Well done OP!! We look forward to seeing your other artwork in the future. The message is clear and your technique is great. Thank you for sharing!

My family has a high percentage of genetic Neanderthal ancestry. I think about my Neanderthal ancestors in passing.

I do hold a bit of grief that I will never know them, or our Neanderthal culture, or what happened. I will never know or understand their funeral rights. And I will never be able to honor them in a way they would appreciate.

Neanderthals only became extinct from earth a mere 40,000 years ago. But there’s new science that just dropped this week that our hybrid offspring existed and lived alongside Homosapien for much longer:

The dating of the Lapedo Child thus expands the debate on the extent and duration of human-Neanderthal interactions. Genetic evidence suggests interbreeding began at least 49,000 years ago and continued for roughly 7,000 years. However, if the Lapedo Child, a hybrid individual, lived around 28,000 years ago, then questions arise as to whether genetic exchanges lasted longer than previously thought or whether hybrid traits appeared in later generations. March 7, 2025 Archeology Mag

Some of us from the East have Denisovian genetics. They became extinct only 25,000 years ago, I believe.

Compared to all of humanoid existence— being alone as the sole humanoid species is the anomaly.

All of time and history up until modern history Homo Sapiens shared our earth. But as far as I understand, we have no modern cultural memory or history of our interactions. Only through our modern science and forensics do we attempt to piece together our real humanoid history.

Now we look to the stars and ask why are we all alone on this planet?

And I can’t help but conclude the same as you: We are alone because at some point…we decided to be the only humanoids.

This makes me feel simultaneously very good and very very bad.

I think you’re on to something. Presidential Republics are inherently unstable. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that South Korea is facing similar issues to America and both have Presidential systems.

After this settles if we aren’t all fighting in anarcho-capitalist communes, America might consider similar structural reform and consider a Prime Minister style of bicameralism (but they can call it President instead).

You make a good point and it’s a hopeful one

They’re real and out there unfortunately.

I have a good friend who believed his life didn’t change at all if he voted or who was in office. His house was given to him. His job is stable. He has very little needs and never left his small town.

He didn’t start connecting how politics impacted him until I lived with him during the pandemic. It was then he started to understand more and vote.

He’s smart otherwise and a great person who is kind to others. But he isn’t the type to look deeply into anything that isn’t immediately around him.

I feel like a lot of people need that 1:1 coaching or they legitimately cannot connect the dots in the big picture. Or maybe they need physical community and to be surrounded by people like me who can see big picture stuff easily.

It’s like people who can’t imagine objects in their head (aphantasia) but for the inability to connect abstract big picture concepts. Whatever that is called —that’s what these non-voters fuck it who cares people have.

I’m going to shut down Gitmo! - Obama, 2006

And here we are almost 20 years later and GOP is sending Ausländers to expanding gitmo camps.

Harris did campaign on health care for all though, right?

Either way, I agree with everyone. I have a suspicion that Harris team started out the gate with very loud messaging around social economic programs they wanted to push.

Then they got reeled in by the donor class. There’s a distinct dampening on clear message a few weeks after the confusion was settled. This is just my little theory though. I think the messaging is vague on purpose to please the wealthy donors.

I think many people reported their ballots not being properly counted (and there’s like the whole burning the ballot boxes thing).

But is there any organization that officially tracks ballots being properly counted? I guess it’s state reported and state dependent. There’s no official or third party independent organization that tracks ballot discards right?

Sometimes you’re in a social gathering that’s polite and one guy invited has a bug up his ass. Like, I have a guy in my social group who keeps joking that women are going to get forced to get pregnant. All the men in the group now vocally tell him it’s not funny. He’s not even weird in other ways that are noticeable.

I’ve also met full gown men who still love Rogan and believe the sentiment of the post. They are often kind of close minded and dumb.

Just be really grateful you haven’t had the misfortune to run into these members of society haha

(I agree with your sentiment about twitter. I never saw the draw)

As a lawyer who has had meetings about our client’s case hitting the news—they’re probably thinking about getting a narrative out there before the DA or some other agency does. There might not be an option to negotiate not talking to the media. This isn’t normal everywhere though.

As they say: If the facts aren’t on your side, pound the law. If the law isn’t on your side, pound the table.

I think the lawyer is pounding the table. It’s ok to hate lawyers for this. We will still defend you if you get in trouble even if you deservedly hate us haha

It follows the same line of thought when you apply it economically: all people are selfish so we can’t do X.

You know that experiment where a teacher ran a thought demonstration with their class in the 50’s? Each student is supposed to run a fake company and sell fake widgets on their fake class market. In the 1950’s the students quickly realized it was a competition to race to the bottom to sell as many widgets as possible for the least amount of cost.

It’s supposed to teach supply and demand of capitalism but also teach that humans will undercut each other in competition.

A teacher ran this in a post-bachelor accounting class I was in—and my teacher got really angry because none of us were doing the behavior he was expecting.

Instead of undercutting each other, we started to work together in a group to get the work done while keeping our independence as “separate businesses.” We each built different model companies to compete but didn’t do so in a way that harmed each other.

Instead of the teacher realizing that maybe our class didn’t naturally have a selfish competitive mindset—that maybe this was also a perfectly valid reaction to the experiment—we just got told we were “doing economics wrong.”

I don’t think it’s surprising that anecdotally we find many people who insist on brimstone religion to keep people in check also believe “people won’t work” and “people are selfish and bad” when it comes to shaping economic and welfare policy. Bowling balls full of horseshit.

Dude something very weird is going on on Reddit. I’ve been through it with them for 12 years and this is like nothing I’ve ever seen.

I finally deleted the terrible Reddit app when my feed was blasted with repeated comments that “Reddit is far left and the left are domestic terrorists.” Sorry what?

These very weird not based in reality comments are posted almost verbatim in every thread. These people usually never respond to conversation.

It’s very very weird

I think your prediction is probably spot on. Reddit already feels like incel 9gag with a bunch of Russians pretending to be American college students.

Edit: oh if that’s your optimistic take then oh wow haha I am staying here on Lemmy I’ll start posting too

I never understood WorldNews. I said back in November pretty plainly that Trump won and so I fear that America would eventually leave or attack NATO. I said I was afraid that Trump would side with Russia outright. That we would abandon our allies in the Pacific, too. That our inaction would create a gap for China to fill. That the gap might be big enough to embolden China who then might make moves on Taiwan.

And I was downvoted (which is fine) but the comments I got were kind of bewildering. The people who engaged with me were trying to convince me that Trump would never side with Russia and there is no evidence ever of this.

And of course here we are now. And all of these things are happening.

The whole Gaza thing you mention—I understand the outrage—but I wonder how much of it online was manufactured in places like Pics because of the election.

Seeing the conversations here on Lemmy makes me think…there’s something very weird going on on Reddit. I’ve rode out Reddit drama over the past 12 years. This is not the narwhal at midnight website. This is something very dark.

THE HEIGHT OF FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY CUTTING PROGRAMS THAT BANK A NET GAIN OVER TIME

It kind of feels like tacking on the defund the police thing is so that headlines like this can be run. And Republicans then can be like “ohhh democrats DONT want to defund the police? Would you look at that! 😏”

When really, any resistance will be over the cuts to social entitlements and welfare as you helpfully pointed out.

I feel like I’m trapped in the SAW House and a bunch of people with me keep insisting it’s a normal house and we are waiting for the dinner party to start. And I keep screaming, The invitation said DONNER PARTY

Either way— thanks for writing that out for everyone it’s kind of you to take the time :)

Awesome. This is really helpful and it gives me a good jumping off point. Thanks for all your help and for taking the time to give your knowledge to others

Sorry but you seem knowledgeable. Is crown royal safe? If you don’t know don’t worry I’ll do research later. Thanks in advance

Exactly. When it’s a loss of profit to the top it’s “boo hoo think of the workers.” And when it’s profit in surplus it’s “money for the top no money for the workers sry :)”

Thankfully many Americans are starting to see the pattern. The programming is insane and it’s a lot for most to break free from.

Like, you’re exactly right. If you’re worried about labor rights lobby to government for labor rights. Oh what’s that you don’t want that? You just want to guilt Canadians for protecting themselves?

It’s abuse tactics on an international scale. Fuck these assholes. Leck mich im Arsch.

I think you’re right. The statement from the Kentucky Distillers Association is absolutely meant to make you feel bad. It’s apologist slop that shifts the blame to potential foreign consumers.

It should be known that Kentucky’s largest city is deep blue and voraciously in favor of civil liberties and representative democracy. The Louisville subreddit had a thread on this and most people talking called the Association out for this terrible letter.

The general consensus in blue Kentucky is that: Feeling bad just enables the assholes like the Distillers Association. It’s unfortunate that those who tried to stop all this from happening will be hurt by the few who made it happen.

But as someone who will be personally be hurt and impacted by the loss of bourbon sales—give us hell. Don’t buy Bourbon. Don’t buy American. Thank you for not enable this bullshit.

“The officer then proceeded to say ‘We are with the police, you have to come with us.’ The officer told Mahmoud to give me the apartment keys and that I could go upstairs. When I refused, afraid to leave my husband, the officer stated ‘I will arrest you, too.’ The officers later barricaded Mahmoud from me.”

Mahmoud’s wife said they were not shown any warrant “and the Ice officers hung up the phone on our lawyer”. She said they cooperated fully and her husband remained calm, even though it was terrifying and traumatizing.

“Within minutes, they had handcuffed Mahmoud, took him out into the street and forced him into an unmarked car,” she said.

This should chill the spine of anyone reading. A president ordering the black bagging of anyone based on a social media post or association with university clubs is unconstitutional and unconscionable.

Worse—he’s set to appear in New York but they purposefully flew him to New Jersey and then a detention center in Louisiana. So that any lawyer retained would struggle to find or meet him.

Here we go. Wish us luck. We are going to need it.

I’m a huge fan of embrace the suck and cut slingload