Oh I get it completely. There’s a bunch of subreddits I miss, my industry I work in which is very niche, leatherworking, heck even the motorcycle community in Lemmy is… lacking.

On the other part you brought in… OH BOY! Unhinged TED talk time.

So I live relatively close to the Royals and the Chiefs stadiums. John Sherman, gas magnate, the owner of the Royals decided he wanted to move the stadium to downtown, where things have been picking up. Specifically he wanted it in the Crossroads where there’s a lot of local community shops and everything, because he wanted it near Power and Light district where there’s bars and the like which… oh right, he owns a lot of. Troubles came up that the stadium proposals took foooooooorever to even come up, looked like it was drawn on a napkin instead of anything serious, and wanted a tax levy to be put on the city to continue one that still hasn’t been paid off for the last time the two stadiums were built. The whole time saying “Look how the stadiums bring business in!”… the area around the two stadiums have managed to keep a Denny’s and a Taco Bell alive, the big resort hotel couldn’t even survive. Yea… real great for business.

Another trouble is… as I say, I am one of those who actively detests sports… I wish I could find the post, there’s an old Reddit post describing what not liking sports was like and used archeology in how it invades everything around you so it’s easy to go from “I couldn’t care less” to “Okay, I hate this thing now. It is insufferable.” I say all that to say, just paying any attention to the news I knew at the time the Royals was the second worst team in the MLB, they were that bad. So they knew they couldn’t get this move off the ground so they went to the Chiefs who was the most recent superbowl winner which of course was happy to get money their way, and the ad campaign went out. And despite the Royals/Sherman being the push on getting this going, it was all Chiefs all the time. I literally even got a flier in my mail “The liberals are trying to take away our teams!” paid for by the team push, so yay politics even drug in. The whole time threatening “Well if you don’t vote it in, we’ll move. Maybe to Kansas (right over the border) or hey, even Tennessee.” Thing is, the state remembers St. Louis on the other side had the rams, built them a stadium and whoopsiedoodle they packed up and moved to California leaving a city with a stadium and fuck all to do with it.

So we’ve got all sorts of issue in state and local level, but holy fuck all the political pressure since the voters turned down the tax is “How can we keep these teams in Missouri!” And it’s funny, I said I’d be more okay paying for it if we got ANYTHING out of it… I don’t mind paying taxes to keep our zoo going and it’s nice I get a hefty discount when I go, but the Royals and Chiefs are giving a nice hearty “go fuck yourself” for us paying taxes so the billionaires have their teams.

On to the “Why are you a fan?” question you brought up. I don’t question it… but I’ve never understood it. I grew up in Arkansas that never had a pro team so college sports was big… I got to hear the “calling the hogs” my entire life and never comprehended the why. Probably because dad was not a sports guy and had the opinion “Why do I want to watch people play a game?” even though he played in high school and I’ve been pretty much the same. I get the community stuff, and that’s fantastic. I’ve just found a community outside of sports so it doesn’t resound to me. The reason I’ve become so against sports beyond it’s completely impossible to ignore it it’s so inundated in culture, is the sheer amount of money that goes into it in all levels. High school, if you’re one of the “football” schools, your school only has 3-4 sports, all the big stadium ticket getting team sports, the smaller less prestigious schools get more sports like wrestling and the like… guess which situation I ended up in? And watching schools dump money into the sports above all other things like theater, labs, etc. “But it brings in money for the school.” Cool cool… so why are we getting asked for a tax levy so the school can build yet another stadium? Repeat this for the college level so the “Hogs can have a proper place to play!” and now the city with pro teams level. And I hear the ticket prices and think I wouldn’t pay those prices to see my favorite band… and again, those ticket prices and yet we have to pay for their shit?

I’m not a sports guy, I’m pretty anti-sports actually (I can go on absolutely unhinged TED talks about how the local teams are trying to drain the city for taxes… I want to continue, so feel free to ask but not doing it here.) But I agree with you on the niche hobbies and local flavor.

I still have to use Reddit because there hasn’t been a good community for local on Lemmy (yes, I know everyone going “it’s user generated” but I’m like 1 of 5 instead of the hundreds still on reddit) and small hobbies in a lot of the crafting world is non-existent on Lemmy.

I don’t have an answer on this one, just sucks. It’s the trouble of being one of the first ones in the door.

God I hope so. Don’t hope for the US to learn.

We didn’t on guns after Sandy Hook so get some popcorn for the horror show to come for us.

If you’ve read Orwell, then you know we have.

I’ve stopped asking about States Rights to do what, they just sidestep it. I just ask them about the confederate constitution.

Article I, Sec. 9(4), Article IV, Sec 2(1)(3), Sec 3(3) (I’ll give a hint, it’s where the CSA federal government outlawed states enacting laws to outlaw slavery. States Rights my ass)

If I get the sputtering boat of “butbutbut” after that it’s what are the secession declarations of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

At that point either they really didn’t fucking know… I grew up in the South and I was an adult before I knew a lot of these, it certainly isn’t in the education system I’ll tell you that… but if it isn’t the really didn’t know category, then they’re as much a lost cause as their myth.

Someone else pointed it out, Freedom Convoy was effectively the next “States Rights” Don’t argue with them in good faith, they don’t argue in good faith themselves.

They’re the ones that cry “2A” about guns but worship the ground of Ronny Reagan who enacted gun legislation to go against the Black Panthers. This is the group that also talks about 2A and would storm the capital attacking police but calls Black Lives Matter riots and cheer when police show up. Hell, they cry about 2A when they worship Trump who said “Take their guns first, due process after.”

They talk about “Freedom of Religion” but it’s always their religion. War on Christmas, how dare they take down the ten commandments, while cheering for the guy who wanted a Muslim ban, attacked Sikhs post 9/11 because they couldn’t even get the religion they were mad at right, and want to force their religion into schools and courthouses.

They talk about freedom of speech when they scream about being able to lie, but cheer that Musk will throw people off that will actually fact check. The party of “Fuck your feelings” cries how they’re being attacked and needs protected when it’s turned around on them.

They cry about discrimination with Affirmative Action, but it’s simply the new Southern Strategy post Obama. Had a black president, racism is over, wave the flags. Oh, still helping minorities, RACISM! But they still stand with people who wave the swastika and the confederate flag and manage to say with a straight face they are not racist at all.

They made use of the social contract of tolerance, that we’re all supposed to get along as a society. They have done so by spitting in peoples faces, enacting violence, screaming epitaphs and being the worst people ever, then run back to society every time it’s turned on them.

Do not give them the good faith they ask for. Do not treat them as reasonable human beings, they are not. When they can act with basic fucking decorum that is required to be a person, then they can be treated like members of society again.

When you hear a loud noise just think to yourself “Please be haunted and not something expensive…” it’s what I do.

Oh we’re past the point of no return. The question we’re at now is how much damage can we mitigate from here forward.

The US has killed any of it’s power it’s had in the world beyond military and economic. The power it had through friendships and trade deals, they’re fucking gone. Trade deals have been shown to be temporary and based on whims so why would anyone do it. And friendships? HAHAHAHAH.

So now it’s economic… and oh look, we’re about to start tearing that apart and probably look at a depression that will be compared to the OG Great Depression, while the trade deals are going across the world and China is definitely willing to step up to the plate to be the “adult in the room” in trade deals.

So last it’s military power. And with getting rid of officers to only have loyal ones… that means strategy and tactics will be going out the window for “We have a big hammer.”

That’s the US’s interaction with the world, which most of our lives we’ve been in the dominant position. So that’ll get rough. Now on to the things internally that DOGE has gone through and cleared out, it’ll take years to unfuck the stuff already done.

The worst case scenario, I would argue, is that this ends in the destruction of the world via nuclear war within less than an hour. This is what I am scared of the most.

I just want to know ahead of time frankly because I know where the nuke is likely to hit in our city and I’m out of the insta-vaporize zone so I want to get closer.

I’ll preface with I’ll agree that for the most part, it’s men being whiny about “woke” and other nonsense. They’re assholes. I really don’t have anything to add to that front.

So I’ll add a perspective of the small other crowd in situations friends of mine and I have found ourselves in, that having criticisms of women led stories gets us lumped in with the above group when the same criticism of a male led roles/stories are fine and dandy. And we’re not exactly a group that hates women led stories despite our love of scifi action. Sarah Conner, Ripley, Jesse Faden if anyone has played the game Control.

Some of it I get as a female led cast movie/show will get hate before the first previews even launch so legitimate discussions can happen. However, I can go on absolute rants about how terrible movies can be: Tom Cruise remaking The Mummy was, attempting to do Hellboy without Ron Perlman and Guillermo Del Toro, whatever the Conan the Barbarian attempt Jason Mamoa had, and no one bats an eye. (Lets be honest, those were all terrible movies) However I’ve been called a misogynist when I talk about in the list with those above ones how absolutely terrible the all women cast remake of Ghostbusters was. Again, I knew there was a lot of undue hate, but if I ever discuss it, I’ve had to outright asterisk it every time that none of my complaints were to the actresses themselves but the movie from worldbuilding to some of the concept of it being made itself (As in: It’s Ghostbusters, an IP that’s been around for decades, did we need to dedicate screentime to remaking it from scratch? A complaint I’ll have at every reboot of a popular IP.)

And there’s legitimacy to the why. As you point out, there’s very few women led movies/stories which (I assume) means that with some representation there’s the want to nicer to it, especially as there are people who are outright assholes about it. Vs Another White Guy Does Things is easy to deride a movie because… speaking as a white guy, I’m going to be there mocking that movie too. But that’s why I put the “(I assume)” earlier, because it’s not like I’m lacking in some form of representation, so it’s easy to mock it.

I will wrap up this though with again, it’s a small extra outside perspective for a different viewpoint. If people just complain “There are too many women in x”, no, they’ve stopped having legitimate complaints and are just being jackasses.

Okay, I had trouble getting off of sodas, and everyone suggested fizzy water instead, and they all tasted nasty, like maybe the water sat in the room with the fruit maybe.

But this is the only time I’ll ever say good about Walmart, their walmart branded carbonated waters are 99 cents a liter and taste amazing. The Fuji Apple one is the one I usually get and it tastes like a fizzy apple soda but doesn’t have sugar.

Since I avoid walmart like the plague, I’ve learned to just drink water now. Tap water is my go to. But these things are like my guilty pleasure, which is a far cry better than the sugar drinks imo.

That’s fair. I’m less interested in the swasticar and more I find it’s the only thing out right now that I can’t find an appreciable workaround.

It’s why I like hybrids. I have a tendency to sometimes end up at least an hour away from an electric plug for a few days or so.

Nah, I don’t need diesel. Lets be honest at hybrid it’ll do the job just fine as is.

Basically I want the kind of pickup truck that I can toss a few 2x4s in the back and go, doesn’t have to be big, doesn’t need a lot of hauling power. Which is the opposite of the way trucks are going nowadays, which are big as fuck and made to tow the fucking world with the shortest damn truck bed that I’ve watched people struggle to get a tv into because the bed is too short.

Is a truck tech? Fuck it I’m calling a pickup truck tech.

I just want a pickup the size of a 90s ford ranger that’s a hybrid. Since I’m making it a unicorn, lets go 4wd

Don’t worry, the aliens will come, and they’ll be oligarchs in their society too.

I’ll admit, my disbelief in afterlife really doesn’t make me fear death because while it’s boring, it’s only boring for everyone else. For the person dead it’s nothing. Boring is a sensation, and death has none of that either. It’s neither good nor bad, just nothing.

I for one welcome our Canadian overlords.

Descent. Gabba Gabba Hey

Work in medical too, but work in the lower sections with the blue collar workers while living in the bible belt. They’re all Trump fans and think this is all great.

The best advice I have is find your people, the ones you know who’ve been against this (not the non-voters, they folded to apathy, and will fold when the going gets tough) and start working on survival plans. Gardens, mutual aid, mutual defense, how to hide those in danger ESPECIALLY if you’re the cishet white guy. Build the community as best you can.

This is not some big overall “Fight the bastions to overthrow” but right now as a regular schmuck in the middle of nowhere, right now this is what we have.