Not a huge fan of Chomsky as a person, even if he’s said things I agree with. But it’s worth considering that he was extremely critical of the exact apparatus that is reporting his demise. Not saying he wasn’t a creep, he was arrogant enough to be, but this could all be fiction. Also plenty of people knew Epstein that were not part of his extracurriculars. As much as I want to see a lot of these rich fucks squirm, we really lack incriminating info. And even if we had it, I’m not sure I trust the current people handling the documents.

Anyone using any technology can miss something and end up in the same spot. I think the real takeaway is that there is way too much consolidation of our technology.

If you’re talking world wide you could give everyone on earth that is currently in poverty about $1200. That’s enough to help a great deal in poor countries, but it would be very temporary. If you’re talking just the USA, you’d be giving everyone in poverty $30k. That would certainly keep people out of poverty for a while. But under capitalism where people have to work many would be back in poverty in a year. Cash infusion would only work if it was permanent like a UBI.

Even if you spent that money to build free housing all over the country, it wouldn’t be enough to end poverty, though that would probably be the best use of the money. Just flood the market with housing availability and living gets way cheaper.

Charlie Kirk openly supported great replacement theory, a core foundational belief of modern neo-nazi’s. He was objectively a nazi.

Charlie Kirk openly supported great replacement theory, a core foundational belief of modern neo-nazi’s. He was objectively a nazi.

His words stoked division, hate, and death. I have no empathy for a neo-nazi who would kill me in an instant if it were legal. As far as I’m concerned, his death is self defense.

I’m fairly techy have a technical job that involves programming, data, and implementation. And I’m still on Microsoft and stock Android. It’s really not that complicated for some of us. I’m not on my phone or home computer that much, I have a mile long “to do” list. I’d love to switch over, but it’s a super low priority. Even if it would only be a few hours, that’s a few hours I could be doing anything else.

There are 5 classified levels of automation. At the lower levels of automation, the very article you are responding to quotes this evidence for you. Here is another article that gets deeper into it, I haven’t read it all so feel free to draw your own conclusions, but this data has been available and well reported on for many years. https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/autonomous-vehicle-safety-statistics.html

They only have to work better and more consistently than humans to be a net positive. Which I believe most of these systems already do by a wide margin. Psychologically it’s harder to accept a mistake from technology than it is from a human because the lack of control, but if the goal is to save lives, these safety systems accomplish that.

Disinformation causes people to believe and spread misinformation. It’s often hard to tell who is being deliberate and who is an idiot, especially with so many idiots on the public stage and so much societal mass mental illness.

I’ve just been calling self defense, because that’s what it was.

I’ll never buy a Samsung again absolutely irritating phones. I’ve had 2 nearly flawless pixel phones. Even if this doesn’t last 5 years, I’m not going back to endless bloatware programs that enshitify the Samsung. If I leave pixel it would be for something like fairphone.

I got mine around release, which means it’s 3 years 2 months, no issues so far.

My guess is that these people were simply absent from the vote. If they scheduled the vote for an impractical time that would explain most of this.

I think you’ve misread me. It’s not like I’m oblivious to the danger we all face, that’s exactly why the inaction of the left makes me irritated. I also admittedly led with a softer touch in regards to organizing in my last comment because I had no idea if going overboard would just shutdown the conversation. While I live a fairly heteronormative life, I’m queer, so is my wife, and so are a large chunk of the people I surround myself with. I brought up zoning and infrastructure because I have a lot of knowledge when it comes to those topics so my effort isn’t wasted. Densifying is an environmental imperative. The spread out nature of our infrastructure is the single greatest threat to human survival because the vast majority of our fossil fuels goes to supporting it.

There is a reason I said I’m not a fortuneteller, we really don’t know how far Trump and Co will take it, and we will all have to be open to pivoting depending on what he does. The single greatest thing people can do is get involved in literally anything. Because once people understand how to navigate activism and politics, it becomes that much easier to pivot when things get bad. Many people on the left have to still take the first step, literally just getting off the couch and used to organizing. I’ve been encouraging that on lemmy and reddit specifically because people need to start somewhere. It’s been my experience that the people most angry on here, the people that refused to vote, etc, are also the people that never get involved in real activism past protests. I really just want people to engage, now, while there is still time…

I’m not a fortuneteller, depending on the route things take I’ll join whatever group(s) are fighting to save democracy and go from there. But aside from that I’ll focus on organizing for small wins, multi use zoning, local transit, shared use trails, etc. Things that improve the lives around you lead to positive impacts politically. I’m most interested in just moving forward in the ways that I can. No one needs to take a large bite, just getting involved leads to positive impacts. People who get involved also don’t tend to feel so helpless when they see how possible it is to get bills passed and good projects funded, that usually leads to a positive outcome. If things go to shit anyway, at least I’ll have done something and tried.

There are all sorts of things that could have been done, but I’m not sure whether it would have moved the needle enough. You can’t just show up in the bottom of the 9th and say. “I’ve rarely hit for your team, but if you don’t do what I say I won’t hit a home run for you.” That’s one of the things I’ve been trying to communicate, all be it grumpily.

The left needs to integrate themselves into the party and into activism permanently. Yes we will be working with people with whom we profoundly disagree on some issues. But we will also agree on many things, and that will create progress. That progress will leave room for negotiation and firm resolution. When you’re already sitting at the table and already part of the team, then you have the power to make change. Especially because the left is large enough and passionate enough to completely overrun the party like the Trumpists did with the right. Instead the left repeatedly does the one thing that will always result in nothing, they refuse to participate.

Its not really about just voting. Though when 10 million people stay home just because they don’t like the top of the ticket, it’s definitely silly. Those down ballot races are filled with progressives and further left candidates that the left could actually be supporting.

They see abstention and protest as action. Protesting and refusing to participate is cathartic, but it has little to no impact on policy. We need to actually get organized and flex our power… Even if it is somewhat adjacent to the party, if millions of far left Americans truly organize and show they can work as a team, the Dems will be forced to bend towards us. The Dems consistently work with organized people. People that are organized are massive blocks of power with the ability to truly mobilize, It’s why the Dems have often been so integrated into labor unions.

I also think the issue with Israel includes hundreds of millions of dollars of campaign pressure against anyone who “falls out of line” from Christian and Jewish political action groups that support Israel. There needs to be far more organizing on the left to counteract that, we’ve done maybe 15% of what needs to be done if we really want to tip that scale. I have no faith in the left to really do that work. So people won’t do the work, and won’t vote… But won’t see how they are a part of the problem.

I agree, voting is the bare minimum, if people are so frustrated, it should drive them to action. Democracy is an imperfect system, but it only truly works if people are actively engaged with it. If we don’t start taking it seriously, we certainly won’t have it much longer, if not Trump someone after him will strip it from us.

At the end of the day, I don’t really care as much about the rift in the Dem party, as much as I care about the inaction on the left. If the left truly engaged with the process, in whatever way they choose, the path will open up for at least some reconciliation in both directions. The real problem is the inaction on the left, imo. The fatalism and despair that leads to lethargy. We need true activism beyond just protesting, such as citizen lobbying, getting involved in local community, joining affinity groups that have legislative goals, etc. All of that stuff forces the party to take notice, and it works. I’ve been involved in many things in my life that resulted in passed left wing legislation, it starts with people choosing to try to make a difference.

I’ve given thousands of hours of my life to politics and activism throughout my life, and intend to continue to. I don’t have to justify any of it to your brain rot.

Complete revisionist history. Before Trump got the nomination the first time, the Republicans did everything they could to prop up any other candidate but him. They worked far harder to stop Trump than the Dems ever did to stop Bernie. When Bernie ran his first time he won a majority of the early caucuses, a system that heavily favors party insiders. Aside from a handful of people at the top, Bernie was well loved in the party, but he failed to get votes.

Democrats would rather lose than work with their left.

The might be the biggest lie I’ve heard in years. The Dems have been willing to work with the left for my entire lifetime. It’s the lefts “my way or the highway” mentality towards politics that makes it impossible. Parties have to be able to garner over 50% support to win elections and win issues. The right wing has had an everything and the kitchen sink mentality towards politics for years, they will appease the far right and the moderate right and both show up. When the left tries to do the same the far left goes “you’re only doing 80% of what I wanted, that’s evil, you have to do everything I wanted because my viewpoint is the only correct one!”.

Yes, I do plan to do the work, because I’m not a lazy braindead idiot. The country is not lost yet, we still have to fight. And if it does fall, we still fight. That’s what people who aren’t caught up in their moral purity do, they look at the situation and make the best decision available to them. The reason you whine so much is because it’s so much easier than actually putting in effort. The world has always been a difficult place filled with selfish people, the only thing preventing disaster is good people taking action, be one of the good ones and do something, anything, to improve the world.