Wait

I thought Biden was the worst person in the world and hated unions and working people and loved the rich and was so much a tool of capital he was indistinguishable from the Republicans they were collaborating to strengthen the corporate oligarchy strangling our country and that’s why we have to vote for Cornel West etc etc

Now that he can’t actually be elected, we need to be upset that Kamala Harris only wants to increase the capital gains tax by 40% and not the 100% that Biden was going to do

Do I have that right?

What about blending tutorials tho

Low level programming C

Could be pretty much any computer

rust

Need a lot of memory (8-16 GB) if you are planning on dissecting any existing projects

Machine Learning programming with Python

Start with colab / huggingface and get a feel for what level of hardware you need for the stuff you’re doing before you start buying stuff

If you want just a general high quality system with upgradability etc, frame.work or System76 are supposed to be good high end providers.

I sorta agree with a lot of what you’re saying; not completely but I think you might have misconstrued some of what I was getting at here.

The US State Dept does a lot of good work

Agreed

There has been no “imperial” ambitions under the Biden administration; quite the opposite, really in countering imperial ambitions of Putin, while also coming down harder on Israel than quite literally any past Presidential administration in history

Agreed

Because the election is 62 days away. Withdrawing aid from Israel will immediately by framed by right-wing media, Republican opposition, AIPAC, Russian and Israeli troll farms as being “Antisemitic.”

Agreed

I’m not going to subscribe to this notion that they’re some inherently evil entity

I didn’t say they were evil. I said they’re not your friend; I think it’s weird for them to be showing up with a guitar like we’re gonna hang out.

Put it this way: If one of my neighbors regularly made phone calls ordering people to be killed, I wouldn’t hang out with them. Like if they showed up to a party with a guitar, I wouldn’t be able to get it out of my head that they might wake up the next morning and decide that a bunch of Houthis need to die, and then make it happen in the course of their working day. That’s weird.

I mean it is fine. You’re not wrong. And I have the luxury of sitting here in my safe little bubble protected by these wide luxury oceans with dudes staying up all night watching the satellites, making sure nothing geopolitically bad happens to anything American anywhere in the world. I definitely think that the US empire is by far the most benevolent of the big empires available in the world today. That’s a pretty fuckin low bar, but sure, I accept it. I mean I’m sitting safe and happy inside it and not trying to put a stop to it or anything so I might as well.

But at the same time, there’s people waking up in hell on earth right now. Like coming awake not eating for two days, hungry with their kids crying, some of their kids just gone killed by the shelling, no food, no toilets, just a big dusty hellscape with more death and misery and emptiness all around them. I get it that at this point we gotta just let that happen, I guess? It just doesn’t seem like too much of a fuckin priority to make it stop. We’re sort of trying, but not on the same level as if it was happening in Philly or Austin or something (or in Tel Aviv.)

I definitely won’t disagree with you about what Trump will do or the electoral calculus of supporting Israel. I’m just saying, you can’t be helping make that happen (or whatever other “lesser evil” atrocity, including the intermittency of our support for Ukraine and our weird little pussyfooting rules about how they’re allowed to fight back) and then be friends and show up with a guitar like it’s all cool. Yeah, I’m glad we have professionals keeping things under control. It is fine. But it would take a lot more humanity from the State Dept before I would really like something like this.

Look, I love this country. Part of why I love it is that streak of anti-authoritarianism that keeps the empire stuff in check, which leads to a lot of the good behavior you’re talking about, and also a lot of the rock and roll we make. I’m just saying… play some other fuckin’ song. “Rockin’ in the Free World” is a song of desperation inside the inhuman system that is America. It’s the homeless guy who knows it’s getting colder with winter coming on and still doesn’t have a place to go. It’s trying to keep hope alive even when you’ve given up on anything you can see or interact with to ever be deserving of hopefulness. You can’t be part of the system and play it unless you are actively fuckin fixing things (I’m not saying Blinken is not, you have a point about that part, but… Gaza.)

If you’re in Ukraine, and you want to play a kind of dark Neil Young song you can still rock out to, play “Powderfinger” about the kid who’s too young to be using a rifle but has to pick one up, all scared, because someone’s coming for his family. Or just play RHCP and blow off some steam. You can bring some America stuff and everyone can have a good time. I just feel like maybe he’s playing it thinking like “fuck yeah rock and roll” and I don’t know whether it’s occurred to him that a lot of the dark horrors that the song talks about are still going on, and for some people in the world he’s the central symbol of the system that’s exporting them to other countries so they can experience them too.

at least he’s got the balls to go to Kyiv in the first place unlike his predecessors

Yeah. This part, I like. We need more of this.

Edit: I got curious and I watched this. JESUS CHRIST MAKE IT STOP. As with many things, George Carlin said it far more succinctly than I could.

I gotta say

1. Fuck imperialism; the US State Dept is not your friend and they’re not supposed to be
2. The idea of the US Secretary of State playing guitar in a nightclub in Kyiv while supporting them in a war against imperialism is actually kind of incongruously good, gives me some kind of hope WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU SENDING WEAPONS TO ISRAEL STILL
3. From the short clip, that sounds like one of the least hip performances of an inherently pretty good song I have ever heard 😢
4. For the uninitiated

Texas has an initiative. I kinda agree with you that it seems a little unlikely right now but at least it might be good to help build the network out for a future day when Ken Paxton is in prison on federal charges and there’s some realistic pressure possible on the Texas legislators.

NC has one too

1. Stop calling it “the fediverse”

Guys

Every single RCV initiative that I am aware of has come from a ballot referendum

Just put it on the ballot. Y’all are adding too many extra steps that require cooperation from the political class.

I think your chance for RCV or STAR increases if you take over a major party

This is totally wrong. RCV is already in place in a few places, and on the ballot in multiple states in November.

You don’t have to have anyone from the existing parties on board to enact RCV. You can gather signatures, put an initiative on the ballot, vote, and presto. I don’t even really agree that “both sides” are trying to fight tooth and nail to prevent RCV (it is mostly one side in particular that’s doing that), but in any case it’s besides the point.

Check fairvote.org, see if it’s on the ballot for you, if so vote. If not then try to sign up with a group working to make it happen in your state.

The idea that most voters are disheartened with “both sides” and that’s what’s wrong with politics right now is actually pretty much backwards from the statistics – people are getting involved more and more in every recent election, which kind of makes sense since “one side” is so actively and obviously dangerous right now – but again, that’s even kind of besides the point. The point is, keeping FPTP and pushing for a third party is going to produce exactly the opposite of whatever the third party you’re pushing is advocating, because what you’re going to do is split the vote with whichever their ideological neighbor is. Reform of the voting system is the only approach that makes sense, and it’s currently happening at actually a pretty surprising pace.

It’s a well trodden path at this point

GOP: I’m gonna do WHATEVER I want whenever I want up to and including KILL YOU AND FUCKIN CIVIL WAR if you try to stop me

Also GOP: Whoa whoa whoa, where’s my entitlement thing you were supposed to give me, this isn’t fair! More pls. Give more. I need it and you’re supposed to give it to me.

It’s like living with a teenager in the house who also for some reason has a handgun.

Honestly this meme is way understating the sinisterness

• Election interference for money machine
• Whole internet is ads company
• Dopamine addiction for all children
• Superpowers for law enforcement

This has been 100% my experience with my Brother printer

Don’t fuck with the paws

It’s fun sometimes to ask them what they think of NATO, or Alexei Navalny or democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong or etc.

You would think that they would say “Oh yeah I was talking about Claudia De la Cruz because I like her policies / I’m upset about Biden approving Alaskan fossil fuel leases / whatever United States thing we were talking about, but OF COURSE them killing Navalny was a horrifying human rights abuse yes.” And yet, the few times I’ve tried it, that has never happened - it’s always either “well you know he had ties to X Y Z white nationalists” or else silence.

I don’t think it pays very well

Hey, neat! It’s a couple of talking points.

When people hold up dollar amounts like Biden is doing a lot, that number is inflated by fraudulent interest

“They are lying to you about numbers, don’t pay attention to the numbers! Just in general; no numbers. Pay attention to my vague, inflated, ever-shifting claims, instead.”

Biden is just paying with our tax money.

“This politician is spending our money!” (mostly this one is emotional impact – it is true that practically everything the government does is spending people’s tax dollars, but suggesting that some specific thing is them spending your money is alarming to people on a survival level and triggers this kind of hatred for the situation overall)

But he’s literally doing the bare minimum

“Okay, he is making progress, but it doesn’t count!”

drastically overpaying meaning for the same dollar amount, more people should be getting loan forgiveness.

Literally no idea what you are talking about here. I think you messed up by making it too specific, so it’s factually untrue – you gotta keep it within the realm of technically true but wildly misleading things (“paying with our tax money”).

Are you suggesting that when Biden forgives $10k of student loan debt, the borrower is receiving less than $10k worth of forgiveness? How would that even work? I think you got too excited at the keyboard and let your typing-froth get too close to factual reality and kind of exposed the fact that it’s all made up bad faith bullshit.

It sounds great if you only read headlines tho…

“I’m the well informed one! If you disagree with me you are foolish / naive / victim of propaganda / etc!”

Making excuses for Biden always just ends up arguing against moderate politicians like Biden. It’s their fault we’re in this shitty situation to begin with

Bringing factual reality = “making excuses for Biden”

General bad faith bitterness and blaming. It’s actually pretty remarkable how effective this is at turning “Biden tried to forgive $500B in student loans and has been fighting against efforts to stop him and still has succeeded in forgiving $167B and is still trying to do more” into “it’s his fault student loans even exist in the first place! Fuck him for pretending to care with his massive student loan forgiveness program positively impacting millions of people!”

Overall I rate this like a 4/10. You hit a bunch of general points that can produce an emotional impact and could literally be applied to anything, and you hit honestly a pretty good rhythm of nonstop firehosing claims wrapped up in a way that they could produce an impact. You got too factual, though; even one claim that is objective and testable and 100% false (the thing about “drastically overpaying” which doesn’t even make sense as applied to student loan forgiveness), can sort of snap people back into the realization that you’re just jabbering anything you can come up with to attack Biden with no connection to reality.

Almost as if there’s a coordinated effort up to and including this headline

Start?

He forgave a little over $150 billion so far

I’d go a step further than that. It’s not all bullshit.

If right at the moment that young men are starting to figure out, hey it’s important to make some money, it’s important not to be a coward, I think I’m gonna start working out and waking up early and keeping my house clean, hey I think at least some of these people I see who are downtrodden by life are at least partially responsible for their own situation and problems and I don’t wanna be that way… if right at that exact moment all the left has to offer them is getting in their face and saying NO NO NO, FUCK YOU THAT’S ALL WRONG TRANS RIGHTS VEGAN CAT FOOD FUCK YOU ARARGBGLGLLGLGL then they’re not gonna wanna join with the left. The left is going to seem stupid and crazy to them, and for a certain segment of the left, they’ll have a point about that.

Trump like all fascism is a malicious lie which will bring them only misery. But just being conservative (like authentic conservatism) in your viewpoint isn’t automatically wrong or “the enemy.”

Hi! I feel like we just talked about this - there are quite a lot of Democrats who are actually currently pushing, with some level of success, for reforming the voting system away from the duopoly-favoring FPTP system.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense either for you or for some Democrat to support introducing 3rd parties in a big way into the existing FPTP system, splitting the vote and leading to a Republican win. It makes perfect sense to support reforming the system so that 3rd parties can gain traction without being spoiler candidates.

I wonder why you are fighting for that first thing and not that second thing. Seems like fighting for that second thing would make more sense, yes? Definitely more sense than somehow criticizing the Democrats for not wanting the first thing.

Since your goal is obviously good leftwards progress and victory for left wing causes, and all