soratoyuki

Davis describes herself as a trans refugee. Back in Texas, she says, lived in a “pretty hostile and frankly dangerous” place. “I had a lot of close calls, a lot of threats.”

Wilbur also describes himself as a “refugee.” He relates an experience that is a virtual mirror image of Davis’. In Seattle, the local conservative talk show host — who also briefly served as Washington state Republican chair — felt like a stranger in a strange land.

Virtual mirror image, indeed.

Platner volunteered to risk his life for his country in combat — multiple times. He then volunteered to run for Senate when no other major challenger was willing or able to step up and give Maine voters a serious choice in a competitive primary. These decisions reflect a form of character and courage.

Enlisting to kill people and then leveraging that fact to gain state power is the opposite of character and courage. It’s the standard politico playbook. Politicians only have three origin stories: ‘I made millions exploiting workers, give me state power,’ ‘I’m the lawyer for the guy that made millions exploiting workers, give me state power,’ and ‘I killed brown kids for the guy that made millions exploiting workers, give me state power.’

Platner is probably better than Collins, but pretending he’s just a blue collar oysterman in a run-of-the-mill election and not the nearly disastrous consequence of (yet another) failure to find component candidates buries the lede here.

Why is there no one better in all of Maine than Platner. Why is there no one better in all of Virginia than Spanberger. Why is there no one better in all of California than Becerra. We’re sleepwalking into a losing Pete Buttigieg presidential campaign.

I’d say this is a shitty article from the Jacobin, but it’s unfair to call this an article when it’s really just some stream of conscious bullet points. And yes, this comment is politically motivated lol.

I want this to be true, but history seems to me to show that most people just tolerate increasingly worse conditions indefinitely. Exploited/oppressed people rising up seems the exception.

Police protect capital, not you.

When Republicans say that about their candidates, we rightly call them deranged cultists.

The striking workers our strike kitchens feed disagree. The unhoused we give clothes to disagree. The tenant unions we support disagree.

When I want opinions on the real life organizing I do in my community, I’ll ask the other real life organizers in my community and the community I serve, not some random internet stranger.

I have but I’m a bad public speaker. I do political organizing in real life, including helping run a recurring mutual aid distribution, and that seems a more valuable use of my time than a quixotic vanity challenge.

You’ve studied Nazism at a collegiate level but are asking for a source on what a totenkopf is…?

We keep voting for the lesser evil and then act suprised when candidates keep being evil.

Don’t be MAGA-brained. Politicians with a D after their name can still be criticized.

Not knowing what it is is an obvious lie, sorry. There’s no way the white male millennial soldier that grew up with the History Channel didn’t know what it was. His friends and having have said he knew what it was. He had Reddit posts defending police getting SS bolts and discussing the thematic differences between Totenkopf and Punisher tattoos.

And, honestly, if he genuinely didn’t know what it was, that level of historical ignorance should also be disqualifying.

Genuinely hope I’m wrong about him, but it’s frustrating that Maine couldn’t find a candidate without a Nazi tattoo. Or one that doesn’t go on Nazi podcasts and call themselves long time fans. Or one that didn’t enlist in a war they thought was wrong because they wanted to kill people. Or one that didn’t merc for Blackwater.

I get that one can’t pick their family, but his blue blood parents trying to buy him a mayorship is also wild.

AI IS GREAT EVERYONE USES IT TRUST ME BRO IT’S SO GREAT JUST GIVE IT A TRY BRO TRUST ME BRO JUST ONE TOKEN BRO ONE SQUARE KILOMETER OF RAINFOREST IS ALL IT TAKES AND ALL THE BIG TITTY MICKEY MOUSE JPGS CAN BE YOURS PLEASE JUST USE AI the chatbot is holding my family hostage please.

People don’t like that generative AI is based on stolen content. People don’t like that it’s being forced into everything. People don’t like that it isn’t even good at most of the things it tries to do. People definitely hate it’s attempts at ‘music’ and ‘art.’ People don’t like it’s immense energy costs. People don’t like that it might render them, and everyone else, unemployed. People don’t like that they’re owned by oligarchs.

Oligarchs invested trillions in the hope of firing us all and no longer paying us wages. You need to get some class consciousness.

Thank you, now I know what I’m going to be reading about for the next several hours.

There can’t be many examples in history of an empire being cucked by it’s own client state, but here we are.

Wild that people just casually admit to outsourcing their thinking to a machine. I’d never willing post something that embarrassing. Butlerian Jihad Now.

They aren’t peaceful.

If in your bedroom is all you can do, that’s better than nothing, but the ability to effectively organize online only is limited.

I know this sounds like a stupid platitude, but the solution to doomerism is to organize. In real life, with living, breathing humans.

Join whatever organization is active in your community, start attending meetings, find a campaign to plug into, and spend at least a few hours a week doing something positive with other people that also want to do something positive. And, after you campaign with them, socialize with them because organizing can be hard but feeling connected to members of your community feels better.

I helped found a mutual aid working group in my DSA chapter; we spend all month taking in donations, and then host a monthly Food Not Bombs-style food and hygienic supply distribution for the unhoused and food insecure. The feeling you get when you actually help improve people’s material conditions is genuinely just the best.

And, yeah, definitely get off Twitter.