lovely flat comparison that only accepts this precise present moment as the only context.

Never mind that the Democrats today are the George W. Bush neo-cons of twenty years ago. Or that the precedent laid down by the Bush admin - and subsequently renewed and strengthened by the Obama admin - are the same legal standards Trump and ICE are now claiming cover under.

asking Democrats to stop campaign like Bush-era neo-cons is now apparently a right wing position

The Tea they destroyed was tariff-free, which hurt the organisers who were smuggling tea and charging a huge mark-up to customers

This is a critical bit that gets overlooked in the US framing of events. The taxed tea was actually cheaper than what local businessmen were charging! We didn’t have a grass-roots revolution for the benefit of “we the people”. It was organized and funded by the local elites, who were throwing a fit that larger overseas elites were telling them what to do.

https://www.existentialcomics.com/comic/9

is moviebob still around?

In the US at least, law enforcement is overarmed. We’d cut back on a lot of unnecessary violence if, say, officers kept their guns in the trunk rather than on their hip.

have you really not seen all those thinkpeices that go, “Lets dump our resources into develping AI rather than conservation and renewables, because the AI will magic up a solution for us better than anything actual researchers suggest”?

Billionaires are only free so long as they do nothing that compromises greater returns year after year. Their money is tied up in financial institutions, beholden to the demands of their fellow investors, their overall class. What you call “freedom” is just ultimate privilege. And, like any privilege, it is conditional.

Musk is the perfect example that very concept, yet you choose to dismiss it as some bizarre outlier rather than a demonstration of the rule.

I agree there are conscious people exercising power, but I’m arguing that the system they’re enmeshed within constrains the actions they’re able to make. Rather than choosing maximal extraction as a means to the goal of survivalist bunkers, they’re locked into maximal extraction. The more thoughtful may not like it, may try to break out of it, but the logic of capital will only select for someone else who has no qualms keeping the machine at full tilt.

Survival bunkers are just one way of resolving that internal contradiction; “I’m supposed to have all this power, all this agency; yet I can’t overcome the momentum of this system without jeopardizing my place at the top of it”. So they invent a goal to fit the means they’re pre-committed to. A way of rationalizing it.

The “general super-intelligent AI” investor hype is just another way of rationalizing the same contradiction. “Yes, we’re destroying the ecosystem, but it’s alright, 'cus digital God is gonna end our dependence on human labor and provide us magic solutions to all the problems before we’re completely fucked.”

when was the last time a bug hit your windsheild? we’re destroying the ecological foundation we’re living in, and we know we’re doing it, yet it still continues at pace. the sum decides what the parts do, what other conclusion can I draw?

do you actually think people are in control of this system? even the most powerful capitalist is still just exercising a privilege, to be stripped away and replaced should they ever push against the profit motive

CO2 carbon dioxide im talking about climate change not republicans, we’re all drowning

general anesthetics are so neat

like, you can just switch me off with a drug, and after a while I come back? weird, bizzar, and yet also practical. and (as far as I understand) it’s universal. Works on every living thing. They’ve anesthetized plants

Mon cherie, protegonist of reality, but of course

I get what you’re saying, but reducing it down to a thing we have because we need it is… overly clinical? Not particularly hopeful, anyway. Even if sexuality didn’t have the historical baggage that it does, I think things would still trend towards a community. People form a sense of shared identity over things. It’s what people do.

eyo! You just won my first downvote. Didn’t quite make a full year, sorry the vintage isn’t up to snuff

There’s all sorts of types of reproduction.

Take the reproduction of knowledge, for example. Say you have a person who never had kids, but dedicated their life’s work to something like Project Gutenberg. They’ve ensured art and writing and understanding is reproduced for generations to come. Is that pointless?

a “you can choose who you associate with, but not who your neighbors are” sorta deal

I understand the world is cruel and harsh, and so I understand why there needs to be an LGBTQ community, but there -shouldn’t- be one.

By the same argument, there shouldn’t be a straight community, with institutions and laws and religion that assume it to be the default, the tabula rasa of humanity.

Really, you’re just arguing against the fact we exist within a historical context. You can try and cut it away - except! Oops! In doing so, you just added yet more history to the pile!

It’s just an evolutionary selective pressure, but applied to organizations of people rather than organisms. Currency rather than calorie. And like any evolutionary system, it settles into the first pattern that just happens to work.

Sort of like those early photosynthetic bacteria that oxygenated the atmosphere – and eventually suffocated on the stuff. Killed by the very process that kept them going day to day. Of course, those bacteria were genetically predetermined for it. Nothing they could do to prevent it. We don’t have such a convenient excuse.

you can fix the online problems with a USB-to-ethernet adapter on the dock