Yeah, the tankies writing for the filthy communist rag that is … The Guardian?

So all the authoritarian regimes of today and the countless ones in the past are in my head? All the hierarchical corporate structures with a male CEO at the top is in my head? What world are you living in where there isn’t a small group or even a single male at the top making the major decisions?

I never said this is the right way to organize things, or that those people should be leading, I literally said we shouldnt idolize them and let them rule us, I think outside of times of crisis that shouldn’t be how we organize society. I believe we need to fight these systems of organization but to do that we need to understand them, denying there existence or the drives that propel them just maintains the status quo. In order to fight fascism you need to understand what drives fascism.

You could say it’s not true for bonobos but I have no idea how you could make the case that a silverback gorilla is not an “alpha” unless you have some very specific definition. Just pulling from Wikipedia as I’m lazy, but if you have better sources please provide them:

The silverback is the centre of the troop’s attention, making all the decisions, mediating conflicts, determining the movements of the group, leading the others to feeding sites, and taking responsibility for the safety and well-being of the troop. Younger males subordinate to the silverback, known as blackbacks, may serve as backup protection. Blackbacks are aged between 8 and 12 years

That seems to describe an alpha beta hierarchy structure to me. With chimps it may be a little less obvious and more variable but still, according to wikipedia again:

Among males, there is generally a dominance hierarchy, and males are dominant over females.

And

Male chimpanzees exist in a linear dominance hierarchy. Top-ranking males tend to be aggressive even during dominance stability

Yes humans have way more complex social structures but almost always there is a hierarchy of men at the top usually with a single man at the apex, call them alphas, the patriarchy, the oppressors, the greats or whatever you want, they exist. Denying their existence or the fundamental drive powering them only helps to obfuscate there motives. We as a society need to recognize those people and harness them for the benefit of society instead of the benefit of themselves.

I mean it may not be true for wolves, but it definitely is true for gorillas and chimps who are very closely related to us. Also most societies from hunter gathering bands all the way up to multi-national empires usually have a single male at the top. Is that right, probably not. Is it natural?, sort of. There seems to be a drive in a lot of men to dominate society and reach the top of the hierarchy. If you combine that natural drive with someone naturally capable to reach the top of the hierarchy and you get an alpha male. You also don’t have to be an incel to recognize a lot of women are attracted to these driven capable men.

The question isn’t whether alpha males exist, it’s what we as a society should do with them. We shouldn’t idolize them and let them rule over us. We should harness there drive and capabilities to help society as a whole

a drug that was originally manufactured and distributed by the American Sackler family through their American Purdue Pharma company.

Purdue doesn’t make fentanyl, they make oxycontin. People rarely overdose on prescription oxycontin as the dosage is consistent and most addicts understand their tolerance. Fentanyl is a different story, it’s so strong and the margin of error is so small that people overdose on it way easier.

You seem to have a similar myopic view of the crisis but instead of evil Mexican immigrants and drug cartels being the sole problem it’s the evil sackler family. Both those only look at the supply side of the problem, which in my opinion is unsolvable. Trying to control the supply of a highly desirable product is a losing battle, especially with fentanyl where you can hide enough of it to kill an elephant in your sock. In order to solve this problem we need to look at the demand side, both getting current addicts off fentanyl and on to safer substances and also addressing the pain that this society is causing that makes people turn to drugs.

She’s voting for Kamala but not endorsing her.

He staffed his administration with a bunch of cronies and they’ve been up to various extortion and pay for play schemes. I’m unaware of he himself has gotten directly caught up in anything.

Yeah but this is a “needle in a haystack” problem that chatgpt and AI in general are actually very useful for, ie. Solutions that are hard to find but easy to verify. Issues like this are hard to find as it requires combing through your code , config files and documentation to find the problem, but once you find the solution it either works or it doesn’t.

At least there’s a carrot now, before we were just getting the stick of “vote for me or the fascists will take over”

Also good for the environment, mostly the not eating meat part. Especially if you buy them dried in bulk you can cut down on your food and packaging waste. Even the lack of fruits and vegetables is good for not drying up California, probably not good for your long term health though. Also fuck billionaires

Probably cause he thinks he’ll spoil the Democrats campaign. Probably doesn’t like his politics since if he ever did get in his policies would liquidate people like crow. West did return the money though

Meanwhile Harris’ donors are just as sus and are expecting something for their money. Whether that be AIPAC and getting her to continue the genocide or health insurance companies getting her to flip on Medicare for all. You don’t see her returning or rejecting any money from them.

As a west supporter I’m fine with this. Though I’m not fully convinced on the magnitude of the spoiler effect, eg. If 2% want to vote for west that doesn’t mean that those 2% vote for Kamala if he’s off the ballot, they’ll most likely just not vote. The race in Penn seems really tight though so anything to get Harris over the line is good.

If you arent in a swing state ( eg. Margin bigger then 10%) and think Kamala’s tacking too far right then id recommend looking into west. He and stein get a lot of slander on here because people are deathly afraid of spoilers but his platform is actually pretty good if you want to do a protest vote. Again in a non-swing state so everyone doesn’t come after me for “helping trump”

I mean you’re gonna find a lot more plutocratic ghouls on Harris’ donor list then his.

Not from Canada but this sent me down a rabbit hole, So the Ontario government sold a monopoly on beer sales to a company and ford backed out early and now the government has to pay 200 million in damages to the company instead of letting the contract expire in a year?

Fuck it I’ll take the down votes, he’s right. Ukraine is losing this war and stand no chance of winning back there lost territory, barring western countries putting troops on the ground. The longer the war goes on, the more territory the Russians gain and the more Ukraine’s manpower gets drained. The only people who stand to benefit from the war continuing is the Russians and western defense contractors.

Obviously fuck Russia for starting this needless war but you have to understand when to cut your losses and stop pouring money and lives into a losing quagmire.

It’s genuinely great that China offers that to the people they don’t imprison for asking for their rights and speaking out against the state.

I mean that’s the vast majority of the people, looks like they have a little under 10,000 political prisoners in a country of 1.4 billion, so 0.0007% of people. That’s not good and should be 0 but it’s not some orwellian police state with stazi on every corner checking if you said xi looks like Winnie the Pooh.

I’m no fan of Chinese authoritarianism and there human rights record but pretending there authoritarianism is the same as the totalitarianism of the 20th century is naive. It’s Definitely not an “open air prison” and does a disservice to people who live in actual open air prisons like Gaza or North Korea.

If you live in a swing state or any state that is up for grabs, then yeah don’t vote for third party. If your in a deep blue/red state, I’m talking > 15 percent swing, vote for whoever you want in the presidential, your votes just going to get collapsed into the state vote for the electoral college any way. Should still vote for the two parties or whoever’s competitive in state and local elections because your vote can have an effect.

If the electoral college says my vote effectively doesn’t matter in deciding the next president since I’m in California, then at least let me use my vote to send some sort of message.

Most of the ‘electricity’ emissions on that nice pie graph isn’t joe bob’s playstation, it’s industrial power.

Again please cite some sources and look at the actual data. Adding in electricity and looking at end use does up industrial but only up to 30% . It ups commercial and residential far more to 31%, your right though most of the electricity isn’t going towards joes PlayStation it’s going towards heating and cooling joes house.

Greenhouse gas emissions from commercial and residential buildings also increase substantially when emissions from electricity end-use are included, due to the relatively large share of electricity use mostly building related (e.g., heating, ventilation, and air conditioning; lighting; and appliances) in these sectors

Again personal consumption choices have an effect on this, even barring the choice of where to live the amount of energy needed to heat and cool a home goes up as the size of the building increases. Heating and cooling a large detached single family home is way less efficient then heating and cooling a small apartment. Like a big truck no one’s forcing you to get a big house and the choice you make has climate impacts.

I agree auto companies are largely responsible for the mess we’re in with transportation, but the solution isn’t to just put our hands up and say we need to hold them accountable, that won’t happen in the current environment. We all need to make the personal choice to drive less, and take more public transit. If public transit numbers go up then politicians will actually start prioritizing it and improvements will be made which will cause more people to take transit causing a positive feedback loop. If traffic numbers go down as well the government won’t have to spend money on adding another lane to the freeway and would save on road maintenance due to cars wearing them down less, allowing more money to be available for transit and adding to the feedback loop.

To kickstart that feedback loop though we’ll need people to choose to take a more inconvenient transport option at the beginning, and you aren’t going to get people to make that choice by saying there actions don’t matter and that it’s all the corporations fault so you driving a mile to CVS is fine.

did you not get sent some fucked up videos

Oh yeah, all that shit, I wasn’t talking about porn and fetish stuff though cause my comment was getting long, was just talking about actual atrocities like war, famine genocide etc. I don’t think preteens have an interest in that stuff. They definitely do have an interest in porn / gross stuff but I’m not convinced that stuff is necessarily detrimental or traumatic. I’m open to being convinced but most of the arguments seem to be pearl clutching about them losing their innocence and anecdotally I know most of my friends watched porn / gross videos at that age and turned out fine and don’t mention it as some traumatic or life changing experience unless they tie it up with some religious guilt.

Could you please give some sources instead of pulling numbers out of thin air. Because the numbers don’t seem to align with what your saying since industry only accounts for 23 % of emissions, so unless holding companies responsible includes completely eliminating them and there emissions you aren’t going to get a 20-30 % reduction in emissions. That 20-30% your talking about can actually be obtained if Americans just stopped driving and flying. Hell we can get almost double that “measly 1.5%” by Americans just driving 10% less then they are. Cars and air travel are emitting just as much as those evil corporations everyone likes to blame, and to stop climate change we’ll need to rein in both. Thats just cars, it doesn’t account for other consumer choices like eating meat and fast fashion that also have huge impacts.