Plus… Like, definitionally, Superman was not born on US soil or to American parents. He doesn’t have birthright citizenship

He’s a literal alien with a fake identity, at the very least he’s an immigrant, in every canon

I think Chinese food spread was more organic, they helped each other immigrate, shared recipes, and acted almost like a franchise in how new restaurants were chosen in unserved areas and given a general playbook

And then the Thai government did it more formally, Korean culinary movement copied the success (or maybe the other way around)

But that’s a response to “they took our jorbs!”. It’s a reframing for immigrants targeted at the reactionaries. But it is the reality - immigrants, particularly undocumented or agricultural visa recipients, are the bedrock of our society

It’s terrible that they are in such unethical conditions. It’s terrible that they have a carve out for child labor for seasonal farm workers. The entire power dynamic is akin to indentured servitude at best

But what we have to do is give them legal status and protections first.

They are not working the worst jobs because that’s what we tell them they can be, they’re working the worst jobs because they’re extra exploitable

Oh I totally agree with that… Just that these kinds of morbid people are drawn to death already. And only a fraction of them could deal with causing the death directly, especially en masse

But they’re outliers, they don’t make up the rank and file of Nazis or ICE. There’s no amount of ideology that makes a person like this… They’re basically high functioning serial killers, people who both want to watch (or participate in) people being tortured to death, but also have the executive function to do it in quasi legal ways

I mean yeah, radicalization is real, violence is real

But there’s a world of difference between violence and suffering. They’re full of hatred. They get off on the violence.

There’s not many people who can look at someone starving and feel nothing. There’s not many people who could start rescuing someone, then go “oh sorry, you’re black so I’m not going to finish digging you out”

I’m not even appealing to their better nature, I’m saying it’s genuinely traumatic. People get PTSD even from rescuing people in a flood.

I just don’t think most of these fucks have the stomach to see their ideals play out in front of them

They’re having trouble recruiting brownshirts. Sure, there’s a wave of them who joined eagerly… Initially. But once all the wannabe cop rejects signed up, it’s gotten a lot harder to convince people. They cover their faces for a reason… We all know there will be consequences on some level

We will see a lot of attrition as this goes on and they’re tasked with progressively more horrible things. It takes training to dehumanize a group, and even then everyone has some degree of cruelty they can inflict (directly) before breaking

I’m sure they’re going to try… But if they’re coming in with supplies, they’ve got to give them out. If they’ve got chainsaws, they’ve got to clear debris

You can’t just larp around a disaster area, not only is it hard to do as a human, survivors are not going to take kindly to it to say the least

Maybe they’re just going to go camping nearby and take some pictures. But if they do try to actually help, they’re find to see things that tend to bring out the humanity in people

Yeah… But I say let them try. Let them try to brush over people they can help, to their face

It’s not so easy to look them in the eyes. The suicide rate among concentration camp guards, and even the SS (who were picked for fanaticism), was insane

If they actually go and try to help, a lot of them are going to realize something. It’s easy to be a fascist in the abstract, it’s not so easy to confront the logical conclusions of fascism directly

Well it’s because FEMA, the national guard, and the army core of engineers would descend on the area like ants, and they would tell people “don’t help, you’ll get in the way, donate supplies over there if you like and go home - we need the local hotel rooms”

But when you cut disaster relief… There’s literally just parents out there searching for their children, they’re not turning anyone away

There are no adults. I learned this early on, and I will interrupt you mid sentence to nail this down if you say it in my presence.

There’s just some lies so toxic I won’t have them spoken in my presence

Yeah…wtf, I thought everyone switched to charcoal and salt and shit like a decade ago

No wonder we all have a plastic spoon in our brains

Okay? I’m frankly more worried about how they’re doing a genocide and killing medical care, but I still think meteorologists have shown their value through their absence

Do you not think the soundscape of a place matters? If you don’t understand why it makes a place better, I take back what I said about civilizational collapse

It’s subtle to some people, but it affects your emotions, and how you perceive an environment. We’re wired to go on alert when the forest goes silent, and to pay attention to loud noises… So when a plane, one of the loudest things in modern life, takes off and leaves the airport quiet, that’s deeply disturbing on an animal level. When you walk through long hallways in the depth of night, it’s unsettling no matter how brightly lit it is… Less so if a hundred other people are dragging their luggage and coughing

It’s why they play birdsong and music at Disney… The rattle of a rollercoaster in the distance is terrifying without it

The sounds of life make a place feel safe, even if the paint is peeling, a light flickers, and there’s no one around, the paths at Disney always feel safe

That feeling is civilizational collapse right there

The sign of a dying empire is when you no longer bother to etch designs on the buildings. It’s when you no longer give out swag. It’s when you cut everything that doesn’t make money, but does just make things nice

Doing things just to make things nice is good. It shouldn’t need a reason beyond that

I disagree.

A hundred people died. One man (technically team, I’m sure) saved that many. How many more would have died without what remaining services were in place?

It shows how valuable these invisible support staff are. Maybe, no one would have died without the cuts…

I think it puts this in contrast. And it’s also good to put in people’s heads before the next time they try to make stupid cuts

Come on, resistance matters. Even if it’s just slowing it down slightly, it affects people in very real ways

It’s ok to take the little wins

Lol. It already happened again in New Mexico…

You know, this has drastically increased my respect for meteorologists. I always thought they were convenient, but I generally just look outside for my weather

And I mean, I knew they were important for hurricanes and such… But holy shit, a few months after the cuts and rainstorms are killing dozens

I’m not sure you get the problem here

You can talk to an llm at any moment of any day. They will engage with you endlessly. They’re becoming the front end for search, and at some point might become the primary interface for your device

It’s a huge problem if they manage to make it a propoganda tool, and that’s the goal here

Remind them what, that Trump says it’s good? There’s nothing to be gained there

No, just document it. Report on it. Ask the Democrats what they’re doing to stop it. Challenge Republicans to make them comment about the horrors to come on record

But the white house? They’ll add nothing of value, better to keep asking the questions that make them nervous

I mean… It is genuinely hard to work for someone not evil. Let’s say you’re an AI engineer… Meta is probably the best because most of the non-corporate LLMs flow from there… But they’re also using it to build personalized echo chambers, which is horrible

OpenAI is at the top and Microsoft has shown every inclination to make it a monopoly, so I could understand wanting to work on competitors

You could go smaller and work somewhere like anthropic, but then you don’t have the resources to be on the cutting edge (depending on your specialty)

I blame people who buy Teslas more than those who work at Tesla at this point. Especially when they slow walk the bad things…I mean, Twitter would probably be less Nazi if more talent stayed onboard to resist institutionally