im losing touch!

[Free Talk Live @FreeTalkLive]

You have every right to know what your government is doing, and they have no right to know what you are doing.

That is why they are called public servants and we are called private citizens.

Instead, the relationship has been inverted. The state hides behind secrecy, classified files, and redactions while demanding total visibility into your finances, communications, movement, and behavior.

A society where the rulers live in privacy while the population lives under surveillance is the very definition of tyranny.

[Marie Isabella @MarieIsabellaB]

Probably

[Kadott @Kadotttt]

I once read somewhere that after an especially exhausting life,some souls choose to reincarnate as a tree spending a century just resting. I haven't looked at trees the same since then

[PAC @CatholicPacman]

“Feather W” concept. Looks pretty cool imo

[Michael Kandel @K_A_N_D_E_L]

the pitt video game actually looks pretty cool

[MagicM @MagicM_MMABets]

Leading.
Hunter gatherer posture.
Food secured.
Rodhesian infantry length shorts.
Generational run.

[Saad @lolnvmtho]

realizing mid-convo it’s their final episode in your life

[Growth Labs @growthhub_]

This man literally tells Neuroscience trick to stop negative thought loops.

[autist @litteralyme0]

The type of girl at the pharmacy desk when I go to pick up a max strength diarrhea medication

[atulit @atulit_gaur]

dude computers are actually so fucking insane when you really think about it. we literally figured out how to write some fake-ass rules called code and somehow convinced rocks to follow them. like actual rocks. sand, melted, purified, carved into tiny pathways where electricity just flows in patterns. that’s it. that’s the whole magic.

and yet from that we get operating systems, compilers, kernels, networks, distributed systems, machine learning models, entire virtual worlds running inside other virtual worlds. billions of tiny electrical decisions per second, all because we defined some abstract logic.

humans basically invented a language of instructions and taught matter itself to execute it.

[Nature Unedited @NatureUnedited]

Moments after her release into a new area, Ushindi, a female black rhino originally from Ol Pejeta Conservancy, came face to face with a male lion

[𝗱𝗮𝗻𝗻𝘆🫧💚 @beyoncegarden]

SHE’S ACTUALLY INCREDIBLE FOR THIS OMFG😭😭😭

[The American Tribune @TAmTrib]

It is important to remember what a purpose of a thing is. The purpose of inflation and direct taxation was to destroy just, locality-centric rule and replace it with a cold, impersonal bureaucracy

Before the 20th century, the West was a very free place. There was little regulation, little direct taxation, little bureaucracy. The British Colonial Office ran 25% of the world's surface quite well...with just a few hundred people. One could trade, travel, and do business more or less at will, constrained by the bonds of patriotism and tradition, but generally not by government action in all but the most fringe cases. What taxation there was generally was levied via indirect taxes, such as tariffs, not confiscatory and privacy-invading income, death, and capital gains taxes.

Such is what built that glorious Old World, and made it what it was. Those who were tied to a community tended to lead it, or at least be involved in its governance, and they too led the nation according to their principles of stewardship. This was more consistently true in Britain than America, but often true here as well.

Naturally, a certain type of person wanted to end that. They wanted bureaucrats to rule, and to regulate everything in the name of "fairness". They wanted taxes to strip away wealth great and modest alike, and then redistribute it to the masses. They wanted to punish agency, hard work, and ability, all to subsidize their opposites

So, they managed to push through confiscatory taxation, which direct taxation like income and death taxation always is, and always is meant to be. But they made it look socially acceptable by keeping the rates low and confined to just the wealthiest few at the very top. Such seemed "fair" to enough people to ram it through

Then they used the Great War to push rates to the moon, destroying countless old families whose sons went to die in the trenches. Meanwhile the carnage generally killed the best men of every class, the ones who volunteered in their thousands out of a pride and belief in country

What was left in the war's aftermath, then, was not the world that had existed before it. Gone were the free and happy days of enterprise, ability, and wealth. In were the days of regulation, of extortionate taxation, of bureaucracy. Most of those who would have resisted were dead, forever resting in Flanders. Many of those who were left were too exhausted or embittered to care, and just wanted to party their worries away in the Roaring 20s. Meanwhile, wartime inflation, particularly when paired with income taxes, ruined the old leadership class, which relied on bonds for income because free trade had largely made agricultural land unremunerative

And so the bureaucratic state was allowed to metastasize and to continue using high direct taxation to cement its rule, wiping out those who would have resisted it

The Depression and Second World War that followed further cemented this state of things, and by the 1950s, the old world had been wiped away, replaced by the egalitarian monstrosity we now have

[Mittens @JUSTcatmeme]

My goodness

[🍁 @72Breezy]

the rage i feel when people are in the kitchen at the same time as me isn’t normal

[Stew @Stewbiedo0]

A friend dating back to high school has a German life partner and spends a lot of time in Germany. Is there now and posted that he can’t take the US gestapo government anymore and is beginning the process to move there permanently. I’m like cool, you’re there now. You’re all set. He’s like no, I have to (lays out complex process of establishing permanent residency). I reply why bother with all that? You’re there now, stay. He explains that you just can’t just do that. There’s a process or you’ll get sent back. Interesting, I say.

[Dave Portnoy @stoolpresidente]

Brutal. Every year. It’s every year. At least Josh has a great life and a gorgeous wife etc. The people of Buffalo are prob buried under 8 feet of snow right now and have nothing to look forward to till summer hits in late August for a week.

[Benedict Spence @BenedictSpence]

And Marco wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.