I think the dems have been losing for decades in essentially every political arena because the repubs have cartoon villain mastermind Mitch McConnell pulling the strings and the dems have fucking Nancy Pelosi behind the curtain fixing races against Bernie, etc.

Thank you so much for the reply! That is extremely helpful.

What rifle and in what caliber do you most recommend for home defense and cheap, relatively plentiful ammo that is shortage-resistant?

I am considering a cheap Palmetto State Armory AR kit chambered for 5.56 NATO rounds so I could also fire .223s. Is brand particularly important, or are most ARs on the market good enough for practice and emergency use?

Thank you for your service

It really isn’t leftists’ fault, though. Trump easily won the popular vote and flipped georgia, pennsylvania, and wisconsin from their dem vote in 2020. Low voter turnout/voter suppression are the real culprits - along with dems failing to do almost any of the things that could’ve changed this outcome. Leftist memes did not lose dems the election. Voter apathy and the sheer popularity of fascism did.

Fascism is quite popular here. We have a lot of racists. We have a lot of uneducated people. We have a lot of self-interested petty-bourgeoise.

I don’t think it’s possible to abolish prisons for all crimes. But why does a thief or a drug dealer (or worse, just a drug user) need to be in prison? What about the nature of their crimes necessitates imprisonment as a reasonable method of corrections?

If the point is stopping people from reoffending, prisons don’t do that. Like objectively. Recidivism in the US is super high, and going to prison predicts increases in the severity of crimes people commit.

So, what reduces recidivism? Eliminating the factors that drove them to crime in the first place. So, you monitor them closely - house arrest, assigned social/case workers, etc. Like a more robust parole system for nonviolent offenders. With enough surveillance, you can reduce the likelihood of reoffence by making the chances of getting caught much higher. This enhanced monitoring would be temporary.

For violent offenders and more serious criminals, maybe prisons are still necessary. But they don’t have to be dehumanizing and can provide necessary health/psychiatric, educational, social, and job skills training.

You could make the corrections system more effective by making society easier for criminals to reintegrate into. If you’re a felon and you can’t find work because you’re a felon - how are you going to afford to live within the confines of the law? Step 1) jobs programs for felons with a path to eliminating non-violent offenses from your record as it relates to work with exceptions as necessary. Step 2) improve the education system to prevent people from turning to crime and to help give former criminals relevant job skills to earn an honest living. Step 3) provide healthcare to people - having access to healthcare for mental and addiction-related conditions is super important to reduce crime.

Basically - prison abolition isn’t about just letting rapists and murderers go free with no consequences. Instead, people in favor of prison abolition are typically in favor of reducing the societal pressures to commit crimes and preventing reoffense.

Having potentially thousands of years of embarassing moments of social awkwardness to think about. And, over the aeons, being relieved when the people you know and love die because they won’t remember the things you’re so ashamed of.

Weekend at Bernie’s for president

Many people have auras before and during migraines. These can be visual (seeing colors or black spots or colors/lights look brighter or dimmer), sensory (sensitivity to light/sound), speech-related (difficulty speaking or understanding speech), motor (impairment to movement), and brainstem (vertigo, tinnitus, ataxia, decreased consciousness, etc).

I get sensory, speech related, motor, and possibly some brainstem aura symptoms. You kind of just learn to recognize when a migraine is coming on and not a regular headache.

“Oh, but I don’t actually go outside - so he doesn’t mean me,” he said communistly.

Ah yes, IPAs, the least manly of beers.

I’m super critical of gender. Let’s get rid of all those. Gender vacuum.

It’s fucking crazy to me that this is a hot take these days. I just want movies to be good. Throwing unnecessary sex scenes into a movie to drive ratings up usually does not achieve that.

Edit: And by unnecessary, I don’t even mean just not plot relevant. Only that they should add to, not detract from, the characterization, tone, or plot/story. Fucking loved Challengers (check it out, it’s great) and that had a sex scene like every 5 minutes. I just wanna watch some good fucking movies. If I wanted to watch good fucking-movies, I’d just find those online.

Oh yeah, and it makes total sense. The brigading, insofar as it happens, really shouldn’t. But also, as someone who espouses left wing views, I always want to give critical support to left spaces - even if they’re imperfect. And .ml and even hexbear have a lot of valuable discourse - I comment on hexbear threads regularly with less radical points of view than their users often have, and I get good responses and engagement usually because I’m good faith.

Wow, this is super interesting. I don’t know if these sequels would have been successful (premise seems removed from the realism that made the published books so great), but if anyone could pull it off, it’s Butler.

It’d have been a sad but potentially interesting critique of power to show Olamina become a darker character, as was suggested. Idk how I feel about the next book jumping to Earthseed having fulfilled its mission (in part) - seems like there’d need to be a transitional book with them making all the preparations under potentially new leadership first.

As someone on .ml I really don’t think it’s that bad. Definitely left, and generally pro-China, but not too extreme imo. Hexbear is pretty bad. I’m a socialist and I disagree with a lot of the stuff there. But .ml is very much not a true “tankie” instance, in my opinion.

The most recent “assassination attempt” was just drummed up by the media. I haven’t seen any evidence it was anything other than a man with some guns in his car who happened to be near the rally.

But libertarians are conservative. They just also like weed and bitcoin

Definitely recommended! There are tons of recipes online - but that’s the basic formula.