korazail

This is concise and reasonable. This would be far, far, faaaar less arbitrary and capricious suffering than he has already inflicted on others. He'd be getting off quite lightly.

As a description of the levels of power I personally have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_boxes_of_liberty

I'm still at ballot box myself.

"Yelling at strangers [on the internet]" is the Soap Box, and while we're pretty well past that as a country due to social media echo chambers and the like, it's still useful. If there's enough social pressure on a given topic, we can change policy. At the very least, being vocal (including online) lets other people know they are not alone.

I believe that we have effectively lost the jury box at this time. The supreme court seems to have abandoned rationality in a variety of cases to-date, and even in a best case, the judicial system works far too slowly compared to how fast new bullshit gets thrown at them by the current executive. Not to mention the cost to an individual average voter to try and sue would be prohibitive. Groups like SPLC and ACLU are helping here, but see point 2 (too slow).

I don't need to defend myself, but I have voted in every municipal election I've been able to since my early twenties in 2004. About the only way I haven't used my power here is by running myself, but I don't think I'm qualified for public office and would only siphon money from someone better who might win.

That leaves us with the ammo box. For progressives in solidly blue states, whose votes were counted, but ultimately found irrelevant, this is the next step, hence firebombing tesla dealerships (Can't find a recent walmart news article, but the idea is still there). In my purple state, I'm in my local precinct org and canvassing, but that doesn't really help when the margin of victory for your party is like 20%.

I will acknowledge the point that Americans -- in general -- are apathetic. I have a significant amount of distaste for anyone who says they are 'not political' or who didn't vote in 2024 or earlier. Sometimes though, you get a wake-up call after the fact. Anyone who didn't vote or voted for trump in 2024, but is now pissed off has been awakened (dare I say, "woke") and that should be celebrated, not derided. I love the leopards-eating-faces memes, but we really need to be reaching out to these people instead of mocking them. There is now a chink in their ignorance-armor.

You got a lot of anger in responses to your posts in this thread. The 'in general' phrase carries a lot of weight, but isn't all that applicable here. This community is likely to be like me and very involved or at least informed. Phrases like "You are all at fault..." is going to raise hackles, even when clarified by 'proportional to your share of power that you didn’t use.'

I'm trying to understand this point. I'm in a purple state. By definition, that means that we're on the cusp of being either democratic EC votes or republican EC votes, as well as senators, governors and other state-level offices.

One of the (minor, but still there) reasons I haven't moved is because my vote actually matters here. If I moved to a solidly blue state, I would be removing a blue vote and making my current state more red.

One of my largest fears is that we continue sorting all the democratic voters into a small handful of blue states and lock in a permanent minority in government due to how we allocate EC votes and allot power in the Senate.

If anything, we need the people in deeply blue states to migrate out into other places and help push our country towards actual balance. If we took 2% of the 2024 democratic Californians (9m Kamala votes vs 6m Trump, 2% of the 9m is 180k, and we could easily do this several more times) and they moved to a low-population red state like Wyoming, Montana or North Dakota (spot checking 2024 vote counts), they would have no EC impact in California, but would have guaranteed Senate seats and EC votes. They would also have huge power in their new local and state government, since the total republican vote count majority was less than that tiny portion of California.

I know this is a simplistic way of looking at the numbers and not the humans, but blaming someone in a red/purple state for staying there is just not helping.

We can celebrate the ideal of a person willing to fight back while still defending the actual person who may or may not have been the person who did it.

"Luigi" is gestalt:

1. An ideal of a person willing to fight for all of us against an oppressive system
2. A Human who is charged and not yet legally proven guilty of a crime; who may or may not be a scapegoat

We hail as heroes those who fight against oppression even when, and often because, their fighting breaks 'the rules.'

If Luigi shot this CEO, then he deserves our respect as a hero: A person who has sacrificed to remove a serial killer who was above the law. If Luigi did not shoot this CEO, then he deserves our support as a victim of the above system.

Sharing memes and keeping him in the public zeitgeist supports both.

In defense of gluten-free-bread producers... the thing that makes bread good is gluten. it's the glue that holds all the bread together, hence the name.

Gluten-free bread is just individual carbohydrates that are close enough together to be called a dough, but don't actually like each other and will peace out given the smallest chance.

I'm sure there is some chemical or product that will stick these things together enough to be bread-like, and also not trigger side effects for gluten-sensitive folks, but it probably causes cancer or something worse.

Side note: my wife likes UDI's ancient grain gluten free bread, which is stored frozen. It makes the fucking best croutons you've ever had: let it warm up, spread to go 'stale' and then chop, season and toast. heavenly. The croutons "melt", likely the lack of gluten, but still have a crunch before they get wet in your mouth.

I'm SO mad at this story. There is no reason to charge the parents. As others have stated, helicoptering kiddos is detrimental, and they need to be allowed to roam their environment -- That can come at the cost of danger, but we cannot be expected to grow with 0 risk.

Sure, as a parent, you can state: 'don't go there', and 'always look both ways', but kids are kids and there's only so much you can enforce without being overbearing. In this scenario, without video evidence, there's no clear conclusion about fault for either the driver or the child.

I'm okay with letting the driver off (criminally, let insurance pay the family but don't put the driver in jail) and acknowledging this as an accidental death, especially since he stuck around and is complying. Charging the parents for negligence, though, is just fucking brutal when they are suffering the loss of a child, not to mention the impact on the older son, who probably is feeling an unreasonable amount unreasonable of guilt: "I could have held his hand; I could have reminded him of the road..." (not his quotes, my presumed internal dialog). Again, as others have stated, this is a city planning problem, not a parental one: If there was a way to walk to a grocery store that didn't cross a 4-lane road, that'd be a better option, but there are plenty of places where that is not possible.

These parents do NOT need the extra burden of being held legally liable for an accident and anyone blaming them for this without knowing them personally and being able to describe other aspects of their parent as negligent is just an asshole.

Exactly.

I want the person down the street, who is barely able to pay rent and afford groceries on their min-wage job to instead be able to be secure. I want them to have housing, clothing and nutrition. Free stuff for others, not for me.

I'm quite happy to pay for that 'free' stuff in the form of taxes, as long as my tax dollars actually go to it instead of a billionaire's scorecard.

My problem with threads like this is that I only have 24 hours a day, and I've accumulated a critical mass of content creators to the point where I cannot keep up.

Which of these awesome people do I ignore?! What information do I leave behind!? How am I supposed to get anything useful done with my life?!?

Also, check out Chris Boden if you want to see something cool!

I'm no longer at my computer where typing is easy. I thank all of you for responding in good faith, and I'll be reading the various links. Thanks for engaging with me.

Okay. My method doesn't work. We can't reform the system from within.

What does?

What's your perfect solution? How do we get there?

I'm honestly curious. I'm pissed at the status quo, and don't know how to make things better with my limited personal power.

I'm now mobile, so my formatting will suffer.

Capitalism = bad. I'm fully behind that, and see it as the root of the problem. What I don't see is a path forward that doesn't involve incremental progress, even if not all demographics are served. At least not without violence that will be disrupt even more.

I think this is where we disagree, but I might still be missing something.

You (assorted folks responding to me) want an epoch change where we rise up and take back the power we have. We have it right now, but the price to pay to enforce that is too high for me.

I want a progression where we work towards owning that power. We had it partially when unions were still strong, but it was undermined. In my mind, the solution is education, but I have no power to enact that directly. My ability to influence is limited to my local org and voting.

A green party, socialist party, etc, will never win an election in our current environment. Votes there are literally useless, if not spoiling a candidate that has at least some if your views. The system is rigged, sure, but you can't flip this table and walk away.

Can we separate this discussion into talking about politics and elections and eliminate Israel/Palestine? I'm a-religious, pro Palestine, pro humanitarian, but having that angle seems to quickly degenerate every conversation into 'both sides are genocide' and avoid the'how do we move forward' question. I think these can be separated, but maybe that is also a place we disagree.

I feel we're playing different games, or using different terms.

Help me understand.

Firstly. Let's define words: I'm assuming/using my view of a US-centric Liberal vs Conservative.

Liberal: Democratic party, wants to make life better for the larger segment of the population.

Conservative: Republican party, wants to consolidate power and wealth in the hands of a few.

That's my personal and biased broad-strokes view of the political landscape.

Conservatives have managed to gather enough popular support that people will vote against their best interest for either perceived economic gain or for 'hurt the other people more.'

Stepping back even further, what is your end-goal? How do you respect the desires of millions of people without some sort of representation, and if you have such, how do you ensure that the representative aligns with the goals of their constituents?

Sadly, I'm offline for the day, but I'd be happy to continue this conversation.