Same. Le sigh 😕

Just remember that according to the cannon timeline, the United States was rounding up people and putting them in “sanctuary districts” and in 2027 it’s the start of World War 3. Who knows, we may be right on track for that brighter future!

Hell I'd vote for him a fifth time, but he's mysteriously not running.

Although I suppose he wasn't running the first four times either...

Ten Z didn't vote Trump in. They simply voted for Kamala less.

Whoa there! Cant have the working class intelligent enough to see through the bull shit.

This is exactly why I keep beating the drum for critical thinking and media literacy, steeped within a rich liberal (in every meaning of that term) educational program.

I've actually begun work on an essay about that exact thing. One that I've put off for a very long time because the last time I dared to imply a causal relationship between the rise of Trade-Schools, where you learn to do one thing and one thing well, but have no real education otherwise, and the dumbing down of the electorate, I got shouted down for being "elitist". But with recent events, I've decided to expand on my idea and throw some more research behind it because fuck it, I'm feeling vindicated.

I'm not saying that everyone who attends a trade-school is intellectually incurious; just that a broader understanding of the world is not a part of the curriculum and it's left up to the students themselves if they want to be a well rounded individual on their own time.

It’s like every generation loses the ability to do something in computer technology that was just abstracted away somehow

Yes, I've been hearing computer engineers (or those with that mindset) complaining that programmers don't really understand much about how computers actually work since before I even entered the workforce, but I kind of get what they are/were saying. I'd look around at my peers nearly the entire time I've been doing this, and I'd see some that really wanted to know a lot about, well, everything, in some cases, being interested in hardware, and then there were a lot, maybe more than half, that just focus on learning whatever the herd is telling them is the newest shiny object - and this is nearly always vendor-led and a lot of it is less about sound reasoning, and more about being fashionable. These days it might be a frontend JS framework, but exchange the set of terms/frameworks and it's the same old story.

These days it is increasingly difficult to know much about the actual target hardware, if you work in hosted services like Azure, etc...

I recently asked someone about 10 years older if he knew what partitioning and formatting means in the context, and he knew, despite initially saying he has no clue about computers, to show someone 10 years younger (who didn’t know) that such knowledge was just basically required back in the day

I call them Intellectual Oligarchies. The knowledge (of any subject, not just tech) being limited to a circle of elites while the products are made simple enough to operate that the average person doesn't really need to know how it's done, just how to purchase it.

The good thing about Intellectual Oligarchies, however, is that they are open to be joined by anyone who wants to learn, or is curious about things. No formal education is required; just intellectual curiosity and the ability to read. They're entirely self-propogated; not purposefully created by some evil cabal trying to withhold knowledge from the average person. Knowledge itself is open-source, in other words. Anyone can use it if they want.

In the Greek and Roman democratic condition, people who don't exercise that "right to knowledge" lacked the context necessary to properly partake in the citizen's primary job...democratic rule.

Ars Liberalis doesn't translate to "Liberal Arts". It literally translates to "The skills of Freedom". A citizenry of a democracy needs the skills (knowledge) to properly function in said democracy; and that included studies of history, philosophy, politics, civics, etc...

And some of the prior generation. There were some truly great minds working on this stuff that were the parents of boomers.

There is Holywood money in the world of progressive actors that could put something together but I don't know that world and how it works so I have no idea if it's something that is actually feasible.

why I think TikTok keeps giving me Maple Maga bullshit

I mean... it shows the garbage to you, and you keep coming back..... maybe it's time to ditch tictack

It's a frustratingly true response... sigh