uriel238
@uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- Comment on If our present was a dystopian future, you wouldn't believe it 2 days ago:
We live in a YAF dystopia that is way less cool than most of the storybook ones.
And while every kid’s story is their chance to veer away from the usual fate of becoming a corporate cog (laborer or soldier) in a billionaire vanity project, most will just end up stuck like Winston without his nook, or will get imprisoned or will just go homeless.
- Comment on We are so cooked 2 days ago:
We’re pretty sure it’s the Monsanto pesticide and anyone who suggests it is hit with a litigation threat. Curiously, as we’re speed-breeding domesticated bees the wild bees are dying out faster, so as the bee population dwindles it also becomes more domesticated and less wild. I know that’s a bad thing, but I am fuzzy on the why details.
I’m a brown thumb, and plants wilt as my shadow falls on them, but if you’re a green-thumb, plant pollinators, which will help the bees.
Also plant milkweed for the monarchs.
- Comment on Horror 3 days ago:
Yeah, but the police don’t hover over us in Spinners as in Bladerunner. They still have to chopper from helipad to airport and ride off in air traffic, so less in our faces.
Their superfluous greenhouse emissions fit the cyberpunk vibe though.
- Comment on What could possibly go wrong? DOGE to rapidly rebuild Social Security codebase. 5 days ago:
Musk remains true to his Disney villain character and I stand by my previous wish for his fate to be:
…eaten by hyenas. Preferably hyenas he had recently betrayed to save his own skin.
At the rate were going were going to get the bad ending which is:
…Chinese bombers over Washington blotting out the sun.
- Comment on Appreciate the effort, but I can't handle my own shit. much less a extrovert instigating a million things to do on top of all that. 5 days ago:
It my current state of five months into a long-term psychotic break, I have the joy of feeling lonely, walking to where people are, and needing to leave immediately, and feeling lonely by the time I get home again.
What a marvel the brain can be!
- Comment on Horror 5 days ago:
I’m glad we got ubiquitous smartphones instead of only rich people having flying cars.
Still, I’m promoting way, way more punk in our cyberpunk.
- Comment on This 18th Century French Doctor Has a Solution to Oligarchy… 6 days ago:
The point of The Terror was to burn the Révolution into the skulls of generations to come by making it so horrible the ownership class would be terrified into treating the working class nicely (this was before class consciousness, so it was the Petit Bourgeoisie that actually formed the Assemblée nationale representing the third estate. They, too, are ownership class, once Marx sorted it all out.)
This is why heads had to be piled high. We were supposed to be scared into civility. But as the early 20th century demonstrated to us, it didn’t work, and we still have people voting for far-right parties in order to vote against neoliberalism (which is happening a lot in Europe right now, and is a sound explanation of why Trump still got so many votes.)
- Comment on Creating new wage slaves is child abuse 1 week ago:
65% of life forms on the planet engage in parasitic survival strategies. This was a risk we took when we started using agriculture, allowing for specializations other than chieftain and shaman. (Everyone else was a generalist.)
Our instincts are still the same hunter-gatherer stuff from 25,000 years ago. Which includes behaviors antithetical to large, complex civilization.
One of those is a bias towards obedience to authority, and to loyalty to clan, over principle (creeds, laws, codes of ethics) . We tend to want to obey the chieftain who commands us rather than challenge them when they demand the unconscionable.
Demagogues, who exploit these biases, were known in classic Athens, hence we have a Greek name for such people, and Athenians tried to recognize and shun them.
The bible has a lot of proscriptions against manipulative tyrants and priests. It also has many decrees to uplift the widow, the stranger, the immigrant, the destitute. This tells us the problem of dudes seeking to consolidate social power (money and authority) and then abuse that power has been a problem throughout known human history.
Obviously we haven’t fixed it yet and still want high tech water, sewage, power and information infrastructure.
We need a movement that is willing to assert its collective power not just for a few concessions but until we have an ironclad social contract that distributes political power widely, and does not tolerate surplus when there is scarcity and need.
- Comment on IRS, ICE Near Deal to Share Confidential Tax Data on Undocumented Immigrants 1 week ago:
Betcha some US citizens are going to get caught up in this sweep.
I wonder if we could get ten percent of taxpayers to not.
- Comment on Mozilla Foundation Calls on Tech Industry to Block ICE Contractor 1 week ago:
From its inception ICE has taken the role of the German SS, which is to say a paramilitary force loyal to the administration rather than to the Constitution (what FBI was during the J. Edgar Hoover era) It was that way though George W. Bush’s admin as well as the Obama admin.
ICE also lent itself out to corporations and trade organizatiobs. They raided the Dotcom estate in New Zealand, and they raided Florida repair shops that did unauthorized (but effective) repairs on Apple products (an event that fueled the right-to-repair movement).
To not talk to ICE. Do not associate with anyone who associates with ICE. Do not cooperate with Law Enforcement that cooperates with ICE.
Eventually when agents and collaborators of the Trump regime are tracked by Nazi-hunters (whatever they call the new iteration of hunters) ICE agents and their collaborators will be the highest priority.
Remember ICE is the agency raiding houses and taking people without due process to CECOT in El Salvador where they suffer tortuous, inhumane conditions comparable to gulags and WWII concentration camps.
The new holocaust is here.
- Comment on frenly warnin 2 weeks ago:
I hope he gets messaged every hour about how his name might draw the wrong crowd.
Also that he needs to take pills for a bigger penis.
- Comment on Which game is it? 2 weeks ago:
Years ago, I played Homefront: The Revolution which was a ridiculous premise (North Korea magically invents and develops microcircuits in the 20th century instead of the US, and invades the US) but had solid weapons and a really great remote-control car bomb.
Its version of the flying cameras from Half Life 2 that actually identifies you and calls for reinforcements also was spot on.
It also had a pretty cool pause-screen song.
Then it had trouble working with computer upgrades, and I moved on to other things.
- Comment on #EverythingHappensForAReason 2 weeks ago:
Giving the benefit of the doubt, it’s illustrating a process for near-readymade art.
- Comment on Which game is it? 2 weeks ago:
Terraria currently. Satisfactory and DRG before.
- Comment on Having a baby? Use this one weird trick! 3 weeks ago:
It’s a good era in which to not have children. Expect a lot of forsaken children.
Also expect some coerced birthing programs such as the Leibensborn program (which was also an excuse to recruit young women as sex slaves for the Schutzstaffel ) and the offspring were supported by the state and raised by the single mothers.
This is the program that inspired the Handmaid program in Margaret Atwood’s Gilead, in A Handmaid’s Tale
And J. D. Vance is super thirsty for it, as is countless other Freedom caucus and MAGA Republican officials.
- Comment on "Eat the rich" is verboten 3 weeks ago:
For profit social media platforms are npt your friend.
As with for-profit newspapers and news agencies, they are biased more towards the ownership classn than the proletariat. They might present left-wing stories and positions, but never enough that it threatens their property and profit gains.
The same with politicians who have to raise money to campaign. Even liberals cannot ever push for policy that serves the public but not the ownership interests.
- Comment on Controversial question 3 weeks ago:
You’re not alone. Karel Čurda turned in Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš for assassinating Reinhard Heydrich (The naziest nazi of all the nazis, also the chief implementer of the Holocaust. Also the only assassination effort implemented by the Allies). Čurda got the reward of one million Reichmarks for betraying his own sabotage team.
Čurda would then be hanged for high treason in 1947.
- Comment on Council housing when? 3 weeks ago:
It’s a Wikipedia day, today.
- Comment on Fucking leeches 3 weeks ago:
Rent-seeking is an evergreen relevant Wikipedia article
- Comment on Controversial question 4 weeks ago:
Mostly because our ability to organize and unify against the wealthy is overwhelmed by the wealthy’s tools to keep us factioned and distrustful of each other. Hence the necessity of the fascist enemy within rhetoric.
The problem is, we humans are simple emotional beings who are really credulous when it comes to being told stuff we want to hear, and the wealthy have crafted messaging catering to this bias and wishful thinking (hence “you are the chosen people and have to massacre all the others who are spiritual flesh-eating zombies”)
That sounds way cooler to the lumpen-proletariat than “you’re just another commoner, but if we work together we can topple the people who hoard all the stuff and make a fun themepark for everyone!”
- Comment on What car stickers say about you 4 weeks ago:
Yeah, my other ride is a broom and similar stickers also imply if you cross my path you better be firm in your beliefs curses don’t work, because mine will find your immortal soul and drag it, screaming and writhing into the very heart of Hell.
Also my coven depends on me for the sticky-icky and some amazing baked goods. And they don’t want me sad.
I might be reading a lot into it.
- Comment on What car stickers say about you 4 weeks ago:
This family has a LOT of activities. And is middle class, but ranking enough to have free time and money to buy stuff, possibly due to the oilfield worker.
Their neighborhood has family rivalries but is knit enough to have community barbecues. My daughter has best friends and ballet partners in the community, so at least we know our neighbors as fellow parents.
Oh and if you fuck with us, we have high-powered rifles and know how to track a bitch. We also have friends with a similar set of skills.
- Comment on Not so long ago, in a galaxy not so far away... 5 weeks ago:
It was the petit bourgeoisie that started the French Revolution after the Estates General of 1789 and the commoners followed them. I was basing the Rebel Alliance after them, hinted at since among the promoted soldiers in Rebel Alliance command were not-just-a-few nobles.
- Comment on Not so long ago, in a galaxy not so far away... 5 weeks ago:
A couple of points:
1) The Alliance formed after a good chunk of the Galactic Empire was feeling the pressure of being imperial rather than republic. Granted, the republic was corrupt like Chicago during Prohibition, but while it existed many of the public departments were still actively serving their role (more or less).
2) The Alliance was not formed from the proletariat, but the noble houses and companies pushed out (who fell out of favor) when the empire rose. Their plan was to restore the republic system that recognized their wealth and political power. And there might have been a period like this comic when Imperial interests were willfully lying to opposition parties and interests to prolong the time before they got serious and formed a military.
3) It was atrocities like Alderaan that really fueled recruitment into the Alliance. Every young person who had family lost in the Alderaan event at least considered joining up, and if they were sympathetic to the Alliance (or had no loyalty to the Empire) were inclined to do so even if their prior ambitions were apolitical, e.g. art or medicine or civil engineering or whatever. ALSO Alderaan was only the most recent atrocity committed by the Empire in the name of enforcing its political power. And (as per long-studied Counter Insurgency) every act of brutality by tyranny draws more of the population into the resistance. The Alliance was just the most popular and best supported movement.
4) NOTE: This is speculation based on circumstances, much like the Endor Holocaust (The EH is implied by the ROTJ events but was later rectconned out via additional canon): The final point of the Death Star is not merely to be a planet-destroying superweapon but a mining tool to crack open (lifeless or evacuated) planets to get to interior precious minerals. While its success as such a tool might be uncertain, had it not been destroyed, the hope by its crew, engineers and support staff was that the superlaser would not often be used as a military device (optimally never again!) but could still be used in the process of gathering necessary resources.
- Comment on No means no 5 weeks ago:
Recently Google decided to enforce its storage limits, which is how I discovered most of my Google cloud storage was backed up photos I never once asked Google to back up. It was… tedious getting them deleted, and I had to desync my phone lest it also delete my device’s gallery as well.
It all seemed to be a ploy to force me to buy more cloud storage space. Thank you, no.
- Comment on Bernie Sanders talking to progressives about how the Democrats' messaging needs to change [Day 82] 5 weeks ago:
The Democratic Party needs to go hard into socialized services or just pack up. Right now it looks complicit in the GOP coup d’etat.
The same, incidentally is true for the Labor party in UK, and for the other neoliberal parties all throughout Europe. Serve the people for realsies this time, or pack up as the Neville Chamberlain party.
- Comment on Whatever it takes to get to solidarity amongst the working class. 5 weeks ago:
Our asses touched the same seat. We are brothers in revolution against the autocracy! ☭💣
Gave it a touch up.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
Sadly, during DADT, the rate of discharges due to outing was at a higher rate than before DADT.
In the US military, DEI is not merely about readiness, but about recruitment and retention as well. Seriously, we counter-recruiters already have enough material to illustrate how joining up is a Really Bad Idea.™
- Comment on Washington DC to be renamed to St Donaldsburg 5 weeks ago:
For a while it was Leningrad.
- Comment on Washington DC to be renamed to St Donaldsburg 5 weeks ago:
Trumpgrad!