I went ahead and voted “Yes” on prop 50. Yeah the democrats suck and I don’t vote for them anyway, but if a few more of them in the House can throw some wrenches into the GOP’s plans, I guess that’s “harm reduction”.
but often think the capitalists of the past actually "built stuff", which is a tough one to crack
I don’t know if this is a good response for people since you have to get into historical materialism, but I have no problem myself admitting “capitalism” was a progressive force and was tremendously powerful in developing the productive forces (wouldn’t use that term). But just because it may have worked for that in the past, doesn’t mean that it should continue forever. It was useful for ending serfdom but there’s so much more we can accomplish as a species if we commit to that same type of transformation. I think you can link it to climate change as a tangible reason why we need to make a dramatic break from “how things are”. I have noticed a huge change among normal people I know who recognize that capitalism won’t solve climate change.
To re-iterate my point… this isn’t about electoralism or what your opinions are on Mamdani. I am only pointing out that we have someone who identifies as socialist who will be the number 1 news story in the country for the next few days, and his ostensible “socialism” - whatever you want to think about - will be a big part of that story. Assuming the people in your personal life know you are a socialist, there is a good chance they will want to chat with you about it. What you do with that opportunity is up to you. I plan on leveraging it as much as I can. Maybe taking a strongly critical position is better for the people around it, but it is not for me and I would imagine for a very large portion of the American user base here.
As an aside, does anyone know more about the situation with pre-K child care in NYC? Zohran wants to establish child care for 6 weeks to 5 y.o. kids. Which as a parent I can say that’s amazing and I’m sure most parents across the political spectrum support. But is there anything in place now and Zohran is just expanding on it? Or are parents in NYC totally on their own now until their kids go into kindergarten?
I myself struggle with the incredibly simple comment “Zohran wants to do socialism”. Because while the obvious and not incorrect response is to just outline what he wants to do and how that obviously is not socialism, just practical actions that help people. But there is a part of me that feels that by sticking to that, it leaves the potential to interpret, by silence, that socialism is still “bad”. So I am thinking about adding in there “socialism is a fundamental change in how people work and who owns what, and that is well beyond what a mayor can do”, to indicate that I don’t think socialism is bad even if it was something that was in a mayor’s power to implement.
That headline is pretty awful, becaused “erased” is a term that can mean a lot of different things to humans. The actual content of the article is critical to understand:
The first Trump regime went far further than its already disgraceful policy of separating families, instead erasing them as legal units by recoding parents separated by immigration enforcement from their children as ‘single adults’ and labelling their children as ‘unaccompanied alien children’ who were then put in shelters to face immigration court hearings alone – many of them still infants.
Trump’s system created intentional chaos, with officials admitting data was “corrupt” and grossly inadequate, leaving the number of children separated from their families still unknown – but at least three thousand in a matter of weeks – and the government admitting in court that it is probably impossible to reunite many of them.
The regime sent many of the abducted children thousands of miles away from their detained parents to foster this chaos and make separation more likely to be irreversible.
Unspeakably evil. This regime has knowingly separated children from their parents and made it difficult if not nearly impossible for them to be reunited again. I don’t like saying “it’s hard to understand just how evil this is unless you are a parent”, because it’s not true. Of course people without kids can understand it. But as a parent, man, this one is really getting to me. To try and get a better life for my kids only to have them ripped away and never seen again… I can’t begin to describe what I would do in that situation.
The daily megathreads on the old cth sub during the George Floyd protests were amazing. Like hundreds of comments every night, maybe even a couple thousand if my memory serves me correct. Not unlike the news mega when really big news happens.
I would encourage newer users to read through @JoeySteel@hexbear.net ’s comments and posts, some real bangers in there. Joey was eventually banned for sectarianism back when we used to have actual anarchists and other tendencies around here.
It’s hard to over-emphasize just how much getting this whole website off the ground was on the shoulders of one admin (Beatnik). I hope they are still around but they put in so much work. And while I definitely do not want to open any wounds over TC69, I think the reason so many of us were thrilled she was back was she so crucial in developing a truly trans-inclusive site (even if we still have problems to work on). This site was bleeding trans users who were making regular posts about how this site sucks for trans users. TC69 stepped in and bullied this site into being better.
Speaking of which, I think there’s a finer detail missed when we talk about the “pronoun struggle session”. There were two stages. The first stage was when the site first introduced pronoun tags. My recollection is that was broadly very popular and there weren’t any issues there (I am cis though, maybe I missed some arguing over it?). I think a few days after that, there was an announcement that pronoun tags were mandatory. THAT correct take caused a big struggle session over people who complained about “muh opsec” and felt pronouns shouldn’t be required. Those folks all left or got banned.
She holds a BA in history from Chadron State College and an MA in history from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL).
So she’s more of a historian than say, Anne Applebaum or Dan Carlin. But less of a historian than… actual historians. No teaching position, no academic papers, etc
I’m not trying to be a snob about credentials, but there is a huge gulf between someone who has a BA in history and someone who has a PhD from a legit program. MAs can be good but there’s not really much of a standard there (Mike Duncan has an MA in history and IIRC he has enough respect for the work to not call himself a historian formally).
The reality is that a rigorous PhD program will teach you about how to research and analyze properly. The kind of research that would help prevent you from making brain dead takes like this one that most historians - even anti-communist ones - wouldn’t make.
President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened U.S. military intervention in Nigeria and the withholding of all foreign aid if its government continues “to allow the killing of Christians.”
Trump said in a post to social media that if Nigeria does not halt the persecution of Christians he may send U.S. troops “guns-a-blazing” to “completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.”
“I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action,” he wrote. “If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!”
On Friday, Trump threatened possible sanctions against the West African nation, declaring it a “country of particular concern” in terms of religious freedom — a classification Nigeria’s president pushed back on.
This might just be a weird quirk of my own social group, but that “straight to jail” episode of Parks and Rec I think genuinely poisoned people against Venezuela and I’m halfway convinced it was an op - like literally coordinated with the State Dept or something.
I will admit to being a bit of a grinch about Halloween. Even as a kid, I didn’t really get into it. As an adult, it’s very important to my wife that we all do a themed family costume, and I really dislike the costumes I’ve had to wear, so I wasn’t really all that thrilled about.
BUT, actually getting out there with the kids, it was so good to see how happy they were. They had a blast and I loved watching them do it all. My littlest one literally jumping up and down in excitement every time she got candy. Totally worth it.
Only downside was that there was basically no one else the neighborhood who was trick or treating. We went late and people were telling us that there was only one other family out there before us. My wife thinks it’s social media, and people in our town will gravitate to just a few neighborhoods were the people there go all out. She was saying she saw on Facebook that people in the most popular neighborhood were buying 10-12 big bags of candy and expecting to hand it all out.
fwiw I know a bunch of “average” Americans, and they all think the memes about this are hilarious. Same people who 6 weeks ago thought it was uncivil to celebrate someone’s death. I think folks don’t give a shit about ol’ Charlie anymore, that was faster than I thought.
I went ahead and voted “Yes” on prop 50. Yeah the democrats suck and I don’t vote for them anyway, but if a few more of them in the House can throw some wrenches into the GOP’s plans, I guess that’s “harm reduction”.