Also, cats understand a surprising amount of human speech. So you can and should talk to them.

(if you get those little button things, they’ll even talk back)

Believing that someone engaged in some malicious compliance here would restore a tiny sliver of my faith in humanity… which means it was probably just incompetence.

Nah it’s not that rare.

Every day would be great. I’m still working on ‘once.’

*If only!*

It’s all I want for the next several Christmases (and various other holidays).

Honestly probably not that serious. Even in their myths/stories, the oracle would tell great doom and then no one would listen. I expect they got inspiration for that from somewhere.

Well that’s a new nightmare fuel for me. Glitchy mattresses.

I feel like I’m pretty tech-savvy… which is why I don’t want software in anything where plain old physics will do the job. Software breaks.

Coke (the soda) is 90% water.

Your soup will still be a soup (or a thin broth, at least) at a far higher percentage of water than you think it will.

Robert Evans (Host of Behind the Bastards) has talked a lot about 4chan, 8chan, and how gamergate, qanon, and trump are all linked. He really does great work.

look for a way to make the system tolerate human error

Ah, if only managers understood this principle.

My motto is that “all failures are management failures.” But I’m not far enough up the chain to really implement that 😅

There is also a weird 3d pretzel pyramid type thing it could be. The two points in the middle would be pointed upward out of the plane, with the outer hexagon being the base of the “pyramid.”

If I had to guess, it’s mostly water.

The really scary stuff (in aqueous solutions, anyways) isn’t usually brightly colored, it’s usually clear. Of course there are exceptions - like bromine or iodine - but I know what those look like and nothing on that tree looks like either of those.

The reason for that is that most pigments are conjugated ring systems - complex organic molecules that break down in harsh environments - so anything sufficiently reactive would actually destroy any colorants you added to them.

I’m not saying that bright, friendly colors are always safe… but the easiest way to get a bunch of bright colors is to use food coloring and water.

100% of the space crime you know about

… but yeah, good for the astronaut, but also sad for the memes.

direct action and electoral politics are fundamentally different

I disagree. Are there plenty of people who vote who don’t understand direct action? Sure. But I can’t imagine anyone who really understands direct action isn’t bothering to vote when given a chance to.

I don’t know why this gives leftists so much trouble when the fucking fascists seem to understand it intuitively. Does anyone think the Proud Boys don’t vote? Politics and activism are all pretty seamless to conservatives, don’t see why we can’t seem to grasp it.

What will happen if/when they lose their majority in the midterms? …they’ll launch their coup

Case in point. You have no problems imagining a world in which Republicans are running for office on Tuesday and then planning a coup on Wednesday. Why is it so implausible that we embrace a diversity of tactics to achieve our goals?

the work to make sure such resistance exists starts now

Absolutely. And you can go to the firing range on Monday and then to the ballot box on Tuesday and then plant a community garden Wednesday. Resistance is 90% organization anyways, so if you’re getting to know your neighbors and building a network of people you trust then you’re already most of the way there. If you’re already emphasizing a diversity of tactics then there really is no contradiction in supporting an electoral candidate with one hand and creating an armed resistance with the other.

With this congress? or really any congress under our corrupt system? probably not.

Ideology is malleable. People aren’t nearly as “axiomatically opposed” to anything as you think they are.

If your organization is already taking direct action (protests, strikes, sit ins, peaceful civil disobedience) then your tactics will naturally escalate as the government becomes more authoritarian. If you pitch extreme tactics now, though, the only people who will join will be the craziest.

You can only make them while they’re vulnerable

They won’t abolish elections all at once. Their strategy for the midterms - or at least what it seems to be - is voter suppression and gerrymandering. Those are powerful tools, don’t get me wrong, but not so powerful that they’re invincible.

Obviously it would have been better to already be organized, but failing that, the best time to organize is now.

The best time to plant a tree…

Organizing is organizing. If you have enough people in your corner to win an election, you have enough people to blow up a bridge.

Or has everyone forgotten why we hold elections in the first place? Voting is a proxy for fighting. If they won’t hold a fair election, make them. Remind the oligarchs why we have elections in the first place.

Mamdani won. He seems like the real deal, too.

If he can do it, we can too. We’ll build a whole new party if we have to, but we’ll get people in office who will actually fight for us.

Interesting that Dems were putting up a fight until Mandani won in NY. If the shutdown is fueling voters to elect actual progressives, then suddenly Dems have to cave.

So we remind them. Preferably by fielding candidates that will actually fight for us, and aren’t afraid to point that fact out. Loudly.

Building up a real base of support takes time. As in, 4-5 years worth of time. Might as well get started while people are pissed.