You’re almost certainly correct, but fascism doesn’t follow logic. It’s merely seeks power. Even if giving up the tiniest bit of power would be a better strategy, fascism will eventually try to grab that power back.

NGL I’m not very familiar with the technical details, but I know quartz is pretty temperature sensitive and starts to get damaged about 400F iirc

It’s possible special conditions are needed to really succeed, like low/no oxygen or a long duration at a lower temperature.

But theoretically, the answer to your question is “yes”

Fascism craves power. The mere existence of a second party is a threat to that power, even if it’s an unrealized threat. But the potential is still there. Fascism will always seek to create a single-party state for this reason.

Diamonds aren’t stable and will eventually, over billions of years, decompose from their cubic molecular structure to carbon’s more stable form, graphite, which has a hexagonal molecular structure.

Oh, here’s another good gemstone related one!

Amethyst and citrine are both quartz varieties, and if the color source happens to be from traces of iron in the crystal lattice, one can be turned into the other. Heating amethyst can make citrine, and irradiating citrine can turn it into amethyst. This is because the only actual difference between the two is the valiance level of a specific election in the iron atom giving the stone its color.

Up vote.

The word “currency” is used interchangeably with “money” but it’s actually a lot more specific. “Currency” is money that is “current” not in the sense of time (“here/now”) but in flow, like a river.

When there isn’t enough money to flow through an economy, it stops being "currency"and gets abandoned in favor of something else that can sufficiently fulfill the role of money in the economy.

So you’re absolutely right. When that fiscal river dries up, the American dollar will become worthless. History shows that something else will fill the gap, but those sorts of transitions take a long time and aren’t without their human cost.

You make some perfectly valid points, the only thing I take issue with is

Money is actually pretty useless

So, I do historical reenactment and one of my focuses is the history of money. Money has been in use, in some form or another, all over the world, for about ten thousand years. Roughly twice as long as written language.

Again, I agree with what you’re saying about time and how important it is. But go back to when humans had huge swaths of free time and you still find money. It’s just INSANELY useful.

I mean, I do believe in the power of friendship.

But yeah international law is a joke.

Voting FOR trans rights accomplishes nothing beyond making sure that trans people have rights.

Voting AGAINST trans rights undermines the freedom and safety of everyone.

I don’t disagree about anything you said, just a quick note because it’s a term that’s worth understanding:

“Newspeak” is a concept based on the dumbing down of language in order to make communication more difficult and complex concepts almost impossible. It’s not just new words or phrases. If it’s not damaging our ability to think and communicate, it’s not Newspeak. For this reason, “politically correct” alternatives (like “POC”), as well as increasingly specific terms (like “omnisexual” or “demi girl”) don’t qualify as Newspeak because they either continue the existing ability to think and communicate or enhance it by being more exacting about the concepts involved.

I’m not trying to be pedantic, it’s just important to me that people understand what Newspeak really is because the fascists really are trying to implement it as a means of reducing resistance against them. My favorite example is “climate change” which was a term introduced by right wing think tanks to undermine the more accurate (and more alarming) term “global warming.” And it worked.

Anyway, again I don’t disagree with your points, so please carry on!

I enjoyed the whole thing, but I also had a friend who had already seen it all help me adjust my expectations appropriately.

I think, with the proper expectations, it’s not hard to enjoy anything.

There’s an essay titled “Ur-Fascism” by Eco Umberto. It’s available online for free, you can Google it. It might give you some good insight on the subject. It’s mandatory reading, imo.

They’re now the most well funded domestic law enforcement agency to exist in the world, ever. With the sole task of deporting non-citizens.

What happens when there aren’t any more non-citizens to deport? Well they sure as hell are going to find SOME way to justify all that funding, don’t you think?

It’s already happening, but the issue is so big it’ll take a lot more than this to even make a dent.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/28/plastic-eating-bacteria-enzyme-recycling-waste

I don’t think you should be getting down voted, I think you’re right EXCEPT it’s less this nation specifically and more human nature generally. Humans hate to leave their comfort zone. But it’s also definitely this nation specifically, at least a little. A lot of Americans have always been fascist, they just didn’t realize it yet (and they’re in denial of it now, but don’t worry Fox News is working to normalize it for them https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/fox-news-greg-gutfeld-nazi-backlash-b2790179.html).

Which is one of those things that sounds great at first but after a few more decades of research we realize it’s actually horrifically bad. Leached chemicals and microplastics are having such profound impacts on life that we’re not even sure how bad it is yet, just that it’s very VERY bad.

A few hundred years from now, if husband aren’t extinct yet, they’ll look back on this the way we look back on pre-modern societies using lead for everything, except the solution to lead was to simply stop using it while a solution for microplastics doesn’t even exist yet. It’s likely that, even after a solution has been found, microplastics will haunt all life on Earth until they get cycled out by geological processes.

The most highly funded police force to ever exist now knows I’m trans. Not that I’m not public about this fact, but sits different when you’re in a searchable dataset accessable to law enforcement.

This also gives them a pretty solid idea of who is disabled.

And with the lack of civil rights in the deportation process, all ICE has to do is accuse you of being foreign and being in the US illegally. Bonus, ICE gets to decide on their own if your case requires judicial review or not, meaning you can be deported to CECOT before anyone even knows what happened to you.

And the public will support it, because they’re being told that trans people are horrible criminals and disabled people are a drain on society. I know this because those are the same reasons they already give for their treatment of immigrants.

The legislative and judicial branches are already cut out of this process, the only thing the executive branch is waiting for is when they feel it’s the right time.

Welfare as just one more method of transferring wealth to corporations, it’s just the money is coming from the government and going through poor people first. Which means it at least generated some economic activity by cycling money from the top to the bottom, but if the tax structure becomes too regressive then that cycle breaks. Both sides acknowledge this problem, it’s just that the neo liberals want to push those limits while keeping the money flowing (so that most of it flows upwards) while the fascists just want to stop the cycle altogether.

This is evidenced by the fact that SNAP is funded by the Farm Bill. It’s not a handout to poor people, it’s a subsidy for farms and the food industry at large.

No, AI did exactly what it does: predict which words were most likely to appear next to each other given a specific context/prompt.

The humans involved aren’t “fucking up” either because this is all intentional. They know the evidence is fabricated, they just don’t care because it provides them an excuse to indulge their biases.

it’s reasonable to suggest you find another

If it’s “just a job” like working retail at Target, sure, that’s a respectable take. It’s still blaming the victim, but it’s also advocating for the victim to address the issue themselves.

But if it’s not “just a job”? If it’s your life’s work, your calling, something you love more than anything else?

That idea is very likely what drove her to the brink. You really have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.

I’ve been there and I almost didn’t survive. Choosing to live isn’t always so easy.

He saw the writing on the wall and decided to make a strategic exit. A definitive defeat now would permanently end his career as a politician, but by conceding he leaves the door open to possible future efforts like a presidential bid.