bazinga

COVID is somewhat different because there’s a strain mechanic that causes big surges when mutations happen, but generally, yes, viruses (at least the flu, and to a lesser extent COVID) obey calendars

source

this extremely based and you’re cool as hell for making this

Be firm. Confront them, publicly if doing so is constructive. Learn to deprioritize civility and prioritize equity and progress. This just has to be met with strength. Procedural changes don’t matter if they’re the ones operating them or if nobody enforces them.

venereal village

or, the single most jarring and disorienting emotion I have felt in my life - both simultaneously

real hours who up

fwiw the game isn’t exactly “by” dunkey, he (and all his staff at bigmode) just published it, Billy Basso is a genius and deserves credit here - just a light PSA

9/11 happened because on 9/10 Bush learned of a secret and unstoppable plan the Taliban had to steal both halves of the recipe, which was to be executed on 9/12.

There’s a book called How Capitalism Ends by a guy named Steve Paxton, it’s that largely libbed up brand of trot brit socialism but it did have some good points interspersed, one in particular I’m thinking of here is an argument for making a distinction between a “technocracy” and the rest of the working class:

It’s important to note that the technocracy are not excluded from the proletariat because they earn too much money, or because they enjoy a large degree of autonomy in their work. It is the effective (though incomplete) control they exercise over productive assets by virtue of their technical knowledge that separates them from the proletariat. They make largely autonomous decisions about how and where productive assets will be deployed, and the expert knowledge which gives them the ability to do so puts them in a different relationship to both the means of production and to the bourgeoisie than that of the proletarian. At the same time, they do not enjoy the full range of ownership rights over the assets they control – they cannot sell or bequeath them for example. This limitation sets them apart from the petty-bourgeoisie.

I kind of like this distinction in this context, might be more prudent than labor aristocrat in describing some folks

(hitler) particle physicist

(https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1933/330610.htm)

our fascination with slutty waisted men is older than capitalism and therefore has a stronger claim to being based in human nature

holding a very, very large knife. The family dog has the zoomies. She slams into my legs and I hit the deck, landing with the knife blade pointed upwards, one inch away from my ribs

Obviously when treading in this discussion, it is necessary to genuflect and state that Biden and his entire cabinet would see [redacted] under any ethical system of government

but playing with this logic a little bit, wasn’t 1% of Hitler about a hundred thousand dead? Naturally if I say I have a preference, people will assume that I think that ing and doing nothing else politically ever is the ideal leftist strategy, but like, if it’s just bubbling in a bubble and then getting back to the orgs, is there a reason that 99% Hitler and 100% Hitler have no meaningful differences, even if that ratio is correct?

Things Project 2025 wants to see that we will definitely not see under Biden:

• Dismantle the EPA and NOAA
• Invoke the insurrection act to punish anyone who called Jan 6th an attempted coup
• Dismantle the department of education
• classify those who talk about being transgender as child sex offenders
• Fire the entire FDA and replace them with people handpicked to ban mifepristone and misoprostol
• Raise the bottom income tax bracket from 10% to 15%, lower the top income tax bracket from 37% to 30%, lower the corporate tax rate from 21% to 18%
• Rescind gender identity, sexual orientation, and sex as protected classes
• “the largest domestic deportation operation in history” (yikes)
• implement unitary executive theory

That’s just an assortment, it’s not all and it’s not the worst things. It’s just a little different from blue MAGA.

Yeah, one party will start the killing now and one will start the killing a little later. Is there not a clear less bad pick?

This is not even a little true, Republicans named it themselves and it is an extremely stark departure from what any previous president from either party has planned to do once they gain office. There’s not really precedent for this going back at least to Reagan.

I used to say the border wall thing too, turns out that’s not super right, here’s a map:

from here https://www.newsweek.com/border-wall-map-joe-biden-donald-trump-1832649

If you have your legos and somebody hasn’t gotten their legos yet, you can’t wait until they get their legos to start yours. You could wait, if there wasn’t the urgency presented by the global lego-stealing superpower, but since we have to run an extremely tight schedule here, the best move is to build your legos ASAP and then help others with theirs once you have the knowledge and resources provided by building your own. You can combine them into one big lego world later when the heat is off, and you can also combine them partially as is expedient.

There’s a reason the West was scared of “Domino theory” and not simultaneous worldwide socialist revolution.

Building just one didn’t work for the USSR, but with careful building practices, it has been going alright for China, Vietnam, and the DPRK, with varying degrees of alright