slam dunkleosteu

Yeah. Bad news, buddy. But your battery's dead.

Do I have a battery?

a lot of these kids don't know what a "folder" is. some of them don't even know how to right click. I asked my class to put a folder on their desktop and half of the students did not know how. these are like, 11-13 year olds who's parents thought they were tech literate enough to sign them up for a programming class. most of them did not know how to add a bookmark on their browser. most of them could not touch type.

basic computer literacy is evaporating because everyone does everything on their phone now, but schools are getting rid of any computer classes because "all the kids are using computers all the time anyways!"

Voting to punish evil. I see lots of variations of this. Biden is supporting Israel, therefore we can’t vote for him. Is there any viable candidate who would stop the genocide? I don’t think the anti voting crowd actually cares. They are appealing to moral feelings rather than political strategy, because strategically, you have to realize that voting is not going to change foreign policy, and that change has to be pushed by other means. It’ll probably be something in the long haul.

Democrats should run someone else. First of all, this is a shit strategy. You don’t primary your president in the second term unless your party is falling apart. This may come from people from countries where replacing the head of government is easier, but the POTUS is the de facto party head. Also, going to the lack of thought to the goal — do you know someone willing to primary Biden and able to win who would do the things you want?

Biden hasn’t done anything anyway. This is just a way to bat away pro arguments. There’s plenty of lists of progress on lots of things. Student loans, insulin price caps, regulations, anti-trust.

Putting the entire Palestinian genocide on Biden. I’m not saying there’s not culpability there, but understand that the entire US government is in support of Israel, on both sides. It was a miracle we got a handful of Senators to call for investigations. We should cut off aid, absolutely. Who’s running to do that? And keep in mind that Israel chose to engage. US officials would have liked a more limited response, not out of care for Palestinians, but because they know from experience that it will come back to bite Israel in the form of newly radicalized Hamas recruits.

Liberals just have no hope for change. This is a new one. Just some idea that people are stuck in a rut and that’s the reason the two party system exists. The two party system is a mathematical consequence of the way we vote. There is reason to hope for change. The change, though, whatever means you choose, will take decades. Keep working at it. The hope is not that this election will fundamentally change things. The hope is that many small political actions over the years will push things forward.

Funnily enough, I haven’t seen a whole lot of third party promotion, just lots of this rhetoric aiming to punish. When voting, ask yourself:

Is this problem I have with this candidate something that the other candidate would be better on?

Are there other political actions I can take that will help?

What things can change with a different President or Congress, and what needs to be pursued by other means?

Withholding your vote as a punishment isn’t really going to help. Biden doesn’t know who you are or why you are not voting for him, and there is no one with a chance of winning that will do everything you want. But you have other means. Protest, organize, donate, build up alternatives, advocate for a different system.

i am an organiser in my place of work as well as the communities i intersect—queers, disableds, tenants.

america is not a democracy. i don't mean the old gotcha "it's a representative republic". it does not function like a democracy at its core foundation. the architects of this state did not want it to function as a democracy, and so it does not.

if it were anything approaching a democracy, then withholding your vote from the incumbent would send a message that you are displeased with their actions and policies and you will not be supporting them in the coming election. it would leverage power to force the incumbent to listen to your views and course correct.

this state does not work like that. i wish withholding your vote was a viable strategy but functionally it is not. the mechanisms of the machine are weighted against you.

the majority of your power comes from the labour you inject into the machine both at work and at home. please learn to organise and build worker power to take control of those levers, collectively.

while you are organising, please vote against trump.

at a molecular level, the two parties are indeed the same. they will defend capital with all the violence they can command. they will support genocide abroad wherever it suits the interests of their global hegemony. they rub elbows at the same social functions. their children attend the same schools.

at a macro level, they are different enough to distinguish themselves as rivals to the average voter. those macro difference have real-world consequences for vulnerable people, myself included. the insulin cap is monumental and would never happen under a republican. the wins for the rail workers would not ever happen under a republican.

and yes, they won.

biden stepped in to stop their strike, which looked ugly. then the work continued and the rail workers got what they wanted without a strike. striking is not fun. nobody enjoys it. it is hard and dangerous. getting what you want without a strike is always preferable.

the incumbent has failed willfully or weakly in many things. student loan debt, kids in cages, anti-trans legislation, book bans, the support of genocidal israel, the list goes on.

the lesser of two evils is all we realistically have. that lesser evil will be much easier for vulnerable populations to weather. that is true and irrefutable.

voting is not a litmus test for the purity of your soul. it is a user input into a vast and complicated system. that's it. i'll be pressing the button for the side that doesn't explicitly and vehemently want to extinguish the life of me, my friends, family and comrades.

but rhea isn't a god. she's a hurt and desperate woman trying to cope with the things that were done to her. rhea has convinced people seiros was a prophet, sure, but ultimately she and her siblings + niece are the remnants of a genocide who are just trying to survive. of course rhea did questionable shit to ensure her survival, but that's the point when you compare her to edelgard, isn't it? both of them do. and edelgard isn't a plucky jrpg heroine motivated by the power of friendship. she's a completely different fire emblem archetype: the red emperor. not a figure who is traditionally heroic, and as someone who played cf first in my 3h runs, even the ending suggests that maybe things aren't great when she fulfills her quest. she lies to her allies about who bombed fort merceus because, again, she thinks of herself as the protagonist and that her actions and lies are what's needed to kill god. she attacks and conquers countries that have long since become independent from the empire because she's convinced herself that god manipulated them to split off, and the "natural order" is for there to be just one empire regardless of the feelings of the people in those nations.