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Joined 22 days ago
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Cake day: December 15th, 2024

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  • I enjoy children because adults lie. I also enjoy setting an expectation of similar nuance of technical understanding as I would for an adult and then being surprised at how many rise to the occasion.

    The other day I was talking to a ten year old about the French Revolution and American independence. She didn’t have the words to express that she already understood. Instead, she held on hand in the air as if grasping something and the other near her chest as if sorta cradling something. I immediately recognized it as the Status of Liberty. I explained simply that it was their gift to us. She replied, “So we’d remember?”

    I don’t know how to end this post. Do what the OP says.


  • OK. I’ll assign more benefit of the doubt.

    To be moral and ethical in their voting choice, to serve systemic design intent, to serve the practicalities of implementation, an individual need not care about others’ votes.

    So, it’s incorrect to set as a prerequisite a belief in success of a 5% goal to vote for it. Presenting as you did exemplifies the propaganda-fed ego of the neoliberal. The meaning in voting is not to make you feel good about yourself for choosing the bandwagon that wins. All should vote for whom best represents them with reckless disregard for the short-term outcome.

    The eventual counterargument to what I’m saying is rooted in utilitarianism: Democracy produces at best mediocre outcomes. The systemic design answer was the electoral college.


  • Let’s be honest here: None of us are going rogue. We aren’t going to grab a gun and start killing the worst of the worst, the people who have destroyed our lives and or the lives of millions, the people who have benefitted from the creation of a soulless society, the people who ruined our lives. We are cowards. We can’t do it, I certainly know I can’t. It’s best not to kid ourselves here.

    You want confirmation that everyone else is as weak to make yourself feel better. It’s typical neoliberal nonsense.








  • Thank you for the opportunity to teach.

    If my grandmother had wheels she’d be a tea trolley.

    Minimization.

    Right now the reality is the Donald Trump is going to take office because a lot of people didn’t vote for the alternative.

    Red herring.

    All the ‘what if…?’ games in the world isn’t going to change that.

    Minimization.

    This is a bit better than typical nonsense because there’s two tactics in a sandwich. Next is usually ad hominem. But, this one may have another trick up their sleeve.


  • The false assumption that most make is that one cycle doesn’t effect the next.

    However, if a third party garners just 5% of the general election vote for POTUS then their platform and higher quality candidate will be on every ballot in the next cycle.

    If there’s a third choice on every ballot then the the third party platform places tremendous and immediate pressure upon the platforms of the two major parties. The third party doesn’t actually win unless the other refuse to compromise. Long term, the continued threat is of greater value than a subsequent victory.

    But, the electoral scheme doesn’t work unless leftists trust leftists to determine the collective risk of voting third party for the states they reside in. Even Jacobin failed to trust twice.

    Things are pretty fucked. Electoral means are slow. I tend to advocate for boycott, strike, and riot (encompassing a wide scope of wisely breaking laws).





  • I think I hear about a school shooting about once every two or three months. And, I believe underreporting at a national level paired with myself not having time to keep up means that I hear about roughly one in every hundred shootings.

    Typically there’s about 180 days of school per year.

    Crunching some vague math, my guess seems preposterous: ~340 school shootings in 2024. That’s almost two per day. But, the more I thought about it the less preposterous it seemed.

    TL;DR - My guess is a seemingly preposterous 340 school shootings in 2024, or almost 2 per school day.