It's not a broken brain in most cases. It's bad upbringing. Incorrect information.  This disinformation is deliberate instilled by the local and state regime.

A lot is disinformation for sure.  I think this is one of the things that "AI" has been very good at. We used to just blanket say that it was "Social Media" feeding the narrative.  But far reaching "AI" has become the buzzword now.  The truth is, it's humans with a digital tool that does a good job.  AI taught to pinpoint exactly what information people get in their "X" feed, their Instagram reel, their TikTok, whatever "news" they think they're getting and feed it with exactly the narrative you want to push.  It's already been happening for at least a decade.

I saw outrage after Orange ****ler was convicted of 34 felony charges for election fraud.  Almost every talking point said that "Biden's DOJ" prosecuted him unfairly and the Judge was crooked.  I mean, you can't get much further from the truth.  But that's what they were saying.

You can see how the disinformation was built.  The first thing that happened was that the DOJ looked into Trump illegally holding Classified documents.  Then Trump was in court for civil fraud which was decided in a non-jury trial.  A bench trial.  Which is quite common.  Then you have the issue where he was recently convicted by a jury of 12 members for falsifying business records in order to keep a steamy news story out of the press just before the election cycle started.  It was an open and shut case of business record fraud.  There was essentially no defense put forward because the evidence was so clear.

Now string them all together and you get "Biden's DOJ (1st case which is suspended indefinitely) dragged Drump to court, where the crooked Judge convicted him (2nd trial where he has to pay $355million from a bench trial where the judge passed the sentence)"  If you bring up falsification of business records they either don't know what you're talking about (since most people on Earth assume that Trump falsifies every business record to game the system), or they think that what he did was not a big deal and he shouldn't face repercussions from it.

Imagine having such a broken brain that a guilty conviction causes you to support someone more

A similar statement was echoed after the OJ Simpson trial but that may be a one-sided perspective that isn’t taking into account the life experiences of those who do so. An inner-city minority who has seen police corruption firsthand, may rationally have believed Simpson’s innocence while those who have had positive experiences with law enforcement might have a disparate but still rational belief.

Been reading through all the replies and just have a couple things to note.

Location voting - this is something that could possibly come back in the future. For now, we really need familiarity or boots on the ground with wherever the location ends up being. With talking to GMK at Keycon 2024 - it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. I expressed it in the above, but it just makes sense from a lot of different perspectives. Is international travel difficult, and sometimes more expensive? Absolutely, and I am not trying to dismiss that. Its one of the main reasons we are talking about it now.

Limited factory tour - This is absolutely a good point and is why we will have tickets up for sale well in advance. That way people can plan and decide if they wanted to attend based on that.

There definitely seems to be a subset of artisan enthusiasts here that would like to see something happen in the US instead of Germany. I think there is a great opportunity for this group to plan a smaller event (ArtisanCon TM) for 2025. I definitely loved to see everyone in SLC, and get that its more challenging to make it to Germany. My suggestion is to go for it! Plan an event with your friends here and make it happen.

How do you genuinely think it's just "artisan enthusiasts" that are affected by this, because they're the most vocal? Coming from someone who is not an artisan enthusiast and speaking about this with many other "non-artisan enthusiasts", the general consensus is that we are rather peeved that there was no desire for input from the community whatsoever. Just because some of us are not vendors doesn't make us less important. Y'all can name your Germany meetup "NovelKeysCon" or something and we can find another entity to plan Keycon elsewhere (wherever the community wants it).

This set is nice, but unfortunately it's a GMK GB so I doubt you'll even need it by the time you get it. Maybe try to find a PBT set that has pink from KBDFans or Cannonkeys.