piefood

I use LUKS and backup to a usb-drive that I have at home. I rsync those backups to my work once a week. Not everyone can backup to their office, but as others have said, backing up to a friend/family member’s house is doable. The nice thing about rsync is that you can limit the bandwidth, so that even though it takes longer, it doesn’t saturate their internet connection.

As someone who grew up fundamentalist-religious and right-wing, but then got out of it, it’s becuase of a few things:

• You’d have to restructure a lot of your world-view, and that is very hard. You have to take a fundamental part of how you see the world, discard it, and watch a bunch of other values and beliefs come crashing down. Rebuilding from that is scary and hard.

• You have a lot of social investment as being part of the “in-crowd” of your community. A lot of your friends/family/colleagues/social-circle all keep reinforcing your beliefs. This makes it hard to step away from those beliefs, because you feel like you are betraying that community. Many communities will indeed abandon you, especially if you go to the “other side”. You suddenly have to become the enemy that you’ve been rallying against.

• Sunk-Cost fallacy: You’ve already spent so much time and effort in this belief, that youre really hoping something will happen, and your faith in the person or system will be justified. Eventually it’ll pay off if you wait just a little longer. Of course, “wait a little longer” ends up being years and years, and at that point you have more compounded mistakes that you have to admit to. This makes you feel like a bigger idiot than if you had just admitted your mistakes up front.

tl;dr: It’s a cult!

Yup, we are mostly in agreement. I will push back on this though:

Because voting is one of the least effortful political action that can be taken

For a lot of people, taking a day off work, to spend hours in line at a polling booth, while voter intimidation is kind of allowed, is a lot of effort. Especially when you factor in that they need to spend time researching the candidates and issues they’ll be voting on. I’ve lived in places where even getting registered was a huge pain, and took a lot of time. Where I currently live, voting is super easy, and I appreciate that, and I think it’s less of an excuse. But for a lot of people, it does take a lot of effort, and I find not voting in those circumstances more understandable.

I’m not sure thats true. Many people had legitimate concerns that Biden was backing a genocide. I’ve never seen any stats showing that they were right-wing posts. Plenty of left-wing people were mad about that as well.

Hillary won the popular vote when she ran. I think most people abstained because Harris was a terrible candidate, who ran on terrible policies that went against what the voter-base wanted.

I mostly agree with you, which is why I voted 3rd party, and I still recommend that others vote. But voting can take a lot of time and effort, which most people are short on. I think a lot of people would vote, if they thought their vote counted, but with the two major parties we have, it clearly doesn’t.

I see it as less of “I can’t be bothered to make the effort; anything is fine”, and more of “Both of you fight against what I want, why would I bother”

Bad analogies are bad

Which I also find understandable. I disagree with non-voters, but if both choices are terrible, and fight against what you want, I understand why people wouldn’t want to vote.

Maybe people wouldn’t call him “Genocide Joe” if he hadn’t backed a genocide. I always find it amazing that people blame the voters, instead of blaming the people with the power, the platform, and the money, who chose genocide over winning the election.

Or… It could be that people have lost faith in the Democratic party. Look at their current approval rating. Look at Biden’s terrible presidency. Look at Biden and Harris’ terible campaigns. Look at the issues and policies that they ran on. All of that pushed people away from them based on the polling.

It’s easy to blame foreign influence, but it’s more productive to figure out why the supposedly left party ran to the right, and alienated their voting base. Did the Russian try to influence the election? Of course, I’d be surprised if they didn’t. But from what I saw, the Demcrats did more damage to themselves than the Russians could have hoped for.

And how much is the new one raking in? They swapped out the person, but kept the problem.

Let me donate directly to Firefox development. Stop giving their terrible executives giant piles of money.

Yeah, that’s a totally fair perspective. I gave up on the Democratic party a long time ago, partly because their current lack of fight is exactly what I expect from them. I totally understand why people voted for Harris, but I disagree with their strategy. I feel like continuing to support the Democrats is like digging yourself out of a hole: No matter how much you dig, you’re still stuck in the hole.

I see Trump as a symptom of something bigger. Yes, I’m angry that he won, but I’m more angry at the ecosystem allows him to stay electable. And I think the Democrats are a large part of why that ecosystem is the way it is. Instead of cleaning things up, and fighting for their voter-base, they chose to build the systems that Trump is using. There’s an old saying: Democrats clean and load the gun, Republicans shoot it.

I desperately want the Democrats to be a party I believe in. But I after years of seeing them in action, I’m convinced that abandoning them is the right call. And I know I’m not alone. Look at how many people gave up on the Dems at the election, and how low their polling is right now. I think all of that abandonment is well deserved.

Some people want to try and fix the broken party, and I think that’s fine, I have no problem with them trying. But I think a third party is a better use of our time.

I feel like “lets keep bombing children”, or “we’re going to back a genocide harder than they are”, or “we’re going to do a better job of putting immigrants in prison” is indeed only slightly better than the Republicans position.

I voted against both of the two major parties because both the Democrats and the Republicans fight against what I want. They both are pro-genocide, pro-corporation, pro-war, etc. While I don’t think they are the same, both parties are pretty evil.

If the Republicans are a 2, the Democrats are a 3 at best. I’m looking for a 9 or a 10, and I’ll vote against both of the parties until one of them stop fighting against what I want, and start fighting for what I want.

I chose to vote 3rd party, knowing that they wouldn’t win, because I’d rather my vote be a vote against the both of them, than an endorsement of either one.

EDIT: I appreciate an honest question, trying to understand my point of view. These discussions tend to get a bit crazy, with a lot of baseless accusations and ad-hominem arguements. Thanks for taking it seriously!

I love how Democrats pretend it’s not their fault for running terrible candidates with awful policies, that people don’t want to vote for.

Maybe you should spend your effort getting the Democrats to realize that running awful candidates like Kamala is why they keep losing. I’d love to be able to side the Democrats, but they keep putting forward bad candidates with terrible platforms.

Oh look it’s another account that doesn’t read things that I’ve written, then accuses me of stuff. I’ve already mentioned how terrible the Republicans and Trump are, and that I think the Democrats would have been better.

Incorrect! I too, voted against the fascist. But I also voted against genocide, which was apparently too hard for you.

I hope you enjoy your endorsement of genocide as you’re rounded up by trumps gestapo.

No one here is rooting for genocide

Literally the Democratic leadership is. They’re even doing more: they are funding it.

It’s not good, but it’s better.

I agree it’s better, but it’s still not good enough for me to vote for. I understand why people held their nose and voted for Harris, but I was unwilling to do the same. We have different standards. I’ve seen the Democrats continuously fight against the policies that I want, and so I chose ‘nah’ over them. So did a lot of other people, so maybe they should incorporate that into their strategy next time.

if you want to actually mitigate this shit storm as best you can instead of letting idealogical purity fuck you over even more.

I find this hilarious coming in support of a party who chose the ideological purity of genocide and money, instead of chosing a popular stance and winning the election.