Criminy, ‘vote blue’ doesn’t mean vote and then sit at home thinking your work is done. It means voting for the lesser evil and then continuing to leverage the whole of your might to making the system better. It means fight just as hard for justice, just do it while trying to pick a less evil bad guy to have to fight. You want a whole new system? Then fight for it, and vote blue while you’re at it because it’ll be easier to kick those idiots out than the outright fascists.

This hurts me. The term is ‘yoked’ as in strong as an ox that can bear a yoke, not ‘yolked’ as in somehow related to egg slime. Hugging gorillas is very wholesome though.

Bro vegan athletes win in the olympics, in strong man, in sprints, in marathons, all over the place. They have to work hard for it, sure, but there’s nothing special about meat protein.

Many things follow this pattern, but not all. It’s important to recognize when you’re being fed outright lies by the real villains and when you’re actually part of the problem. Don’t pretend corporations are solely to blame if those corporations can only do what they do because you willfully pay them for it. When they have a monopoly on necessary goods, sure, they’re entirely the bad guys. When they would do harm whether or not you pay them, same thing. But don’t act like the corp is the bad guy and you’re the poor little victim if you’re choosing to empower the bad guys when you have the option to spend your money ethically instead.

The reason is that art made by a human has human creative reasoning behind it and therefore when I take the time to look for meaning in it I can find it. The art can say something to me that means something about the human experience. AI art has no human creative reasoning and so when I look for meaning there is none. It is only a surface impression and so the time I spend looking at it is wasted because there is nothing but illusion.

We don’t care about art for the shapes and colors, we care because a human did something with meaning and intention and by studying it we can learn about the human condition. AI slop brings no joy. It looks like a cake but when you cut into it it’s nothing but sawdust.

Yes my friend. “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” ― Albert Camus

Emphasis on ‘potentially’. Don’t waste too much time on them, some of them get off on watching you uselessly spend your time and energy and sanity on them. Brainwashing doesn’t work like it does in comic books. These are people who were already willing to and capable of rationalizing putting kids into cages and the ‘brainwashing’ just gave them an easy explanation.

It’s like a person who has committed rape. Even if they come out later as an anti-rape activist and they’re publicly remorseful and they do a lot of work to make up for the harm they caused you still aren’t gonna leave them alone with your sister.

I like it, let’s try it. I’m sure there are pitfalls but they can’t be worse than what we have now.

Sounds like you don’t have enough experience with modern automatics to hold such a strong opinion about them then. I love a manual transmission but modern automatics are usually very good. There was a time they were less efficient and less good at shifting at the right time but those days are pretty well gone. You do still sacrifice some fine control that you almost never need and they are less fun, but let’s not talk shit on them for issues that have been solved for years.

There is overwhelming scientific evidence that animals feel pain and are sentient like us, and despite the pop science articles to the contrary there is no scientific evidence that plants feel pain or have sentience at all. Plants respond to stimulus in very complicated ways, that’s what we have evidence for. Don’t pretend the two are equivalent. Stop getting your ideas from sensationalist pop science garbage and read the actual studies.

I think you’re almost at the right idea but you’re stuck on the conditioning that it takes some daddy authority figure to be the one enforcing behavior. That’s for babies. Adults should enforce good behavior in other adults. If you see an asshole taking up 4 seats it is your responsibility to tell them to act right. I used to be scared of doing it but the older I get and the more free of authoritarian conditioning I become the easier it is to call out bullshit. Just the other day some asshole in a Ferrari parked so close behind my busted up prius that I wasn’t going to be able to get out. He was still getting out of his car and I was able to say, “If you don’t move your car I’m just gonna hit it so I have enough space to get out.” Bro looked quite scared and I think it’s because of the complete lack of fucks I had left to give that day. Point being, just open your mouth and advocate for justice. Don’t pass that responsibility off to someone else because they don’t exist. If someone needs to get bounced and you don’t have the physique or training for it that’s a great time to ask for help from passersby. You aren’t alone in being pissed off at assholes acting entitled, plenty of people will help you if you get the ball rolling.

You’ll only be scared before you go to the protest. Once you’re there you’ll be fine. The vibe on the ground at every protest I’ve been to is great and there’s a real feeling of camaraderie and support from your community. There is some risk, yes. It’s probably still safer than crossing the street.

My [sister/brother/other] in [insert deity] have you forgotten that in almost every place on the globe food is purchased with money? And that money is also how you buy politicians? One billionaire absolutely could solve hunger through a combination of direct donation and political spending.

Maybe but there are also lots of people with mental illness who manage it and are still decent people. Not every sociopath is a serial killer but every billionaire is fucking evil. The decision to acquire great wealth at other’s expense and use it only for yourself is something else.

Fear of retaliation by the physical human in front of you as well. Some people are good because they believe in the value of goodness but a lot of them only act right when they can’t get away with being awful.

I would argue that ‘free’ just means the cost is hidden and you might end up paying it anyway through the societal effects that the energy demands of LLMs cause. That is, there’s a cost and it will make it back to you somehow or other because that’s how tech oligarchy works.

Yeah, I think it’s a mistake to imagine that these are good people who just need a little love. There are literally hundreds of millions of people who aren’t getting enough love for proper human flourishing and it’s not like that turned them all into fascists. The kind of evil exhibited by these people must be attributed to a fundamental enjoyment of the suffering of others.

Blessing bat can see you through the screen and the effect is the same. Be well, friend, you are bat-blessed.

It’s also accounted for almost 100% by mosquitos, specifically the diseases they carry…so not really the mosquitos at all. Quick searching shows snakes following mosquitos with 100,000 deaths caused per year. In any case, the scale is prodigiously unbalanced. Human animals kill trillions of non-human animals, almost entirely for their own pleasure. Non-human animals kill a few hundred thousand human animals (or a bit over a million if you count mosquito-borne disease) in self defense or by accident.

Hills are why bikes have gears and there are plenty of chilly hilly places with strong bike infrastructure and culture. Not Just Bikes goes off on this subject frequently. Check them out on nebula or youtube for a laugh and some good information.