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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • Not by itself no, but it was a vector to be indoctrinated into a strong belief in a christian afterlife at a very young age.

    I no longer hold any of those beliefs. I now think that existence ex-nihilo and creation by something outside of the natural universe are two equally absurd possibilities, and science is fundamentally incapable of resolving that question.

    I have certainly had odd, even otherworldly experiences, but I couldn’t say what any of them meant or if they mean anything at all. I am deeply suspicious of anyone that claims to have the answers.


  • Oh I do know about that, I’ve had a near death experience myself, your body/brain has an uncanny sense that says “you are dangling over the precipice right now.”

    I just mean that until it actually happens, there is no true confirmation, and after, you can’t report back, that’s why it’s called a mystery.

    In fact from the way that person is talking it sounds like they may have had such an experience, and maybe now they’re doubting that it’s real.









  • If all of the people who stayed home would have been kamala voters then it sounds like she failed to inspire them to vote. It sounds like she lost an election.

    Yes, if an unprecedented, impossible turnout occurred then dems might’ve won, but that’s not actually a strategy, that’s fantasy. Assuming there isn’t some level of divine intervention, then people are right that their vote doesn’t matter, because this is the real world where we already know a plurality of people don’t vote.

    It’s almost like voter disenfranchisement works.

    I don’t know why liberals can’t get this basic concept: if electoralism is meaningful at all, then the electorate cannot be wrong.

    If the electorate voted “wrong” then your democracy doesn’t do what it claims to, it does not represent the people. <- this is actually the correct answer btw

    Blaming the electorate achieves nothing.

    The electorate didn’t fail the dems, the dems failed the electorate.


  • It’s hard to blame the people who stayed home when disenfranchisement is an intended feature of your electoral system. The vast majority of people know for a fact that their vote mathematically does not matter and a huge number cannot get time off on the weekday it is scheduled for.

    If a full third of people stayed home, that’s a systemic problem, not an individual responsibility problem. Your electoral system is completely captured by capital and you are stuck blaming the electorate.

    Folks please: US corruption is not a cultural or personal issue, it is systemic. Power corrupts, not just people, but systems. The US has been at the head of the global hegemon for most of the last century, they have most of the billionaires, of course they are corrupt. That’s where capitalists focus their efforts to get the most returns. It’s not an accident that the guy doing DOGE just happened to be the richest man on the planet.

    Maybe focus your energy there instead of on the people who have literally no power.


  • Asking for a historical example is not inciting violence, telling people to start shooting and put their money where their mouth is, is inciting violence, even if you’re being sarcastic.

    I wonder what you would consider as not “all talk”? Someone posting evidence? Gee, I wonder why people don’t do that. I wonder if that’s exactly what people engaging in direct action should never do.

    I wonder how I can tell the difference between what you’re doing now and how a fed would talk.





  • Facebook has had a strategy for a long time of monopolising the internet of countries that previously had very little internet. They essentially subsidise internet infrastructure and make that subsidy dependent on facebook being a central part of the network.

    So I’m not surprised to hear this. They obviously have found ways to inveigle themselves into key infrastructure in lots of places, even if they couldn’t build it in from the ground up.


  • They are obviously not in a reasoning place. I wouldn’t try logic, but they are susceptible to emotional manipulation. That’s how they fell for fascist propaganda in the first place. I would go for emotional truth.

    You have to judge if you’re safe to do this, but the next time they’re screaming about their absurd conspiracies, I would get a really sad look on my face, make direct eye contact, shake my head and say, “You’re so full of hate, and it’s really sad.” Just go full sincerity and show them how you see them.

    You can even set them up for it. Next time you try telling them some fact that they’re going to have this hateful response to, you can have this in your back pocket. You start with a simple fact, they respond with hate, you reply by telling them they’re being hateful.

    This is a modification of this strategy: https://youtu.be/tZzwO2B9b64

    Basically, don’t waste time arguing with fascists, just point out that they’re being assholes.

    Now, I say you need to judge how safe you feel doing this, because you might be surprised how ballistic they go. People stuck in abusive behaviour patterns hate nothing more than having that behaviour simply described to them. But when they do lose their shit, you can just describe it again.

    Sometimes they will just short-circuit and try to ignore you, or chastise you for speaking out of turn. The authoritarian personality is deeply connected to authoritarian parenting attitudes. Just persist over time, and maybe they will notice that they can’t stop you from reflecting their ugly selves back at them.

    I don’t know how old you are, how physically big you are, how prone they are to serious outbursts, but again, pay attention to your body and how much you’re feeling your flight instinct. Only if you feel safe.

    I do this with my parents sometimes. Like if my mum is fussing over my kids in some way that I think is invasive, - this was a sore point in my upbringing, she has no filter and no boundaries - I don’t engage on the facts of what she’s saying. I don’t tell her, “That tiny red spot you’ve noticed isn’t a big problem,” because that’s also being invasive and speaking on their behalf. I say “People don’t like to be scrutinised like that. If that’s a real problem they can tell us.”

    It’s honestly astonishing how fast this resolves some situations. That might have been a perennial argument about some fussy detail of my child’s appearance, all the time adding to the boundary-crossing scrutiny they experience, but shutting it down by pointing out her behaviour really makes her stop, and it communicates to my kids that they don’t have to put up with it. It teaches them that they have autonomy.

    It’s taken many years of demonstrating to her that I won’t be pushed around or intimidated for me to get to this point though. It’s not an easy road, and often the way to know the tactic is working is by watching how unpleasant someone gets when you do it, at least at first.

    Again: only if you feel safe.


  • Excrubulent@slrpnk.nettoYou Should Know@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    29 days ago

    This is an online forum. It’s words. Your idea that the people you’re talking to are all talk is unfalsifiable. If anyone did post on here about pulling a trigger you could attack them for being all talk for exactly that same reason.

    On this forum, you are also all talk. There is literally nothing else you can do on here.

    But go off, everybody around you is all talk, all the time. That certainly isn’t a feature of the place you chose to express your vapid rants.

    People who are organising on the ground are under no obligation to keep you in the loop by posting about it publicly, especially given you clearly aren’t interested in helping anyway.

    My guess is your accusations are all a projection of your own feelings of powerlessness. I mean there’s not going to be another election for about 4 more years, and your only method of change is useless until then.

    Gee, I wonder if that’s by design?


  • I agree broadly with the idea that the state’s legitimacy relies on the appearance that they wield their violence justly, but I think you’re giving the state too much credit when you frame it as a fair and considered exchange of power.

    The state has had all of us under its purview since birth, it has pumped us full of pro-hierarchy, anti-autonomy, anti-social propaganda and it wields its violence more to prevent insurgency than it does to protect us.

    There is no “social contract”, nothing that I ever signed anyway, and even if there were, contract law invalidates any contract signed under duress. The concept of the social contract is just yet more hierarchical propaganda. It’s a vague, handwavey vibe to obscure the fact that we really aren’t given a meaningful option to leave.

    The state relies on not just the appearance of legitimacy, but the appearance of absolute power. Both are illusions, and can be opposed by organised people directly building mutual aid on the ground. The more we meet one another’s needs for security the less we need the state and the more people can see it for the charade that it is.