People, especially Americans, don’t approve of figures they agree with as much as figures they perceive as winning.

Bicycle parts.

It is now politically incorrect to say any of these words.

admin of exploding-heads confirmed

If you ever take a calculus or precalculus class, when you are testing for minima and maxima across a zone, you usually test the corners first. The wisdom therein is that you don’t know for sure whether you are starting out centered on the critical point.

It’s the same thing for politics. You can’t assume that the observable range is equidistant from The Truth in all directions. In many cases, you’re going to have an edge or a corner that is closest. Starting out by saying “we’re going to define truth simply by the average of the opinions that are out there” assumes that all perspectives are equally reasonable, that the average of the masses is always right, that it does not need to evolve, and that it is immune to manipulation. All of these assumptions are deeply wrong. Using this approach, you are always going to end up defining truth by the principles of strangers, instead of developing your own principles.

If you study American government, one of the first things you learn about is Marbury v. Madison and how the Supreme Court gave itself the power to challenge the constitutionality of legislation, because they made a good argument for it and nobody decided to oppose that move.

For any cognizant person, the takeaway is that “you have as much power as you are able and willing to claim and defend in political battles”, that there was a pivotal time when it was more common for people to be doing this, and that people have just been taking all their cues from the stabilized environment since then.

You’d think it can’t be worse, but you’d be wrong.

What does “a decent shot at the future” mean? My entire life is oriented around building things like “lifehouses” where people can thrive amidst the crumbling empire.

If I wanted to, I have a good sized list of places that I could go live, have a decent community around, and be utterly invisible to anyone who would pose a threat to me. But I want to expand until the carrying capacity of these places goes, from thousands currently, all the way up to hundreds of thousands.

It must take some BigBalls to waltz into a cybersecurity job at 19 and then promptly leak company secrets.

Stellate cells and also astroglia, so one might have USSR flag and PRC flag in the middle of their head.

Wait til you see what Afrikaans is spelled like

Samurai Crack

Osteocytes in the malleus?

it sucks

terrible shape

bring back rectangle

I embrace the falling purchasing power, especially if it makes my fellow workers easier to radicalize. I’m already used to living off less than the average global GDP per capita.

I don’t embrace the threats and violence against queer people or racial minorities though. Shit’s gonna get way weirder this time around.

I’m rather bullish about the ability of associated communes in Turtle Island to fight off and defeat techno-feudalist city states.

“Without being paid to lie, it’s hard for me to keep telling you how much the CPC is lying.”

Bad memories, they’re never going to be purged.

Not having a door was way worse than sharing a small dorm room.

were your parents secretly dogs?

Oh non, where are all the #JeSuisCharlie free speech warriors?