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Interesting. I should look it up for sure. While I'm certainly very much inherently in the camp of primarily approaching philosophy in a more traditional analytic style, I've become more appreciative of more artistic and "messy" packaging as of late, and this is certainly doing it for me. I love the absurd oversimplification disguised in rationality and nuance's clothes. All that education these douchecanoes get only to never apply that same academic rigor to their worldview.

While it's certainly true that Jim Beam can no longer honestly keep the label of 'all American' due to corporate structure, they have kept up much of the American tradition and culture around Kentucky bourbon by generally letting them run autonomously. However, to your point, that's definitely not guaranteed to continue-especially if profits are gonna start being fucked with. American jobs and culture are under pressure from both trump and outside corporate organizations. It was already insulting enough that a faceless corporation took it upon itself to be a steward of a part of American culture and history, but then the shameless sellout? It's that irresponsible behavior that makes these corporations so inherently unreliable and untrustworthy no matter how faithful they may act for however long.

What was that about bringing back American manufacturing jobs again? They keep saying the wealth will trickle down, yet I don't think the wealth was supposed to be in this liquid form we've been getting...

Oh good, so in addition to what I mentioned it has direct economic impact overseas as well. Neat. Fun. We're having so much fun with all the bigly winning and other buzzwords for seven year olds.

Jesus. So not only is trump directly hurting the American economy, he's destroying actual American culture. I would say this event just makes trump's literal destruction of the Whitehouse even more of an apt analogy of his relationship with America as a whole, but anything more than 100% is just excessive.

So I guess Putin is gonna just keep giving NATO a reason to exist by continuing to be an imperialist bitch.

Yeah, I feel this sentiment very strongly. Complacency is what they want, because then you just mindlessly participate in the system. It's difficult to not participate in the system by default since it's like "hey man, I just ~~work~~ live here". So not only do you need to be educated in wtf these systems even are, why they're bad, and how to best engage/disengage with them, you have to actively make an effort to change with energy not a whole lot of people have these days. Some may see this reaction to Microsoft as silly and overblown, but people getting rid of windows could literally save their life due to the systems of surveillance built by Microsoft aiding increasingly dangerous and malicious political actors.

Haha, thanks man. For me personally, I'm a socialist and punk to my very soul, so the hate for Microsoft runs ultra deep. In addition to everything I mentioned before, I've become much more wary of the software running in my house due to an increase in political risk. There's no longer just a privacy consideration for general security, but now a heightened existential risk involved. Microsoft is part of the problem in perpetuating the existing system of oppression, so absolutely fuck em.

I've been absolutely seething over Microsoft's bullshit for years. Over the years of having less and less control over my own fucking computer, the parasitic privacy invasion, the dumbfuck constant bloat, the cartoon level evil of Microsoft in general, the constant degradation, forcing unnecessary features and ads, and generally just the sheer audacity. Honestly, I've just kinda been putting up with it for not much more than "it works for now and I'm just tired, man". However, then Microsoft started pushing ai and some updates that were literally bricking systems so I could no longer justify having a switch from windows being such a low priority; it was now a liability. I'm now running CachyOS and I'm quite happy with the switch. Everything just fucking works, not to mention the very noticeable performance boost. Fuck Microsoft.

Yeah, I've always been super into music, so I thought it was weird that it didn't seem to translate. Like you, I think the critically acclaimed shit just ain't it for me. Which, now that I think about it, my music taste is for the most part not even kinda mainstream so I probably should have made that connection before. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Oh! Glad you asked. It was The Harlem Dancer by Claude McKay. First poem that finally hit me in my life.

I never really understood poetry, never understood the appeal. Like a month ago, I finally read a poem that just... moved me. I wondered if maybe it was just the one. This one did the same with just that last line. Guess I've been just reading awful poetry every time I had "tried" it in the past. Well, hot dog, a whole new fucking world!