WTF… Portland had the winning recipe already - those little micro homes on parking lots were working great

Fucking hell, why would you destroy the shanty towns before you give them somewhere better to stay??

I was about ready to fight you and all… Why can’t we have nice things…

What is she not doing about it that she should be?

From my perspective, she’s one of the few politicians acting appropriately

There’s actually impossible colors that can be seen by playing with the visual spectrum of the color sensitive molecules. You can also play with visual processing to further see impossible colors

I’m not saying there’s infinite combinations, but there’s ones you’ve never seen and no one has a word for

If you think you can create a utopia through revolution, you’re delusional

A utopia can only be built by genuine buy-in. If it doesn’t come from the people, you’re just another authoritarian believing you’ve cracked the code

I don’t even think you’d disagree with this from what you’ve said so far… But can you really not imagine a better world? Can you really not even picture a path where people just are better, without the need for laws or violence?

I get how you might not see a path from where we are to there, but can you not even imagine the best timeline?

I’m going to skip the Italy bit and jump to Trump.

Trump has been a fake all his life. He took a real estate empire and managed to develop it into a smaller real estate empire.

He called the news under fake names to talk himself up. He convinced Forbes he was a billionaire to get the label, but it’s very debatable if he ever got to that point

Until now. He is actually a billionaire now. He’s also a convicted felon. He’s the most powerful man in the world, but his brain is soup now, so he actually is just a voice for whoever spoke to him last

He wants to be feared and respected, but even at the climax of his power he’s still being mocked to his face

Yes, Trump hasn’t faced “justice”, but justice was always a lie. From my perspective, he made a monkey paw wish. He’s got everything he ever wanted, but I think it’ll all taste like ashes in his mouth

Not like that helps the rest of us, but it is satisfying to watch up close

Like most things, it hasn’t been done through the correct channels. I think Trump signed a few orders (with only some of the words from the leaked list), and then his staff occasionally orders an office to drop everything and ensure they’re newspeak compliant

I do know removing anything except male/female from the gender drop down boxes was a big push, the white house website is getting a lot scrubbed, but it’s all very inconsistently applied and disorganized

No, that’s the end goal of authoritarians. Liberal authoritarians think the perfect system of laws will maximize freedom without affecting the freedom of others, conservative authoritarians think the citizen should serve the state

Both of these are totalitarian dystopias - it dehumanizes people and enshrines the state.

The “your freedom ends where your fist meets my nose” axiom is one axiom, it doesn’t describe a society. Libertarians maximize this as the full limit of state involvement, anarchists can maximize this as a guiding principle culturally with no state

Billionaires have publicists. Forbes itself was basically made to glorify the ultra wealthy. Every last part of her story is sanitized for the public, I think the Walmart family were actually the trail blazers of the practice

A billionaire isn’t a person. They’re an avatar for their wealth. I mean that literally - they are slaves to their own dragon hoard.

Their wealth isn’t real, it’s speculative - so if a Walmart heir gets drunk on video and it goes viral, on paper their whole family loses money on paper. As do the other shareholders…aka, the other billionaires.

And so, they don’t go out in public without careful preparation - instead, the ultra wealthy spend most of their life in places with tight information control. They don’t get to go outside freely, but they can fly across the world on a whim to visit these places

And so, their social circle is made up of people they interact in those places - namely, billionaires who are also sitting on similar ephemeral dragon hoards. Ones that overlap with the other hoards

And that’s why there’s no good billionaires - they’re interdependent. They can’t just wake up and decide to go off script… They’ll be shunned at best, maybe have their wealth cut off, maybe literally put on house arrest or straight up assassinated… It’s not like the law applies to billionaires

Anyways, the point is this:

She’s a fucking dragon. Sometimes dragons are useful, sometimes they’re pointed at your enemies. Sometimes they even do good things

But dragons aren’t persons. They don’t love like people do, they don’t have morals like people do. They don’t walk among us or care if we die horribly.

When a dragon is on your side, no they’re not. Their hoard always comes first

But like… What if you team up with the Nazis, and just compromise with them? I bet that goes over really well historically

No, they use it correctly

It is woke to think for yourself. Woke means awake, like self aware and able to see through the bullshit

They’ve always used the word correctly… Woke means someone who didn’t believe their words at face value

I’m a gender abolitionist, so I’m just going to chill and download an emulator when the time feels right for me

I think that’s giving her way too much credit… She’ll never be one of us

But the purity tests are a very real problem. Everyone moving the right direction today gets a pass. When they break off, they’re fair game

Simple as that, we have to care about winning a hell of a lot more

I really, really disagree with that.

You know what seems like it was universal in every ancient culture? Guest rights. Helping people in need. Stewardship over the environment.

Humans default to “humanity vs the world”. It’s only when things get big, when there’s power to be had, that the worst parts of human nature get drawn out

We didn’t split the atom because we were too free - it was because people with a lot of power feared losing power. We don’t wage war because of freedom… We do it for power and profit of the people at the top

I’m not sure, someone should ask taco belle

No. It’s a stain you both can’t explain or eliminate but also feel quiet pride over

I’m kinda in between…I don’t signal in empty parking lots and rarely at 3am on the highway

But when I’m not totally alone and I intend to change lanes, my pinky flicks before I think about it or look to see if the land is open - I flick it back off if I realize I’d cut someone off regularly

Um… Then you’re not describing a utopia, you’re describing a perfect totalitarian state.

It should not be against the law to be rude or dress up as Batman. That’s insane. That’s the literal end goal of fascism - to give full control of every aspect of society over to the state, and then indoctrinate future generations to be perfect extensions of the state. They just also usually want it to be an ethno-state, but it can also be done through nationalism or ideological purity

In a utopia, laws should be mostly vestigial. You’re supposed to fix the root causes of violence by helping people become well adjusted in a high trust post-scarcity society, not perfectly codify acceptable human behavior and crack down on it with stormtroopers

But like… What you’re describing is just culture.

(In most American culture) If you eat kimchi or a tuna fish sandwich for breakfast, people will call you out for being weird. You can talk to your cashier if you like, but if there’s a line behind you there’s an expectation that you’ll wrap it up once you’ve finished paying. In fact, it’s frowned upon to impede work in any way, and people will confront you over it. You don’t have to bring back your cart, because consumption and convenience are held above the public interest

Even the way you dress… If you wear a toga, people will approach you to ask why, and will often react negatively if you don’t have a reason. Or they might support your widening of cultural norms

Even challenging the culture is done within cultural norms. You can challenge food preconceptions if you acknowledge it’s weird first and insist it’s actually good. You can dress up as Batman and ask for money, or you can have someone recording you, or signal you’re in transit to a place where it would be appropriate… If you go about your normal day as Batman in suburbia, people will respond with actual fear, because you’re deviating from the culture instead of challenging it

Every moment of your life is lived in the context of your culture. Culture is the guardrails, and they’ve always been there. Some are explicitly taught to children, like queue etiquette and punctuality, others are unspoken and learned through interactions with others

It’s an anti-dating simulator… Kind of like an anti-joke or an anti-game, they’re subcategories of jokes and games

If you invert the game mechanic, you’re still using the mechanic. That’s very different from not using the mechanic

You make it sound like some authoritarian nightmare, but what you’re describing is like… Try not to fart in enclosed places and don’t eat on the Metro