Maybe in some nations.

It wasn’t Cracked, it was a channel called Gaming Wildlife, last video on the channel was posted 6 years ago; I think they’re defunct. here’s the video in question.

Walk out into the wilderness and make it on your own out there, tell me how much manpower you have to spend keeping your core temperature above 90F. It takes a lot of effort keeping a human alive; by yourself you just can’t afford things like electricity, sewage treatment and antibiotics. We only have those things because of the economies of scale that society allows.

Yeah, capitalism is a bit out of control at the moment, but…let’s kill all the billionaires, kill their families, kill their heirs, kill the stockholders. Let me pull on my swastika and my toothbrush mustache for a minute and go full on Auschwitz on “greedy people.” That the Musks and Gateses and Buffets of the world must be genetically greedy, so we must genocide that out of the population. And we get it done. Every CEO, every heiress, every reality TV producer, every lobbyist, every inside trader in congress, every warden of a for-profit prison, dead to the last fetus.

Now what?

You want to live in a house? Okay. At some point someone built that house. Someone walked out into a forest and cut down the trees that made the boards. And/or dug the clay that made the bricks or whatever. Somebody mined the iron ore that someone else smelted into large gauge wire that someone else made into nails that someone else pounded into the boards to hold them together.

We’re still in the 21st century, there are people on this planet lighting their homes with kerosene lanterns. We still have coal miners, fishermen and loggers. Farming has always been a difficult, miserable thing to do, we’ve just mechanized it to the point that it’s difficult and miserable on a relatively small number of people. Those people probably aren’t going to keep farming at industrial scale for the fun of it.

Star Trek, especially in the TNG era, shows us a very optimistic idea of what life would be like if we had not only nuclear fission power, not only nuclear fusion power, but antimatter power. The technology to travel faster than the speed of light and an energy source capable of fueling it, plus such marvels as the food replicator and matter transporter. The United Federation of Planets is a post-scarcity society. We aren’t. Somewhere on this planet right now is a man hosing blended human shit off of an impeller in a stopped sewage treatment plant so he can replace the leaking shaft seal. We use a man with a hose for this because it’s the best technology we have for the job. We do the job at all because if we don’t, it’ll cause a few million cases of cholera. Who do you think should pay for the hose that guy is using?

Yes, hence I referred to them as “afterthoughts.” James Madison and company drew up the articles (he didn’t create it alone but I think it’s in his handwriting), it wouldn’t pass as-is without ten amendments, it passed, more or less the current federal government was in place, and since 17 (very nearly 18) more have been added for a modern total of 27, two of them extremely stupid.

Ought to be enough for anybody.

That’s my Izzy if I let her have any cheese.

Freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom to peacefully assemble. These are pretty important, foundational personal liberties, right? In the United States, these are found in the first amendment of the Constitution. The first afterthought.

The basis of copyright, patent and trademark isn’t found in the first amendment. Or the second, or the third. It is nowhere to be found in the Bill Of Rights. No, intellectual property is not an afterthought, it’s found in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8.

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.

This is a very wise compromise.

It recognizes that innovation is iterative. No one invents a steam engine by himself from nothing, cave men spent millions of years proving that. Inventors build on the knowledge that has been passed down to them, and then they add their one contribution to it. Sometimes that little contribution makes a big difference, most of the time it doesn’t. So to progress, we need intellectual work to be public. If you allow creative people to claim exclusive rights to their work in perpetuity, society grows static because no one can invent anything new, everyone makes the same old crap.

It also recognizes that life is expensive. If you want people to rise above barely subsisting and invent something, you’ve got to make it worth it to them. Why bother doing the research, spend the time tinkering in the shed, if it’s just going to be taken from you? This is how you end up with Soviet Russia, a nation that generated excellent scientists and absolutely no technology of its own.

The solution is “for limited times.” It’s yours for awhile, then it’s everyone’s. It took Big They a couple hundred years to break it, too.

“To support our commitment to reducing the number of covid cases, we have elected to discontinue counting them. We kindly ask all infected to kindly die at home.”

Managing your own AV equipment has always been a pain in the ass.

There was a comedy channel on Youtube aeons ago that would do “if x were honest” videos. Their slogan for Valve was “We used to make games. Now we make money.”

See? That’s great branding.

The hell do you mean “just”?

I’ve said this before, or tried to.

Official Democratic party policy is pro-business, pro-stock market, pro Nancy Pelosi’s portfolio. In the parallel universe where Kamala won, inflation and slowly tightening corporate policies are slowly pressing Americans to death, we’re not in a bullshit trade war with Canada, exactly the same number of Palestinians are being killed, absolutely nothing is being done to address healthcare, reproductive rights, gun crime, poverty, disease, the environment, net neutrality or basically anything of that nature.

Official Democratic party messaging is “At least we’re not the Republicans.” Which means less and less as time goes on. They’ve got no progressive policies. No one in this nation I think is rabidly pro-Democrat. There are a few that are rabidly anti-Republican.

How many times have I seen this conversation play out: “The Democrats need to reach out to moderate Republicans.” “NO, they need to move to the left!” No, the Democrats need to reach out to the majority of Americans. Which is going to mean actually appealing to men. Which they currently DO. NOT.

Europe isn’t a region, it’s a brand.

Remember when programming a VCR was a stand-up comedy joke?

My high school girlfriend did a very light version of this. Very early on, we were in a convenience store parking lot getting gas or something, I climb into the car and she says, “Look, when I say ‘maybe,’ I mean ‘yes,’ okay?” It wasn’t a continuation of any conversation we were having, I guess she was doing that chick thing where she has most of the conversation in her head and only shares the end of it with you.

Dozens upon dozens of times, we’d have this conversation: “Wanna do it?” “Maybe.” “…and maybe means yes.” I never neglected to remind her she’d said that.

Later on, I had another girlfriend who liked to be chased. Literally. Tag was foreplay to her. We’d get through the front door of the house and she’d go tearing off into the bedroom and jump fully clothed under the covers, often giggling. This would often start with her pulling herself out of my arms. I talked to her that chasing her through the house to a hiding place, taking the blanket off of her, undressing her, and fucking her felt a little bit non-consentual. She just…liked to be chased. So she agreed to say something like “Come get me!” before taking off. Yes, Ma’am!"

The United States Marine Corps once had a Staff Sergeant named Max Fightmaster.

Also, there was a NASCAR driver of note named Dick Trickle, the only man in motorsports named for a symptom of enlarged prostate.

The man who invented the mortgage was named Nicholas If-Jesus-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned Barebone. His father’s name was Praise God Barebone. First name Praise, middle name God, last name Barebone.

I think all cats are named “Stoppit.” It’s like in the taxonomy. Animalia cordata mammalia felidae stoppitae quitthatus felis catus

Along with Crumple Zone and Brake Check.