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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: December 25th, 2023

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  • China’s energy grid is about 80% fossil fuels. Assuming their energy mixture remains unchanged (a bad assumption as their coal usage is on the decline) it would take about 65,000 miles for an EV’s carbon output to break even with an equivalent ICE vehicle.

    The waste and suffering involved in carbon intensive fuels is ongoing instead of being single event. One benefit of renewable tech is the recyclability of it’s components. Once we’re made the battery it can be recycled and died not require ongoing extractive mining forever.

    EVs have a place in a just future and can do some good at this time. Alternatives to cars are still a far more important and uncomplicated solution to our climate problems





  • I don’t think it’s the source. I think it’s a tool of social control that enables the powerful to create a bare minimum willingness to be ruled. For a long time the doctrine of Christianity was the Divine Right of Kings. Now it’s the Prosperity Gospel. The books did not change but the people with all the money and power ensured the church leaders who served their interest had most of the money and thus followers.

    If we didn’t have religion, some other social construct would arise, and I’d argue, has arisen to fulfill it’s role. Modern economic theory justifies the current power order in an unfalsifiable way that reminds me of religion.

    Religion could be a liberatory force in society. In fact it has been. The liberation theology movement in South America and numerous heretical movements in the late medieval period are both examples of progressive Christian social movements.





  • You’re not wrong, but that doesn’t contradict what I said. Just because some Jews are willing to take anti-semetically motivated help doesn’t make that help not anti-semetic. The added effect on diaspora Jews is destabilizing as well. Every antisemite can justify abuse by telling people just to go to Israel.

    This is a tangent but, a common belief is that Jews needed an ethnically Jewish state in Palestine in order to live there. That is not true. Jewish folks have lived in that area continuously for millennia. In a lot of ways Zionism is a power grab. It’s a way to grab land to get rich in a speculative land market. It’s not dissimilar from how the genocide of indigenous peoples played out in the United States.




  • I’m glad Biden ended family separation and has increased electronic monitoring over detention. Unfortunately, tons of people are still in abusive privately run immigration prisons. Many are dying during border crossings. Plenty of kids who immigrated are laboring in meat packing plants.

    Biden continues many of Trump’s awful policies, but because he does it in a quieter, more respectable tone he receives less backlash. The lack of support people get from us is stark and the abolish ICE movement has withering away.

    Both these situations are bad. I think my point is less about the election and more that we collectively should do something about these conditions. Mutual aid, volunteer, harass a representative, just something.








  • More specifically the question is, does the statute in question apply to people preventing a government procedure from occurring? Previously the statute has been used to prosecute folks who tamper with evidence. They’re quibbling over the wording and whether storming a proceeding is also covered.

    It’s seems fairly obvious to me that January 6th rioters wanted to stop the proceedings in a way that protestors of the supreme court do not. It also seems obvious that the government wouldn’t want citizens to be able to legally prevent it’s basic proceedings from occurring.

    Also worth saying the defendant ran at a police line yelling “charge”


  • I don’t think that’s how people work. An individual can decide to think critically, act selflessly, but when you’re talking about millions of people environment means so much more. A mass of people don’t just do anything. They are the result of their education, media, and religion. When all these things are shaped by people with all the money it’s no wonder that people are bigoted, short sighted, and disillusioned with politics. We live in an extremely sophisticated propaganda machine.

    As long as people are sufficiently comfortable, things will continue as they are. Enough people need to find their material reality shitty enough that they’re no longer willing to eat the shit we’ve been fed all this time. Things haven’t been this concentrated since before the great depression. If we see a similar economic collapse. This time a collapse in the ad/tech market or obscene capital financialization, and we’ll finally see a similar backlash against capital. We just need to make sure we finish the job and the owners can’t slowly claw back political power again.