, child porn…

Before AI took over, I used to make fakes and we had tons of discussions on the forums about it. Even if an actor or actress was of age, if the photo used was from when they were underage it could land the poster permabanned, regardless of how popular their fakes were. (Emma Watson comes to mind - OH! did the shit fly around her likeness being used when a faker on the forum took a still headshot from one of the Harry Potter films to use and the picture was removed almost instantly and his posts were heavily modded for quite a while afterwards…)

Even simulated UA photos… nope. You don’t go there… ever.

Hmmm. Might be the platform should be shut down until the issue of it being used to create child pornography is fixed.

If not, Elon Musk could (and should) be facing charges for facilitating its creation.

Respectfully, there is not much less that can be done than just put up a plaque with a name on it as a mere placeholder. If an image must be used, let it be that painted portrait that he hated.

Well, as long as it’s left to academia and not made into a "movie of the week’ scenario…

The govenrment and the media should offer little more than the damming accolades of faint praise.

Trump is nothing like the Democrat William Jennings Bryan. Trump is celebrating and enriching the barons.

So far most of the performing acts at the Kennedy Center have bailed, leaving the space to be used by political and business groups that stay - price discounted - at nearby Trump hotels.

Can anyone say “kickbacks”?

Trump’s “evangelical” supporters offer lip-service in their opposition to carnal sinners and pederasty, all the while turning a blind eye to the victims.

Christ would rebuke them mightily.

This “opinion” piece is what it looks like when someone is sniffing another person’s ass while giving them a reach around.

The next Administration is going to have to claw back Trump property (I think they should just take it) to return that capital to the taxpayers.

I actually like this idea. Perhaps the next President keeps the Hall of Presidents pictures/paintings up but leaves just Donald J Trump’s name up on the plaque and no picture. Just a name that states yeah, there was this dude that was the 45th and then the 47th President. Nothing else.

Am thinking that the ballroom he’s building should be turned into a museum that highlights the corruption of Presidents past, including a whole room dedicated to the criminality of the Trump regime, including naming and shaming those who enabled and were enabled by him.

His Administration is so poor that when the inevitable bottom drops out on the economy and the MAGA folks - who, let’s face it, aren’t the brightest or most financially adept - hit rock bottom ad lose the last few teeth they have… I think there’s going to be a quick turn from people even admitting they supported the clown.

Failing at various businesses and getting the middle-class taxpayers to fund it is one thing, but failing the entire country that takes one’s own voting base down, is another.

Hang on to your hats folks, this is going to be one bumpy ride.

Fuck Palantir, it’s Google that’s the devil.

Don’t fear the state, fear the profit driven corporations.

They’re the future, and it begins now.

Just don’t be “alternative”, do go to church, look conformist and white, have 2.5 children and you’ll be fine.

Blecch.

Oh for sure the Democrats have gone closet fascist… An American “liberal” politician is a centerist by EU standards… but we have to work with the system and monkeywrench it as best we can until it breaks.

Just saying the two party system is rigged (Yeah, know that) offers no real solution. Saying “don’t vote” is how we ended up in this place as too many sit out.

I for one can’t wait until the current crop of Democrats - gastly old bats like Nancy Pelosi, and the Chuck Schumers of the party - leave. The party is tied as long as the voters keep re-electing fossils.

Thing is, I AM a registered Republican that voted straight Democratic ticket for the last three elections, and I stay on the GOP rolls to get the press for the new candidates locally. I’m seeing exactly ZERO new GOP candidates that offer anything of value to the public, I see more coming from the new wave of Democrats.

Yes, you are 1,000% correct on the point at the federal level. The issue is money in the big elections and until the push happens to overturn Citizen’s United, things won’t change.

Personally I’ve been agitating for a general boycott and consumer strike for years - which could really sting the government - but getting the conformist, consumerist public on board with that is unlikely to happen until there is no more middle class.

They just ptich for a different team…

Yaah, the teams are nowhere near the same on actual social justice and expanding rights for the public.

Abbot and Cornyn and their side are somewhat retrograde in that aspect. Oh, for it to be 1957 again, when women and minorities knew their “place”… right?

Pffft!

Why would anyone live in Texas to begin with?

It’s too hot most of the year. God’s retribution for being assholes in that nature sets up the scorchiest weather in the country there, as the “global warming” that the Texas government ignores, settles in.

Fuck that place. Get out and head towards the coastal states.

The weather and the people are nicer.