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Cake day: July 16th, 2024

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  • The death penalty is a law enforcement weapon. Unless you think you will personally be able to make the laws to serve your interests, you should oppose the death penalty just from a strategic standpoint. The death penalty will be used to execute enemies of the state when the state is unjust.

    Death as harm reduction is often good. Killing soldiers from an invading army is good, killing cops is good. But death is only harm reduction if you don’t have better options. A community fighting a state often doesn’t, but anything capable of arranging a death penalty likely does.

    Death as punishment is kind of dumb. The person will stop existing so they will stop suffering for their crimes, and everybody who has ever done something similar now knows they should fight to the death to resist you.

    Death as an ideological suppressant is even dumber. The people that want people who have done wrong freed won’t go away if you execute the people who have done wrong. Most Nazi leaders died pretty quick but neo-nazis worshipped them anyway. Martyrdom is a real factor, and the dead can’t ruin their own reputation by being embarrassing or changing their minds. In fact people whose heroes are martyred tend to radicalize.

    Ross is not the problem here. No amount of punishment for him will change the fact that 90 million people voted for Project 2025 and the US government is becoming fascist. Death is part of the answer, but not for him.


  • I don’t support death as punishment, but sometimes the only tool someone has to protect others is murder. Right now the system gives people no option to defend themselves from law enforcement officers other than through civil war, so it is just that law enforcement officers are murdered in (community) self-defense.

    If there is a succesful revolution, old regime law enforcement prisoners of war are no longer in a position of power supported by the state. Killing them would no longer be clear-cut harm reduction when house arrest and rehabilitation are on the table. At that point, why kill him?

    If he’s alive you can put him on house arrest and give him some craft tools and let him make stuff that others can use. It wouldn’t be forced labor; as every “give people free money and see what they do” experiment has shown, people will just make stuff if you let them.



  • Maybe I’m heartless, but why give millions of working class dollars to a bunch of lawyers in what will almost certainly be a slam-dunk loss? It’s not like the carceral system will stop enslaving and torturing him if we pay them enough.

    If you want him to be rewarded, give the money to his family, to his friends, and to the workers whose lives were disrupted because of this.




  • In many cases, it’s easier to have an online culture with an anti-AI policy than a local one. A bunch of people already insist on using AI when interacting with others irl, and many more are passively supportive of them doing so. (i.e. “they don’t care”, but in a very different way from how “they don’t care” about someone eating vegan).

    So an online group that has persistent identities where it’s hard to get a new account with a good status whose culture opposes AI is going to be much easier to keep AI-free than your local neighborhood third space.


  • But by the same token, what is unsuitable for trees today doesn’t have to be unsuitable a decade from now. Plant growth affects the climate. Retaining moisture, stabilizing day-night temperatures, retaining topsoil, changing surface albedo, triggering cloud formation, etc.

    Ideally a mega-project is thousands of small projects being attempted at once in a way that is useful even if only a fraction of them work. Those 10% of places that worked could be used as a jumping off point for further efforts in the region, and in all cases people learned valuable agriculture skills they can take with them for the rest of their lives.





  • Rowling spends almost every bit of income she gets on funding anti-transgender organisations and literal fascists (such as Posie Parker), whose lobbying efforts have turned every major British party against transgender healthcare, resulting in transgender healthcare becoming practically inaccessible through legal means with waiting lists lasting decades.

    In terms of its material impact, buying HP merch is equivalent to buying a swastika flag from a neonazi store. You can be assured that every cent of profit will go to funding fascism. The only difference is the aesthetic of having HP merch versus having nazi merch.


  • The last time everybody was touching a solid object connected to the Earth by touching other solid objects is probably around 15,000 years ago, when humans crossed over into the Americas. Before then, it would probably occur regularly that nearly all humans are asleep and the handful that are awake happen to all be touching the ground.



  • The first violence is that they arrest parents for child abuse if they don’t send their children to attend a school with a pedophile on the board.

    The second violence is a parent grounding their child unless they attend a school run by pedophiles.

    The third violence is that they arrest people if they don’t pay taxes to fund the wages of a pedophile in a position of power over children.

    The fourth violence is someone paying money to put a pedophile in charge of children.

    The fifth violence is a child getting sexually assaulted because the perpetrator knows they can get away with it.

    The sixth violence is an adult telling a sexually assaulted child to go back to school because they don’t have proof.


    A peaceful world does not look like the present day. A peaceful world is anarchy, where nobody is required to support a pedophile school board member unless they want to.

    What you are asking for isn’t peace, it is submission to the status quo and the forces with a monopoly on violence that maintain it even if they are unjust.

    If you want peace, prepare for war. Because a lot of people are going to be violent towards you the moment you stop supporting their violence.


  • The author spends almost every bit of income she gets on funding anti-transgender organisations and literal fascists (such as Posie Parker), whose lobbying efforts have turned every major British party against transgender healthcare, resulting in transgender healthcare becoming practically inaccessible through legal means with waiting lists lasting decades.

    In terms of its material impact, buying HP merch is equivalent to buying a swastika flag from a neonazi store. You can be assured that every cent of profit will go to funding fascism. The only difference is the aesthetic of having HP merch versus having nazi merch.