Argument and debate don’t work because they’re a terrible way to spread, express, and defend ideals.

The ironic thing about “Enlightenment” philosophy is that people cling to it’s methods and orthodoxy despite all evidence of their own lived experience. The truth doesn’t care about your logic.

Communism is old, and young. The principals of communal living are the oldest form of human organization. It’s also the most common form today if you count small groups like family.

But as an organizing principal for government, it’s a baby. The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848. The Bolshevik revolution was in 1917. So the whole idea of communism is < 150-200yo. Compare to capitalism at this age and it’s all slavery and settler colonialism; the most massive redistribution of wealth through theft in history.

The logic that communism is a bad system because the Soviet Union should also condemn capitalism because the Dutch East India Company.

So, if the AI bubble pops, it’ll be a great time to build a PC

It’s a myth that “anyone” can get wrapped up in a cult. Their are many “filters” to joining a cult. Such as unusual dress, complicated social hierarchies, and tons of jargon. And they hit you with this stuff right up front; it’s not gradual. People who are not looking for community and meaning will be repelled.

So they’re filtering people who are not in a particularly credulous mental state. People who are not in a “joining” mentality. I’m not saying that educated, sophisticated, and intelligent people are immune. This all has to do with adjustment, maturity, and emotional stability.

So anyway, to mitigate the reach of cults, society should be organized to minimize alienation and isolation, while a multitude of sources of community and meaning should be encouraged. Check on the people you care about and make sure they’re getting on. Crush capitalism.

Any platform that’s advertising based is a propaganda outlet. Reddit’s function is to manipulate pubic opinion.

Why not both?

The oldest praying automaton we know of is from the 16th Century. This is basically that but with more capitalism.

I can’t help but notice how captured the Christian mind is, when even the return of the Savior is a business opportunity; a revenue stream. These people are already robots who can’t worship without a prospectus and a spread sheet.

Cheap plastic bowl scrapers. Like these:

I use these every time I cook. I use them every time I clean the kitchen.

Yea, religion is made up and should be ignored. Just like currency, boarders, sovereignty, human rights, the concept of law, literature, art, and language itself. Brilliant.

“Heat death” is the popular name given to hypothesis that the Universe will continue to expand and cool until there is no light or energy left. Using the term for Earth burning up is going to confuse people.

If I had infinite money, I would create Medicare for All as a private company.

It’d be like shooting all the healthcare CEOs at once.

The holocaust absolutely facilitated the creation of Israel. The Balfour declaration and Theodor Herzl are necessary, but not sufficient. In the aftermath of WWII and the Shoah, there was a need for mass Jewish migration. Meanwhile, “good” countries like the US and UK had strict immigration policies explicitly to exclude Jews. A ship full of Jews fleeing the Nazis in '39 were rejected by the US, Canada, and the UK. Eventually they were returned to Germany. (the embarrassment of this episode is why countries are supposed to give shelter to anyone fleeing persecution until the matter is adjudicated) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis

And that’s the part of history that’s left out. Western Europe and N America were happy to resettle the Jews, anywhere else. Support of Israel by the West cannot be understood without acknowledging the massive amount of antisemitism in basically all of Western Civilization.

This would be the most ambitious engineering feat in human history. A project to rival colonization of Mars in expense and danger. All to connect one wilderness to another. Brilliant.

If you look closely, there appears to be a “Bren” type LMG on the floor and something that kinda resembles a “sten” smg propped up against the dresser. I suppose these are replicas or they’d been the in the headline.

I saw a documentary about the ultra rich teenagers in the US years ago. One young girl in that film explained that maintaining friendships with “regular” people was impossible. Her reasoning was that rich people do rich people shit. And you have the choice to pay someones way, which makes for awkward obligation/ resentment. Or you could exclude them, which also causes hard feelings.

That teenage girl? Ivanka Trump.

I need windows for flight sims. My problem is not so much the software, it’s the hardware. I have a head-tracking camera, a set of pedals, a throttle, and joystick. All need separate drivers. None support Linux. My throttle is so old that it hasn’t been supported since W7 and it’s work to get it going on W10.

It’s just way easier to dual boot than to try to get all that hardware running on Linux.

Training and culture is important, but one must remember that firefighters and EMTs do not have qualified immunity. Meaning that firefighters and EMTs can and do get sued for negligence and assault. They also have a “duty of care” while the pigs are not responsible to protect the public, enforce the law, or uphold court orders.

Treat capitalists as you find them. Forget morality. What is advantageous and legal is automatically good. What is advantageous and illegal is a cost/benefit calculation.

It’s really sad when non-believers don’t value other’s freedom to believe what they want. It seems hypocritical. Citing Muslims as an example of Chinese religious freedom is either dishonest or ignorant.

In American leftism there is a definite divide between black and white.

For example second wave feminism is often thought of as Women seeking entry into the workplace, but at the same time black feminists were trying to leave the workforce and take care of their own kids.

The labor movement has an explicitly racist history. A fact that Capitalists often took advantage of by leveraging black scabs who were often ineligible for union membership. Eugne Debs identified this as a problem with the socialist movement.

I’m not saying that racism is common among today’s lefties, just that white lefties are often ignorant of black American life and especially black radical thought and activism.

If you are vexed by Bernie Sanders’ struggle with black voters, you’re probably not very familiar with this history.