I’m a lot less likely to report a crime after the George Floyd murder. Granted violent crime, like murder, tends to get reported regardless of a person’s personal feelings about police, and reported murders are down

Mexico is a bad example IMO. The Zapatistas are right there. That’s a pretty significant bit of territory the Mexican State has very little control over.

I like eco-dent I have some jagged spots on my teeth that most floss snags on. This stuff doesn’t snag and it uses wax instead of forever chemical

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

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.

Because billionaires are morally good, hard working, and smart. If a poor person was all those things they wouldn’t be poor /s

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.

Netanyahu has propped up Hamas for decades in order to separate the West Bank from Gaza. There hasn’t been an election in Gaza for 18 years so nobody there had had the opportunity to choose an alternative anyway. Hamas didn’t even get the majority of votes in that election. Finally, plenty of people who don’t support Hamas, like queer folks and babies, are being indiscriminately murdered by the IDF.

The people in this photo are making a not uncomplicated but ultimately moral stance.

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.

There’s another factor here. People who are vegan, sober, poly, don’t drive, and any number of choices are breaking societal norms. Most people don’t even think about these things as choices. They do the default. Realizing that there’s a choice, and that this person decided not to do the default, puts people off. It makes them uncomfortable. They begin to question things they’ve never had to evaluate.

That’s why I stopped using Google a few years ago. I moved to ddg and liked it pretty well. I switched to kagi earlier this year and it’s going pretty well. I still run into some captchas that refuse to let me pass. I usually just turn around at that point

Dams are scary too, I just hope people are able to decommission them slowly when the time comes. Otherwise the deluge is going to suck.

I will say my Fairphone is a good bit thicker than my work Iphone but honestly it’s not a significant downside for me. The weight is a bigger deal but still not worth the trade-off for a phone I can be confident I can repair myself

Looks like you can do it manually. Build your own Google flavor https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/134847/how-to-filter-out-a-long-list-of-sites-from-google-search

The ones that are successful at enshitification have captive markets. They’re a monopoly, monopsony, or in another kind of inelastic market. https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/

Groups of humans have lived beneficially with other life before. Plenty of folks are doing it right now. The endless need for consumption and extraction are manufactured for the benefit of the few. Eliminate the system that requires endless economic growth and we can start making decisions that won’t destroy ourselves and others

Organize your workplace, join the IWW if you want to know how.

Buy your food as directly as possible from farmers, CSAs, food co-ops and buyers clubs are a good first step to decomodifying food.

Organize renters to prevent evictions and rent increases through collect action. Support non-profits that supply non-market housing. Advocate for and support your local houseless population. If houseless people can’t be used as a moral lesson for workers, they’ll feel more able to organize.

Read some history, all of this shit has happened before. People fought it in the past and won victories. We can too.

Vote in local elections. This will have a greater effect than voting in national elections and can move the needle on significant issues in some states. You can vote in national elections too I guess

Basically act collectively and educate yourself. The process of taking power from the owners will be a slow process but solidarity and empathy for your fellow workers is the only way we can get out of this.

When both parties agree on something it’s almost always bad