mozz

I think there’s a decent possibility that the US is sending teams of people to all these countries to investigate what Russia may be doing to them, and teach them about how to detect and prevent Russian cyber activity against their infrastructure / journalism / military targets.

It could also be purely made of, of course, but it seems a little on the specific side, and that up there is an obvious reality-possibility which actually would make sense, which you could if you wanted to mischaracterize as the nonsense activity which RT is describing.

1b

Just walk up to the outside of the stall and slap your hands against it and wedge your face up to the stall crack and start whispering complaints. Guarantee they'll turn the music off 😃

1. Get that passive aggressive shit outta here; either say something direct or resign yourself to that being the way it is and enjoy yourself
2. I recommend the enjoy yourself option though. Your Mama or Punk Rock Girl or a MrBallen podcast

Welcome to Youtube now

It's a career now, with thousands of people trying to make it work, and it selects for ability to exploit Youtube instead of saying some real stuff. And so, the number of people with relevant stuff to say is few and far between.

Back when Substack was getting grief for letting Nazis on, a bunch of people told me that making dangerous extremism illegal was absolutely the right thing to do and necessary, and a bunch of them asserted that Nazi speech was already forbidden on some level in the US.

I told them that any legal restrictions on speech will instantly be used, vigorously, against what the people in power think is “dangerous extremism,” and not with objective fairness against the stuff that’s actually dangerous extremism, and so it’s a bad idea to have those restrictions.

Every single one of them lectured me confidently about how that’s not how it works and I was wrong.

Fun fact: During BLM, a lot of the national guard said that they felt like their job, being sent in to “keep order,” was to protect the protestors from the police.

National guard is different from city police. Most of their time is spent in training, or on things where they’re helping (disasters being a big one). I don’t really know where they shake down on the “going to Kent State and killing protestors” versus “being the only government agency to rescue people with any level of competence and humanity after Hurricane Katrina” scale, in the present day, but I wouldn’t automatically assume they’re the enemy.

Agreed, yeah. "Probably gonna die" is not the same as "perfectly safe to be around in the meantime."

Yeah. It's actually a really dangerous time.

Any organism faced with death will start to fight with everything in its power. Except this one is not a raccoon in the garage, it's a whole nationwide organization with billions of dollars, prisons, weaponized propaganda every person sees every day, and a whole network of detention centers just waiting to turn into concentration camps.

Maybe you don't want to win. Keep getting your 3% every 4 years.

Win what? With Trump?

The GOP has been losing power ever since Clinton, because their most deeply held beliefs (less taxes for the rich, abortion bans, no public health care, more money to big business, no action on climate change) are wildly unpopular. Trump is the extinction burst - the frenzy of activity before the organism actually dies.

It remains to be seen whether they’ll be able to undo democracy to the point that they can stay in power regardless of how unpopular they are, and they have a plausible shot at it. But failing that I think all the gerrymandering in the world won’t be able to keep them around.

"On Tyranny" by Tim Snyder has an excellent set of practical guidelines based on how it's played out in other places historically

Unironically, I think this is part of the big appeal of fascism and fascistic movements.

People need something to belong to. People need brothers and sisters who see the world the same way they do, who will support them if they're in trouble, and will ask in exchange for trust and respect and support from their side. It's part of life. If you don't have that, something inside you is missing and it'll never feel settled. Nothing about any of that is wrong -- it's how people are designed to live, in a little village with people they know well and can depend on. It's right.

Outside your family (if you're lucky), that just doesn't exist in America. Daily life is bullshit. It's coworkers who, let's be honest, mostly don't give a shit, and you don't either, and everyone understands that it's all a bunch of crap and a big waste of time (unless you're very lucky). Every day doesn't matter. You and the people around you and the interactions you have with them, in the final analysis are pretty much a waste of time. But you need money, so you keep getting up and doing it anyway. But something feels very wrong, even if after a while you go numb, and you write off that numbness as "growing up" and "the real world."

And then, here comes this grouping, maybe with some friends of yours in it, and it's got an epic mission and an epic struggle. And, people aren't just talking -- they're doing it. They're going out on the streets and having rallies, and they bail each other out if someone gets arrested, and they talk about people who are in the thick of it who are finally fighting to make things better (and, let's be honest, no one anywhere can say that things in America don't need a ton of help). When they hang out, they have stuff they can talk about and get passionate about, and get confirmation that they're on the same team. There's risk. There's decision. And, most importantly, there are allies.

It's like pornography for that need for belonging. And so for the first time in your life, something feels right that never did before.

I saw an old, old German man in an interview talking about going to Nazi rallies when he was young. He said, of course now I understand how wrong it was and all the suffering we caused. And of course we all suffered terribly, after the war, because of what we'd done. But even now today sitting with you, I can think back to that time and that electric feeling, going to those massive rallies with all my people, and everyone shouting and singing all together, and Hitler up in front -- in person -- on the PA in his piercing, passionate voice... and I miss it. I wish I could go back, because it was wonderful.

Do you have numbers for this? Like what’s the inflation number for one of those nonessential goods? Because I suspect you literally just made all of this up as a way of saying, okay sure inflation dropped last year and low-income wages are way up but here’s why none of that counts. Although, I’m open to being proved wrong.