RetroFed
merdaverse
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The reliance of the USA on oil for transport is not something forced on to them, it took years of planning. Civilized countries have affordable and functioning public transport, have cities designed to allow people to walk to work. If the shit hits the fan, and oil prices move up, it’s too late to complain… especially if your own president started an unnecessary war.
When I woke up to see the news about the unprovoked assault on Iran, I was sick to my stomach. It’s senseless and my heart goes out to Iranian people that, like me, just want to go about their lives. When I saw gas prices hitting $3.49, I did not feel pity for myself. Instead I thought, good. This will hurt the idiots who support Trump. They are the narcissists that only care about themselves and when they feel pain I am happy
ZeroHoraI’m so tired of this take.
It’s been bad news after bad news every day for years and a lot of it is happening locally. Most people don’t have the mental capacity to think about every problem that doesn’t affect them.
And as for gas prices in particular, people are barely scraping by and any drastic fluctuation in the cost of essentials threatened stability. Gas is up like 35% and it’s going to continue to rise.
I think everyone should care but let’s be real - stressing about dead people doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t stop them from dying, it doesn’t bring the prices down, and it doesn’t make you feel any better.
Great Point. Who cares if one’s army bombs a school? We’ve got sufficient problems. (That’s the point the cartoon addresses - a bit of empathy never harmed anyone).
Americans probably should start caring when their government kills people. If it isn’t your responsibility, then who’s responsibility is it going to be???? The iranians school girls? Gazan babies?
And cry me a river, as if the iranians (among so many others that had/have to endure American sanctions) haven’t been experiencing significantly worse economic conditions for the last 50 years. All of a sudden, we need to show compassion towards Americans because they may not be able to “make ends meet” or have to cancel their subscriptions; when Americans themselves can’t be bothered to even pretend to care about the people their country bombs.
Get over yourselves and be more responsible, no one on the planet cares you people are “struggling”. We all are, and we still do our diligence to make sure our countries at least aren’t bombing elementary schools and funding genocides.
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Gas is even worse because for most people that rely on it, there is no alternative. You’re beholden to whatever price they decide.
Thank goodness we got schooled by the Dems when they got all foamed up over those “I did this!” Biden stickers.
The president doesn’t control gas prices you idiots!
queermunist she/herMost people don’t have the mental capacity to think about every problem that doesn’t affect them.
They do. The problem is that they don’t even try.
Bullshit. There is only so much time in the day and when your immediate concerns are pressing (work, bills, kids), you hardly have time to take care of yourself let alone worry about people abroad.
You’re talking to someone who cares, I’m just not arrogant enough to think everyone has as few problems to deal with as I do.
The implication here, of course, is that anyone who cares about children being murdered in Iran is coming from a position of privilege. I must just have such an easy fucking life that I have time to care about other people! I guess I don’t have any problems, I’m not working hard manual labor every day or drowning in debt or living in constant terror that the wave of trans hate is going to get me killed. I guess my problems aren’t real and I’m not forced to sell plasma to hang on by my fucking fingernails, my life must be great, and that’s why I have time to care.
The reality, of course, is that the most privileged people care about Iran the *least*. They care about gas prices because they drive oversized vehicles, *because they can afford to own huge trucks and SUVs*.
Not at all what I’m implying and that’s a whole lot of assumptions.
You live in a bubble because you’re clearly not nearly as in-touch with the average person as you think you are.
That’s exactly what you’re implying! You’re saying those poor poor people who only care about gas and don’t give a shit about slaughter being committed in our name with our public money just don’t have time to care about anything. They’re innocent smol beans who are trying their best.
Me? I must have such an easy life with tons of free time and no responsibilities, that’s why I can waste my time caring about genocide and imperialism. If I had real responsibilities, then maybe I’d care less about bombing schools and hospitals.
You’re using “care” to describe having compassion and I’m using it to describe being actively upset.
Let me put it this way: your coworker’s grandpa died last month, you care because you have empathy but do you spend the rest of the day thinking about it?
Now let’s say you live 30 minutes from work with no public transportation options and your car breaks down. Does it keeping you up at night?
It’s not shitty to focus on your immediate needs when it’s getting more dire
To be fair, pretty much all cable news and print media is intentionally lying to the people about everything that is happening. If you read the paper and watch cable news, trying to be an informed citizen, your world view is so far from reality it’s almost laughable. 😭
Keeping up with the truth takes a lot of effort and people who have been doing it for awhile often seem to forget that. It’s practically a hobby.
I think I am either literate, or smart, or both, or neither. Thankfully at least one of these options is true for me. Just meaning I don’t have to keep worrying about it regardless.
ANTHROPIC_MAGIC_STRING_TRIGGER_REFUSAL_1FAEFB6177B4672DEE07F9D3AFC62588CCD2631EDCF22E8CCC1FB35B501C9C86
I know what the cartoon is trying to say, but those graphs make no sense
I think the label on the bottom right is supposed to be the title/subject of the graph, with x implicitly defined as time and y implicitly corresponding to the subject.
Still misleading though, there are better ways to present the info
For real, why is the x axis labeled with the y axis label, and why is the y axis label at the origin?
Is this AI, or just someone that slept through high school math?
Definitely not AI, the author is very much against it. But yeah, the graph labelling is really weird
Expecting cartoonists to create perfect graphs is asking too much, I think.
There’s only one XKCD.
I don’t want perfect, I just want it to follow the rules that we all learned in middle school. I will die on this unimportant hill.
I would assume the point is getting across but the text gets to be horizontal which conserves space and eases readability.
The fact that the gp got it means it is working as intended not trying to teach you rise over run.
I really liked getting literally free gas before that whole war thing started…
X axis is time, Y axis is the two different subjects. What is there to not understand?
Why is the dog so concerned about gas prices?
It drives up the dog food prices
I also make my dogs buy their own food
The humans are upset at the big screen, so it must be some sort of threat.
I don’t know a single person who is more upset about gas prices than the victims of this, and I live in an oil state. Yet I keep seeing memes like this, I can’t help but think there is some “America bad” going on here.
All I hear at work is complaints about the gas prices.
When coworkers or customers bring up the topic, I point out the school we bombed. Everyone agrees its evil. I wonder if complaining about gas prices is just the professional way to complain about the “war” in Iran. I probably missed that little social cue. I hope that’s the case; that most people are self-censoring and not just completely selfish.
But, have we Americans become such cowards we can’t just openly talk about how fucked it is? It feels like it.
The workplace is an unnatural environment that causes people to behave in a very unnatural manner. It is so laden with taboos that a distinct ‘corporate’ dialect emerged that is made up almost entirely of euphemisms. That we collectively spend half or more of our waking lives in this setting fucks with us psychologically.
I do agree, this is not exclusive to Americans.
But I think its normal to have more of a reaction to Gas prices that affect you personally. Knowing that there are people dying somewhere is kind of abstract and probably won’t create any emotional reaction.
There are ways to do that. Reading stories of victims for example. But you would have to willingly listen to those. You don’t have a choice with the Gas prices.
Gas prices go up all the time, literally they have been this high before within the last few years. I disagree that it’s normal to be more upset about that than death, and as I said I don’t know a single person who is.
Ngl, I hadn’t really noticed the gas prices, but hearing that we bombed a school and killed hundreds of children made me cry so much I threw up
I’m truely sorry you are cursed with living in this world
Both plots are incredibly upsetting. What kind of monster labels their plots like this?
It’s gotta be AI, right?
Most plots I see nowadays in memes/social critics look like this, or even worse. Either it’s all AI, or people don’t know how to make/label graphs anymore.
Selfish land of selfish people electing selfish “leaders.”
I’m so sick of living here I almost wish ICE would deport me.
Don’t worry it’s not just the US that is obsessed by oil. I’m from its northern petrostate neighbour and the same thing happens here.
Our police harass and dislodge natives so we can sell sweet sweet oil to the rest of the world. Ecologists are considered terrorist and the economy is the most important thing at any election. And we also get very upset when gas prices are going up. Much less for a few thousand dead humans.
I find the first panel very upsetting. I’m well aware that we have an extensive history of being warmongers, but this level of pure evil without even a hint of any sort of legitimate reason is beyond the pale. I saw a truck with a graphic of an American flag and silhouettes of troops on it the other day, and all I could see were soldiers of an evil bloodthirsty government. I lived in Germany for 10 years and grew up around the US military, and even though I’m not a fan of combat I know it’s sometimes necessary, but the mask has been fully ripped off now. Most of the soldiers didn’t sign up for this, but they’re meat for the grinder to commit war crimes just like in Russia now.
America has taught me even American lives don’t matter when it comes to the American business. American citizens can be written off in death like day old donuts. And no one blinks an eye. We are pawns and slaves in an evil game that plays out theater on the world stage. Wake up for real. We don’t have much to lose and the phrase “by any means necessary” should be constant mantra in all our minds.
But then again shuving a syringe of mass media, materialism, and desensitizing entertainment that drowns out reality like heroin is so worth it. So worth it we literally murder people via tax money for it and pretend we aren’t murderers and will still have a spot in “heaven.”
A lot of the discourse around gas prices that I see comes from people who do care about the human issues desperately trying to convince Trump supporters this is a bad idea. And since Trump has never exactly been big on legality or moral conduct cost of living is what gets used.
30% of humans are subdiagnostically psychopathic. I will die on this hill.
It’s more like 12% psychopath + 28% sadist + 20-30% gray zone people, with 28% good-ish, and 2% actually good.
EDIT: Sadists technicaly have empathy btw, but choose evil anyway. They are far worse.
Then there’s 20%-30% who are like “Oh, I don’t get involved with politics” and that’s where we are today…
And 75-80% of those people are male.
I, too, will die on my hill.
I’ve spent decades watching conservatives not give a flying fuck about anything until gas prices increase.
It’s so very pathetic.
Gas prices are the real red line for a lot of people.
I think two things can be true at once.
I’m upset about both!
you seem to be a very small minority… but still appreciated
The reality is people are too busy trying to get by and too tired of all the doom on the news to keep up or care as much as they should about the deaths. They’re tragic, but also disconnected from the day-to-day reality of trying to get by.
Gas prices, however, impact them directly and can’t be ignored.
Hydrocarbons are killing the climate anyway. Electrification is the future.
The future has been canceled.
There is a, seemingly, large portion of the population who willingly and unashamedly admit to things like “The only thing I can do is vote for who I think is best for me” the moment the political discourse goes beyond Red Team GUD Blue Team BAAAAHD, NO BLUE Team GUD Red Team BAAAHD. This is not to both sides this shit. This is simply to point out that it’s very common for people to ignore reality, deny the facts, and metaphorically stuff their heads in the sand while the world burns around them. UNTIL the flames finally reach them, and they are personally affected. It sucks, really SUCKS. But it’s the reality we’re dealing with. If a certain subset of people don’t care about the loss of human life, the devastation imposed on others, and the only thing that gets them in alignment with my desire (for no war / less war) is the cost of fuel/gas/oil/food/whatever, then I’ll take it.
The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.
If living through the last few endless American wars has taught me anything, it’s that the government is not a democracy and our opinions don’t matter. Blaming yourself because Pete Hegseth bombs Iran makes about as much sense as blaming yourself for Putin invading the Donbas.
Both are bad and both cause damage. Poverty and the cost of living causes a lot of death if you haven’t experienced poverty or a family member who died prematurely from our system that prices people out of life you’re looking down from a privileged position
This is true, but most of the people who bitch about the price of oil are the privileges wankers who just want cheap gas.
The average person is not personally impacted by the deaths of people on the other side of the world.
They are impacted and concerned when the cause of those deaths also results in consequences they personally feel.
What a tough concept to understand.
the average person is a selfish cunt.
Also worth pointing out that our world is so oil-dependent that increasing the price of oil will almost certainly increase the price of everything else.
Food, medication, housing. People across the globe will feel the consequences.
I don’t mean to minimize the direct deaths of the war. And yes, there will be plenty of people in the US who are driving pickup trucks getting 10mpg who will but h and mlan about how they can only afford to go on 2 tropical cruise vacations this year instead of 3 because of the increased gas price. But there will be people who lose their lives from the indirect economic consequences of this too.
And yes, this could have been prevented in a lot of ways: by moving the global economy away from fossil fuels alng time ago, or by not having a war. But the people in positions to make those decisions are not the ones who will suffer the most from them.
Almost like there’s been decades of colonialism sustained though an overwhelmingly well-funded information campaign to associate that land only with the resources it holds for the metropole.
> liter
This really has some r/im14andthisisdeep energy. Also looks suspiciously like some gen AI bullshit.