comfy

Thanks for checking, it's refreshing to see that attitude and care online.

I would suggest they survey their target audience (when they're in Arizona, ask Arizonans), see what they need the Dems to help with, and then see if they can use their power to help with it.

I know that's vague, but one of the worst things I could do is arrogantly pretend I know the most important struggles of local working people. Sure, I could just guess, and some of those guesses may be right - perhaps establishing community aid organizations to reduce the impact of financial strain, creating or supporting rent/tenancy unions to help address housing crises, and labor struggles like union industrial action efforts to create better working conditions and reduce injury and death in the workplace, throwing their weight behind existing protests. But if something else is more important to a region (perhaps a local group able to solve a local problem is underfunded or needs an expert to assist), and a political party recognizes and addresses it, that is empowering to the citizens and helps build enthusiastic support for the party, rather than just seeing them as ineffective distant rich people.

Ah, right. I'm not familiar enough with US law to realize.

There is nothing they can truly do to fight without tons of popular support.

That's true, absolutely, but also there's only so much hype can do without actions alongside to make people feel empowered. Plenty of people go to protests, then realize they've just stood around chanting and feel like nothing was accomplished, especially after a few times in a row. So while rallying and gaining popularity is necessary, it's not sufficient.

On the other hand, using those crowds to accomplish actions, even minor and safe, shows to participants that this is a group and a strategy that can accomplish things.

It has to be organized for one.

I disagree. Consider racist mass shootings by lone perpetrators. It's clearly an act attempting to incite terror and tension, many of them make it clear in their manifestos that they're trying to spark a 'race war'. But it's not organized, beyond being the result of stochastic terrorism.

While he certainly deserves to suffer proportional to the suffering he’s causing

Even Abu Gharib would struggle to do that. The scale of influence billionaires have is insane.

ok that's cool and all but what are they actually doing?

They've clearly demonstrated they have enough influence to draw a crowd. Plenty of activists dream of that kind of audience. Hopefully they did more than just state the obvious........ mobilize them towards non-electoral action!

"My collection of rare, incurable diseases! Violated!"

The first time I heard about him beyond a vague "electric car person" post was from a tech co-worker in 2017, where they said they read a biography of Elon where they basically labelled him a sociopath. So, just to emphasize to anyone in the back-row, it's certainly not news.

The video does bring up human ability too with the fog test ("Optically, with my own eyes, I can no longer see there's a kid through this fog. The lidar has no issue.") But, as they show, this wall is extremely obvious to the driver.

I hope some of you actually skimmed the article and got to the "disengaging" part.

As Electrek points out, Autopilot has a well-documented tendency to disengage right before a crash. Regulators have previously found that the advanced driver assistance software shuts off a fraction of a second before making impact.

It's a highly questionable approach that has raised concerns over Tesla trying to evade guilt by automatically turning off any possibly incriminating driver assistance features before a crash.

I just hate authoritarians on either side who suppress free speech

There's an interesting point to make about speech, moderation and social media platforms, including those that make up Lemmy.

The bottom line is, there will always be some limit to speech on platforms for them to fulfill their purpose, and you just need to figure out what limits you're fine with. There are some "free speech extremist" platforms which allow almost everything - they're invariably and inevitably just filled with spam-bots, literal pedophiles, neo-nazis and people unable to hold a conversation, because they get kicked off from all the other sites and no-one else can enjoy being around them for long. I say this to emphasize that a vague ideal notion of 'free speech' isn't a helpful perspective to apply to a real society. Even the US legal system, famous for its First Amendment to the Constitution, has explicit suppression of speech, and other countries will have their own laws, so a platform is at legal risk for hosting any violating speech, and most admins won't go to prison to defend some shitposters they've never met.

It's also important to consider that many of these instances aren't "general purpose" but are made for a purpose or an audience. For example, an instance or community focusing on bicycles and cycling might sometimes discuss cars but it has no pragmatic reason to tolerate repetitive time-wasting trolls yelling about how cars don't have freedoms anymore and that bike riders are destroying their daily commute, or repeating easily-debunked misinformation like saying that adding one more lane will fix a road. These aren't new ideas, these aren't useful conversations to the community, so the community will moderate and censor to allow actually useful conversations to thrive. If they want to engage in a more challenging conversation, there's plenty of neutral ground around.

like those who overtake and control your beloved communist system

You say that as if there isn't broad speech suppression under capitalism, even the most liberal (as in liberty) states like the USA. The bottom line is, all states work to suppress revolt. The main difference is that capitalism's suppression is a systematic effect of the owning class exercising private and legislative power, rather than a one-party government system directly suppressing counter-ideology. For a real example, university students in my country are threatened with expulsion (a punishment with serious financial and career impacts) for speech against Israel and their university's ties to it, and in the USA, this has already resulted in the attempted deportation of a permanent resident, not to mention constant police suppression against such protesters and university staff in plenty of countries. Look at recent (and historical) anti-protest laws in capitalist countries.

But for a more general analysis, mass media control effectively turns most significant avenues for speech into private platforms ruled by the owning class. If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading Manufacturing Consent (or at the very least, skimming the Wikipedia page) which explains the main five factors which filter news and media away from ideas which benefit the worker class and towards the ideas and ideology of the owner class. This is society-wide speech suppression, just not through legal means. You mentioned how reddit is suppressive, and if the same is systematically (not coincidentally) true for reddit, twitter, facebook, instagram, and all the other sites with an audience large enough to matter at scale... freedom of speech in this society is more of an idea than a reality.

Under capitalism, the ultra-rich class have similar powers to the one-party states of a Leninist states like China or Cuba or the former Soviet Union, it's simply more indirect - the owning class own all mainstream television, film and online news companies, all mainstream social media platforms, and frankly, most federal politicians. Politicians at that level have almost no chance of election without the support of the owning class, who can give them funding, media air-time and the propaganda they need to win a national popularity contest, so make no mistake, they're beholden to the owning class. This is one part of how companies can pressure politicians to benefit them instead of the people they're supposed to represent.

but hey “that’s not real communism”, right?

Haha, that's a whole thing, and it's not just some excuse: it's referring to real ideological disputes, just like those who claim crony capitalism "isn't real capitalism", or the USA's recent authoritarian turn "isn't real capitalism", or that a regulated social welfare state like the Nordic Model "isn't real capitalism". What the heck is "real" capitalism if capitalist economies like the USA or the Russian Federation don't count? Same for socialism and communism, silly people claim only their school of thought is the "real" version. The classic "No true Scotsman" fallacy at work!

We've just been talking about Leninist states, not any of the other forms of communist ideologies such as libertarian communism aka. anarcho-communism. An anarcho-communist will sincerely claim "it's not real communism" because it establishes a state. Like you, they hate authoritarians, and so they want to eradicate "unjust hierarchy" altogether, and the state-driven approach of China, Cuba and the Soviet Union is unacceptable to them.

As for the supporters of those Leninist states, their viewpoint is that these states are a tool to transition from a capitalist mode of production to a socialist mode of production. None of these states claim to have reached the socialist, let alone communist, mode of production yet. So while they do believe this is communism (that is, the social movement towards establishing a communist mode of production), it very obviously hasn't established a communist society (that is, one which has obsoleted economic classes, the state and money).