lemonaz

This. The whole framing needs to be pushed back against.

And what was his “merit” again (since that’s how they like to frame it)? Oh right, fooling people into voting for him. Just PR and courting big shots for campaign money.

Well yeah but you have to get RCV first. But for the rest of us in FPTP land, we make do until enough of a movement for RCV is built — and you can’t build a movement for RCV while basic rights are being stripped away and you’re spending all your cycles on the back foot defending those and putting out fires. Eh, who am I kidding… The damage is irreparable, current Democrats (unless the party gets taken over by Mamdani clones) will just do their ratchet shit again and cement this as the new normal because they’re fucking useless.

In FPTP, not voting the lesser evil gives you the greater evil. It’s dead simple, but I’ll be the first to admit it’s a damn hard pill to swallow for us idealists (I should know, I was a Jimmy Dore fan in 2019-2020, took me ages to see through faux-left grift because it preys on idealism and perfectionism).

Fair enough, but I was saying in the “this should become common practice” sense. I don’t think anyone can just post there since it’s owned by the creators, so you have to join them, it’s a package deal.

Where would be a general purpose place to use as the second platform? Something that’s easy to use (and ofc not even more immoral than youtube, so not rumble or things like that).

Not at broadband speeds, that’s for sure.

Denny Crane

D E S E R V E

In my experience, after a little back and forth they realize they can’t win this on facts and just pull rank.

The capitalist club.

Jeeeeesus

Wtf, the police is literally saying they’ll just kill people?? I missed that one, do you have a link?

That is true (I love Cash and listened to a lot of his music), but a lot of cons will just take it at face value, same way they do with Punisher.

Btw, Cash has this “shot my woman down” motif in other songs, like Delia’s Gone, and always they end badly, like with him in jail. Too bad the cons only listen to those and skip pieces like San Quentin or Man in Black.

Mostly peaceful, really, same as these. But obviously when you have literally millions of people protesting, there’s bound to be some not-quite-ok stuff happening in all the chaos. Property damage, stealing, that sort of thing.

There’s really no way to have zero violence at this scale, although I’d say there’s a distinction between property damage and violence (one is done to objects and the other to people).

Don’t forget we remember MLK protests as mostly peaceful too, but the media did not portray them that way back then either. The copaganda is ever present. But look up the 2020 protests and you’ll get a lot of headlines reporting that they were in fact like 99% peaceful.

Didn’t BLM 2020 protests have over 3.5%? I don’t think they accomplished much except put pressure to prosecute Chauvin. Like literally just that one guy.

What’s this? Ranking Linux number 2? Heresy! /s

Envy.

Spite. The dirty bomb of emotions.

Yeah for sure. I’m afraid of the “just one more” thing too, that’s why I don’t think of it as casual. It’s more like I expressly forbid it in association with things I do every day or places I am every day, then if it happens in the corner cases once in a blue moon, I’m fine. So for instance, one rule I have is not to buy any packs ever and I don’t keep any around the house — you don’t move in with your FWB lol. But if there’s a crowd of friends or something, we can partake, but it’s like a ritual, it has a clear start and end and you don’t take it home with you. I specifically modeled it after weed, since I’m not addicted to that at all, and if it’s around me I sometimes partake and sometimes don’t. That’s how I’m currently with cigarettes. Plus, I don’t go out much these days, so I barely even see anyone else do it.

That said, you’re right: both that it’s a different experience for everyone, and that it’s better to just never touch it again, but personally I can’t live with the thought of being banned from something for the rest of my life, because that implies I’ve already experienced it for the last time in my life, and that just brings in the existential dread.

As someone who has a relationship with smoking, I feel like I have to say a few words:

Apart from abusing my body in ways similar to what you described, I also smoked for almost 15 years. I started out of stupidity in my twenties. I was not even in high-school, I totally averted that danger… only to step in it years later voluntarily and for stupid reasons (I coughed when trying to smoke pot so I thought I should practice, then found out the high was pretty nice and reasoned it was cheaper to smoke this than pot). Anyway, I gave up 2 years ago, but I tried many times before that. I tried cold turkey, I tried gradually, I tried lighter cigarettes, but nothing worked. The idea of never ever smoking another cigarette for as long as I lived was paralyzing. I also hated how it controlled me, and it felt like avoiding any contact with any cigarette ever was also a form of it controlling me from the other direction. So I worked something out that works for me, and maybe it will for you:

My goal was to solve the control problem more than anything. So I said I don’t want a love or hate relationship with cigarettes: I want indifference. It means I don’t buy cigarettes anymore, for one. This is probably the most important part, just don’t smoke at home or during normal activities. The physical dependence is present in the first 3 days, after that it’s just psychological, or so they say, so I took advantage of when I was down with a cold and couldn’t smoke, and I kept it up after. I still had some cigarettes left and I smoked them with some friends when I was out for beers, about 2 weeks later. Whenever I felt stressed at work or whatever, I tried to just take my hand and put it on my mouth with like 2 fingers as if I was holding a cigarette and just suck thin air like it was a cigarette then blow the fictional smoke, I’d do it multiple times if needed — this gesture was calming, even if it didn’t last as long as it did with the real thing, it was like halfway there. Even though this sounds like quitting, the goal was still indifference, but I was way too much in the “I need to smoke” control zone so I focused on pulling out. Throughout I didn’t think of myself as anything related to smoking: I wasn’t a smoker because it felt defeatist, I wasn’t a non-smoker because it felt unearned, I wasn’t an occasional smoker because it felt lazy — I was just trying to take the control out of my relationship with smoking and turn it into something more like “friends with benefits”. I had a quit-smoking-timer app on my phone which in previous attempts I kept resetting with each cigarette I wasn’t able to resist, but this time I said I’m not going to punish myself anymore: this is a new mindset and it allows for casual smoking just like you casually try some weed at a party if someone is offering and it doesn’t make you addicted to weed or a weed smoker or anything like that — you’re just having fun — so the app measures the time since I adopted this new mindset and new (non)relationship with smoking.

The first month was probably the only time I kept needing to repeat all of the above to myself. After that it became second nature. It was both easier and harder to do than I initially thought, but I’m confident in myself now because it’s more of a fundamental identity change than a change in habits or actions: it’s internal, how I see myself vis a vis smoking.

Maybe a mindset like this can help you conquer your addiction, if you’re interested. I say “if you’re interested” because you probably know already: you have to want it first. It can’t be forced on you, it really has to come from you. If it helps, for me it came when I got mad that, after forcing myself to smoke lighter and lighter cigarettes, I learned that they’re just as harmful in the long run, so I got even more mad at big tobacco for lying to me like that (apart from all the other horrible shit they’ve done) and that betrayal was the fuel I used as motivation. It’s always the petty stuff that gets us the most, lol. Also, I really don’t want to check out that soon. Non-existence is terrifying, and life is finally getting better for me. But I’m also older and need to watch my health, so I’m more open now to actively changing stuff for said health.

One more for potholer54. He’s one of the oldies, right up there with DarkMatter2525.(probably my favorite), Professor Dave Explains, Myles Power and Martymer 81. Oh, and in this vein there’s a (relatively) new kid on the block: Forrest Valkai aka Renegade Science Teacher.