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Cake day: March 5th, 2024

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  • In New Berlin, Wisconsin, a woman named Kim Teschan, 64, told a canvasser accompanied by a Post reporter that she was fired up to vote after learning about how “corrupt” the 2020 election was from videos on Facebook.

    ~sigh

    A Postal Service spokesperson confirmed to The Post that the man in the video is an employee who had appropriately delivered the ballots. When The Post told Matlack that the man was a verified employee carrying a post office basket, Matlack responded, “Anybody can obtain those baskets.” Later, he added, “So working for the post office means you’re incapable of committing any sort of election fraud?”

    And that’s a strawman. The argument was not that no postal service workers are capable of committing fraud, but that this particular postal service worker was simply delivering the mail, which happens to include mail-in ballots.


  • A concentration camp guard is a combatant. They are armed and keeping you there with violence, right? Responding with violence to violence is pretty widely regarded as acceptable, outside of pacifist movements. Your more controversial question is what we’re really talking about. I think your focus on the “material basis” for their actions is where this goes wrong, as it ignores their ideology, their psychology. This is why such resistance movements fail, humans are not fundamentally logical. Even a total undermining of their peace and security simply draws that overwhelming response you mentioned, as we are seeing evidence of right now. While the nonviolent methods were not working very well, they were working better than this. What works is what’s most important, that’s why I’m dictating right and wrong to others quest for freedom. Even a full cutoff of all foreign weapons to Israel would not resolve the famine.

    Any actual sourcing for this primacy of violence in peaceful protest movements or King’s assassination being to preserve capitalism? It seems to me you are simply trying to give all the credit to the few, while ignoring the contributions of the many, because it suits you.

    “Every revolution” sure is convenient, when 99% fail. The ANC did not “defeat” South Africa, it was international pressure that ended Apartheid.

    On the note of government surveillance and oppression of the civil rights movement, I agree.

    Regarding Vietnam, the US could have kept fighting far longer if there was will for it. The reason there was not will for it was domestic opposition.

    Again, you’re simply giving all the credit to the violent while ignoring the hard work of the masses in these movements. This is disingenuous.


  • Well, yes, killing a noncombatant is bad, no question about it. There are other ways to accomplish the goal, from peaceful ways to simply killing actual combatants instead. I know you’re more of a revolutionary, so that kinda undermines your whole thing, but oh well.

    Sure, but things like the riots, particularly around race, contributed to a great deal of backlash, and were not exactly the cause of things like the Civil Rights Act. In fact, I’d challenge you to provide historical cases of a leader caving to that sort of violence while they still had their military and police forces to protect them.

    Yes, martyrdom is common, assassination is unquestionably a thing that happens in history. If you’re saying his assassination was some conspiracy to preserve capitalism I’d like to see some actual evidence of that, though, from a respected historian.

    Almost always fails, though? It’s relatively rarely attempted in any seriousness, but let’s see… Vietnam War, Women’s Suffrage, Civil Rights Act, Prohibition, and that’s just examples from my country. And yes, I know, they were not all exclusively perfectly peaceful. Majority peaceful, though, I don’t think you can logically just unilaterally declare all the positive results were due to the violent aspects, that makes no sense unless you can provide some evidence.



  • Protip: That oversharing is a misuse of a legitimate conversational tactic where you’re sort of trying to “prime the pump” and get a both-people-sharing thing going. The problem arises when people generally don’t want to get particularly deep, early into most sorts of interpersonal relationships. Trying to do this anyway can leave people with a negative impression.

    To get around this, there are other conversational tools. A useful one is the innocuous question, something like “oh, what was that like?” or “huh, how’d that go?” after a simple “what you been up to?”, “how’s your day going?” or somesuch. Even if you don’t really care, manufacturing the curiosity to dig a little deeper into surface-level things keeps the conversation flowing while avoiding getting into any actually uncomfortable topics. It can often open up into an opportunity for humorous observations or interjections, maintaining that lighter tone and keeping people comfortable with surface-level banter.

    Conversation is a bit of an art, though, so its useful to develop a wide range of tools in your conversational toolbox for deployment in a wide variety of individual circumstances. Banter-heavy tv shows like Firefly can provide helpful templates if your real life situation does not give you much practice opportunity, though getting out into the world and practicing on random people is always necessary.





  • Not entirely. A few months ago AOC was discussing how her own internal polling of her own district ended up under-estimating her support by around 10 percentage points. It was in that hour long talk she gave explaining why she was still supporting Biden as the candidate, before he dropped out.

    Polling has always been tricky, but I think in the past decade its gotten nigh-impossible. These institutions now seem to be more focused on not losing their jobs than actually trying to gauge support for a politician.

    Makes me wonder if issue polling instead of politician polling is better. I imagine it probably is a little bit, but I’m not sure.











  • having little effect.

    I disagree. Many people are brought out, you can very commonly find people’s personal accounts. The problem is they’re continuously recruiting as well, and do overwhelmingly well particularly with young male gamers who are disproportionately active online.

    We can’t forget that every year, millions of people turn 18. Right now, four whole years worth of them don’t really personally remember a lot about the Trump presidency, they were doing the whole growing up thing.

    I do agree that people do bear responsibility when they seek it out. I don’t think that’s most though, for most its the default from their local culture that they need education and critical thinking to save them from. Much like religion in general, if nobody helps you break free with independent ideas and critical thinking skills, you simply won’t. It’s a default of sorts, depending on the overall environment you were reared in.


  • Conspiracy theories, which underpin so many fascist movements, are fun, is part of the problem.

    What’s more pleasant, living in a harsh and difficult reality where you’re a small fry and real change is hard and life is mostly dull, or living in a dream world where all your problems are “their” fault and you can live with an emotional sense of superiority?

    You can be an egalitarian, having to be equal with everyone, or you can be better than some people. Then, remembering that you can always just avoid thinking about contradictory evidence, try to objectively decide which you might prefer. Being an equal, or being a superior? I mean, does it matter what’s true? Does it make a difference in your day to day life if black and white people actually are fundamentally equal, if you don’t really have to treat them that way?

    Imo, this is how it gets the smart people. Running theory anyway.