The propaganda playbook for this one seems like a really lazy version of Iraq's way back when, with the whole "narco-terrorist" nonsense substituted for the then-crucial, focus-grouped WMD narrative.

What even is a narco-terrorist, someone trying to scare you by importing something you want and selling it to you?

I want the regime gone as much as the next guy but everybody knows by now that war (at least temporarily) strengthens the position of the defending government and they can abuse that newly-gained power to make things even worse for their subjects, see Ukraine where elections have been suspended and the now un-elected regime has nationalized all media outlets, instituted a state church and banned all other churches, and kidnaps boys in the streets to cart them to the front as cannon fodder.

Listen, I have nothing good to say about the Maduro regime, or most other regimes for that matter, but wouldn't you entertain just the slightest possibility that the Venezuelan "We'll greet your troops a liberators" party might just be funded by the CIA? It's not like nothing of the sort has ever happened and besides, people do tend to rally around the flag if you attack them despite them hating their government, like in Iraq for example.

A man after my own heart - I think 😅

1059 because I imagine a pretty gift box containing a secret 😄

Well, gotta destroy history before remaking it in your ideology's image, lest people think there used to be another way 😄

I wonder if, endless government regulation aside, there would be a market for new cars using only 60s technology and features but with modern materials and production methods. Ought to be rather cheap to produce given the advancement in industry and the lack of computer technology but probably only at scale.

If I had money to burn, I'd love to gather some engineers and mechanics build some stainless muscle cars 😄

God, I'd love to live in an economy so good that everyone needs to be bailed out left and right - oh wait, I do 😅

Haha, well if none of that is happening in Norway, I'm moving there tomorrow 😄

Oh well, just the basics, they're eroding what you once thought of as your civil liberties in order to "combat the current crisis" while creating and allowing the creation of ever more money, lessening the value of whatever reward for your honest work they allow you to keep because they've long since laid formal claim to all of it.

And by "they" I mean those who claim to act on behalf of any modern-day republic, elected or otherwise.

Sure, the worst kind 😅

Awareness renders you free to experience every aspect of what they're doing to you in harsh daylight, hiding nothing behind euphemism, lies or propaganda.

"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind"

Luckily, if your mind is the likeness of a current-gen LLM, you barely qualify as human.

In case you're a right-winger and you have been living under a rock for the last 650,000 years: Reagan was not a libertarian, he was a big-government spending hawk like almost everybody else.

The last president noticably acting like a libertarian was Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s.

Yes, some might even say that that is their most important task, alongside violently expropriating peaceful human beings.

Don't tell me what to do 😄

I guess none of his doctorates were in operating simple household appliances.

I don't mind violence as an answer as much as people needlessly substituting violence for the question, that's where the trouble starts.

Galt's Gulch

You know, with nostr as my only social media, I don't even notice that I legally don't have a right to free expression, isn't that wonderful?

I've never really liked Cloudflare, I think a lot of people (not all of them, of course) use it to hide the fact that their web apps deliver huge piles of garbage code, styles, and markup 😄

Are you sure? The statement has twelve words, I was almost certain that haikus have exactly eleven.