Agreed. I think a lot of people in light red and purple areas probably had my same experience of being really surprised at the amount of support there was. The occupy protest in my city was like three dudes in two tents. The No Kings protests stretched for three city blocks and we got a ton of enthusiastic responses (and only, like, three counter protests that I saw) from people driving through. I never ever would have imagined that kind of turnout and support in this town, and I found myself feeling really encouraged that there’s a lot more local support for resisting this bullshit than I estimated.

So, I attended my local protest. 9/10 experience, had a blast and also realized that being anti-Trump and keeping our republic is a waaaaaaaay more popular position (even in my light red area) than I thought it was. The local police department has its priorities straight and they didn’t show up to the protest at all, so there were zero problems with law enforcement. The only thing keeping it from being a 10/10 was what I didn’t see:

1. Clear demands. This was what happened with Occupy. It generated a lot of buzz and got tons of attention, and when they finally asked the protestors “what are your demands?”, the answer was basically “idk, everything sucks. Make it stop sucking”. We need some clear, hard, attainable demands or we’re just going to repeat Occupy.

2. Organizing. There was almost no organizing happening, no outreach or recruiting for or between political, advocacy, or support groups. People showed up and left with no additional contacts, commitments, or follow ups. That is a wasted opportunity.

For me, it’s more like it just gets wrecked by a new hyperfixation until they both plateau just in time for a new one to come charging in. I’ve got at least seven topics that I can basically turn into a human Wikipedia page on.

The criticality of any given service is inversely proportional to how recently released was the technology that it runs on.

This, if you see some ancient machine sitting there humming, don’t even make eye contact with that mf, don’t even think about it. In fact, try to minimize your time in the same room so when it eventually goes tits up, you don’t get blamed.

I would watch the absolute fuck out of this to the point that my family would be so fucking sick of it.

I’m a white dude, apparently one of the relatively few left ones. It’s probably because of AuDHD, I grew up knowing what it was like to be in the out group. I lived full time in Honduras for a few years, and not with the military, so I kinda know what it’s like to be an immigrant. I had to deal with their visa/immigration system there. It’s not the same, I’m not saying that it is, but I’ve lived the experience of making community and friends and being reminded by the government that you don’t belong here. I also got to see the immigration issue from the perspective of the people that are subject to it. A lot of these Trump fucks have enjoyed the luxury of never questioning anything, just cruise, watch your hunting shows, live in your bubble and recite your fox news/ tim pool bullshit. I know the type, and it is utterly inconceivable to them that the could ever end up in the out group, and it’s a fucking interesting ride to be along for when they do end up there. Unfortunately, too few of them realize that they weren’t just being singled out by the deep state or Satan because life is a show about them, and that that’s just life for people in the out group.

Tried it; it doesn’t matter, in my experience. Conformity is way more important to these folks than they pretend, and once something like this starts getting traction, it gets labelled a thought crime and sealed away.

I mean, there’s all these pictures of Trump, but not a single good shot.

Holy shit, so I’m not just uniquely terrible at understanding people on the phone? I’ve searched so long for a phone that does high-quality phone calls, and I can’t believe I never figured that it was a problem with both the phones and the carriers.

Are you sure it isn’t just that he’s Dutch?

Wild that that dude was almost a SCOTUS justice.

E: changed my mind about snark

I meant my remark in good humor. Looking at the ratio, I can see that it was taken very different to how I meant.

Bless you, cousin, for your boomer posting, but I feel compelled to warn you. You keep this boomer posting up and you’re going to get stuck that way, like being sarcastic too much IRL.

Transcendental Cha Cha Cha and H.S.

Both by Tom Cardy. Holy shit.

West coast checking in, sure would appreciate the assist.

Well, shit. There’s a lot to not like about Newsom, but I can think of 100 democrat politicians that would have folded like wet Kleenex by now. He could be a lot more aggressive about this, but he’s clearly trying to exhaust all the normal channels. Critical support for Gavin.

Fascists are never to be taken seriously when they say that they’re very worried about protecting anything.

Well, to be fair, he did issue a bunch of flimsy ass pardons for his closest friends and family, he just didn’t do anything to help the rest of us.

As deranged as DC may be, I seriously doubt it. Especially because, being as old as he is, Donald was probably raised through the fever pitch of the cold war. He’s probably shit scared of the use of nuclear weapons. Did you notice how quickly the Trump administration jumped in to try and cool things off between India and Pakistan? I’d bet anything that it’s because Donald has a deep-seated urge to avoid nuclear weapons use.

So, there’s a cool documentary called Winter On Fire that covers the 2014 Maidan revolts in Ukraine. The relevant bit is at the end; after the police open fire on an unarmed march, the protestors announce that by 0900 tomorrow, they’re marching on the capitol building and they’re all going to be armed with guns (all 90,000 of them), and the cops can choose to be there or not. Well, the cops fucking skipped town that night, along with the president. Nobody has ever accused LA of being a city that is deficient in guns, or if they have, then they’re fucking stupid.