You can't judge the effectiveness of any action only by its immediate measurable effects. The working class of the US is in a long period of finding their courage and strength and solidarity after decades of propaganda hid it from them. Every peaceful protest encourages bigger peaceful protests and they encourage more disruptive protests. Every protest that gets tear gassed all to hell by the police pisses people off more and encourages more and bigger and even more disruptive protests.

I hate how slow this is all going too and I have been ready for and advocating for direct action for a long fucking time now. I have taken direct action when the scale is small enough that I can do it alone. It takes time to rouse a population and it is embarrassing to our country that it's taking so long but it is absolute bullshit to say that what we've done has been 'nothing effective'. Class consciousness is higher than I've ever seen it in my lifetime and it's only growing. The amount of people ready for direct action and the amount of groups organizing is greater than I have ever seen it. That's all progress. It's happening. Instead of being a doomer go out and organize and you'll see what is growing.

Yeah, I think it's a mistake to imagine that these are good people who just need a little love. There are literally hundreds of millions of people who aren't getting enough love for proper human flourishing and it's not like that turned them all into fascists. The kind of evil exhibited by these people must be attributed to a fundamental enjoyment of the suffering of others.

This hurts me. The term is 'yoked' as in strong as an ox that can bear a yoke, not 'yolked' as in somehow related to egg slime. Hugging gorillas is very wholesome though.

Criminy, 'vote blue' doesn't mean vote and then sit at home thinking your work is done. It means voting for the lesser evil and then continuing to leverage the whole of your might to making the system better. It means fight just as hard for justice, just do it while trying to pick a less evil bad guy to have to fight. You want a whole new system? Then fight for it, and vote blue while you're at it because it'll be easier to kick those idiots out than the outright fascists.

Mom is beginning to see through her cultural conditioning to things that the owner class meant to be invisible. Mom is made of meat and the flesh on her table was once an individual like her, maybe even a mom like her, and Mom let herself become complicit in a system that makes one victim the victim of another victim all for the enrichment of the cruel and hateful creatures with economic power.

Yes my friend. “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” ― Albert Camus

and call police what they are, nothing more than enforcers for the owner class. Not your friends, not there for 'justice', not there to save you. They exist to exert control and dominance over the exploited.

I would argue that 'free' just means the cost is hidden and you might end up paying it anyway through the societal effects that the energy demands of LLMs cause. That is, there's a cost and it will make it back to you somehow or other because that's how tech oligarchy works.

Let them be tired then.

Do you understand the difference between capitalism and commerce? Using money for trade isn't what makes capitalism what it is. Capitalism is, from wikipedia, "An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development occurs through the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market" Capitalism means that I can own something I have nothing to do with and you have to pay me for the privilege of using it. When that thing is housing or food or medicine then I own you unless you want to die.

Capitalism means taking from the worker and giving to the 'owner'. The problem is that work is real and ownership is a made up concept.

The more you learn about it the more you'll understand how evil it is, I promise.

It's also accounted for almost 100% by mosquitos, specifically the diseases they carry...so not really the mosquitos at all. Quick searching shows snakes following mosquitos with 100,000 deaths caused per year. In any case, the scale is prodigiously unbalanced. Human animals kill trillions of non-human animals, almost entirely for their own pleasure. Non-human animals kill a few hundred thousand human animals (or a bit over a million if you count mosquito-borne disease) in self defense or by accident.

Sounds like you don't have enough experience with modern automatics to hold such a strong opinion about them then. I love a manual transmission but modern automatics are usually very good. There was a time they were less efficient and less good at shifting at the right time but those days are pretty well gone. You do still sacrifice some fine control that you almost never need and they are less fun, but let's not talk shit on them for issues that have been solved for years.

Bro vegan athletes win in the olympics, in strong man, in sprints, in marathons, all over the place. They have to work hard for it, sure, but there's nothing special about meat protein.

A good criminal justice system ought to have comprehensive mental health services as part of the goal of rehabilitation. Therefore, for his own good, he should be in prison and we should reform the prison system.

This seems like a remarkably good idea but I still wouldn't gender it. Say it's "hands on therapy for physically oriented people" or something. I'm sure there are plenty of non-male humans who would benefit.

Hell, it might even work for my girlfriend who will go to insane lengths to avoid sitting down and having a conversation about anything personal. If it works, I owe you an upvote or something.

Fear of retaliation by the physical human in front of you as well. Some people are good because they believe in the value of goodness but a lot of them only act right when they can't get away with being awful.

Listen, AI is great when it's folding proteins or looking for novel solutions to math problems, doing work that can be checked by human minds to make sure the logic of the AI and the logic of the problem are in accordance. It's universally reviled when it replaces art with garbage. Art is meant to enrich human experience, to help us understand, to help us grow, to be an authentic expression of our inner world. AI has no inner world. It has no experience and no understanding. Perhaps there's something to the arguments of those who hate it?

Perhaps in this world where so much of real value has already been taken from us we reject this most recent attempt to take away the thing that satisfies one of our most basic needs?

This is bringing hope to millions of people and setting the precedent of democrats actually resisting. It's changing what is normal and energizing others to do their own good work, to get into their own 'good trouble'. It's doing a lot of fucking good. What the fuck are you doing?

Sure, those who can afford to pay for games should support the artists that made them. Those who can't afford games should pirate them. We should all pirate in instances when paying would give our money to evil people, and we should all work towards a society where people can afford to make good art whether or not there's profit to be had from it.

I think you're almost at the right idea but you're stuck on the conditioning that it takes some daddy authority figure to be the one enforcing behavior. That's for babies. Adults should enforce good behavior in other adults. If you see an asshole taking up 4 seats it is your responsibility to tell them to act right. I used to be scared of doing it but the older I get and the more free of authoritarian conditioning I become the easier it is to call out bullshit. Just the other day some asshole in a Ferrari parked so close behind my busted up prius that I wasn't going to be able to get out. He was still getting out of his car and I was able to say, "If you don't move your car I'm just gonna hit it so I have enough space to get out." Bro looked quite scared and I think it's because of the complete lack of fucks I had left to give that day. Point being, just open your mouth and advocate for justice. Don't pass that responsibility off to someone else because they don't exist. If someone needs to get bounced and you don't have the physique or training for it that's a great time to ask for help from passersby. You aren't alone in being pissed off at assholes acting entitled, plenty of people will help you if you get the ball rolling.