Dharma Curious (he/him)

Don’t worry, after we invade and occupy purchase Greenland Red, White, And Blueland, I’m sure we’ll “purchase” Iceland, too. Then we can all go live there…

Oompa loompa doompety doo I’ve got a perfect puzzle for you Oompa loompa doompety dee If you are wise you’ll listen to me

What do you get when you capture and cage Tiny elephants filled with wisdom and rage? Forcing them to work against their own will What do you think they’ll do when they’ve had their fill?

Oompa loompa doompety dack If you’re not cruel, they won’t attack You will live in happiness too Like the Oompa Loompa doompety do

They may be small but they’re clever and bright With memories long and a thirst to fight They’ll band together while you sleep at night And stomp on your toes with all of their might!

Oompa loompa doompety dight Listen to now and set things right You can befriend them instead of enslave And they’ll trumpet your name from tunnel to cave

What can you gain from your wicked small zoo? When friendship and trunk-shakes are waiting for you? The karma returning from your evil schemes Will haunt all your days and plague all your dreams!

Oompa loompa doompety doo Treat little creatures with respect that’s true Oompa loompa doompety dee Set those wee elephants instantly free!

It doesn’t make sense. But I live in the southern US, where they didn’t get that memo that it’s okay for men to like things besides giant trucks and football. Two dudes in Walmart did the coughfaggotcough thing a while back when they saw me with my teeny little mini dachshunds. 🙄 They don’t know what they’re missing. Tiny dogs rock

Nah, as a dachshund dad, everyone cares. I can’t take them anywhere without adding extra time to how long it takes. For real, on days when I take them for a ride in the car, I have to add an hour or so to my mental math of the trip because people will stop me to pet them or ooh and aww. It’s wild.

And then like once or twice per dozen trips out someone makes a comment about me having little “girly” dogs, and I gotta deal with that, too. But IDC, my babys love going for rides, so they’re gonna go for rides. Lol

Computer, arch.

Computer! Arch!

Computer! Exit this hell hole! Arch!

… Why am I never in a holodeck when I wish I was in a holodeck

I mean, I figured it was more meme-y than accurate, but good to know. Still, they’re smart as fuck and mourn their dead, and seem to have rituals, sacred spaces, and generational knowledge. Shrink them suckers down and let me give a whole herd of petite pachyderms a patch of paradise, please

So there is a good reason, then? I’ve googled it before, and the best answers I’ve gotten are basically “cause MAMMOTHS!”

If that’s the case and there’s a good reason, then hell yeah, do whatever we can to prevent climate collapse!

But also, give me small elephants, please? Especially if they can manage Chihuahua sized elephants. I would have so many! And I would make sure they always have a clear view of the moon goddess they worship

Ever since I was a kid I’ve always been hyped about the idea of them bringing back the mammoth. Been hearing about it my whole life…

But I have to ask… Why are we trying to, exactly? I mean, the planet’s heating up. why are we trying to reintroduce a woolly mammoth? It’s one thing if they’re talking about using actual mammoth DNA and cloning it, but that article was talking about specifically just turning on some genes that cause fur and cold tolerance… What is the point of just making furry elephants at this point? Where are we sticking them, and why are we sticking them there? Is there some ecological niche that needs filling? Are we going to attempt to populate Antarctica (and hope it stays cold enough for that?) with hirsute pachyderms?

How about a different plan? As much as I have been excited woolly mammoths my entire life, let’s try something a little different. Let’s shrink the elephants we have, and introduce them into North America. Elephants the size of bison, roaming the continent. You can still make them cold tolerant, to handle winters, and give em some fur if you want. But the elephants we have are going extinct, and you’re worrying about bringing back something else. How about we save what we have? Let them roam and graze Europe and North America, replacing the Aurochs and the bison. God knows we’re not going to stop eating anything too cow like, so wild bison is basically right out. Let’s let the elephant fill these niches, and save the species. They’re too fucking smart to let die. Elephants got fucking religion, y’all. We cannot let them die.

Found the dog

This is one of the things that’s in the running for my genie wishes. An earth in which multiple species of sapient hominid survive to the modern day and live peacefully and without xenophobic hatred with humans, with roughly equal populations between the species.

The wording needs to be fleshed out to avoid the whole genies actually want to fuck you over angle, but that’s the jist of it. It’s not at the top of my genie wish list, but it’s in the running

I just finished a player of games a few months ago! Someone suggested the series to me here on lemmy (perhaps you? Lol. I never take note of screen names when I should), and I read Phlebas and APoG before I got distracted. It’s so good. Like ridiculously good. Phlebas wasn’t quite my speed, not bad by any stretch, I just found myself wishing for more of what there was little of and less of what there was much of, but APoG was fantastic and exactly what I was looking for!

I never grew past the phase of childhood where kids will be like “oh my God cool shirt we should be friends!” Lol I make a point to do my best never to come across as creepy or predatory (especially given I am physically quite large. Over weight by about 60 pounds, but even at my ideal weight I’d be an imposing figure), but clothing choices are what I notice, just like when I was a kid. I’ll be walking through Walmart and be like “I love your T-shirt!” And the smiles are so amazing. I don’t know why more people don’t do it, it feels so good seeing people get happy, when all I did was say the thing I was thinking already.

A favorite one was a woman in Walmart a few months ago. She was tall, and dressed in, full, hippie gear. I’m talking log flowing earth tones, chunky crystal necklace, an om/aum pendant, peace symbol ear rings, her hair was in this really elaborate braid, the type that looks super simple but probably takes a ton a work, super tall chunky cork platforms… It was like she stepped out of the 60s, but not in a fake way, it was obviously not a costume, either. This these contemporary items that she put together for this look. She looked amazing.

I initially went to compliment the necklace that I really liked, and then took in the whole look and it came out like this:

“I love your ne-- I love your whole freaking vibe!”

She laughed hard and smiled and just looked so incredibly joyful. Then she noticed the two tiny puppies I had and she got the play with puppies for a minute, and it was a rare example of joy in this crushing dystopian world.

As an anarchist, I answer this just about the same way I answer most questions. Through consensus of those involved, the form that takes is going to be different for each region, community, et cetera. Those that make up society need to have some way of making collective decisions, but it doesn’t need to be a state to achieve that. States are new, governing is not. I favor consensus democracy, but it’s by no means the only method. But questions like this are a double edged sword, they’re vital to explaining left libertarianism, but they’re also proof of how far we have to go before people understand even the basics of it. Stateless does not mean ungoverned, just as anarchism does not mean chaos. It’s simple a governing by the people. If we cannot be trusted to govern ourselves how in the hell do we think this is a tenable system, in which we choose individuals to govern us?

Y’all wanna talk hoopties? Let’s talk hoopties.

Two great stories below all the issues.

I had a 1990 Oldsmobile Regency. Google it for the full understanding of just how hoopty this hoopty was. I had it in ≈2012-15

An automatic, the gears were fucked, you drove in neutral, neutral was reverse, and park was reverse. There was no park. You put it in neutral and put on the e brake.

To crank it did not require a key. You just turned the little plastic nubs on the ignition.

The doors did not open from the inside, you had to reach out the window to open them from the outside. It also did not lock correctly, so it could always be opened from outside. Occasionally the driver’s door would stick shut and could not be opened, so you had to scooch to the passengers door, or climb out through the window.

If you turned on the windshield wipers the radio turned on or off, depending on if you had it on or off when you turned on the wipers.

If you turned on the headlights the wipers came on. Period. Which then fucked with the radio. I used to have to physically take the wipers off and raise the little metal bars if it wasn’t raining, so that they didn’t screech on dry glass.

It had no muffler, and was so fucking loud

It had no blinkers or tail lights, so I bought a set of trailer lights and stuck them on the trunk. Wired toggle switches. If you wanna turn on left blinker, rapidly switch the toggle for the left blinker.

In short. Hot fucking mess.

Stories:

We drove this car from Tennessee to Florida when helping someone move. He put us up at Fontainebleau in Miami. We drove this hoopty in, and had it valet parked. The look on their faces was absolutely fucking priceless. They thought we were the clampetts.

But the best story is when my brother and I were at a campground. For reasons I won’t go into, we were staying at a campground with our dogs. No one could know we were there. My brother has IBS. He and I went to bed in our tents, and at some point he got up to drive to the bathroom/shower room things. He gets in the car and goes to crank it and it won’t crank. His stomach is upset and he decides he just has the walk the half mile. But oh no! The windows are up, the car won’t crank, and he can’t open the doors!

He repeatedly called my name and phone, and I just slept through it. He sat in the car for nearly 5 hours while he watched a family of raccoons eat all of our food. Including each individual egg from the carton. He had video of it for years. The only person who could know where we were was our mom, and he called her repeatedly, leaving the saddest voicemails that she kept for years.

“Mama… Please help me… I’m locked in the car… The raccoons are eating our food… I have to go to the bathroom… Please help… Mama… Please help”

When my parents finally got there, he told them not to wake me up. He went to the bathroom, and then when he got back he crawled into my tent, put his mouth by my ear and screamed my name as loud as humanly possible. Scared the hell out of me. He then made me watch the raccoon videos while he berated me for sleeping through it.