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[Nodack]

So we just had the Bud Light controversy and now Belgium has decided that Miller High Life “The champagne of beers” slogan is false advertising. It’s been their slogan since 1969 and now all of the sudden Belgian has decided that Miller High Life was trying to pawn itself as Champagne and their ingredients surprisingly don’t meet the qualifications to be champagne and they decided to destroy thousands of cans of Miller to make a statement.

I am trying to decide which controversy is dumber.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/22/europe/b ... index.html

[Mori Chu]

Another good thread on how stupid the whole Twitter verification saga is. Elon is basically going around handing out free blue checks now to celebs who don't want it.

[Nodack]

I was on Twitter for almost a month before deleting. Blue check marks, pink check marks. It’s like a teacher writing a smiley face on a test paper. It means nothing to me.

[Superbone]

I will never give Twitter one red cent.

[Mori Chu]

Yuck. If you search for a lot of innocent terms on Twitter like "cat" or "dog", the autosuggestions would send you to horrible videos of animals being tortured and killed.

[Mori Chu]

Wow. Twitter censors and deletes content posted by the political opponents of President Ergdoan the day before their election, because Ergdoan threatens to shut off access to the site if they don't. Very bad precedent; any scummy country can just repeat this pattern to get Twitter to censor their political dissidents and opponents at will. This from Mr. "Free Speech Absolutist" Elon Musk. Free speech, unless you threaten to reduce access, then I'll just censor any random content you want. What a joke.

[Mori Chu]

[Mori Chu]

[Mori Chu]

Fitting.

[Nodack]

Most of you know I am a local musician. I play at some bars on the West side around Sun City that are mostly conservative people as in older and white. Most of them are Trump fans. They think I’m great. As a musician I have learned to stay neutral and they probably think I’m a Trump supporter too when they walk up bragging about their T-shirt that says “Fuck Biden and his whore!” The same guy told me he had another shirt that says “Fuck Biden and Fuck you if you voted for him!” I had to stand there, smile and swallow my tongue. Most of these people are the nicest people you ever want to meet when I talk to them but, I know they hate Libs.

That brings me to my next thought. I play a duo a lot with another guy who is super nice and is a conservative. We have a certain chemistry going on on stage that seems to work great. I obviously care about the world we live in and want to do my part to bring us all together. As a musician it’s a not a great idea to ever get political, although some certainly have. I was trying to think of a way to promote togetherness without getting political or preachy on people. The two of us like to tell jokes and make fun of each other on stage. Maybe make it part of the act somehow. Maybe it’s a dumb idea. They aren’t there for politics. They are there to forget about politics. Maybe singing songs about love and togetherness with a little intro about love and togetherness is the way to go. Baby steps I guess.

[Mori Chu]

I hear you, but I don't think you need to explicitly do anything to promote togetherness or tolerance. Just being yourself, being nice and friendly, being inclusive to them, that's probably all you need to do.

I really dislike most Republican political views and policies, but almost everybody in my life who's a Republican is a sweet and kind person. It's important for us to just be among each other and see each other as people and not the way everyone is presented on the news and social media.

[Nodack]

Thanks. I guess nothing combats all the divisiveness being shoved down our throats more than just being nice to your fellow human being.

[Superbone]

I find avoiding politics altogether is the way to go. It is just such a dividing topic. Now more than ever.

I was just in Arizona for a week and I got together to play poker with a group of guys I started playing with online during the pandemic. I was meeting them in person for the first time in at least 2 years of playing a weekly game together online where we would get on zoom and see and talk to each other while we were playing. All great guys and all moderate to very conservative Republicans. My college gambling buddy is who introduced me to them. Most of them worked together at Boeing at some point in time.

Anyway, as long as we don't talk politics, it's all good. There's also a text chat group with these guys. A couple times they started spewing conservative BS in the chat. Once a guy posted a picture where Biden had a penis head or something stupid like that. I told them to remove me from the group as I wasn't interested in talking politics. Instead, they just dropped the politics. At one of the houses that was hosting, as I'm going to the bathroom, I saw a Brandon hat. The owner of the house is a guy I joke around with all the time and seems to be a great guy. Anyway, I ignored it and politics never came up in our conversations while playing poker.

[Nodack]

It’s amazing how people can get together, have fun, do all kinds of things together and never know what the politics are of the person they are having fun with. They might have both just came from home where they were arguing with each other about politics and never knew they were the same guys that play poker together.

[Mori Chu]

[Mori Chu]

This story is wild. Local paper discovers that county officials talk openly about killing their journalists, among other foul topics.

[Mori Chu]

Oof.

[Superbone]

Midas touch.

[Superbone]

I thought this was a joke but it’s not.

[Mori Chu]

Lately Elon Musk has been liking, re-sharing, and posting various discriminatory content. He has recently made several anti-trans tweets talking about "castration" and "mutilation" of children. And now lately he's liking tweets about White Pride. whee.