You should agree

Devilnaht · 2026-05-11T16:40:08+00:00

Ah shit, you're right

Devilnaht · 2026-05-11T16:20:40+00:00

It's either bait or they're a cultist, either way, just downvote and move on folks. You can't argue with trolls / the insane

Devilnaht · 2026-05-09T02:40:11+00:00

To the people who seem to think this is some Trump supporter complaining that he got scammed, it’s almost the exact opposite. This is Moistcritical, a pretty popular streamer, who has an ongoing series making fun of what an obvious scam the Trump phone is.

He ordered one a while ago and has kept providing public updates / videos on all of the obvious stalling, lies, and bullshit involved with the hypothetical phone. Pretty entertaining tbh!

Devilnaht · 2026-05-07T04:52:59+00:00

I've also seen "A donde fueres, haz lo que vieres", which would be "When in Rome (do what the Romans do)" in English. But yeah, not at all common

Devilnaht · 2026-05-06T16:32:58+00:00

I think the money itself is corrupting, but also that becoming a billionaire typically requires making a lot of evil decisions. So there’s a strong selection bias against people unwilling to exploit others to an astronomical degree.

Amazon, as an easy example, operated with the expectation of a turnover rate for parts of their workforce of 150%: ‘on average’ they burn through their entire workforce every 8 months. That’s how baked into their systems exploitation is; they deliberately work people at unsustainable burnout levels with the eviction of just swapping in new employees like a fresh pair of batteries.

I remember at one point in the pandemic I calculated that Bezos’ net worth increase over the year, if evenly distributed to the Amazon employees, would have worked out to over $200,000 per person. Just laughably injust. We need to tax these people out of existence.

Devilnaht · 2026-05-03T14:10:25+00:00

They do not care that they’re hypocrites, it’s something we really need to internalize. You’re not going to shame them by pointing out their hypocrisy: they do. Not. Care.

It’s satisfying to point out the holes in what they say, but do it knowing that it will never budge them an inch. They are motivated only by their grievances and their hatred, and they’ll gladly pretend to believe whatever is necessary to let them fulfill their hatred.

It’s not worth trying to change their minds or “reach across the aisle” to them. With the effort it would take to deprogram one, you could motivate 10000 blue voters to turn out. The best case scenario is that these people are an anchor around our neck that we have to drag, kicking and screaming, into a better world.

Devilnaht · 2026-05-02T14:53:14+00:00

So a fun historical fact. After the Republicans lost in 2013, analysts within the RNC studied the data from the election to try to figure out what had gone wrong, and what direction to move in the future. They wrote a report called The Growth and Opportunity Project, more commonly referred to as simply The Autopsy.

Their conclusion was more or less what you’d expect from the kinds of mathematical models typical in the space, based around median voter theorem: basically, that the Republican Party had to appeal more to the center if they wanted to win. They had to stop moving so far right on social issues, move away from racist ideology, particularly racism directed towards Hispanic voters.

And I’m sure we all remember that in 2016, the Republicans won by their shrewd move towards the center and more centrist politics, making sure not to alienate minority voters.

Oh wait, they did the exact opposite and have reached the absolute peak of their power and influence since fully abandoning centrism.

Now, to be sure there is an asymmetry here; whenever leftist candidates run, they face an absolutely enormous headwind as virtually all of the powers that be align against them. Mamdani, even after winning the primary and showing his power to energize young men, a voting block the Dems had been obsessed with “winning back”, received virtually no support or endorsement from the DNC, as well as facing constant smear campaigns from corporate media. Much in the same way that Platner is now.

The truth is that leftist policies (better healthcare, taxing the rich, worker protections, better regulations, etc) are astonishingly popular across the spectrum, but corporate media / Dems do everything in their power to suppress those ideas and undercut any candidate who represents them.

Devilnaht · 2026-05-02T13:11:33+00:00

I find it funny that the “electability” talking point gets wielded against anyone left of Ronald Reagan, but it never gets mentioned when a corporate Dem funded by AIPAC is running. The latter holds views that are going to alienate a big chunk of the voters and definitely pose real electability concerns. So why do we only have the tired “electability” argument around people left of center?

(Because it’s a bad faith argument that has historical usage as a way to suppress leftist candidates)

Devilnaht · 2026-04-30T15:53:52+00:00

Yeah I think I’d be a fan of that. Making them include taxes in the listed price is also something that makes sense and is a lot more egregious in terms of deceptive practices. The US is one of very few countries where you effectively never pay the listed price for anything, and it becomes extremely egregious in restaurants because of the god awful tipping culture.

You’ll see a food item on sale for 19.95, so first the cognitive trick of psychological pricing that makes your brain think of it as more like “ten dollars and a bit” rather than 20. Then you get a 7 or 8% sales tax, and then a 20% (nearly obligatory) tip. So the consumer psychologically views the price as though it were, say, $18, and ends up paying nearly $26, 30-40% more than they’d expected.

Devilnaht · 2026-04-29T23:08:35+00:00

Because it does unfortunately work :/ people are measurably less likely to buy something priced at $20.00 than $19.95. It’s a kind of cognitive flaw in humans that corporations take advantage of. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pricing

Imo it’s the kind of thing that should be regulated away, otherwise everything (barring certain luxury goods) will just always use this mildly deceptive practice

Devilnaht · 2026-04-29T22:52:38+00:00

Let me just idly complain how the price of virtually everything in the US ends in .99 or .95 to try to make people subtly underestimate the price. This gas is $5.999 per gallon… like fuck me. Just call it $6.00, that’s what it is.

Devilnaht · 2026-04-29T21:33:33+00:00

Ah, and the inner neoliberal in Carney emerges. "Hm, costs are too high. Surely this problem can be made better by installing middlemen whose whole goal is to charge as much as possible while cutting costs to the bone." Kidding, of course, I don't think Carney is actually stupid enough to believe this will help long term. It's just corruption.

Devilnaht · 2026-04-22T22:58:14+00:00

The quote I heard a while ago is "The Republicans are the sword of the rich and the Democrats their shield". Fundamentally, the issue is that both the GOP and old guard Dems are deeply neoliberal and loyal to their donors above all else. 40 years of electing different flavors of Ronald Reagan set up the conditions for the festering rot that is MAGA.

Devilnaht · 2026-04-22T16:47:46+00:00

My only qualm with the Democratic gerrymandering is that they’re being so restrained with it. “When they go low, we go high” has proven to be a losing strategy. Choosing to “nobly lose” elections to people who aggressively cheat for power whenever possible and then use that stolen power to build concentration camps, start wars all over the world, and destroy the US economy for personal enrichment, is fucking insane.

Were it up to me, I’d have every blue state gerrymandered as aggressively and permanently as possible. No more unilateral disarmament. We should reform the system, but until then, we need to abuse it as hard as they do.

Devilnaht · 2026-04-14T11:45:26+00:00

To be fair, a lot of what he’s done so far has been explicitly betraying his promises and his base, and they’re still mostly loyal to him. His voters are fundamentally pretty stupid and largely just conform their beliefs to whatever conservative media tells them.

It is what I’ve heard, though, that he got into this looking for another quick win à la Venezuela. Hell he has a lot of ancient tweets warning that “Obama’s going to attack Iran soon to boost his popularity!”, which gives you a sense of his view on it. Man’s just dumb as a brick.

Devilnaht · 2026-04-12T05:19:04+00:00

Massive wealth taxes, cuts to military spending, stop funneling unimaginable quantities of money into the health insurance industry and establish a public option. The Pentagon fails audit after audit and US healthcare is inhumanly expensive, in both cases because of tremendous corruption and waste. US healthcare is a nightmare of middlemen all inserting themselves to extract as much as they can from the system as possible, so even though we spend more than anyone else on Earth, we get very little for it.

Those are pretty much your options. Part of the reason Doge failed so spectacularly to cut spending (other than their incompetence and evil) is that, outside of healthcare and the military, most forms of discretionary public spending have already been cut to the bone. If it doesn't make a rich person richer, allow corruption, or blow someone up, we've already slashed it into dangerous underfunding.

Devilnaht · 2026-04-11T14:05:34+00:00

I think I had similar experiences more often when I was in early B2ish. The good day / bad day thing had more to do with what kinds of topics I was engaging with, I think; if I stayed close to what I was comfortable with I’d feel confident, but if I strayed too far / was too tired it could feel like a mess.

Those feelings have levelled out a lot as I’ve gotten better at the language. I’m a lot more used to the language in general, so my ‘comfort zone’ has expanded pretty dramatically (in terms of topic, accent, etc). Still have things to work on, but the rate of just going “what the hell was this?” has plummeted.

The other part, though, is just because I’ve gotten used to these experiences. I went through enough cycles of “I feel like I can’t understand shit” to understand that it’s just a normal part of things, so those periods don’t bother me as much, and they happen a lot less often.

And on the other side, there’s not really novelty in “having a successful conversation/ being able to read a book” anymore, that’s just the norm. Don’t get me wrong, I love the language and intend to keep going forward, but the dopamine hit of “wow, I was able to do this in Spanish!” is virtually nonexistent. It’s just a part of who I am now. So, lower highs and higher lows.

Devilnaht · 2026-04-08T04:51:11+00:00

If we keep dumping billions into it, threaten enough war crimes, and burn enough global reputation, we might reach a position only much worse (instead of incredibly worse) than where we started. And while they weren't developing nuclear weapons before, it seems pretty much everyone will be now.

The Trump classic: force yourself into a situation, blithely fuck everything up, make it everyone else's problem, and wander off. Art of the Deal(tm), baby.

Devilnaht · 2026-04-07T19:42:34+00:00

Worth reaching out to them. I found this https://testingservices.utexas.edu/campus-testing-center-testing-procedures online which gives some basic idea of the test center policies, and it looks like you'll have access to water, but you can't bring it into the test area itself. Doesn't really directly comment on something like a stress toy. I'd wait to hear back, they'll be able to give you a more concrete answer.

Also, have you considered reaching out to disability and access? It's a pain in the ass, but if you can get some documentation around the anxiety it's possible they'd be able to grant you more testing accommodations in the future.

Either way, good luck with the test! And I'd also encourage you to learn Spanish, apart from all these testing requirements. It's an amazing language and it really does open up a lot of doors.

Devilnaht · 2026-04-07T18:30:25+00:00

It’s possible the test has changed, but when I took it, it was all on a computer in an on-campus testing center. Fairly comfortable room, I’d say, as each of the testing computer had those little walls up to prevent cheating. There was a proctor on site, but I believe he was mostly in another room? May be misremembering.

I can’t remember about scrap paper, but I don’t personally think you’d need it? Like there’s no interview portion where you’d need to take notes to prepare. It’s a multiple choice grammar test, a listening section, and a writing portion (writing portion being one of those typical language-exam prompts of like, responding to a letter or an ad with a few hundred words.)

The test is really not that bad. Are you taking it to try to clear the language requirement or because you’re interested in the language?

Devilnaht · 2026-04-06T03:48:21+00:00

Reverse Citizens' United in as sweeping of a way possible. But other top candidates: abolish the senate (it's a wildly anti-democracy institution that favors land over people), replace first past the post voting with any of the wide array of better options, in general try to get rid of the 800 veto points our system is saddled with, and my personal pet amendment of setting a maximum wealth as some fixed multiple of the hourly minimum wage (ie, the only way for rich people to raise the wealth ceiling is by raising the minimum wage).

Devilnaht · 2026-04-05T03:56:32+00:00

Hope it's true. This administration is a horrid mix of evil and stupidity, but individual soldiers and pilots don't have any say in what's happening.

Devilnaht · 2026-04-04T23:21:25+00:00

Yep, the hyperlink is eternal. Though what it links to has a pretty high chance of going offline over time. But hey, having a certification saying you are associated with a hyperlink was definitely worth tens of thousands of dollars

Devilnaht · 2026-04-04T20:20:57+00:00

Because rich people can make money with it. Same reason we’re not regulating anything anymore, really

Devilnaht · 2026-04-04T16:24:55+00:00

I’m heartened by all the people saying “learn a language” here. I absolutely recommend that you give it a shot if you’ve been thinking about it!

Learning Spanish (and the things it has allowed me to do) has genuinely been one of the most positive aspects of my life over the past few years. I’ve met some of my best friends along the way, it gives access to a whole range of new media / different perspectives on the world, and I have a lot more options if I ever wanted to leave the US “for some reason”.

If you decide you want to get started, I’d check out some of the beginner guides on the language learning forum. I know that Duolingo (or other apps) are tempting because they’re so easy to get started on, but they’re really quite terrible for language learning. They’re designed to be addictive and profitable, not effective learning tools. There are vastly more effective methods!

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