drthunder

I wonder what the mildest thing a true AI could tell the oligarchs to do that would make them shut it down. Giving 10% of their wealth away and not in a tax dodge way? Stop funding fascists?

I appreciate your period-appropriate example with TJ Ford.

It feels so out of character that they'd call each other that, because I think that's really the only part of that movie that didn't age well. The rest of the time they're a great example of guys having a healthy friendship.

Every time I come across forum posts from the 2000s I lose a little bit of nostalgia for that period of time. The casual bigotry was fucking everywhere.

Not to be confused with Times Square

On top of what everyone else has said, I'm gonna be that person and bring up capitalism, which I'm defining as private ownership of business (as opposed to state ownership, or ownership by the workers, etc). Capitalism concentrates money, and by extension power, which is never good for people without it. I'll admit I'm biased as a socialist, but at this point the biggest indictment of capitalism for me is that most of what we're seeing these days isn't new: rampant wealth inequality which leads to institutions decaying, followed by liberal and conservative elites being either unable or unwilling to fix problems that are plain for everyone to see, followed by people being radicalized.

The new thing is global warming, which can't be attributed solely to capitalism but is being exacerbated by it. A handful of people who get their money and power from fossil fuels would rather burn the world to ashes than give up that money and power (yes, they're probably investing in renewables, but if they treated global warming like the existential threat it is, they wouldn't be bankrolling climate deniers.

(this should not be interpreted as an endorsement of the Soviet Union or the current Chinese government, they are/were both also results of capitalism failing but neither of those is relevant to democracy failing in the West™ also I'm not a tankie, authoritarianism of every stripe is bad)

Having an idea of the government we want to have before shit goes down is a great idea. I've thought about writing down my thoughts for what a better government would look like and maybe I should do that. I'm sure none of us randos on Lemmy would be the people in the room where it's happening, but if we talk about it maybe we can influence it.

I saw a take a few months ago that voting third party isn't voting your conscience, voting your conscience is going against what you really want to do, to do what will actually result in the least harm happening. Our system of government is absolute trash but until it changes (and we should all be pushing for it to change) this is what we've got.

If you like the aggressive energy of that song, other ones like that are WWIII; Bullets, Bombs, and Bigotry; Paradise; and KMF. They have a shitload of music but that's what I can think of off the top of my head.

Here are my thoughts:

• Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza since day 1, they just pick up the pace sometimes
• Every US president this century has enabled this
• Biden and Harris were all on board with the current round of fast genocide and they should be remembered for it
• Trump pretends to be anti-war but emboldened this shit by moving the US embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 or 19
• Netanyahu wanted Trump to win, as evidenced by meeting him during the campaign last year
• Any ceasefire supposedly happening right now is entirely to give Trump good press. He's going to give Israel even more support for their imperialist bullshit than Biden did and Harris would have
• Because Trump won, the federal government is going after immigrants, nonwhite people, LGBT people, etc, and is going to further tear the good parts of the government down

I'm pretty disillusioned with the Democrats between the imperialism and almost completely giving in to the fascist takeover, but I wouldn't be looking to get out of the country if Harris had won, so thanks for that if you could have voted and didn't.

edit: I voted Uncommitted in the primary, helped out at my local Gaza camp, and have gone to rallies and distributed books about Palestine, so I'm not just sitting here at my computer saying all this

I haven't experienced it lately, but sometimes when I watch too many YTPs I start getting fascist shit in my recommendations.

It really does. And I do think it was on the Brutal Legend soundtrack. I know it because I'm just old enough to remember that sort of stuff back in the 90s when it was big.