Yeah let’s just allow roving gangs of brownshirts to run around attacking and terrorizing minorities

Well that’s blatantly not the argument at all. The question isn’t whether to react, but what do you do about it?

The vast majority of fascist movements are destroyed through nonviolence rather than violence, which itself is typically inseparable from fascism. To refer to the post below, what ended Jim Crow? Was it a bunch of black people going around punching suspected Klan members? On the contrary it was the reverse. The Klan “lynching people and getting away with it” included key rallying points like the murders of Emmett Till, or the Mississippi Burning murders, along with state violence like the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Sure, maybe the fascists themselves got away with it, but fascism didn’t. The things the Klan and other segregationists fought for were dismantled, in large part thanks to their own violent efforts.

Nazis don’t need a justification for their violence, but their enablers - Von Papen, or the would-be modern equivalent Mike Pence - do. And these enablers need to tell themselves, their family, and their neighbors, that they have good reasons for their decisions. Exposing fascism as the senseless violence it is robs them of that justification, while giving the fascists a threat to refer to provides it.

I’m just gonna focus entirely on the common misunderstanding of the use of violence against Nazis in WWII because that’s such a common argument for punching nazis and it’s really quite wrong on so many levels.

“But Nazis were stopped by violence in WWII.” That’s a meaningless statement without the missing last word. Violence stopped Nazis militarily, after they had already seized power in Germany and were invading other countries. Today we’re not in a military battle with Nazis, we’re in an ideological battle.

So why did the Nazis seize power in Germany? Because they weren’t punched enough? Well the exact mechanism behind how the nazis seized power is a complex web of illegal political maneuvers, political violence, and yes, some degree of ideological success by the nazis. But a key part of that ideological success was the fear of political violence by their opponents - most notably the Reichstag fire - to justify the power that they were illegally taking. It was basically “desperate times require desperate measures”. So in the ideological battle, the perceived* use of violence by Nazi opponents was actually a key part of their victory within Germany.

Meanwhile, over in the US, the contrast between the violence employed by the German American Bund (the US version of the Nazi party) and largely Jewish peaceful protesters ended up being a massive embarrassment to the Bund from which they never recovered. Again, ideologically, non-violence proved quite effective.

Point being, and this should be obvious - violence is a really bad option for succeeding in an ideological battle. Yes, in a military battle, it’s the only rational option. But in an ideological battle, it’s actually counterproductive.

*Obligatory caveat that whether the Reichstag fire was actually set by nazi opponents remains debated, but suffice to say the political atmosphere at the time made it plausible.

Where I am harleys aren’t so much of an issue as extremely loud uber eats scooters. Everywhere should just ban gas mopeds. The downside is it’ll come off as a tax on underpaid uber eats drivers, but if the same rules apply to everyone it should end up going to the Uber Corporation and the people who use it instead of the drivers. As it is basically all of us are subsidizing uber eats with our ears.

Whenever I see these articles, I feel like it’s part of OpenAI’s marketing strategy to use the fear-based media to pump up the sense of how revolutionary their tech is. Kinda like how they marketed GPT-4o by openly tying it in to the movie Her, as if ChatGPT is gonna replace relationships. They’re clearly very aware of what gets attention and going for that.

support for Russia (not Putin, as historical materialists don’t subscribe to great man theory) is only a partial, temporary, tactical one, in the context of imperialist liberation.

So you’re pro-Russian in the temporary, tactical sense, in the context of imperialist liberation. And you would be pro-Putin too, but for not believing in great man theory.

TNT used to be a non-stop Shawshank Redemption loop.

Every keyboard must have a home and end key that doesn’t require pressing additional keys like fn, and home must go to the start of the line, while end goes to the end of the line.

I can think of several, but it’s so cringe to say any of them. There’s a disdain for do-gooders in all societies, but especially American society. Which means that it’s just not cool to admire someone who is simply a good person.

Then why is Israel helping them? It is, after all, quite true that Israel has refused to stop settlement activity in the West Bank. Seems like a great way to cause protests, and then responding with a shoot first, ask questions later mentality will lead to a lot of martyrs. Are you accusing the Israeli government of being in league with Hamas?

To steel man the downvoters, maybe there are other solutions besides killing off every business that can’t afford to comply with copyright. After all, isn’t the whole point of copyright to enable the capitalist exploitation of information?

Ok so what do I short and when?

I tried to create a blog on substack once, I got literally zero views across a few posts. I feel like the only blogs there that get recommended are by people who are already semi-famous, suggesting the usual problem of recommendation algorithms killing entry for new creators. It also strongly encourages a paid model, you also usually have to subscribe to comment on others’ posts which makes it hard to get your blog out there. I’d say it’s more a publishing platform for people who are already well known than for ordinary people.

My go-to is to grab a used samsung galaxy from Ebay. Usually the best bang for the buck. The reasonably new ones have no headphone jack, but the solid dongles (not the flexible ones) work pretty well for that.

Have no social life, it’s much cheaper.

But in all seriousness, if you have to have a social life, limit your spending on that stuff. Restaurant and bar tabs can add up quickly. Budget, limit your drinking, and if you don’t wanna limit your drinking, at least do some cheap drinking at home first.

“I’m really great at reading people/spotting BS/etc.” It seems like almost invariably this is said by people who are quick to make assumptions about people and as a result, are terrible at figuring out what someone is actually thinking.

To predict what jobs AI will replace, you need to know both of the following:

1. What’s special about the human mind that makes people necessary for completing certain tasks
2. What AI can do to replicate or replace those special features

This guy has an MA in industrial engineering and an MBA, and has been in business his whole career. He has no knowledge of psychology and whatever knowledge of AI that he’s picked up on the side as part of his work.

He’s not the guy to ask. And yet, I feel like this is the only kind of guy anyone asks.

Leaders in tech have to be good at raising money from rich investors, lenders, etc… Most of these people aren’t tech people. They’re hedge fund managers, bankers, or just people with lots of money. So consider the following 2 strategies:

Strategy A: Be realistic. Explain the positives and the negatives. The tech looks promising, but the future is uncertain. It’s a risky investment that could pay off massively, but it probably won’t. You the CEO know a lot about the topic, but you’re still just a guy, not a miracle worker.

Strategy B: Just focus on the plus side. It will succeed, and it’ll succeed way more than anyone expects. Not only that, you the CEO are an unstoppable hardworking galaxy brain genius who sleeps on the factory floor. They should be so lucky to get to invest in your company.

Which of these is more likely to work with investors who don’t know tech? And which is most likely to be the strategy chosen by leaders who are narcissistic and deceitful? The answer is the same.

Of course the point of likening it to a virus is to compare it the involuntary nature of a viral infection, even though must people have a voluntary role to play in accepting ideas. So if you take something into your body with full consent, knowing it will reproduce itself, I guess that’s more mind sex? That sounds a lot less harmful.

I have had an app on the play store, it’s a bitch for indie devs. Just today I had to update my account info after there was a notification that google would delete my account for not being active. If I hadn’t logged in over a 2 month period I would’ve lost a developer account I paid for just so I can publish free apps. I assume the App store is even worse.

One thing that courts and antitrust lawyers won’t understand is that these “stores” have annihilated the free market for phone apps. Market entry for phones is just too hard because you need to be an actual for profit business for any of the hassle to be worth it.

Time to bring back the fail whale