Oh absolutely. Perhaps “necessarily” isn’t the right word. But the point is that even if you were somehow perfectly neutral (or worse, supportive) toward this horrifying shift in geopolitics, you still wouldn’t want to invest in the US dollar.
Of course it’s not strange. It’s not even necessarily retaliation! It’s just smart business. The US is not reliable or stable, and the dollar is not reliable or stable. Neither are good investments right now.
We need to reprioritize what we value as a society, deemphasizing individuality and private ownership and moving towards community.
Except… how do you do that?
Write a book?
Post on social media?
There’s nothing actionable there. Vaguely encouraging people to consume less will literally do nothing in the face of endless advertisements and algorithms.
There is no way to change the mass behavior of human populations without doing something direct… like addressing the fact that the wealthy are hoarding all of the wealth.
I can’t hit anything with a dagger because I’m too stupid to read” doesn’t come close
This happens 3 seconds into the game, and very few modern gamers will ever RTFM. It’s far more likely to be a hard wall to a newcomer. I wouldn’t blame them, either. Invisible stamina-based dice rolls was certainly a choice.
Oblivion’s system took time to break down - long enough to actually get players invested, at least.
The ends justify the means. Not a moral statement on ‘doing whatever it takes’ - it is meaningless to win when the victors are no different from the victims.
Rather, an observation on the nature of what it is to be justified or vilified.
The ones at the end decide. When it is happening, it is never justified. It is never tolerated. It is vilified. It is criminal. The means are always painted as extremes.
Something new can only ever be justified when you reach the end. Until then, it - literally - is radical.
To the present, you’re just a person stirring up trouble. Could be good, could be bad, but either way, it’s trouble.
You can only ever be a hero to history.
(Maybe someone on F-droid could get on that?)
Seconded! I read and thought the same things, something like that would be huge right now. Hell of a time crunch and hostile work environment, but it could save a lot of lives.
Easily the most underrated moment of the election was when the sofa-king Shady Vance said that the US has the “cleanest energy economy in the world.” On stage! On television!
That’s not even revisionist, it’s just straight double think. Decades of holding the nation back in an outdated dirty energy economy, from Reagan ripping solar panels off the white house roof to Trump ripping EV chargers out of federal parking lots.
Decades of fighting any and all clean energy initiatives and they just… pretend it never happened. Gaslit the country into thinking that we already accomplished all of the progress that they personally prevented. The progress that we still desperately need to this day.
being transgender is like being left handed in that it is an innate quality which cannot be changed even if it is suppressed, but there’s nothing in what he wrote here which is an argument for that implication.
There is nothing implied here. The parallels between the two is the explicit argument of the quote.
The apparent growth in the transgender population is similar to the apparent growth in the left-handed population. Transgender, gay, and left-handed people were all around before it was socially acceptable.
It was known and in the public consciousness long before it was tolerated, and people would persist in being transgender, gay, or left-handed despite it literally being a crime.
They were punished and oppressed, yet continued to exist. When it finally became more acceptable, each population appeared to explode by a sudden increase in people self-identifying and self-reporting.
But in each case it was always there. It’s nothing new. A patient seeking medical transition was on TV in 1975. People just didn’t notice because they are a relatively small minority, and because they were forced to hide from others - or worse - from themselves.
And worse? When I see a vehicle here in B.C. with a Washington license plate, my shackles immediately go up. It makes me feel really bad… but there it is :(
It’s okay. Many of us understand. It’s the nature of the times. It could be worse… our hackles immediately go up when we see our national flag. We are told to stand and salute it every morning as children, and now when we see it in public we are forced to worry whether it belongs to a crazed nationalist with more firearms than brain cells.
The struggle when you realize all of the cool ghouls are downtown, and the only immortal for 100 miles is the energy vampire who was turned when he was still a shitty teenager. He works at the gas station on the weekends. Don’t ever take his change - if you get too close he’ll drain away that meager high you get when you take your first sip of coffee in the morning.
We simply weren’t ready for the internet. Humans haven’t really been ready for any of the advances we have ever made. Hank Green has an excellent video about the societal vulnerability to new communications technology. I don’t know how we address it, because we never really addressed the others either.
The original printing press enabled Luther to break the Church’s theocracy. More modern printing enabled newspapers to instigate the Spanish American war. The technology is still used in the modern day for propaganda and lies.
The radio enabled the Nazis and the Red Scare to fill people’s homes with hate and fear. The technology is still used in the modern day for propaganda and lies.
The TV enabled the police state and “law and order”-style Republican disinformation. People who were otherwise safe and comfortable at home were suddenly and constantly faced with escalating panic about criminals and terrorists, even while crime consistently decreased over time. The technology is still used in the modern day for propaganda and lies.
All of these new technologies didn’t just change the way we communicated - they changed the way we thought about the world. Or rather, people in the right places at the right times used that technology to change how we thought about the world. We are human, and every new communications technology gives an ever smaller group of humans ever greater influence over the world.
And finally, the internet. We thought it would be different. We thought it would give voices to the many. But instead it gave the wealthy access to the soundboards where they can silence and amplify voices, and it opened up town squares for even the most hateful and ignorant ideas to gather and fester and grow to become legitimate political forces.
The internet enabled all of the massive changes we see today.
Words like “fascism” ultimately serve the interests of those in power not individuals. It is used as a tool to get people emotionally engaged instead of mentally engaged.
This is nonsense, sorry. I get it. Think for yourself. Assess your sources. Think rationally. Challenge your own beliefs.
But the people in power are openly breaking the law, abusing authority that they don’t have, stripping away rights, dismantling the social safety net, shipping people off to die, and ignoring any of the constitutional and legal safeguards meant to prevent any of this. It’s fascism.
Any logical, rational, thoughtful approach to the situation will provide the same exact answer as the emotional response to seeing Trump and Bukele laugh and lie about Kilmar Abrego being a terrorist. Call a spade a spade.
If you really were a rational thinker you would have to choose your side separately for every single issue
It’s time for ICE to leave NY. Hochul and the other governors need to pull the trigger and outright ban the agency from operating in the state. The fed is already pulling funding across the board for state programs and dismantling the agencies that keep states running when a crisis hits. All of the carrots are gone and Trump is waving his sticks around for no fucking reason anyway. Innocents are being taken off the street and students are being harassed and expelled.
Yes, there’s probably nothing to legally give her that power, but there’s nothing legal about any of this.
Post-Bespoke: the most dangerous vampire is the modern day scientologist, whose faith is incomprehensible yet jealously guarded.
Yes, adult men protesting against a teenage girl causes harm. Full stop. No, nobody here needs to justify that position. You just need to imagine grown men wearing wristbands and holding signs, showing up at every school soccer game to protest against a teenage girl just living her life.
adults attending a high school athletic event do not enjoy a First Amendment protected right to convey messages that demean, harass or harm students.
But what you can’t do is tell them not to say it.
… lol. That’s not how freedom works. I can tell them whatever I want. That’s how freedom works. But go on with your freedom. Go use the N word like that on the streets of a major city, we’ll see how you hold up with that half-assed ideal when people rightfully tell you to stop.
It’s sort of like telling someone who smokes, that it’s bad for them, they know, you don’t need to remind them.
If a famous celebrity tells people that smoking is good for them, should that go unchallenged?
For the record, he was already facing life in prison. Or worse. This administration is not just sending people “back”. They’re sending people to die. Good luck trying to scare obedience into people on death row.