All of these are individual actions. I’d add organizing with other folks trying to make a difference. Direct action or political advocacy can have a much more significant effect than an individual acting alone.

That doesn’t help you understand his supporters though. You have to wade in the shit they call news. You have to hear what they say to begin to understand them.

You’re in a media bubble. It feels like there’s no way anyone could see it differently. The people who disagree with you are also in a media bubble and don’t understand how you could believe what you do.

For everything you said they

• don’t believe happened
• think it was a deep state plot
• believe it’s good actually and believing anything else means you want to kill babies or destroy the economy
• have never heard of it

Reality may have a leftist bias but most people don’t live in reality. Most people live in a reality constructed by corporate media. Social media is largely derivative of it.

“I don’t even know you. You’re not the man I married 5 years ago.”

China’s energy grid is about 80% fossil fuels. Assuming their energy mixture remains unchanged (a bad assumption as their coal usage is on the decline) it would take about 65,000 miles for an EV’s carbon output to break even with an equivalent ICE vehicle.

The waste and suffering involved in carbon intensive fuels is ongoing instead of being single event. One benefit of renewable tech is the recyclability of it’s components. Once we’re made the battery it can be recycled and died not require ongoing extractive mining forever.

EVs have a place in a just future and can do some good at this time. Alternatives to cars are still a far more important and uncomplicated solution to our climate problems

Direct action gets the goods

Explain Like I’m Five

Libro.fm for stuff not at the library

I think it has to do with complete distrust in western news and government (WNG). They can discount anything WNG says; especially when, it goes against their belief that the US is bad.

I believe we live in the most sophisticated propaganda machine ever developed but the folks who are a part of it mostly don’t lie. They’ve got the same problem the tankies have but reversed. The folks who work in WNG believe the US is good. They naturally distrust and minimize any info that would conflict with their beliefs.

There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance.

The only way I can navigate my belief in the fundamental inaccuracy of information is acknowledging it and accepting I don’t have enough info to be certain a lot of the time.

I think all bigotry can be used as a wedge to divide working people from their own interests. I wouldn’t be surprised if Romani bigotry was used to control Europeans in the past. However, I think immigration is the most important wedge in the European context

Bike poggies are worth looking into to keep your hands warm. Studded tires can help with slipping too

The bone conducting ones make me nauseous so I got a pair of Bose open earbuds. They’re not as good in loud environments but that’s kinda the point. I ride and listen to music with them daily

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/13/a-punch-in-the-guts/

TLDR deregulating medicine has been a disaster. Monopolistic hospitals, ridiculous drug IP laws, and medical price middlemen with bad incentives make the US medical system the most expensive in the imperial core countries with the worst outcomes.

I don’t know what that has to do with anything. I’m a lefty, life has never mugged me. I’m a leftist because bad things happen to everyone and the solutions isn’t to hurt people until they’re better people. Giving people time and resources just makes people and society better.

I don’t think it’s the source. I think it’s a tool of social control that enables the powerful to create a bare minimum willingness to be ruled. For a long time the doctrine of Christianity was the Divine Right of Kings. Now it’s the Prosperity Gospel. The books did not change but the people with all the money and power ensured the church leaders who served their interest had most of the money and thus followers.

If we didn’t have religion, some other social construct would arise, and I’d argue, has arisen to fulfill it’s role. Modern economic theory justifies the current power order in an unfalsifiable way that reminds me of religion.

Religion could be a liberatory force in society. In fact it has been. The liberation theology movement in South America and numerous heretical movements in the late medieval period are both examples of progressive Christian social movements.

That sort of thing can happen in extreme situations. Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany are the most prominent examples. Both examples involved not having enough stuff. When there aren’t enough necessary goods to buy and people have plenty of money you’re going to get inflation. Using the right combo of subsidies, government run production, purchase quantity limits, reserves, vouchers, and price fixing you can ensure the supply is stable and eliminate inflation even if there’s lots of money.

That’s true. That happens because people are stuck in the narrative of the government needing a balanced budget, just like a household. It also happens because the owners and the corpos use all their money and power to ensure workers pay taxes and thus decrease worker money and power.

Yeah, if the population was educated on MMT the ability to bring corpos to heel would be significantly increased. People arguing for it are fundamentally arguing for a change in how we think about money.

The nice thing about trials of corporations is discovery. We have evidence of Google intentionally making search worse, increasing the time spent looking for results, and this improving ad sales. All that came out in discovery.

Agreed, I switched to their unlimited tier pretty quickly

I’ve been using it for a few months. It’s good. I get the official docs for my first result using OP’s query. 300 queries, their starting tier was not enough for my use. I was using DDG before and like it well enough. I’m not sure if it’s worth it but I like the idea of paying for services I use. I stopped using Google years ago because of all the captchas I had to fill due to my VPN

LMGTFY In August, before the United Auto Workers strike, the Biden administration announced $15.5 billion in funding and loans to help car manufacturers redesign their factories for electric vehicle production.