She is still saying that and probably will continue to. Kamala is not someone to ever support uncritically. She’s a politician who is thinking strategically and has been known to publicly suspend her ostensible personal morals in the interests of the state (such as when she legally defended the death penalty while stating she personally opposed it at the same time). This is not a person to put faith in, this is a politician who just indicated she is willing to give on this position in return for political support. It’s not enough yet but this is significant progress in my opinion.

It’s a major rhetorical shift for sure and Biden would certainly never have done this. I want to see a lot more progress so hopefully they get the attention they need from this feeler to take some next steps.

I think when people are afraid and confused they tend to depend on narcissistic psychopaths to do their thinking for them. That’s the part that’s nature. The reason so many people are afraid and confused is because we are trying to live in a highly unnatural way in a world guided primarily by narcissistic psychopaths whose only concern is to outdo the other narcissistic psychopaths in the world using their people as a resource toward that end. Religion is one of uncountable tools in this dynamic. Removing it would disempower some narcissistic psychopaths and create opportunities for other narcissistic psychopaths. Afraid and confused people want the assurance from the narcissistic psychopaths regardless of whether religion is an option.

My mother used to — she would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say to us, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” LOL

You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.

Especially since there was nothing chaotic about the video. The officer got annoyed at something the victim said from the other room, announced to his victim that he would murder her, and then murdered her as she was trying to diffuse the situation with an apology. It was cold blooded. No quick movements, no panic, just an officer stating they would commit murder and then committing murder in cold blood on camera.

Bethesda has needed a lot more humanity for a long time.

There’s a general category of government oppression, which has existed for as long as governments have existed, and then there’s the political concept of fascism.

I think Umberto Eco’s Ur-Fascism is the best introduction to fascist philosophy. Here are his 14 points summarized by Wikipedia

1. “The cult of tradition”, characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.

2. “The rejection of modernism”, which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.

3. “The cult of action for action’s sake”, which dictates that action is of value in itself and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.

4. “Disagreement is treason” – fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.

5. “Fear of difference”, which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.

6. “Appeal to a frustrated middle class”, fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.

7. “Obsession with a plot” and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society. Eco also cites Pat Robertson’s book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.

8. Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak”. On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.

9. “Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy” because “life is permanent warfare” – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to not build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.

10. “Contempt for the weak”, which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate leader, who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.

11. “Everybody is educated to become a hero”, which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, “[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.”

12. “Machismo”, which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold “both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality”.

13. “Selective populism” – the people, conceived monolithically, have a common will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he alone dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of “no longer represent[ing] the voice of the people”.

14. “Newspeak” – fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.

I had a Switch for a few years before the Steamdeck came out. If all the games you want to play are available to play on Steamdeck, stick with Steamdeck. It’s more powerful, has way more games, you probably already have plenty of games to play on it, the games are way cheaper, and the degree which you can modify the software and hardware is pretty unique for a “console.”

The Switch has an edge in form factor and is more convenient for me to use. Although Switch emulation on the Steamdeck is pretty decent, I still prefer the original hardware to play Animal Crossing or Zelda.

Not that special, unfortunately.

The Supreme Court members who made this decision are in official act range right now at this moment. Donald Trump is in official act range at this moment as well. Not to draw conclusions but I’m not sure how serious the Democrats are about staying in power.

I would like to see this poll again with “no one” as an option. No one won anything at this debate. Anyone pleased by Trump’s performance would have been pleased no matter what, and everyone else is horrified.

I love the honesty of actual science.

This could be this decade’s Citizen’s United. Neo-liberalism especially among the court has been whittling away at the economy of regular people and the ability of the government to regulate business since at least the 70’s. Privatization never stopped or even abated, regulatory capture has been common, and businesses themselves write the bills for the congresspeople whose campaign they bankrolled to pass quid pro quo. We already have a severe lack of regulation and now we’re going to have no regulation. We just handed the entire country over to a class of gangsters whose morals are exactly the same as Donald Trump’s but wield a much greater degree of violence domestically and worldwide.

The Luddites should have been dismantling capitalists if they wanted to solve their problem.

Good for Goldman Sachs

The GDP is completely irrelevant to the vast majority of people. The difference between perception of economic barometers like this one is that people used to have more faith in capitalism and it has become so painfully clear that this faith is unwarranted. In the past, people in desperate financial situations could easily delude themselves that they were temporarily embarassed while everyone else in the same situation was probably just lazy. Now people are starting to realize the system is causing it and are much less willing to eat the table scraps thrown to them during times of “economic prosperity.”

Not Western Europe. Europe as a whole and its colonial projects around the globe which murdered their way to being majority “White.” The West.

No one is going to attack North Korea and despite promising to do so every minute of every day for the last few decades North Korea isn’t going to attack anyone. Russia on the other hand is a typical warmongering western imperial power squabbling with the other warmongering western imperial powers like always, so they will be having wars to spare for as long as there is a Russian Federation. I guess NK trading a few million extra mouths to feed for whatever Russia can spare economically could benefit the leadership of both countries.

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Whenever I hear this I always feel it takes a lot more guts to understand why not to but continue to choose to live anyway. Death is a comforting certainty while living is the way we know it to be. Hope you and I will be able to feel differently and be more comfotable with the idea of continuing through this world.