As a fan of early Ulver, I love finding their later shit floating around online. I’d rarely see it otherwise.

My cats love to get behind my servers. When I’m running a compute job and the fans spin up my cats scurry over to bask in the heat

This is why I love jumping spiders.

I’d be terrified of a huntsmen spider, but I love jumping spiders i leave them be whenever I see them, knowing that they will snack on all the fruit flies, moths, and mosquitoes that make it into my house.

You don’t need to be downtrodden to feel like a party is failing you. Considering life is getting harder for so many lower and middle class people, a lot of people are feeling worse than they did 10-15 years ago. This is where people have been failed by both parties.

I mentioned that there are people who are feeling like they are losing their position in society. Some people are simply bigoted and are upset at seeing minorities get visibility, some are upset that christianity is less prevalent among Americans. I don’t think either of these reasons is valid, though, fuck the old hierarchies.

The issues faced by Americans in the rural south are completely different than the ones faced by Americans on the east or west coasts. We basically live in separate worlds. Republicans failed them, but to think the democrats didn’t is silly. For example, a lot of people live in rural areas, where the police would take an hour to get there if someone was being attacked by someone or some animal. Guns are a bit more necessary in places like this than they are in a big city.

Granted, I think the media’s lies is the biggest cause of the populism. And holy shit does right wing media spew lies at an incredible rate.

That’s true. I was just trying to explain my view of the US system.

Broadly speaking, do think that if a country has two dominant neoliberal parties, like the US, this will inevitably happen.

In a two party system, populist movements grow when the opposition party is failing (or is perceived as failing) people. Alternatively, both parties can fail the people before one becomes populist.

The two party system has failed Americans. But now that the republicans have created a populist movement, the failure of democrats to properly serve many people causes them to be pulled by populism. It doesn’t help that the culture war lets absolue horseshit issues fly by without actual basis in reality, since that fuels the fire without actually having to do the hard discussions about policy.

The MAGA movement is a “third way” that formed because the paths forward shown by both democrats and republicans seemed to lead to nowhere for many people.

I don’t think this is a cancer, I think this is a horrendous feature of the design of a representative democracy under capitalism (at least, in the American sense)

Capitalism will crush people while trying to wring every bit of profit out of them, and in a capitalist democracy, the state supports capitalism.

Representative democracy leads to unaccountable representatives. They still need to get re-elected if they want to (or they could just serve capital and dip), but with all the dogmatism caused by political parties, the hierarchy of the parties protecting the politician, and the benefits of having corporate sugar daddies, especially media corporations, they can get away with enriching themselves at the expense of Americans, while still having decent odds at reelection.

Further, people in power, for whatever reason gave this tendency to build their power, usually at the expense of those without it. The state gives itself new powers and new toys at the expense of everyone else. Fear of terrorism gave us some of the most draconian laws on the books, such as the patriot act, which has not been repealed whenever there has been an opportunity to. The police got afraid of the people, and bought themselves guns, counterinsurgency training and tools from a foreign apartheid state, armored cars, and raises. The supreme court went from writing itself into existence to giving the president near legal immunity, rolling out the red carpet for the authoritarian state to become an even more authoritarian state.

When you mix these tendencies together, its no wonder why this state has failed. And while it hasn’t failed everyone, the nature of capitalism leads to a pretty large exploited class ripe for exploitation. And this populist movement is ready to take advantage of that, between those primed by culture war drivel, economic suffering, or seeing their demographic and/or class lose power in some way.

This populism isn’t a cancer on an ailing democracy.

It is a symptom of a failing democracy, unable to sustain itself from the structure of itself.

Bringing up imperialism is a good call, you’re absolutely right. Although I left it out in my comment, the techniques used abroad always come back home on Foucault’s imperial boomerang.

The technology we use on our borders will be used to oppress activists and protesters in the city. The techniques used to stomp on indigenous people abroad will stomp on our queers and PoC back at home. Old military equipment will be sold to the military we turn on our civilians: cops.

A few of these feel like they were said about conservatives but holy shit did you hit the nail on the head with property damage and corpo rep.

Like “you have to accept the election result” is a liberal thing to say, but the “no matter the cost” bit is something a conservative would say when their dickbag is winning. Things like “protesters are just mad they lost the election” or “Antifa are the real fascists” or “Police repression is A-ok” are all things I’d more much more likely hear from a conservative than a liberal.

Notably, it is missing the separation of protestors into “good protestors” and “bad protestors,” which is what I associate with liberals talking about protestors. Most liberals feel bad watching a young kid getting brutalized by the cops, but if they can abjectify them by separating them into good and bad protestor dichotomy, thats how they can say police repression is A-ok.

Honestly, you should just draw parallels between the liberal response to the pro-palestine encampments, since they responded similarly

• “those people are probably outside agitators, they knew what they were getting into, and therefore the police action was justified”
• “those antifa kids are the bad protestors ruining our peaceful protests!”
• “<parroting police report uncritically>”

Also, the protests here were pretty violent in some cities and at at some points, but in practically every case the violence began with the police, as you’d probably expect if you paid attention to history.

The nonviolent ones were only nonviolent if you ignored the police response to them, though a few token peaceful marches with minimal police presence happened here and there.

And for full disclosure, I don’t consider property damage violent unless it was done solely for the purposes of threatening someone. Smashing a cop car up isn’t violent, but breaking a window and spraying hateful graffiti is violent.

I’m very concerned. The US has been increasingly authoritarian for a long time. But I really hate how people are only seeing “oh shit that’s authoritarian now”

I mean, let’s be real, we live in a fucking authoritarian police state, and this isn’t something that suddenly happened with Trump or the SCOTUS, they are just showing some of the terminal symptoms. Our police force is above the law, mass surveillance is normal, corporate surveillance is a profitable business that doesn’t shirk from getting profit from the Govt, and our democratic system is feeling pretty autocratic.

The oppressive arms of the next authoritarian on the throne of the oval office have been set up over many decades, accelerating recently. But now that the throne has been polished, people are starting to notice.

This system is fucked.

edit: autocorrect fucked me

I work weekends. My “weekend” starts tomorrow!

Thats not a very fun fact 😿

Well, we live in a society where some camgirls give a portion of their paycheck to fund their viewers at three letter agencies.

I was on a hacking team in college, and one of our best defensive people wears cat ears while working.

It does make me a little uncomfortable to see intimate displays of affection in public. It doesn’t matter if it’s straight or gay or whatever.

I have gotten comfortable with the discomfort… it’s not their problem to deal with, it’s mine.

100%

As my views matured, I’ve grown to realize that forcing people to comply with the comfort of people is inherently oppressive, and that when I’m in public, I’m not entitled to complete comfort.

I’m not a big fan of straight people holding hands or kissing in public. Like, i support people doing things like that in the privacy of their home, but they don’t need to force themselves upon is and shove their straightness down our throats. Essentially, I don’t think straight people should be able to openly exist in public, since their existence is forcing it down our throats, so they should just go back into the closet.

:::/s:::

Dominos is outrageously expensive if you don’t shop the deals.

When I was in college, I’d get dominos with my roommates when they had the 20$ special, which would be about 30$ after tip and delivery. The special had 2 medium pizzas, garlic knots, cinnamon twists, and soda.

After I moved back home, I learned my local dominos doesn’t always have that deal. I’d get something similar to what you got and I’d be upset that I got less food for a bit more…

Now what really pisses me off is the high end neopolitan place near me is cheaper on their dinner special days, where you can get 2 personal pizzas that taste so good I’d accept it as proof that god is real for about 25$ including tips and gas money.

It’s been a rough week at work, and being in an environment where we are all on call and numerous people are subbing for others who are having life get in the way, a lot of people are working late and taking weekend shifts that they would have otherwise had off.

One of my college friends works with me, and I know his responses to these questions pretty well, and boy howdy have I seen him go through all of these responses in order as things got worse and worse while the director pops in and out of call to check on us and get updates on the situation.

Considering we would have had the weekend off and both of us stayed very late, things are going pretty OK, all things considered. Can’t complain too much if I’m still truckin’

Everyone loves to say ACAB, but people often forget about the cop in their head

I’m sorry, you are being silly and rejecting reality.

Zionism literally is a political movement, founded by jewish people, with a desire to make their own state. Zionism isn’t new, and it is well over 100 years old. Check out this wikipedia article for a rundown.

To say that it is only a dogwhistle is just a rejection of reality. But it is also a convenient rejection of reality because it lets you vilify political opponents.

“Zionists” = Jews, an entire people.

Unfortunately, zionism is not equivalent to a group of people. Zionism, at least in this context, is a geopolitical position, not an ethnic or religious group.

To consider an entire population of people one-dimensional and hold a political position is harmful. I literally said this exact thing in an earlier comment.

Zionism, at least in this context…

To elaborate on this point, I’ll describe it in this context, and then describe it being used as an antisemitic dog whistle, so we should be on the same page.

In this context, zionism is a political ideology based around settler colonialism, and it led to the founding of Israel, among many, many other consequences.

The meme points out a really annoying tendency that I, as a queer person, and many others have seen when supporting palestine where pro-israel people will go “lol why do you support hamas, they will literally torture you and kill you for being LGBT” even though it is pro-palestine, not pro-hamas.

In the antisemitic dogwhistle context, it is simply used as a stand-in for “the jews”. If you think this is the context people on the left are using, you lack all forms of critical reasoning.

Based on what you said, this meme would indeed be racist if you view it from the antisemitic dogwhistle context. But it isn’t coming from there. To try and conflate the two is just trying to conflate opposition to a geopolitical position with racism.