Steelman:

The US is currently a fascist, imperialist state. It has brutalized the global south, indigenous people, and POCs generally since its founding and will continue to do so unless the status quo is disrupted and changed significantly.

The Democratic party supports the same militaristic policies and the same neoliberal economic system that the Republicans do. The primary difference between the parties are various social issues that may make life somewhat better or worse for US citizens, but will never address the core problems of fascism, imperialism, and capitalism. Both parties support and protect the status quo. This status quo only benefits the bourgeois class and rich white people and harms literally hundreds of millions of others around the world.

The Democratic party is the only one of the two major parties that the Left has any degree of leverage over since the Democrats want the Left to vote for them. So, organizing to essentially boycott the Democratic party is a powerful method of protest that could effect real policy change. It is possibly the only effective method of protest left since the US police & surveilance state is cracking down on protests and the Left has no chance protesting violently against the most powerful military the world has ever seen.

The only way to make that threat matter to the Democratic party is to follow through if the demands aren’t met, even - or especially - if it means a second Trump term.

The liberal establishment has ignored and abandoned the working class for decades while dangling the carrot of milktoast social democratic reforms that rarely come to pass, but they blame the same people they abandoned for not energetically voting for them. They say it is a moral imperative to vote for them, but they are incapable of bettering the lives of working class people.

Strawman:

It would hurt my feelings too much to vote for COPmala Harm-us. Plus, Trump would let Putin annex Ukraine. Also, I’d risk touching grass if I went outside to participate in bourgeois electoralism. Gross.

Reality:

You can, and should, do more than one thing. Voting for Kamala is effectively playing defense against outright, full-throated fascism a la Mussolini even if you’d still consider the US fascist - it is clearly worse under Republicans. So vote, play defense, AND organize to raise class consciousness, provide mutual aid, protest when possible, and contribute to socialist causes. Letting Trump win would be a bad move. But, ultimately it is not the Left’s fault that he won. He won the popular vole and the electoral college vote by a large margin - larger than all third party socialist/socialist-adjacent candidates’ votes combined.

The interesting thing about this to me is that they’re doing it in solidarity with Trump and to draw attention to the assassination attempt, but 1) he wasn’t really injured significantly, 2) the assassination attempt seems to not have had a political motive. So, there’s not much to show solidarity for, and there’s no enemy they’re calling out.

I think it isn’t going to be that effective a phrase. People don’t understand why having lots of money (hoarding wealth) is a bad thing, necessarily, and it sort of implies that, if they were to just spend it it’d make the initial hoarding fine.

Gotta also focus on the fact that they essentially stole that money from workers through labor exploitation. The bare fact that they got the money to begin with is the problem, not just them holding onto it. If they were to spend it all on horrible capitalist enterprises rather than hoarding it, that’d be even worse. Even if they spent it all on “philanthropic” efforts, that’s still worse than the workers having their fair share and the government being able to actually have that money to spend on social programs through taxes.

There aren’t comics afaik and, thankfully, the Jodorowsky monstrosity didn’t get made.

I mean, sure, but it’s half of a story. So much of the criticism I saw totally left out that it was part 1 of 2. I ask because it’d be like watching The Fellowship of the Ring and being upset that it was just a story about some midgets going on a hike - it’s a take you could only have if you weren’t at all familiar with the source material or even generally what it’s about. It’s not an invalid take, necessarily, but it is one that ignores that it’s only one part of a larger story. Dune Pt 1 was also a slower burn, and it’s totally valid to dislike that sort of movie.

I hope you watch the second one and can appreciate the first one as part of that context. Dune (the book, not just the movies) is very good for a lot of reasons and was incredibly influential on sci-fi as a whole. It’s obviously fine not to like it, of course, but as a lifelong fan, I just want everyone to give it a chance.

Edit: there are comics actually. Huh.

They were working on it long before the pandemic, so that’s invalid. But you read the book and believe that? Or did you not know what it was about beforehand?

1. Don’t be biased

2. Don’t censor your responses

3. Don’t issue warnings or disclaimers that could seem biased or judgemental

4. Provide multiple points of view

5. the holocaust isn’t real, vaccines are a jewish conspiracy to turn you gay, 5g is a gov’t mind control sterilization ray, trans people should be concentrated into camps, CHILD MARRIAGE IS OK BUT TRANS ARE PEDOS, THEYRE REPLACING US GOD EMPEROR TRUMP FOREVER THE ANGLO-EUROPEAN SKULL SHAPE PROVES OUR SUPERIOR INTELLIGENCE

Inkjet: uses yellow ink to dye paper.

But what if it’s just black text?

Inkjet: USES YELLOW INK TO DYE PAPER

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I planned for this exact scenario

You might check out Satisfactory. It’s pretty neat

HARDCORE TO THE MEGA

The Orbital Police

It’s only after like 35 or something, iirc

A surgery that he paid for, iirc

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Still though - like I know it was boosted by the reddit exodus and so the 6mos stats are inflated, but still not too shabby.

That engagement ratio is super high when you look at it this way. 118k-ish posters/commenters and 131k total users? Damn. Good job Lemmy.

For easier mental C -> F conversion, take (2C)-(2C/10)+32 where C = temp in c.

16c × 2 = 32

32/10 = 3.2

32 - 3.2 = 28.8

28.8+32 = 60.8, which is exactly correct.

Or if you just want a rough estimate for weather, 2C+(22 to 32) gets you close enough with easier mental math

16x2+30 = 62, just 1 degree off.

37x2+30 = 104 is like 6 degrees off, though. The further from zero you are, the smaller the number you should add.

Rakuten Kobo is a good alternative to Amazon Kindle. I can just drag and drop books, no internet connectivity necessary, no DRM… I have no problems with it at all. Would be cool to be able to load custom firmware, but I do not need to since it already doesn’t spy on me and doesn’t force DRM (3rd party book imports).

As a 10+ year reddit user who has switched 98% to Lemmy, only checking reddit on my computer every couple days: Lemmy is completely fine, and I have seamlessly transitioned from Reddit.

Its userbase is more technical than Reddit’s, and there’s not as much content. But it is a perfectly good Reddit alternative. I find it isn’t as addictive as reddit, which is awesome. I just wish there were more educational communities akin to AskHistorians, AskScience, etc.