Hard disagree. Randomly murdering fascists does not a revolution make, to say nothing of the odds of winning that fight.

Go to the gym. Be able to do cardio without dying. Work on your fitness and health. Then buy a gun. Train with it. A lot. Organize with like-minded people. Invest in community defense, look out for LGBT / immigrant / marginalized friends and family. Be prepared for violence, but keep it a last resort. When / if bullets start flying, lives with be ruined on both sides of the gun.

Hear, hear! If anything, this election has proven that we need to work on class consciousness and the Overton window. Mutual aid, direct action, protest & strike support, salting, and civil disobedience are all ways we can produce the conditions needed for positive change.

Oh shit! Reading comprehension is my passion.

Yeah, that’s much more based.

Sucks that “firing” is what we’re trying to get, when it should be “life changing legal consequences”.

I have no idea why people think late-term, abortion-as-contraceptive abortions are a thing.

Have they never known a pregnant person? Seen all the gross and painful shit pregnancy puts someone through? Do they really think people are subjecting their bodies to that for six months… just because???

The purpose of my jellybean thought exercise was to show that “I don’t know” and “I don’t believe” are not mutually exclusive. Basically:

I do not believe [x] != I believe [not x]

I don’t believe in String Theory. String Theory may be correct for all I know: I am not a physicist, and my understanding of String Theory is cursory at best.

Because I do not have enough evidence to warrant belief, I cannot say I believe in String Theory. But that same lack of understanding means I must also say I don’t believe that String Theory is false.

Say you have a jar full of jellybeans. We know that the number of whole jellybeans in the jar must be either even or odd.

If someone asks you if you believe the number of jellybeans in the jar is even, you can and should say “no” if you haven’t counted them or otherwise gathered any evidence to support that conclusion. To believe something is to say you feel it is more likely true than false, and you can’t say that about the given proposition.

Importantly, this does not mean you do believe the number of jellybeans is odd. The fact that one of those two things must be true does not mean you have to pick one to believe and one to disbelieve. It is perfectly rational to reserve belief either way until you have evidence one way or the other. You do not believe it’s even, nor do you believe it’s odd.

So, if we define “atheist” as “someone who does not believe in any gods”, I think you meet the definition of atheist. Just like the person in the above example does not believe the jellybeans are even & also does not believe they are odd, you don’t need to believe “there are no gods anywhere” to not believe “there is at least one god”.

Been thru most of these. Lived with chronic pain. Wife and I lost our jobs this year within a few months of each other. Had someone credibly threaten to sue me for more than I could afford. Dealt with depression & suicidality. Worked from home with a gun on my desk because the cops wouldn’t do anything about my batshit insane neighbor.

The list of problems I have proven to myself I can survive grows longer every day. I have the contact info for a good psychiatrist, lawyer, and physical therapist. I know who my support network is, and exactly how far I can stretch a dollar. Yes, bad things happen now that are worse than when I was younger. But I am stronger and more in control of my life. Problems that would have broken me down when I was just starting out are things I can now handle without so much as elevating my heart rate.

And, there are new joys that have only become accessible to me through the benefit of experience! Fears I have conquered, hangups I have gotten over, people I have warmed up to.

Getting older doesn’t just suck. I think it just seems that way because people (on the internet at least) find it really easy and relatable to complain.

All of these men sorta look like Ryan Reynolds.

The big divide in the US is not so much between Republicans and Democrats as between people who invest and people who don’t. For a man of his means who is running for America’s second-highest office, Tim Walz is on the wrong side.

God forbid a leadership position go to someone not in the ownership class!

In 2022, 58 per cent of Americans owned stock, either directly or indirectly through mutual funds. Based on his 2019 financial disclosures and his 2022 tax filings, the Democratic vice presidential nominee is not one of them.

So? The average American, who has maybe a 401k and some options thru their company, still has more shared class interests with someone who owns no stocks whatsoever than with someone who doesn’t have to work for a living.

The rest of the article fails to load, but looking at the author’s other pieces, we see she thinks price gouging is a myth and that another recession might actually be a good thing. She’s either so out of touch she may as well be from outer space, a soulless corporate sellout, or intentionally writing ragebait with an economic coat of paint.

I feel you in a big way, but to be totally fair: corporations becoming states has probably trended towards the better from a zoomed-out perspective, and political leaders lying all the time has probably only become more visible than ever.

The entities that were doing all the colonialism for the past several hundred years have been private companies, and they did huge amounts of slavery and genocide. Blackwater is bad, but the East India Company was worse. This is not to say that things are good now, only that they aren’t like worse than they’ve ever been.

And I think the present day has a greater expectation of political leaders being accountable to the people they govern than most of history. Back in the days of monarchs and oligarchs, there was no mass media to tell everyone they were lying and no likely consequences for the liars even if there were.

Again, I empathize a huge amount with what you’ve said & I am also disappointed that the world we’ve created isn’t better than it is. I just personally think that the above two are trending in a more optimistic direction, even if they’re still objectively pretty bad.

Fifty-three percent of respondents hold a “very or somewhat” unfavorable view of the system, while 40 percent hold a “very or somewhat” favorable view.

I swear to God, you could ask “Do you enjoy being hit in the face with a hammer?” in a poll and 30% - 50% of my countrymen would answer “yes”. At least one third of this country lives in a completely different reality.

I spent all afternoon reading that comic, having to call it a night on chapter 93. Thanks for the link!

1. Rape does not always involve physically overpowering someone. Someone may coerce someone else into sex with blackmail, lies, threats, or abuse of a position of power.

2. Erections are controlled by a person’s autonomic nervous system. A man can get hard even when he is not turned on or consenting to what is happening.

3. Not all rape involves a penis. A woman who sticks an object into a man without his consent is committing rape. Rape is about power and control over another person, and the rapist need not be directly stimulated for rape to occur.

I’m glad I’m not the only one with that criticism. I enjoyed the first game so much more because of that.

I would guess the logic behind going harder on repeat offenders is that they’ve already been punished once and didn’t stop breaking the law, so we should punish them harder this time. Not sure that’s super effective reasoning, but w/e.

Carries a gun

Violently terrified of others carrying guns

This guy was never not going to murder someone.

Yep. Prisoners and homeless people are there to remind you what happens if you stop making money for the boss man. Plenty of horrible, exhausting, unsafe jobs get away with paying dogshit wages because it’s either that or being thrown into the maelstrom of human misery that is being incarcerated / unhoused. How many people would die of heat exhaustion in an Amazon warehouse if they knew their basic needs would still be met if they quit?

Silly me, I thought you were trying to make a picture of an animal with a gun!

The receiver is backwards and there are two ejection ports.