Emphasis on ‘potentially’. Don’t waste too much time on them, some of them get off on watching you uselessly spend your time and energy and sanity on them. Brainwashing doesn’t work like it does in comic books. These are people who were already willing to and capable of rationalizing putting kids into cages and the ‘brainwashing’ just gave them an easy explanation.

It’s like a person who has committed rape. Even if they come out later as an anti-rape activist and they’re publicly remorseful and they do a lot of work to make up for the harm they caused you still aren’t gonna leave them alone with your sister.

I like it, let’s try it. I’m sure there are pitfalls but they can’t be worse than what we have now.

There is overwhelming scientific evidence that animals feel pain and are sentient like us, and despite the pop science articles to the contrary there is no scientific evidence that plants feel pain or have sentience at all. Plants respond to stimulus in very complicated ways, that’s what we have evidence for. Don’t pretend the two are equivalent. Stop getting your ideas from sensationalist pop science garbage and read the actual studies.

I think you’re almost at the right idea but you’re stuck on the conditioning that it takes some daddy authority figure to be the one enforcing behavior. That’s for babies. Adults should enforce good behavior in other adults. If you see an asshole taking up 4 seats it is your responsibility to tell them to act right. I used to be scared of doing it but the older I get and the more free of authoritarian conditioning I become the easier it is to call out bullshit. Just the other day some asshole in a Ferrari parked so close behind my busted up prius that I wasn’t going to be able to get out. He was still getting out of his car and I was able to say, “If you don’t move your car I’m just gonna hit it so I have enough space to get out.” Bro looked quite scared and I think it’s because of the complete lack of fucks I had left to give that day. Point being, just open your mouth and advocate for justice. Don’t pass that responsibility off to someone else because they don’t exist. If someone needs to get bounced and you don’t have the physique or training for it that’s a great time to ask for help from passersby. You aren’t alone in being pissed off at assholes acting entitled, plenty of people will help you if you get the ball rolling.

My [sister/brother/other] in [insert deity] have you forgotten that in almost every place on the globe food is purchased with money? And that money is also how you buy politicians? One billionaire absolutely could solve hunger through a combination of direct donation and political spending.

Maybe but there are also lots of people with mental illness who manage it and are still decent people. Not every sociopath is a serial killer but every billionaire is fucking evil. The decision to acquire great wealth at other’s expense and use it only for yourself is something else.

Fear of retaliation by the physical human in front of you as well. Some people are good because they believe in the value of goodness but a lot of them only act right when they can’t get away with being awful.

I would argue that ‘free’ just means the cost is hidden and you might end up paying it anyway through the societal effects that the energy demands of LLMs cause. That is, there’s a cost and it will make it back to you somehow or other because that’s how tech oligarchy works.

Yeah, I think it’s a mistake to imagine that these are good people who just need a little love. There are literally hundreds of millions of people who aren’t getting enough love for proper human flourishing and it’s not like that turned them all into fascists. The kind of evil exhibited by these people must be attributed to a fundamental enjoyment of the suffering of others.

Blessing bat can see you through the screen and the effect is the same. Be well, friend, you are bat-blessed.

It’s also accounted for almost 100% by mosquitos, specifically the diseases they carry…so not really the mosquitos at all. Quick searching shows snakes following mosquitos with 100,000 deaths caused per year. In any case, the scale is prodigiously unbalanced. Human animals kill trillions of non-human animals, almost entirely for their own pleasure. Non-human animals kill a few hundred thousand human animals (or a bit over a million if you count mosquito-borne disease) in self defense or by accident.

This is bringing hope to millions of people and setting the precedent of democrats actually resisting. It’s changing what is normal and energizing others to do their own good work, to get into their own ‘good trouble’. It’s doing a lot of fucking good. What the fuck are you doing?

A good criminal justice system ought to have comprehensive mental health services as part of the goal of rehabilitation. Therefore, for his own good, he should be in prison and we should reform the prison system.

We don’t need back, we need forward, and a lot of us aren’t interested in giving into doomerism. It is still the time for peaceful resistance and that might still work. It might not, and if it doesn’t the time for widespread destruction of property and civil disobedience will come and that might work, and then soon after the time for armed resistance will come and that might work. If it all fails we can at least make them hurt and show the world that we don’t take fascism lying down. It’s dark times but we don’t get out of them by giving up.

Hell, there’s a chance we come out of this better than we were before, and not just because the bar is so fucking low. We (americans) might find our passion for liberty and justice again and we might find our courage and we might express our decades of resentment against the creeping in of inequality by swinging to the left with new and more inclusive rights and protections for working class people. That’d be nice but even if we can’t have a good ending it’s still the right thing to do to fight fascism with everything we have.

and call police what they are, nothing more than enforcers for the owner class. Not your friends, not there for ‘justice’, not there to save you. They exist to exert control and dominance over the exploited.

This seems like a remarkably good idea but I still wouldn’t gender it. Say it’s “hands on therapy for physically oriented people” or something. I’m sure there are plenty of non-male humans who would benefit.

Hell, it might even work for my girlfriend who will go to insane lengths to avoid sitting down and having a conversation about anything personal. If it works, I owe you an upvote or something.

Do you understand the difference between capitalism and commerce? Using money for trade isn’t what makes capitalism what it is. Capitalism is, from wikipedia, “An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development occurs through the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market” Capitalism means that I can own something I have nothing to do with and you have to pay me for the privilege of using it. When that thing is housing or food or medicine then I own you unless you want to die.

Capitalism means taking from the worker and giving to the ‘owner’. The problem is that work is real and ownership is a made up concept.

The more you learn about it the more you’ll understand how evil it is, I promise.