Phil Landmeier @shuttersparks@qoto.org

@DanielEriksson Clever. I'm pleased to say this isn't something I've ever done. However, if this was the first cup of coffee of the day, I can't rule out the possibility.

@ff0rt @Free_Press Well, there is that too. I can't imagine they don't have ejection seats. Pilots are valuable. Training a pilot is a very expensive thing. By the time you become a fighter pilot, the military has millions invested in you.

@tuban_muzuru @lovelylovely I feel that too. It's kind of a form of empathy. I want all humans to succeed. But it's the natural association with that person due to our common white skin color that I resent.

@ai6yr @ascentale @xtaran Correct. Around 1990, police and prison guard unions began spending tens of millions of dollars on ad campaigns designed to frighten the public. This enabled things like 3-strike laws. Its main purpose was to ready the public and legislators for the unions' demands for large increases in funding and pay, which they received. At the same time, prison systems were redesigned not to rehabilitate and get people back into society but to retain them for as long as possible, increasing prison populations, which was then used to justify more prison construction, more law enforcement and corrections officers, so more members in the unions, more dues, more funding for ads and promotion, and so on.

Today it's all pretty much a scam designed to funnel taxpayer money into private pockets. The process began in California and quickly spread to most states.

@HopelessDemigod Agree on all points.

@tuban_muzuru @lovelylovely Hah, funny way of putting it but the embarrassment is at times really effing irritating.

I avoid hobnobbing with bad people because guilt by association is a real thing. In this case I can't not be associated to some degree with white racist idiots because I am white guy.

Every time I see some openly racist white guy it pisses me off. "You're making me look bad."

@MarleyandMe @lovelylovely Some? Here in West Virginia it's the standard mantra everyone repeats to everyone else. They get it from Fox News of course: "Crooked Joe Biden".

Propaganda works.

@ai6yr @ascentale @xtaran Hmm, outside of riding the school bus on rainy days (not common in West Los Angeles) I biked or walked from kindergarten, through junior and senior high school. I don't remember my parents ever taking me to school or picking me up. And I'm glad of it. I enjoyed the freedom to leave school when I pleased (I often stayed late), ability to stop at a friend's house, or library on the way home.

@ff0rt @Free_Press I didn't see any parachutes either. The plane was in a flat spin so the pilot(s) needed to eject immediately. If they didn't the centrifugal force of the spin can make it impossible to eject.

@ErikUden The Dutch are possibly the most common-sense / practical people on Earth. At least that's been my experience since the 1960s.

@claralistensprechen3rd Hahaha. They are dinosaurs, after all.

@HopelessDemigod Hah, Linux here. Although the Commodore 64 would be welcome here too.

@lovelylovely Yes. The makeup of society has changed completely since I was raised in the 50s and 60s. Nowadays, being a feral "caveman" is A-OK.

Tonight did a file sync to my server of about 1.8 GB and got 71 Mbps for several minutes. Then it dropped to about 25 for several seconds, then back up to 71. I like it.