I worked in a “European” US bakery for a hot minute around 2012, and one of the things I remember most was them trying to find new providers with cheaper products. This lead to a difference in taste because obviously in this case the cheaper products are actually a sub-par product.

A big part of it has been the consolidation of the businesses who sell food to restaurants. They all pull from the same places, and so the variety has gone down and the filler gone up.

It’s not just fast food, it’s all restaurants that are suffering this plague.

I never did anything better than learning to cook at home. My home-made pizza tops any delivery, and I always get to eat it hot out of the oven.

Do like the BBC and spin up your own mastodon instance, Guardian.

Well, the rise of the megacorps came after The War Against Terror (TWAT) but we don’t really like to recall such vulgar beginnings.

Well, as I get older, it’s less “party every day” and more “have a wonderful… Time. Is that it?”

better get more equipment for it before the tariffs kick in

Well, and with the Trump admin incoming: they’re not wrong. The FCC will probably be gone within two years.

who are the people that helped Obama win with his campaign of hope and change.

They became the establishment that helped Hillary lose to Trump.

Obama had a winning message and he failed to follow through on a lot of it. It was about hope and more importantly CHANGE.

The change never came, and the candidates that came after never promised hope OR change. People stopped believing Democrats were offering either hope or change. Because they weren’t, they were offering “don’t rock the boat, it might upset the rich.”

I mean, even Obama offered up RomneyCare instead of something more progressive. People got wise to that over time. It made them feel defeated.

Trump offered change, it’s that simple. Most in this country are sadly too uneducated to really realize what his type of change means.

Democrats were too busy worrying about whether they could actually implement policy, so they tried to only make promises they could keep, and with Republicans obstructing everything they did, they stopped making real, useful promises to the electorate.

People loved Sanders whether he could make his agenda happen or not, case in point. Nobody likes a policy wonk telling them “no, wait longer.”

Bullshit.

I voted for Harris, but I understand why people gave up.

I have cancer, under Harris, I would have still had a struggle to afford my medications AND work at the same time. As it was, I was condemned to a life of poverty to afford my medications, choosing to not have a job so I could get the ACA to cover my $18k a month medications. Debating on whether I should be condemned to the poverty of disability or continue trying to find a way to work.

I will die under Trump, but for a lot of people, the prospect of just waiting and waiting for help that will never come? They got tired and were willing to watch it all burn because what’s the fucking point if no one is coming to save you either way?

In a way, at least my death here will be swift instead of stressful-to-the-end-of-my-life-in-poverty. I can see why some people chose that. I’m 43 and I’m exhausted, I’m sure there’s more who are even more exhausted than me, because cancer didn’t hit me until I was 42 (I guess cancer is the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything), and many many many people were suffering under similar issues far younger. So they just chose to abandon the Dems because the Dems abandoned them.

The Dems were busy trying to get WAR CRIMINAL Dick Cheney on their side like that matters to people who are struggling. They spent the election crowing about how good the economy was when it was realistically only good for the already obscenely wealthy. They told railroad unions to go fuck themselves, they don’t get to strike (and then followed up with trains chemical bombing whole cities in derailments). They were willing to hand the Republicans literally everything they wanted in a border bill because FUCK them DREAMers, I guess.

They abandoned us and continue to abandon us, and I understand why people who have been abandoned don’t show up to vote.

Honestly so few people actually gave a fuck about Palestine its a joke to bring up. It’s not like anyone even knows who the fuck Rachel Corrie is, and if they cared about Palestine, they would be chanting her fucking name to this god damned day. American citizen murdered with a bulldozer so Israel could steal Palestinian land, over 20 years later and still no one gives a shit. Americans were never going to give a fuck about Gaza, they’re all too god damned selfish.

Many Bothans died to bring us this information

Don’t forget to speak up for the disabled and atheists as well.

snacks

never underestimate the power of punch and pie

Good news everyone! There’s actually been a massive helium reserve that has been discovered!

Maybe not a great idea for some individuals to advertise their escape plans in open channels online?

Honestly, the internet doesn’t feel “safe” anymore, in general. I’ve already stopped myself saying certain things a few times in the last 24 hours.

“Great Firewall of China” style internet incoming.

Put on your pirate hat and get while the gettings good. Sneakernets makin a comeback.

in 4 years Trump will try to name a successor

That would require the narcissist to not think he’s still young and vibrant and will never die. He will go the same way his father did, being manipulated by the worst around him as he drifts into dementia. He will be propped up as a puppet as Reagan was.

Good luck and I wish you the safest journey to somewhere safe as possible.

They’re done with the middle class here. They don’t want to raise the poverty level worldwide, they want to bring us down to match the rest of the world. It’s strip-mining time, we’re too expensive for the international rich’s tastes.

Also, I wonder if we should be considering the move to organizing on secure channels instead of in the open in places like here on Lemmy? Like Matrix has end-to-end encryption out of the box and its at least similar to Discord.

Find out if there’s local Mutual Aid groups in your area, then figure out what your relevant skills are, and then give those skills as free to use for your local Mutual Aid groups.

None of the systems we have traditionally relied on will hold, and no one is coming to save us. We can only turn to taking care of each other. We will all have to work hard to make it happen, but at least that work will be going to our communities instead of to capital.

https://www.mutualaidhub.org/

It’s an okay place to start, but it really starts by building community locally. If you don’t have enough decent people locally to work with to build a mutual aid group, then… that’s a tougher situation. When you’re stuck in largely Republican areas, it can be quite difficult to find others who want to build such groups, but not impossible.

As a Washington state resident, it seems like sane people are well represented here, by our voting numbers. So if you can get out here, not the worst place to ride out this storm.

More people in Washington should be willing to open their doors for people who need to get away, honestly. I’m really trying to push my extended family to get more active, because there’s going to be a lot of people who need help, a lot.

I think an underrated piece of theory that the right-wing seems to understand and utilize more than the left is Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. They seem to be very good at recuperating our theory and twisting it to their own ends, while we on the left struggle to détourne their words and ideas in a way that promotes leftist thought.

I think media theory in general is a big aspect where the left is losing.

EDIT:

Learn self-defense. Get armed, if practical. Be ready to protect yourself and others.

Also, one of the best ways to survive a fight is to escape it. If getting armed isn’t practical, a high-powered flashlight that can temporarily prevent an assailant from seeing you clearly enough to attack and approach is a good move. A group with laser pointers can work, too. Can be quicker and more accurate than pepper spray, but more effective at long range than close.