supersquirrel

No, it is far less environmentally friendly than rc bots made of metal, plastic, and electronics full of nasty little things like batteries blasting, sawing, burning and smashing one another to pieces.

Definitely falls under the category of a Trap ICE card.

Bernie is an agitator; he helps radicalize people and show them the light, so to speak. That’s one thing, but it’s not leadership;

Leaders don't start movements, they might think they do, but it is agitators that start movements. The leaders come later and though a good or bad leader can determine the fate of a movement, it is never the leaders that inject power and broad appeal into a movement. It is the agitators that do.

To put it another way, leaders are what you need in a struggle against a political near-peer opponent to win. However when in an environment where your political opponent is far more powerful, one might say catastrophically more powerful, the best strategy is different. Agitators are what you need in a resistance, preferably those agitators are just everyday people everywhere getting into conversations with people around them about how things could be different and how being exasperated is actually very sensible right now.

Interestingly, I think this is actually the precise moment that Bernie Sanders and AOC are with their tour of massive public speeches attempting to transition from a resistance strategy to a more peer-to-peer strategy of directly challenging power and building broad based appeal and consensus to stage a legitimate claim for physical and ideological leadership of the democratic party or at least whatever party will ultimately dismantle it. Yes I know this is literally just agitating, but it is the kind of agitating you do when you are getting people ready to change the status quo and you want to establish broad based support and desire for it so that people are DEMANDING on the streets the policies future Bernie Sanders and AOC like politicians will be advocating for in the halls of power.

Maybe it is too little too late, I am not arguing that, but I Bernie and AOC are making moves like they understand at least now how desperate the situation is for democracy and future and current quality of life for people in the US and globally for that matter.

As a USian I wonder if Trump actually consistently understands the difference between Greenland and Iceland. I would love if y'all joined up with Iceland to try to confuse and humiliate the shit out of the Trump administration by satirically pre-confusing your two countries just to see if the Trump administration even catches it happening. For example when a leader from Greenland is speaking, casually refer to the capital of Greenland as Reykjavík just to see if the fuckers even catch it... then make fun of them mercilessly later.

Then if you get corrected by one of these goons say with a straight face that oh no "Nuuk" is a very offensive term for women in Greenlandian.

Hell, maybe even temporarily switch flags with Iceland just to commit to the bit. I know it would be a lot of work, just saying if y'all feel like trolling the US please do it as hard as you possibly can.

If you need a blueprint for this consult the character Minna Häkkinen (played wonderfully by Sally Phillips) from the TV show Veep which is a terrifyingly accurate takedown of U.S. politics. She constantly takes the piss out of the show's U.S. characters and it is great.

I could not disagree more, I think Bernie is the rare movement leader who understands that as egoecentric as they are (must be to be a politician?) that in terms of raw power, time you spend stoking a movement based on ideas and desired results pays back in future gains FAR MORE vs. focusing on cultivating the strength, charisma and cultural relevancy of certain political leaders to make them into the superheroes we need to save us....

...most people in the U.S are ready to vote for anybody but Trump so long as they don't perceive that figure is part of an ossified Democratic establishment that is barely better than Republicans at times.

In this environment, Bernie's strategy of always emphasizing his ideas and policy visions over his specific character or genius was wise or perhaps really the only realistic play given the political realities somewhat leftist figures like Bernie Sanders face at the national level in the U.S.

It is the opposite of the Trump strategy of trying to forge cultural figures that motivate people based on who they are as characters in a cultural landscape of grievances or perceived threats.

For this reason conservatism has utterly failed to do anything other than motivate ignorant people into violent beliefs while progressivism has radically reshaped what is possible in political conversation in the U.S., what younger people believe is possible for our future in the U.S., and brought legions of semi-informed voters into a practice of focusing on, critiquing and discussing policy as if they were working in politics and knew all of the specifics because they had to.

It is only ok to think of it this way though if you immediately qualify that with it is a problem with a specific subsection of a generation within colonial powers who are or believe they are middle-class, upper-middle class or wealthy.

I guess that can seem like a pedantic qualification, but it actually isn't because all of the energy in people's agitation just siphons off into hating old people from a perspective that doesn't illuminate anything, and it REALLY isolates older people who weren't included in that collective selfish foreclosure of our future. All the seniors who are forced to work, living in poverty or alone. Even if they have shitty politics, when we just talk about it as a generational problem we deny their agency and potential as individual human beings.

We also feed into an unspoken centering of the experience of people in colonial powers and ignore the colonized who have been excluded categorically.

At the same time I also bristle when people get upset at people exclaiming shit like "gahh man, fuck boomers" without an acknolwedgement that... yeah I mean fuck boomers kinda....

It is like if someone says "fuck men" in exasperation nearby me, yeah well I am a man and in my heart I try to be a good person and I know there are good men who are loving and mature... but like... I join in with the vibes because I know they aren't talking about me (or if they are maybe I need to take a step back, breathe, and listen?). I don't say "not all men!!!" and I think there is a tiny bit of that in the response people have to shutting down people exasperated with boomers because the truth is complicated.

TL;DR Vent, be wary of people who snap at you the moment you vent about something understandable, but also be wary of narratives simplifying to a hurtful point

I am not going to defend Bernie Sanders past a certain point here, I fundamentally agree with any criticism of the U.S. left in terms of impact and willingness to appear "radical" to the status quo media narrative for decades but also... Bernie Sanders has been INCREDIBLY influential as a politician both in terms of practical across the isle legislation created and passed but more importantly in dropkicking the Overton Window over the fence and at least into very very moderate european style "socialist" politics.

We need more than just Bernie Sanders and AOC, we can't rely on them, but they are extremely effective at what they do, I constantly hear young, driven, effective progressive activists cite Bernie Sanders as the person that first set them on the path to where they are now, even if their politics have since become much more leftist than Bernie's lane ( and no... "radical" these people may be labeled, before anyone says shit these people are always obviously driven by a kindness and desire for better lives for all USians ) Bernie Sanders gets people to take a second look at leftist politics purely on the basis of the consistency and genuine integrity Bernie has vs. basically every other politician in U.S. politics.... which isn't to defend Bernie as somehow a virtuous figure, the bar is just insanely low for U.S. politicians especially in the wake of Citizens United opening up the floodgates to dark money warping politics in the U.S. to an extreme degree.....

.....something that no other figure in U.S. politics (or media in general for that matter) has more effectively raised awareness about than Bernie F'king Sanders by the way!!!!!

To right now say that Bernie and AOC are ineffective and will continue to be ineffective is probably the most obviously incorrect moment to do so I can possibly think of during the span of... my entire life?

lol, hilarious stance to take in this moment

hell yeah

hot take: Deep Rock Galactic >> Helldivers 2

I don't understand the need that people have to pretend like it's all perfect.

I am not claiming it is perfect, I am saying the experience is already much less of a headache than windows is at this point with all of microsoft's bs.

The form factor of switch/steam deck is expanding, valve doesn't by any means have a stranglehold over it, they are by far the biggest player but the benefits to linux gaming are shared across the board which opens up the entire industry not closes it down?

Not saying I trust Valve or think they are somehow a company but good but yeah out of the current options I will happily give Valve my money.

But I admit I am compromised - I spend too much time gaming, being retired its easy to lose track of time. Honestly, I feel like a vegan who wraps bacon in thick wholemeal sandwiches and pretends they are not really eating pigs since its mainly bread.

Fuck that noise, play video games, they expand and stimulate your mind and you don't hurt anyone or waste any significant amount of resources playing them!