God I love how Bionicle fans on YouTube make the longest videos imaginable

Embrace tradition. Time to bring back phpbb into the mainstream.

Yeah, I still occasionally call it Youtube Red. There’s only 2 subscription streaming services I don’t feel weird at all about paying for and that’s YouTube and Dropout.

“Will criticizing the Democrats lead to a safer community? No, because the alternative political party ensures that to be a horrid decision.”

As someone who would absolutely be targeted by another trump presidency, I’m not sure if this is the case. Sure, his policies are absolutely worse for me and people like me. But at least in rhetoric, democrats (the voters) would suddenly be against the things democrats (the party) are currently doing if trump were doing it instead, which mobilizes more people toward activism and helps protect those in need actively instead of passively if at all. Should the democrats (the party) slowly adopt republican policies (which seems to be the case), wouldn’t it be better for the electorate not to be asleep at the wheel for 4 years leaving my community to die? If democrats (the voters) don’t respond well to alarm bells for genocide, what makes you think they would respond well to alarm bells for transphobic bills that aren’t veto’d, civil rights being walked back, project 2025 being implemented under Harris, and no protections even attempted to combat it? Stochastic terrorism from trump can happen even if he’s not president and insurrection can happen even if he doesn’t win. The real safety in my community comes from the community itself, not the politicians representing billionaires who give sweeping laws, but if liberals are fine with throwing Palestinians to the wolves today, it’ll be the queer community tomorrow.

The queer community has and will fight like we have in the past should we need to regardless of who becomes president, and with or without the support of the masses. Sure, a lot of us might be killed, but that’s the position the comfortable masses always put us in. The lack of criticism of the democrats right now among their base tells me a couple things: 1) the line about “sure democrats and republicans both have duds, but at least democrats hold their own accountable” is a lie and 2) shows me that throwing groups under the bus is okay so long as it maintains comfort and security- meaning we are headed for fascism whether it’s blue or red since it seems like the entirety of the electorate are willing to sacrifice others for their own benefit. Our nation was born out of genocide, so it’s no wonder how easy it is to vote for “lesser genocide” rather than protests, strikes, riots, and generally shutting down the country while helping our neighbors out materially. Either of the two main candidates winning is a testament to how hateful our country really is.

Consent has been manufactured with a false choice given to you by oligarchs and many have been fooled into thinking this is democracy. If you aren’t willing to fight for your rights and the rights of your neighbors, they’re as good as gone already regardless of who you check on the ballot.

This is about the topic of criticizing though. Are you honestly surprised the group who claim to be more moral than murderers are criticized more for murdering?

It’s funny how people only interested in the “logic” of harm reduction don’t realize why this is the case. Like, no shit people will get more upset over a police officer killing innocent people over the random maniac with a gun killing innocent people.

Oil and gas has its hooks in almost every facet of our lives unfortunately and our absolute reliance on fossil fuels won’t end even if all our ICE cars were instantaneously converted to EVs. Paints, rubbers, resins, soaps, fibers/clothing, plastics, adhesives, dyes, weaponry, electronic semiconductors, building materials, healthcare/pharmaceuticals, etc are made with oils and gas in process and material. Nearly every part of my “acoustic” bicycle is also made with the help of fossil fuels on top of any used for transport on top of any used to create the food I eat to power it.

Though, 99% reliant on fossil fuels is still better than 100% since that’s about all the power we have as regular people who have no direct say on global or domestic policy.

https://youtu.be/VcP8EDCp9Tw?si=JvPMfEOmAH3r38Re&t=128

“The research also suggests that screenwriters of old western and war movies got it right when they depicted a character taking slugs out of a bottle of whiskey before undergoing an operation without proper anesthesia.”

Doesn’t alcohol thin your blood? Sure, it might not hurt, but there’d be blood everywhere (maybe, I’m not an expert on the cinematic accuracy of surgery portrayed in the 19th century OR a doctor)

I mean, this strategy exists for a lot of consumer industries, right? Sell at a loss for years to flood the market, then once people are bought in and competition is left scrambling to catch up or worse, jack up the prices to start making a profit. But preventing competition so you can sustain a jacked up automobile market is also anti-consumer especially if domestic car companies are making record profit margins in the meantime. But this is the EU and I’m from the US where consumer protections are laughable, so maybe vehicles are actually affordable over there and this would be a good decision.

If their EVs are so good/affordable that it would destroy all domestic EV car competition, couldn’t non-chinese car companies just make better/more affordable EVs? Nah, gotta side with automotive corporations and against consumer choice.

This is the kind of garbage move that creates things like the Chicken Tax in the US, which is a big reason Americans drive around tanks now instead of regular sized pick-up trucks.

There’s something to be said about how interconnected a lot of major issues in the world are. Many solutions to specific issues don’t solve the underlying reason why that issue came about in the first place, laying the groundwork for the same issue to pop up again in a few years, which is why people push to fix systemic things. (Though I do think for the sake of accuracy and humor, the last line of the comic should be “No, that is too big of an issue to possibly change”).

We just have to accept that some people are “give a man a fish” people and others are “teach a man to fish” people. I think the world needs both for things to actually get better. Then there’s another group of people who just don’t like hearing the cries of the less privileged when they themselves are perfectly comfortable with how things are (shown in the comic) and who often wears a mask imitating the “teach a man to fish” person. The “teach a man to fish” people and “please stop complaining” people might both target their complaints towards the “give a man a fish” people, but that doesn’t mean that those two groups are the same or have the same goals. Pay no attention to bad actors who will try to prevent any movement towards a better world when it costs a bit of their own comfort.

God, I need to log off. I saw that this chart has a “presentation” axis and immediately got defensive in the same way I get whenever people complain that I don’t look “androgynous enough”, but then I read the chart lol 😅

Some people’s lives are so bad they would rather focus on personal survival than electing the good cop over the bad cop, both of whom would likely make their lives either a little or a lot worse every single year. “Our country is at stake” only really matters if you have systemic benefits from this country- otherwise, it just seems like it’s a plea for victims of this country to take your comfort into consideration above anything else. Sure, we’re on the precipice of a fascist takeover where even the white people in gated neighborhoods could start feeling even fractionally as bad as people of color currently do, but it might be worth considering this perspective isn’t just some petty or ignorant thing- it’s a rotten system created by racist white men that might not be worth participating in because even if the system is perfectly fixed, there will always be people on top and people on the bottom. At least with Kamala, there is a hope of traveling farther away from that “racist white man who begs me for votes and never delivers on promises” trope, so it doesn’t surprise me one bit.

Yes, but not only is it better than what we current have, but it goes against the whole “That’s a problem no matter how government officials are elected, and therefore irrelevant.” claim you made earlier.

As opposed to the 50%+ we have in office now?

God I love Derry Girls. It’s about time for a rewatch

Here’s the press release from Atlanta.

And if you want to read an article about it, here’s one from Time

I feel like this reply is for someone else? We’re both coming from a leftist position. Democrats only think they’re being overrun with bots and propaganda because they aren’t actually politically informed enough to know the valid reasons why people don’t like them.

You should research cop cities. Atlanta democrats voted to fund theirs.