This reeks of "Freedom Fries."

I thought freedom fries was the dumbest thing i've ever seen out of washington... well until now. 4 more years of this BTW.

Fun fact about World War One, the US started calling Sauerkraut by the name of Liberty Cabbage. We don't have fresh ideas.

The Gulf of Liberty Cabbage

Welp, I know which name I'm going with.

I'm going with Gulf of Mexico, with Gulfy McGulfface being a close second option.

I'm in NZ. Google maps says its Gulf of Mexico (because that's its fricking name).

>Google says it will change Gulf of Mexico to 'Gulf of America' in Maps after government updates

>will change

Hopefully, it's only 4 more years.

if we're not in some kinda post apocalyptic scenario in 4 years i'll be pleasantly surprised

That's the shit that has me up all night.. Fricking lunatics have escaped the asylum again, but this time they're prepared. This ain't "Joker 2" muthafricka!

Four years, give or take a /r/collapse

This was only the first week. ugh

4 more years so far...

Yup. Just the first week. Im so sick of the darn trump show and it doesn't seem there is a way to unsubscribe, disconnect, turn the channel, unplug the tv etc. His brand of stupidity is fricking everywhere.

4? Try 8 when vance gets elected

Hopefully you'll still have a country that resembles the US in 4 years.

They ruined the Dixie Chicks' career because they spoke out. Turns out we should trust some musicians for our foreign policy.

Just because some are sometimes right doesn't mean we should generally trust musicians.

The overwhelming majority of musicians are not geopolitics experts, or at all informed on political issues.

The fact that we constantly expect celebrities to chime in on issues they have no expertise in is one of the reasons politics is so toxic and polarised today. It's contributed to the dumbing down of political discourse.

But also, being a musician does not disqualify you from having and expressing political opinions, nor does it guarantee that you are politically illiterate.

The world might be a better place if pop artists were more inclined to sing about politics than vague romantic notions.

real big "shut up and dribble" vibes coming from that dude

: Rich people are out of touch and have no idea about reality or what the common people are going through! Guillotine them all!

: Actually, more celebrities should lecture people on how to be hecking good human beans, after all they all agree with me. Tee hee!

The funny part to me is that "America" isn't even the name of our country, it's the name of the continent. We're the United States. 'Gulf of the Americas' kind of makes sense, but has nothing to do with the United States of America.

I could see that if it was the gulf of USA but Mexico is part of America

And everyone will continue to call it the Gulf of Mexico

In Florida we just call it "the gulf".

Not any more - we'll be sure to add "of Mexico" for clarity from now on.

Seems confusing. How do you know which gulf you're talking about?

What an absolutely brilliant question. Your mother must be so proud of you. Do you go poo poo on your own too? Awwwwwww.

Woosh

Awwww, not yet? You'll get there.

They are so angry they just attack each other for no reason

Everyone who matters will call it the Gulf of Mexico, at least.

I hate to break it to you but everyone matters, not just those that agree with you. That was made very evident with the election. Just because in your mind you can just tell yourself other people don't matter, they actually do. And sadly, their decisions can frick up the world for you.

I think he/she might mean those in communities that actually deal with the Gulf like those in the scientific communities, not just the average layman.

Sure, that's perfectly possible. However, that doesn't counter my point at all. The entire idea that some matter, and some don't, is how we ended up in this mess in the first place. It turns out, everyone actually does, and if you don't believe that, your world can get pretty fricked up by that disbelief.

Give up brother this place is like a blindfolded circlejerk

Leftists purity checking each other over things that aren't even disagreements

Americans don't matter to me any more.

What irrelevant country are you from?

The great thing about American exceptionalism is that it can never have any negative consequences of any kind. Good luck with that!

I will. Frick that nazi. Gulf Of Mexico.

Oh so you like deadnaming now, interesting.

PM Trudeau of Canada should issue an order renaming the USA to "South Canada". Let's see Google change it for Canadian viewing.

This is exactly the kind of high-level international trolling we need. Show Trump for the pathetic man-child that he is.

: So you guys agree that we should be same the country then!

But _I_ don't desire they use that name, and I'm American. Can we, like, petition Google to not be punks who do what the totalitarian wants?

Lmao. The Google CEO was front row at Trump's inauguration. Best of luck

Maybe constantly bitching about CEOs/rich people/important people even when they're on your side could have some unfortunate consequences?

Californian checking in. It's the Gulf of Mexico.

>Google will change

Google is the scariest of all tech companies. They are essentially our library. They have the ability to manipulate the narrative on a different level. For the vast majority they are our dictionary, our encyclopedia, our Library of Alexandria. They are THE reference for day to day life. Our last arbiter of truth.

We are already aware that weighted searches are for sale.. but them kissing the ring is scarier than social media techs doing so. By my estimation, at least.

That's why I periodically download wikipedia

"Here at Google, we deepthroat the whole boot"

Stop being anti-corporations and maybe they'll like your side too

Why do people think this ends when trump ends? It doesn't. It's being set up so it doesn't. We will get Vance, who is more cognizant and has the potential to be worse.

True but, I don't think anyone but Trump has what it takes to rile up the morons enough to get out and vote.

It's comments like this that make me think you people still do not understand the magnitude of this election.

Every single lever of power in the government that matters is now firmly controlled by people who are perfectly fine cheating in broad daylight with a violent mob to maintain that power.

They are not going to let themselves be voted out of that power.

Maybe choose an actual candidate next time instead of an identity checklist?

I think his cult followers can absolutely be manipulated, post Trump Death, into turning on themselves. I don't think they're accept the Charisma vacuum as the next leader.

I think the internal MAGA civil war will tear the movement apart.

You just have to hope that they haven't destroyed democracy too much post that point.

Like how you guys lost the election?

People want to believe that Trump is pulling the strings. They don't want to believe that there's a group of people putting EOs on his desk to sign without reading

Fricking wingcucks lmao

Now factor in the very best healthcare that money can't buy.

COVID would have killed him if he wasn't POTUS. Sad this dude keeps escaping death. It's always the evil ones that live the longest. :/

Even the best medicine can't do miracles.

Ah, frick, who am I kidding, modern medicine is a miracle. We're fricked.

[Karma] Doesn't exist.

I mean… it does. You'll see. And even if you don't believe, when bad things happen, I can assure you us real Americans will be cheering

I'm a real American too but I don't believe karma is an actual thing. If it were true, why would such monstrosities be done to innocent people over the course of history? What did they ALL do to deserve slavery/torture/murder/r*pe/genocide?

I meant real in the sense cheering for karma to happen to dotard. You are also assuming you know exactly how something you don't believe in actually works. Bold assumption

Do you know exactly how it works then?

I know what I believe, but is it what religious adherents believe? No, don't think so.

How is that any different than what I said?

Cause I think my version is real or is to me at least. You said none of it is real.

It's real to me that it doesn't exist.

Hippie with exotic beliefs meets edgy reddit atheist. The argument goes past this point btw

Regarding the BMI, I get the impression he's been taking Ozempic or something. He seems to have been slowly thinning out

Maybe but elderly people often thin out for a variety of reasons, most of which are not good.

Yeah that's usually a sign of deaths door

P Diddy's lawyer Anthony Ricco has stepped down from his legal team.

"Under no circumstances can I continue to effectively serve as counsel for Sean Combs," Ricco said in a motion for withdraw of counsel filed in New York on Friday. Discussions had been held with lead counsel Mark Agnifilo and Ricco before the motion was filed, according to the documents, which were obtained by The Mirror US.

ignore the 0 effort plating

The past two nights I've been stuck around liberals that have stared into the abyss for too long. They claim that scared idiots like conservatives like simple answers. Yet the simple answer they cling to for their election lose is that America is racist and sexist.

Never mind the fact that compared to Biden, Kamala got 6 million less votes. Trump only went up by 3 million votes compared to his last presidential rub. The fact of the matter is no one liked her. She has a history of being unpopular.

They say that Trump is holding onto power so he doesn't go to prison. That makes zero sense because he could give himself a blanket pardon just like Biden gave his family.

I really wish these people weren't in so many of my social circles. I need to find ways to meet more regular people

Top Drama

Relative Drama (takes into account the size of the subreddit)

autodrama: returning jobs to dramneurodivergents. Ping HeyMoon if there are any problems or you have a suggestion

I'm sorry but Europe is so 🚬 y now. It's become Orwellian, with people being arrested for thinking about dead babies, and with streams of illegal immigrants running about raping everybody while the governments all cheerlead diversity and say "nothing to see here".

The fact that the left has to reflexively defend European decline under the guise of "be nice to our allies!" is just so fricking ghey.

!friendsofspiderman

Who should I ban next. Should I ban award @sandkwinn more? She said something mean to my girlfriend. I hate her. I hate Sandkwinn.

I am cautiously optimistic that we will reach the $4B/day FY2026 reduction this weekend https://t.co/XQBK3rqkwo

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 1, 2025

Reducing the federal deficit from $2T to $1T in FY2026 requires cutting an average of $4B/day in projected 2026 spending from now to Sept 30.

That would still result in a $1T deficit, but economic growth should be able to match that number, which would mean no inflation in 2026.

Super big deal.

I am cautiously optimistic that we will reach the $4B/day FY2026 reduction this weekend https://t.co/XQBK3rqkwo

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 1, 2025

I am cautiously optimistic that we will reach the $4B/day FY2026 reduction this weekend

I am cautiously optimistic that we will reach the $4B/day FY2026 reduction this weekend https://t.co/XQBK3rqkwo

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 1, 2025

Elon Musk's DOGE commission gains access to sensitive Treasury payment systems

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Government Efficiency, run by President Donald Trump's billionaire adviser and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has gained access to sensitive Treasury data including Social Security and Medicare customer payment systems, according to two people familiar with the situation.

https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-elon-musk-doge-treasury-5e26cc80fcb766981cea56afd57ae759

"They seem to want Treasury to be the chokepoint on payments, and that's unprecedented," the person added, emphasizing that it is not the bureau's role to decide which payments to make — it is "just to make the f-ing payments."

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/31/politics/doge-treasury-department-federal-spending/index.html

Federal Outlays Breakdown, these are what the treasury actually pays out

Throughout this page, we use outlays to represent spending. This is money that has actually been paid out and not just promised to be paid. When issuing a contract or grant, the U.S. government enters a binding agreement called an obligation. This means the government promises to spend the money, either immediately or in the future. As an example, an obligation occurs when a federal agency signs a contract, awards a grant, purchases a service, or takes other actions that require it to make a payment. Obligations do not always result in payments being made, which is why we show actual outlays that reflect actual spending occurring.

Napkin math with last years numbers:

• Social Security: $374 B (19.7%)

• National Defense: $262 B (13.8%)

• Health: $246 B (13.0%)

• Net Interest: $242 B (12.8%)

• Medicare: $233 B (12.3%)

• Income Security: $162 B (8.5%)

• Veterans Benefits and Services: $105 B (5.5%)

• Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services: $52 B (2.7%)

• Natural Resources and Environment: $39 B (2.1%)

• Transportation: $36 B (1.9%)

• Other: $43 B (2.3%)

Total Outlays Spending: $1.9 trillion

Assuming boomers and the defense companies are untouchable and muskrat isn't r-slurred enough to default on interest payments overnight this can be met by immediately halting payments for:

• Income security(162b) + Vets services(105b) + Education(52b) + Environment (39b) + transportation (36b) + Other(43b) = (.162+.105+.052+.039+0.036+.043) trillion = 0.437 Trillion dollars

Lets slap on a halt for all healthcare outlays including medicaid for 246b to get 0.683 Trillion dollars . Nowhere near enough dollarydoos to meet the target.

Lets make some harder sacrifices. All outlays to the penta-GONE (262b) for 0.945 Trillion. Now the target can easily be solved by reducing SS payments by 14% .

Bigger picture 1 trillion dollars is 3.65% of nominal GDP and 1 trillion dollars worth of outlays being halted for a year from this scheme fires a solid chunk of 2 million soldiers, 2 million federal employees, every contractor so something like ~5-7 million people? Pulling some galaxy brained napkin math out my butt thats 1/16th the total workforce for an additional 6% unemployment not including private sector income loss by sept 30.

UPDATE: FAKE NEWS

MULTIPLE ABOVE SPENDING BUDGET BY 3

Will this go through ?

Who knows ? Its literally the most illegally r-slurred way of cutting the deficit imaginable .

But muskrat says its the plan and this is what the payments system controls

!neolibs

!g*mers

as we all are aware, the prophecies clearly state that this is the last pope, ergo this sickness is a harbinger of doom

https://rdrama.net/h/dioceseofrdrama/post/321468/the-prophecymarseyfortunetellerof-st-malachy-pope-francis

!superheroes

Reports from Gaza that civilians have been killed by a failed Hamas rocket launch from central Gaza. Awaiting confirmation. I’m sure their names will be on the next Ministry of Health lists of those “killed by Israeli aggression”. pic.twitter.com/WCKWfYiXpM

— Andrew Fox (@Mr_Andrew_Fox) February 13, 2025

An armed man arrested at the U.S. Capitol said he planned to kill Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and burn down The Heritage Foundation, federal authorities say.

Ryan Michael English, 24, of Massachusetts (), was found with a knife and two Molotov cocktails on Monday afternoon near the south door of the Capitol, U.S. District Court records say.

"I'd like to turn myself in," English said after he approached a U.S. Capitol Police officer, the records say.

Officers detained and searched him and found he had a folding knife, a lighter and two 50-mililiter bottles of vodka with a gray cloth attached to the top.

English told officers he went to the Capitol to kill Bessent, who was being confirmed as Treasury secretary. He said he had more Molotov cocktails in his car.

He said he left home on Sunday with the intention to kill Hegseth, who he called a "Nazi," and Johnson, as well as burn down The Heritage Foundation. He said he aimed to "depose" the officials and send a message, records say.

As English headed to D.C., he stopped at a library in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and saw Reddit posts about Bessent's confirmation hearing. He then altered his intended target, the records say.

Read more @nbcwashington

!trump2024 !trump2028 !project2025 !the_donald !chuds !accelerationists !fedposters

I frequently mention in front of my straight white male husband that straight white men need a tall collective glass of shut the frick up and listen.

He agrees and mostly does. I meet him in the middle and only watch about a half hour of news/commentary a day. Let's face it, whatever comes about with Sweet Potato Hitlers plans, he will be impacted the least of the two of us. He is with me when I'm crying for the fear and pain of this time and I'm with him as he finds how horribly deep the rabbit hole goes. He knows he'll never be able to fully be in my position or the position of the Navajo who are being detained.

But he listens.

We're playing the turboneurodivergent Dawn of Civilization mod for Civilization IV that replicates world history. !g*mers

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Last time, on LPC4DoCF, the Roman Empire had started to fracture. It's 624AD and after a barbarian onslaught, the Kingdom of France declared itself independent. We reconquered Clermont and spared them. Egypt and the Levant have seceded and joined the rising Abbasid Caliphate. Not on our watch

First and foremost. Per @Ubie request I am starving the Irish to death. They get one cow pasture as a food source until I build a mine for them to toil in and the rest are to work directly on building boats until they perish.

Our stability is now Shaky now that the Golden Age is over and done with. Expansion and Economy is not negative, but not good. Foreign is bad of course (it always is) and Military is suffering a little because of our barbarian wars. Domestic is our only saving grace as we have compatible, modern civics and Catholic religious unity.

We have room to expand. Obviously. We just lost most of our eastern territories

Most of my army in this territory got evacuated to Knossos in Crete. I don't have means to transport them yet so they're on a little island vacation for now.

A long time ago I conquered the Kingdom of Nubia, rivals of Aksum. Aksum were pretty ungrateful little b-words about it, but it's been good land and it's now really paying off for me. Nubia did not secede, so some of my troops were able to evacuate there. This gives me an opportunity to quickly retake Egypt from the south.

First turn and with our cavalry we've already retaken Waset, the holy city of Islam. Easy! Muslims btfo

Oh wait

Oh holy mother of Christ

I now know what it feels like to be on the other end of a "Stack of Doom"

Our reinforcements land, but it's not enough. I'm going to die

But suddenly they pull back. I send my spies to take a look.

All the beautiful Roman Roads we built are being used by the enemy, and apparently they got distracted by Persia. Thank the Lord. This will give us time to retake Egypt and regroup our army.

One of our missions to the Mande finally succeeds, so we have another Catholic civilization along with us and the French.

St. Peter's Basilica in Roma serves as the Apostolic Palace from the base game, which is basically the religious medieval U.N. We control the Pope basically, so we have influence over diplomacy in the Catholic world. Since there's actually a Catholic presence in the world now, we can put something to a vote. We call for a crusade against the Abbasid.

Neither of them want this, but with our control over the religion they don't actually get a say. The crusade is on.

We can even team up with our ancient frenemies of Persia. We've always been in something of a cold war with them, but Turkey is a bulwark to Greece, so helping reinforce their cities is in our interest. Plus our espionage network in Dorylaion has been pretty valuable

Our espionage reveals that after some butting of heads their military strength is about equally matched with Persia, overall. And we are way stronger than them in totality They just have their army consolidated.

FINALLY the lazy butt Persians research Civil Service and cause us to fail the third Historic condition. Reminder this is intentional, I want a Space victory.

Civil Service was the only technology I had available to research at this point so it's about time.

We've helped them out so much that they're now pretty advanced, technologically ahead of schedule and researching stuff we don't have. With our spies in Dorylaion we can just steal anything they discover thoughbeit

By the time the Arabs return with a host of Ghazi we're ready for them, we've retaken Egypt and reinforced the army. They have a slight terrain advantage but we can soften them up with our gunpowder artillery

We're victorious With a Great General too

After having researched Commune we can now have this guy build an "Armory" as well to speed up production. Roma is still benefiting from the Flavian Ampitheater so we're going to build on there and churn out superbombards and supercavalry

^^^lol he's clipping into the background

Harun al-Rashi is now willing to sue for peace. He's willing to offer us Jerusalem unharmed or even convert to Catholicism. Some intriguing options here but no We're conquering these frickers and taking Mesopotamia.

We're going to have more problems to deal with though

The Moors are about to spawn in Iberia as well.

I haven't seen one of these unique civ spawning warning messages yet, I think they only show for civilizations in your vicinity (maybe I missed the French one?). It doesn't really make sense here if the Arabs hadn't conquered North Africa and the Umayyad Dynasty don't exist. but whatevs the messages are really cool

Regardless, we're about to be beset on both sides by muslims

As well as Christians

Again... Muslim control? but again

I have an army in the west ready to fight these both the Spaniards and the Moors, but... I'm going to let them go

In fact...

France is mechanically capable of becoming a vassal now, but capitulation is tricky. You need to batter an enemy into submission in a war until they feel it is hopeless. Unfortunately we don't have much room if France has two cities - if we conquer Bordeaux and besiege Paris and they refuse to capitulate, we're kinda stuck.

Right now they won't voluntarily swear fealty because we're "too powerful". Pretty sure they will still capitulate if forced.

Spain is still in the "Rise of the Spanish" and can develop for now. When the "Rise of the Spanish" event is over I might invade and try to get them to capitulate. If they go to war with the Moors first I'll join them. The Moors usually build an Islam specific wonder in Cordoba, if we can capture it it would rule.

So for now I'm going to let western Europe secede and develop independently, and the Catholic world are now all my friends

I liked Tarragona but the Silver mine it had is now exhausted so it's less valuable anyway. The one thing that sucks is that muslims now control the Strait of Gibraltar and west Mediterranean, so our mobility is reduced.

I'm focused on eastward expansion instead anyway.

We liberate Ohrmazd-Ardashir from Arab control for our Persiabros.

Gets us some brownie points, and the city was outside of our expansion zone and not really that desirable. If the map is coherent at all, yellow is a "Contested Zone" while red is strictly foreign. Agarum is the furthest south in our contested zone. The Abbasids are willing to surrender it peacefully at this point.

England is about to split. We'll gonna let them go too.

We're back to Stable. The economy has been a rollercoaster with our conquests but this has been offset by trade route buildings that start becoming available around medieval times. Most notably we now actually have Good Relations and positive foreign stability I didn't know such a thing was possible. I guess all the liberation has worked out

Before there are more European powers on the map, we may as well invade France now. The only other European nation is Spain and they don't like them that much, so they won't be annoyed.

Charlemagne probably thinks we're schizo

Success! France will now capitulate.

The Kingdom of France is now the "Province of Gaul". They are our semi-independent b-word, we can direct their research, they join our wars, and we can sometimes demand resources. With Bordeaux they will still be able to colonize. We'll just have to help them out in technology a little.

The Mali Empire will voluntarily vassalize as well, but unfortunately for our Malibros we don't really want them. There's only room for five vassal civilizations. We do want to maintain good relations though when the slave trade starts tho.

Spain has declared war on the Moors, so we'll take our army from France and join them to retake our western territory. They didn't get a chance to build any wonders, oh well.

We might as well make this into another crusade

IT'S ON

Reconquista time

As we retake land we start to get overextended. Time to whip neighbors and enact population control

Cordoba is defended by a Great General, Abd al-Mu'min. This is the first time we've actually gotten to fight one in combat.

Morocco goes down

And frick it, let's go take Hungary too, there's a nice gold mine

Right after Morocco's defeat this crazy b-word declares war on me

Apparently Spain is dead set on completing the Reconquista and Catholic Roman controlled Cordoba isn't good enough.

She's very stubborn and refuses negotiations even after I retake Tarragona and pillage the heck out of her land.

Only after taking her capital and forcing her to relocate her palace to Santiago does she surrender.

I was going to liberate Cordoba anyway She is now a vassal with France as the "Province of Hispania".

Islam has been thoroughly BTFO. There are no more muslim states in the world. The Moors are dead and the Arabians collapsed when Turks took Mecca. We now control from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Sudan and Iraq, with two vassal provinces.

We're Solid stability but getting a little too big for our britches and risking a correction. Fortunately I have a couple Great People I've been sitting on who can trigger another Golden Age should it be necessary.

Other rising threats are coming - I think the northern Italian city states are going to attempt to split off around 1100AD, and the Ottoman Empire is going to reconquer all my middle eastern gainz around the 1200s.

We already have technology to start exploring the New World but the Aztecs haven't even been born yet. That will have to wait until 1300~. I want Roman conquistadors

Part 6