I like that idea. I don’t think it matters how horrifying or repugnant or boring we try to make something. If something is made by humans, and humans forget what it was made for, eventually humans are going to explore it to try and figure that out.

On the other hand, nuclear waste is potentially valuable - or “valuable” - because It could be used to fuel more advanced reactors or make nuclear weapons. And I think that’s part of the discussion. The people in charge don’t want to bury it so deep that their nations can’t retrieve it for future use.

Capitalism isn’t a political system. It’s an economic system.

And I think it’s totally fair to point out how “a company making a product worse because they make more money off the worse product” is one of the flaws of a capitalist economy.

I like to ask bloodmouth concern trolls “what would convince you to go vegan?”

And when they come back with some soft appeaser bullshit, “you clearly know that information, so why hasn’t it convinced you to go vegan?”

messy and expensive.

Expensive for whom, though?

The American people will pay the cost, in blood and tax money, for occupying Venezuela.

Big Oil, weapons manufacturers, and the Trump crime family, will reap the profits from it.

(Edit: and yes of fucking course the Venezuelan people will suffer far more than Americans safe in the imperial core. I thought that was so obvious it didn’t need to be fucking said.)

Every American invasion and occupation is another massive wealth transfer from the poor to the rich.

Socialism for the rich, rugged capitalism for the poor, isn’t that the saying?

That’s actually a part I don’t disagree with. Local short-term problems still do need to be solved. They are the symptoms of the underlying disease that is the global capitalist economy, and we have to fight the disease instead of just fighting the symptoms - but if you don’t treat the symptoms, you might end up dying before you can treat the disease.

And, also, the personal is political. People will see the impacts of climate change on their communities, and people will commit the time and effort to adapt to those impacts locally, and that will make people more willing to vote for the national and global collective action we need even more badly.

Credibility and popularity are necessary. Getting people involved and committed on the local level is the first step to getting people involved and committed on the global level.

If climate leaders lead people in that transition instead of stopping at the local level and saying “hey, we rented some solar panels from this fossil fuel megacorp that branched out into solar power, everything’s good now, go back to consuming as usual”.

I think it underestimates the value of climate mitigation. A focus on reducing emissions may not save us from a 3 degree world - and a 5 degree world after that, and a 10 degree world after that - but it could delay those milestones and give us more time to adapt. For example, I think a 40-foot rise in sea level is inevitable in the next few centuries - even a two degree rise guarantees both the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melt - but delaying that 40-foot rise from 2080 to 2150 makes a huge difference in our ability to prepare for it and in the lives of people living in the flood zone now.

I also think climate change is a symptom of the underlying disease of capitalism/technofeudalism. Local and community resilience efforts treat the symptom but leave the disease free to run rampant in new and horrible ways.

(Imagine: a city puts in battery backup in case of grid failure, but the megacorp manufacturing the batteries forces them to use its proprietary software and pay service fees, and when the grid goes down the megacorp hits the city with millions in extra fees and threatens to turn off the power if they don’t pay.)

Why do people act like not using a gas powered stove is akin to stripping away some fundamental right?

Because change is bad.

I’m not (just) being snarky. People get defensive when something important to them changes, even if the change is for the better.

And food, and cooking food, is extremely important to most people.

I agree with you, and that’s why I think the US government specifically will let the AI bubble burst - so that the feds can buy up all those data centers for pennies on the dollar (and a promise to look the other way at all the pumping and dumping and insider trading the hyperbillionaires did to come out ahead in the AI crash).

Only Nixon could go to China, as they say.

Because if a Democrat had tried to normalize relations between the US and Maoist China the Republicans would have crucified him. But when their own leader tells them to do it, it suddenly becomes a great idea.

If Republicans didn’t have the principle of groveling to whoever’s in charge of their party, they’d have no principles at all.

“Hydrogen economy” believers.

Factual accuracy.

Pick one.

Conservative only reading the title: “See? See? Global warming is still in question!”

You’re absolutely right. Trump demands the spotlight at all times.

But also, I think your comment is an example of what Trump’s enemies still do not understand about him.

To Donald Trump, no publicity is bad publicity.

Even if it’s “bad publicity”.

If the media is talking about Trump’s mistakes, then Trump’s minions will be all over the news defending Trump and arguing with the people attacking Trump. Trump’s supporters will believe the people defending him, Trump’s opponents will keep being his opponents, and moderates will dismiss the whole argument as just another political he said she said.

And Trump will be the center of the news cycle for yet another day, and become even stronger in his position as the leader of the Republican Party and the biggest celebrity in America.

Jesus fucking Christ, we had four years of the Biden administration trying to get Trump on anything they could, four years of daily headlines about Trump being accused of crimes, or being arraigned for crimes, or being arrested for crimes, and Trump went into the 2024 election more popular than he was in 2020.

If you talk about Trump, he wins.

The only way to beat Trump, as hard as it is, is to fucking ignore him and talk about what the American people actually need instead.

“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

Or, pithier:

The rules for sheep don’t apply to lions.

I’m just hung up on the proffered idea that LLMs are actually going to replace anybody in an efficient sustainable way, or even reach AGI someday.

I share your concern with that point, to some degree. On the other hand, Cory Doctorow makes a great point: an AI cannot do your job as well as you can, but a salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI, because it’ll make your boss money:

The promise of AI – the promise AI companies make to investors – is that there will be AIs that can do your job, and when your boss fires you and replaces you with AI, he will keep half of your salary for himself, and give the other half to the AI company.

And even if AI is shit at your job, the cost savings from not paying humans means corporations will still make more money providing a shitty AI product than a good human product, just like corporations make more money now selling shitty mass produced plastic crap than they do quality products from skilled workers.

And from there you get mass unemployment and all the social and cultural impacts therefrom.

(What is your view on why billionaires are pushing AI? I think it’s a combination of “number go up” and an excuse to build the data centers the surveillance state needs for mass real time facial recognition, travel monitoring, and conversation recording/sentiment analysis, but that’s just me.)

There were no primaries in 2024…

That’s the fucking point.

Don’t tell me I can fight the billionaire masters of the Democratic Party in the primaries when those billionaire masters canceled the primaries just last year.

We need a new progressive movement, not just to outcompete the failed Democrats, but to move this country away from a broken system of electoral politics that lets us “choose” between two oligarchs from the Epstein caste and calls it democracy. We don’t need progressives banging their heads against a billionaire funded wall and lending credibility to a rigged primary process through their participation.

And before that, Obama, Kerry, and if I remember right even fucking Gore were all accused of being the most radical left Presidential candidates in American history.

Funny how the Democratic Party keeps running more and more progressive candidates - both the Republicans and Democrats say they’re doing it, so it must be true - and yet the Democratic Party keeps moving more and more to the right.

Remember Democrats, if he’s the Democrat option come election time it’s TOO LATE TO bitch!!

And that’s why I’m not a Democrat.

Jesus Christ, if you think Presidential primaries matter, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you. If the Democratic primaries weren’t rigged to hell and back Bernie would have finished his second term last January. And if Democrats had been allowed to have a primary in 2024 Newsom would probably be president now.

If you want us to believe that your primaries are an opportunity for actual choice, maybe you shouldn’t have appointed a 2024 Presidential candidate who never, in her entire life, won a single fucking primary.

Exactly true, but it’s more than that.

One of the more positive aspects of post-WWII, United Nations-facilitated geopolitics was the belief that the world ought to care about human rights. That when a country was horribly mistreating its own people the world had a right and a duty to intervene.

Fascists and racists and ethno-nationalists really don’t like that idea.

So you have ultra-nationalist right-wing movements all over Europe, who would happily murder each other for speaking the wrong language or being the wrong shade of white, working together with each other and Russia and the US against the EU and the UN, because anyone telling them “you can’t murder people you don’t want in your country” is their common enemy.

To be fair, it’s strongly suspected that Trump had extensive ties to the New York Mafia.

I mean, Jesus Christ, he was a real estate developer in New York in the '70s and '80s. There’s no possible way he wasn’t in bed with the mob.

Say what you will about Trump, he’s probably closer to gangster than like 99% of us.

Sorry, did you post in response to the wrong comment? I didn’t say the US was anti-left (though a lot of it is). I said the US was anti-vegan, which is not the same thing at all.

(I think veganism should be apolitical - eating healthy food, saving money, animal rights, self-sufficiency, public health, and so on, are not inherently leftist political issues. They’re common fucking sense. But that’s another rant.)