build_a_bear_group [he/him]

I see a lot of good faith attempts to point out their issues from Hexbear.

I think they’re cool.

I have a similar thing, and I have found that certain shoes with the right lacing pattern work well. Basically, buy something with a big toe-box, but most of the lacing concentrated on the center of the foot so that you can narrow it by lacing it tight. I find that certain Xero shoes, and most iterations of Merrell Trail Gloves work well for this.

IDK, I used to really recommend Red Wing, but I have been repeatedly told that over the last decade (I have had mine for, I think, 12 years, so not from first-hand experience) their quality has very consistently getting worse. So maybe some caution there.

Yeah, Obamacare was way too generous and left-wing when it was the Romney-care plan before being reduced and heavily means tested.

deleted by creator

Well at first glance the West seems very well suited to buffer the effects, The last decade shows that it is hyper sclerotic and unwilling to give even the most minor concessions to adapt to change. This will be US centric, but the US was kind of behind on this trend (e.g. Orban, Erdogan, the AfD, etc. came before Trump). The only way the political system can function is by expanding authoritarian repression. No matter which party is in charge we have to keep expanding the military and police to fight the boogeyman (China, Russia, Republican Fascism, Democratic Deep State, etc.) and only appeals to voters/platforms are by how we need to fight back the horrors of the other party (fascism and the end of Democracy, Woke-ism and Democrat conspiracies). This fundamentally comes from an unwillingness to improve or maintain the standard of living of most, but would rather use violence to keep the lower orders and economically superfluous in line. Ironically, the more problems that we face, the more that the political system is converging and unwilling to adapt. This means that in actual policy both parties have been converging closer to each other (Biden has not deviated from Trump’s immigration policy, and is in fact, working towards Obama’s record as Deporter in Chief, has clawed back pandemic protections and relief even from the low bar Trump set, has been funding police using federal programs and therefore more anti-BLM than Trump). But for electoral and political identity reasons, the more that both parties are far-right fascist parties aligned on policy, their rhetoric and political maneuvers have to be more polarized.

So, even though in external challenges and capacity on paper are in the West’s favor, I really think we cannot count out the institutional decay and how every political institution is hell-bent against ever adapting to changing conditions other than strengthening the police-state.

It’s the Onion, but I think this demonstrates a metaphorical truth about how Neoliberalism of the last 40 years removed any state capacity to deal with crises and changing conditions: https://www.theonion.com/something-about-the-way-society-was-exposed-as-complete-1846251067

I like Feeder, even if I think it’s use of the back button can be a bit counter-intuitive sometimes.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.nononsenseapps.feeder/

The post was very clearly saying that Ghengis Khan and the post-Mongolian Chinese state is a worse form of conquest and murder because they were conquering and killing their own people.

But the US was killing Native Americans which weren’t citizens, so it is not as bad as killing your own people like the Mongolian/Chinese/Mao.

First, yeah, sure, Mongolians saw things through modern Euro-centric racism to say “we are all the same, there are no Mongolians or Chinese, only backwards Asians”. Second, your defense of Native American genocide basically boils down to “your honor, we didn’t consider them human when we genocided them”

cyberpunk without any cool aesthetics.

Ant-eaterization

In fact, we “Rule You”…stares in Gladio and Brabant killers.

Looks at Allende, the Indonesian Genocide, ÖSDAP, and the US Civil War… I am sure, this time the ruling class will just say “aww shucks”, and peacefully give up power, rather than fight to retain power like every previous time.

Removed by mod

1918 Soviet Russia was very early in decriminalizing homosexuality. Cuba has some of the most progressive stances on LGBTQ rights, particularly with the new family code. And East Germany was much more progressive than West/United Germany pre-2017 with gay rights. The most progressive states were in the 2nd world, even if it was very far from uniform.

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/gay-liberation-behind-iron-curtain/

Turkey and Poland have entered the chat.

deleted by creator

No, that is true, even if it is less directly disqualifying of the specific political tendencies, and the closing of practical horizons of American politics meant that there is a vast demobilization of political action. So, mostly because voting and engagement with mainstream politics is highly correlated with several axes of privilege, white people vote more than non-white, wealthy vote more than poor, etc. So, most mainstream politics and all electoral positions over-represents white middle-to-upper class. There is less of a gender gap on the face of it for parties than one would think because there are a lot of white and women from conservative areas that vote Republican. But there is also a boomerang effect of people that are privileged enough to not suffer ill effects of failure of sabotaged progressive movements such as the Black Panthers and Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition are more likely to vote to the left of the Democratic Party. Because you could get some minor pork-barrel spending if you support the establishment over progressive candidate that will just be crushed by the machine or fizzle out due to internal fractures and more minor sabotage.

So, yes they are. Maybe that is 90% of electoral politics, but it is true that Soc-Dems are disproportionately white men. Though that is more of mainstream politics over-representing privilege on many axes. And also if it is divorced from daily struggle and immediate issues (as mainstream politics works to alienate us from), then politics becomes horse-race stuff for nerds.