You still have spending wars. Politicians are bought and sold every day, and any large company probably donates to politicians of multiple parties.

I don’t see the problem originating from Congress necessarily being polarized. I think the problem is that corporate and big money interests are too strong, and they fund politicians that will try to divide the people on social issues so that they can distract the people from badness happening on the economic front. In other words, I think we’re seeing a problem with corruption that’s expressing itself as polarization.

Even the term “polarization” can also be used as a trap, because it tends to be used in a way that frames politics as a linear spectrum, and your views are somewhere between these two end points. In reality everything is far more complicated. People have highly nuanced views on many different subjects with good reason, and there’s no way you can easily capture it on one single sliding scale.

Phone calls are a trap. Little good comes from answering them.

Nothing. Discovered mine long before.

Diversity, my friend. What will you do if the 401k doesn’t come through like you want? Bear in mind that the ultra rich and the big banks employ people who are really good at investing money. They have more experience and information than you. They’ll bail themselves, but not you, out in case of disaster.

“Show me the money” is not a good motto for long term savings. Inflation or poor investment can make that money disappear easily enough. Of course you don’t want to get scammed, so oversight is a good idea.

Not quite tho. He has lost in court several times. Paid for it. Forced to be there when the judge ordered it. And we shall see what happens in a few months.

But anyway, it’s no secret that the ultra rich don’t need to obey the law. That’s old news, sad to say.

Many companies love undocumented workers. Easy to abuse, underpay, overwork. So of course they hate it when those workers can easily get documented or citizenship. Following the law is such an annoyance. Cuts into the profit margin. That is why big business and the nationalists often work together.

The nationalists kinda know they’re getting played to generate corporate profits, but they also enjoy having a target to look down on.

I agree that the 24-hour news cycle is pretty horrendous and leads to a lot of unneeded political badness. At the same time, going back to the old style of political news is also a mistake. Hell, it let Nixon get reelected.

Rather than either of those options, it’s important for people to realize that they are actively consuming the news, and one way to protect themselves from being manipulated is to consume the news in different ways and from different sources. It’s surprisingly easy to do that these days, if you have a couple of different social media accounts or use an RSS reader, for example. Of course there are many other ways. It is our own personal responsibility to be active and aware enough to avoid getting manipulated in predictable ways.

It’s curious that you claim privacy and anonymity are clearly differentiable but didn’t bother to define either of them. Is your claim accurate? We have no idea, because we don’t know what you’re talking about.

George Orwell, Philip K. Dick, and Corey Doctorow already covered the basics, and two of those authors did so decades ago. Why are you asking this question now? What is it that you want to hear that they didn’t already say? Or are you asking us whether we’ve read those authors?

You’re the one who brought in a personal political view, and basic history realize your claim, which is why you didn’t actually cite any.

I mean, what’s a good example of cancer culture? If some white guy says something horribly racist, and then he loses an election, he complains about cancel culture. But that’s a good thing, because we don’t want racist bastards in office. Of course he doesn’t see it that way. So he looks for some new term to describe the phenomenon, some way to make himself a victim.

The term itself was created by right wing people who decided to deploy it against those they didn’t favor, as an excuse to justify their own bigotry, but the idea of public shaming and goes back centuries if not millennia. Quite naturally, the establishment has a strong interest in public shaming if it will keep them around longer.

It’s not “all of a sudden”. And it’s not “the world”. And it’s not even “America”. Rather, you’re now consuming media that’s exposing you to thoughts that have always been around, often on the fringes.

Remember, bigots have always existed, and polite bigots toe the line as much as they’re forced to. They aren’t going to disappear, ever. (That being said, we can make them less relevant and powerful.)

I think that’s what they were asking for.

What kind of jobs are you talking about? People speculating in real estate are doing so for passive income, not for employment. I just don’t see this job loss concern being legitimate.

Maybe some property management folk would have to change to slightly different aspects of the service industry, that could happen, but it’s just not large scale. In comparison, we hear stories everyday of people who can’t pay their mortgage or can’t pay rent, then they become homeless, and then they lose their job as a result.

Which is to say, I don’t think politicians believe for a second that high housing prices are keeping unemployment low. Also, you mentioned economic statistics, but for some reason you feel that homelessness isn’t included in them. That’s a peculiar choice.

Your question is wrong. Few if any people need constant validation. The question is what frequency people desire it, and how, and that varies greatly by person.

Generally speaking, writing new data is what actually erases old data. So no, you can’t exploit it for extra storage space.

Your final claim is the one that’s in question. You think it’s true, but maybe it’s totally false. For example, I think Al Gore and Hillary Clinton got the results they got because of their spinelessness, in part.

To some degree, the principle that I’m talking about is quite clear. In a situation where a large percent of the population doesn’t vote at all, it’s the candidates job to get people excited enough to cast their vote. One way of doing that is to have a firm position, to show that you have integrity, to show that your values mean something. Of course when people get elected then they might have to cut deals in order to pass legislation, and we all understand that, but if you throw your values out the window before the election even happens, I’m not going to vote for you.

There are reasons to be strategically quiet, but it’s plainly incorrect to say that being quiet during a campaign makes little difference, because a lot of things are happening in the world before the election. People’s lives are changing in many ways now, next week, next month, and not only because of what happens in November.

What is your background? Did you have friends in high school? How long have you been in university? Are you studying on campus? How do you know people are ignoring you? What country,or at least what general region?

Details matter. Provide whatever you feel comfortable providing.

Also, attending classes and circles are how you make friends. So if you are running away from the solution, expect the situation to stay the same.

Building community is important for most people, but it can be done at university, or elsewhere, or both.

We know, but many do not know.

You can do DNS in multiple ways. The question is what you try to do, or what your software tries to do.