I don’t think it’s that. I think they’ve been brainwashed by anit-vax propaganda into truly being afraid of vaccines, combined with not understanding how severe these diseases are and how serious the consequences of not vaccinating can be.

We need to make it a priority to teach critical thinking skills in schools.

trump also railed about millions of dollars of research money being spent on making mice transgender, because he (and his minions) don’t understand what “transgenic mice” are.

Maybe it’s time to start using rhyming slang?

You make a short phrase where the last word rhymes with the word you want. So for “rich”, the phrase could be “bait and switch”. Then you drop the end and just use the first part, in this case “rich” becomes “bait”. Eat the bait. You could also make one for “eat”, say “sugar beet”, then eat–>sugar.

Sugar the Bait.

But plenty of other possibilities. For Luigi, it might be a little harder, all I can think of is squeegee and Fiji.

I was a kid when they were first developing the vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella (we called it German measles). So my brothers and I all got every one of them. I remember being sick with them, and with one of the measles types (don’t remember which) I was so sick I though I was gonna die. I’ll never forget lying there, even thinking of certain things made me puke (or dry heave) so I had to concentrate on not thinking of anything. I remember puking so hard it came out my nose. One of my brothers was so sick, his fever was so high, they took him to the hospital.

Do parents really want to put their children through this instead of a shot? WTF

How much more anti-christy can this guy get?

But the powerful people behind the scenes who are using him as a figurehead learned a lot from his first term and have been developing their plans for years since then. Biden winning a term just gave them more time to work on it. Though there’s still chaos like last time (so we don’t pay attention to the Project 2025 actions ), we see the lightning-fast implementation of their agenda from Day One: Schedule F (getting rid of civil service workers to be replaced with loyalists), firing the inspectors general to remove a major obstacle to implementing, the rash of executive orders for everything from the shibboleth “Gulf of America” to declaring a national state of emergency to clear the way for everything else. Trump’s impulsivity can sometimes get in the way, but he’s otherwise the perfect figurehead because he also agrees with the agenda.

Going back in time to mess with things can create all kinds of unintentional butterfly effects.

omg, maybe this timeline is a butterfly effect!

Not so sure how many republicans in office aren’t Russian assets at this point. There’s a bunch of them though, have been for a while.

As someone who grew up before the negative effects of computer/internet technology became apparent, and who was excited and impatient for it to develop, I agree with the points made in the article. It didn’t have to be this way; in a different kind of society it could have been a boon to everyone. But in our society all the benefits of good things are appropriated by the powerful so they can more readily exploit the less powerful for profit.

So many wonderful possible benefits that might have come from these technological advancements, to help people lead better lives, to address many of society’s issues (hunger, climate change, disabilities, education, etc) simply never happened, because in our society money must be invested to develop them, so only things that would make more profits for the greedy were able to be developed. Yes, some things did get funded by governments or foundations, but they’re only a drop in the bucket to what could be done.

I just installed Librewolf today, using it now. Being a fork of FF it makes a very smooth transition.

Hey Dem politicians, it’s very clear. You do what the repubs always do when they’re in the minority. You vote against every. single. thing. they try to pass. You make speeches against every single thing they want to do on the floor of Congress, in every committee meeting, every town hall, every interview and every tweet. You also make sure to point out that repubs have the trifecta and everything bad that happens is their fault.

There is no moral ambiguity here, nothing to debate about, nothing to agonize over. “ooh we shouldn’t let the govt be shut down should we?” stop that! It’s already being shut down, you idiots–it’s being dismantled right before your eyes. If the question “should I go along with them on this one thing?” pops into your mind, the answer is NO. If you hear another Dem suggest going along with them on something, you slap that Dem in the face and tell them the next time they say that, it’ll be a punch them in the nose. Now replace Hakeem “wimp living in the past” Jeffries with Jasmine Crockett as Leader and get to it!