I’m in a similar boat, and am working on managing my dopamine set point. It’s tough, but it def helps, I recommend looking into that!

Edit: simile -> similar

Left-wing scrutiny of the Squad and particularly Representative Ocasio-Cortez has steadily veered from constructive criticism and needed pressure to a kind of caricaturish vitriol.

Jacobin is clearly panicked by the possibility that the Outsider Left might not actually inherit the Democratic Party’s mantle, but seems unwilling to ask why or to suggest a solution.

This op-ed consists of hand-waving apologetics that glaze over AOC’s often neoliberal voting record with feel-good references to, for example, the legacy of the failed Green New Deal, and it reads like an excuse.

Perhaps Jacobin is merely attempting to convince itself, but an injunction to think of “the health of the socialist and broader progressive movements” feels pathetic at the end of an article that’s largely failed to defend the socialist Wunderkinder against the leftist critique that they’re all just regular old Democrats now.

It’s tough being a member of the “Squad” these days.

Is it really, though? AOC and her ilk further their careers by happily selling their politically-profitable, “socialist” personas to a tragically hoodwinked outer-left constituency that’s just hopeful for meaningful change.

See ya at the next Met Gala, AOC.

Part of the problem, eh?

when asked whether they agreed with the statement that members of the opposing party are “not just worse for politics—they are downright evil,” 42 percent of both Republicans and Democrats responded “yes.”

Yikes, that’s a terrifying mentality for 42 percent of people to have, that’s downright ruinous to any attempts to salvage the democratic system.

Fair point, and made me laugh

Meh, if that were the reason Google Maps would also be unavailable

In this case I’m pretty sure it’s a play on “coomer,” given the masturbatory nature of the referenced mentality

Edit: clarification + link added

Who’s the first villain in the top left corner?

I guess we’ll see how post-Covid de-globalization of supply chains + China’s rapidly snowballing population/labor supply crisis affects their ability to continue to be legitimately competitive in the international market.

I expect, on the Sino-side, increased cost of labor, increased cost of manufacturing, and decreasing monopolization of various industries as mid-skilled countries like Mexico ramp up their own industrialization.

Edit: did I hit a nerve? Lol

Yeah, I’ve been seeing a lot of sensationalist posts from this user tbh

She’s enough of a chode that the Guardian shouldn’t have to resort to trash clickbait about how she hired the same web designer, jfc…

Supposedly Alexander the Great went to visit Diogenes in a suburb of Corinth to see what his deal was. When Alexander asked if Diogenes wanted anything from him, Diogenes reported replied “yes, move, you’re blocking the sun.”

Afterwards, Alexander was so amused and impressed that he’s quoted as saying “it I were not Alexander, I wish I were Diogenes.”

Fucking awesome.

Ok, good for you, but that’s beside the point.

This article is reactionary, leftist apologetics for yet another “socialist” politician who’s being publicly called out because her political actions don’t really line up with her professed progressive views.

She’s clearly a decent enough politician, and yeah, she’s willing to compromise, but she’s also 1) disingenuously representing herself as something that she’s not, or 2) not self-aware enough to realize that she’s a social democrat and not a democratic socialist.

Either way, her behavior doesn’t line up with her professed leftism, but does increasingly align neatly with standard, neoliberal Democratic policy. She’s become a part of the establishment, and got there by riding the anti-establishment, socialist sentiment in young people. Not sure how that could be considering anything but problematic.

You’re misunderstanding me (probably because I misspelled “defers” as “differs”).

I’m saying she, as a proclaimed “progressive,” generally isn’t that progressive at all and generally defers to centrist, Democratic Party leaders: she does what they say rather than sticking to her ostensibly much more leftist guns.

It absolutely is hero worship any time someone is put on a pedestal and their flaws are ignored.

That’s what the author of the linked article has explicitly done. He waves away the fact that she consistently defers to Democratic Party leadership—except for occasional, “token gestures of resistance to solidify the illusion” that she’s a hard-line leftist—and then holds her up as the face of progressivism.

If that’s not hero worship idk what is.

Edit: spelling

I mean, the article linked is an AOC apologist quite literally bending “definitions and rules to make exceptions” for her after another columnist said she was “just a regular old Democrat now.”

Branding the progressive left the “AOC Left” is also problematic and indicative of some hero worship on the author’s part.

This is when you put a small pebble under each of the tire valve caps and screw them down tight enough to depress the spring, open the valve, and let the air out all of the tires

There’s a lot educational material as opposed to trash, and, like in school (but not like on Reddit), I haven’t felt condemned for expressing thoughts that might piss off one dominant political ideology or another.

You probably already have, but if you’ve not yet check out Wine and Proton, I’ve seen numerous guides on setting up a Linux gaming rig that runs Windows games.

Yup. It’s too easy to be “Christian” these days, which breeds complacency and corruption in a hierarchical religious system (which, by dint of its hierarchical structure and opportunity for abuse of religious ideals, already breeds complacency and corruption).

When you legislate (bastardizations of) your religious precepts into law, at no point do you have to consciously “choose” to be Christian, at no point do you have to make the hard choice between, say, holding to your faith or having an abortion because you’re really, really not ready for a kid. It’s just not an option, and you’re forced to do what your Church says, which seems…un-Christian.

Idk. I’ve been trying to workshop this thought—that living in a religious society results in half-baked, hypocritically-“religious” abominations that end up in office—rather than thoughtful, intentional participants in a diverse and thriving society that understand why they choose to live in one way and listen to their neighbors explain why they choose to live in another.

The goal would be to use that approach to get Christians voting for legitimate freedom of choice, but idk if it’s even worth it at this point, it seems pretty impossible to sway them at times.

Looking back at the early days of persecuted Christianity (Roman times) it seems like people were legitimately drawn to these communities because they looked out for each other in a way that others didn’t. Christians have come a long way from that, in a bad sense, and I wonder if the lack of (actual) persecution plays a part in that.