I discovered Mastodon the night the Wagner group started marching toward Moscow, and was seeing live updates. From telegram or something. That was crazy.

When are we going to protest. This is insanity.

Here is an excerpt from the dissent:

Looking beyond the fate of this particular prosecution, the long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark. The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. This new official-acts immunity now “lies about like a loaded weapon” for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation. Korematsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214, 246 (1944) (Jackson, J., dissenting). The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in ex- change for a pardon Immune. Immune, immune, immune.

Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.

Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.

Thanks, I’ll check out strange horticulture. I’m looking for arthouse games in a sense. Outer Wilds completely changed me, for example, and I want to try to recreate that feeling, but I don’t want an Outer Wilds clone, like how Lords of the Fallen is to Dark Souls.

I want something that’s going to destroy me and make me think, or just be ultra fun and different from anything else I’ve played.

Star Wars, DC, Marvel, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Jurassic whatever, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, Godzilla, Halo, Gears of War, Batman: Arkham and every other nostalgia-driven cinematic/televised/videogame franchise relies on shitgobblers. Shitgobblers just keep gobbling.

It took me a bunch of tries, too. It’s not really a “fun” game, more like a visual and interactive novel. Once I got the hang of the dice rolls being the biggest part of the game, and knowing/remembering where to seek them out, and getting used to the map, it became easy to pick up and put back down. It’s amazing, but not easy to get going.

My OLED is coming in today, so hyped. Will definitely help with the commute. First off is finishing up Disco Elysium, then maybe playing Edith Finch? Anyone have any other recs? Besides Hades 1, I guess.

I get what you’re saying, but I’m not certain the Iranian drone attack would have even happened if Israel hadn’t been engaged in the raising of Gaza with US backing.

I mean, Israel bombed an Iranian embassy two weeks before that occurred.

I’m in somewhat agreement with you. On the one hand, there are innocent Israelis who need to be protected (here, I don’t necessarily buy the nuclear risk, tbh. Continued US protection is more about prevention of civilian casualties, to me ). On the other, our continued support further emboldens Israel to keep fucking shit up over there, so of course they’re going to experience aggression from their neighbors.

Unfortunately this starts getting into a game of who-shot-first, which is a bad state to be in.

If anything, all this is a win-win for the “defense” industry.

Edit: also, for the record, and in the context of this thread, even though I’d argue against continued US military support of Israel, and that Biden hasn’t been forceful enough on that issue, and that Democrats in general are too comfortable with the status quo regarding free market capitalism for individuals and socialism for the corporations, and that many of them serve their own interests or those of corporations, you still gotta vote for Biden this election, especially if you’re in a swing state. The two parties are not the same, even if they do both suck. The degrees of suckage are not equal.

Guess I just don’t see the flattening of Gaza and displacement of more than 1 million Palestinian civilians as Israel “fighting for it’s survival,” nor do I see an immediate cessation of sending US bombs to Israel as leaving them in the dust.

Are you saying that if the US stops sending Israel weapons, they will likely start a nuclear war? Bruh

The top comment on this thread contains a conversation (argument) about Chomsky’s view on the term “genocide,” as well as his verbiage discussing Serbian-run concentration camps.

I listened to Understanding Power fairly recently and it definitely changed my outlook and broke me out of the lull of neoliberal self-satisfaction, and helped introduce me to other leftist writers. So I’m a fan of Chomsky’s, but it doesn’t sound like he had that good of a take on the Bosnian genocide. He seems to only reserve the word genocide for the Holocaust so as to keep its significance, and despite supporting a UN fact-finding commission that did find Serbia was running concentration camps, he refers to said camps as “refugee camps,” instead, and seems to infer people had the freedom to stay or leave as they please (even if this was technically true, I doubt it was practically true).

So, not a good look for him, even though he had other viewpoints that I’ve been strongly influenced by.

Have you happened to read the book? He has a chapter dedicated to his decision to call it technofeudalism rather than capitalism, hypercapitalism, technocapitalism, etc. Basically he’s saying profits have been decoupled from a company’s value, and that it’s no longer about creating a product to exchange for profit (which, in his words, are beholden to market competition) but instead about extracting rent (which is not beholden to competition – his example is while a landowner’s neighbors increase the values of their properties, the landowner’s property value also increases).

Anyways he describes Amazon, Apple store, Google Play, cloud service providers, as fiefdoms that collect rent from actual producers of products (physical goods, but also applications), and don’t actually produce anything, themselves, besides access to customers, while also extracting value from users of their technologies through personal information. They’re effectively leasing consumer attention in the same way landowners leased their lands to workers.

It sounds pretty accurate to me, but I haven’t had much time to chew on it. What’s your take on that idea?

Actually, you’re not being clear, at all. The article you linked, yourself, notes that the 37 murdered political candidates were local government candidates murdered between September and May, not national candidates. Far cry from your insinuation that 37 of Claudia Sheinbaum’s political opponents were murdered so she could win by the hands of the cartels.

That last section of the article you highlighted makes me think about Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. Imagine if everyone going to bullshit meetings actually did something productive for society, or did something that they themselves found fulfilling. Makes me sad.

Oh yeah that one is bad, you’re right. Also the meme with the bell curve is definitely ableist. Hmm, you definitely bring up good points. Gotta chew on it a little. Much of this is just ingrained in us.

I dunno, I see your point but does the guy on the left really have a dented head? I thought those were forehead lines from emotional agitation. Also, where is the drool? I only see tears. I don’t really see the inherent ableism, as much as I see a negative representation things like lack of emotional regulation, “neckbeardyness,” etc. I agree moreso on the whiteness and general tidyness of the chad, and the association of beauty with good and ugliness with bad – I kinda buy your argument there. It is pretty shit that we do that, but I don’t necessarily think it’s wrong for the OP to use this meme template. Ignorant? Maybe.

I feel like you could use similar strategies to decry any meme. For example, the glorification of violence through imagery and use of the word “weapon” in your own meme. Obviously, I’m not going to seriously suggest you’re perpetuating the glorification of violence through your meme, but I kinda think its the same with OPs meme.

Edit: to be clear, all my thoughts on this are entirely from the last 20 min. I assumed you’ve thought more about this subject than me, so I consider myself pretty swayable. But idk, my initial reaction is that we’re looking too far into a meme.

What would you say are the broad american imperial interests? Maintaining regional military control for the sake of oil – thats the obvious one – but anything else?

Genuine question here, I haven’t thought or read much about it, whereas I have thought/read more about the incentives for politicians to continue pushing the ever bloating “defense” budget.

Edit: Here’s not a bad article about it that I just read. Basically: the new cold war with china.

That totally clarifies it, thank you. I was confused. Still, that does not increase the renter’s capital, and puts them at a disadvantage, because as they lose capital, the landlord gains equity. That’s where we were disconnected, but I see now how you were using the term.

For the record, I think most people confused about your position do not believe the basic principles your stance is based on, such as profit = wage theft. Would you say so, or am I putting words into your mouth?

Capital, as in ownership of money or assets that combine to a persons overall wealth – A landlord does not provide this, and only takes it from the renter in order to increase their own capital. You can make an argument that a landlord provides a service, sure, but not that they provide capital, because they really don’t. Maybe you mean they provide a means for a renter to accrue capital? Even then, that’s shoddy, because you have to drill down to owners who actually care about their tenants vs those who charge as much as the market allows.

You can bring up risk, and sure, the landlord incurs risk. That risk is losing their property and becoming a renter. The “service” they provide is entirely dependent on their ownership of property, and I don’t have much sympathy for a person who uses their ownership of property to exploit another person’s need for shelter in the name of accruing more capital.

Those are kinda my quick thoughts, and I’m not totally prepared to defend the absolute shit out of them. My initial point was that landlords do not provide capital, and I stick by that.

To be clear, I don’t think being a landlord automatically makes you a bad person, considering the economic system we live in. But I also don’t think landlords provide a good, generally, to society. I don’t think we need landlords, and I don’t think they become landlords out of the kindness of their hearts, or that they wish to provide a home for someone. They just own more, and as such they can use that ownership to further increase their ownership. I don’t think your example about you with extra cash is wrong in the context of the society we live in – hell, I’m pretty much in that exact situation with my roommate, with whom I was renting before I bought a house. Sure, you could say I’m doing him a favor by letting him live in my house for a low cost, but mostly I am the one accruing capital at his expense. It doesn’t make me a saint for doing that, it makes me greedy that I’m charging anything at all. That’s part of the disgust I personally have for this system, is that we are all compelled to own more more more more. It’s really not work hard and you’ll succeed. It’s own hard.

Sorry, buy-it-for-life