I don't believe that activism actually generally works, and I am skeptical that voting works either.
Don't get me wrong. I do vote, and I believe that voting and activism can work, and even still does for a variety of things. But as for fighting against forces of corruption and tyranny, I believe activism is about as useful as an ashtray on a motorcycle. Any grassroots efforts are in a horribly asymmetric battle against well-funded adversaries that will come back every year everywhere without fail to get their opening. And any hope we had of limiting corporate interests in politics has been decimated in the U.S. basically since Citizen's United — not that I really believe there wouldn't have been some other workaround had that not happened.
So yes, I believe grassroots activism largely doesn't work. The fact that the battle is so asymmetrical makes it even more asymmetrical by making people apathetic about and fatigued over activism, making it even less effective.
But people often turn their heads when there's violence.
Nobody wants violence, just like nobody wants to hit rock bottom. I believe truly that political violence is a very dark place that will be no fun for anyone involved that I personally do not want to be a part of in any way. But, it just is the case that things will get worse before they get ~~much worse~~ better.
I see it as a question of if and not when until structural changes occur that durably improve upon the asymmetry of political activism. And in that case, it's not a matter of whether or not, it's a matter of getting it the hell over with.
I don't know how the fuck these stupid Flock "safety" cameras got here, but I have a pretty good guess how they'll disappear.
This is anticipatory obedience and it's actively harmful.
You are also wrong. Contracts, ordinances, and everything related to governance get rolled back or changed all the time. Especially at the local level.
If you have lost the initial battle you can do the same thing as them: you keep attacking their presence and you only need to win once to undo it.
Locally over here our city councils are overran with people who are anti Flock. Flock's strategy is to sneak their way in as if it is an "emergency". They've got a whole playbook.
Normal activists don't stand a chance against well-funded adversaries.
This is just anticipatory obedience. Deciding that you've already lost before even trying is actively harmful, especially when paired with a lack of any other action.
If you don't believe in this system then start setting things on fire[0] I guess. Otherwise shut up, people are actually trying to fight it.
I didn't actually mind the prepping too much personally. Just to be safe I started early to go on the long end of what they suggested with the diet and basically just ate baked, unseasoned chicken for 10 days. Then did the bowel prep; a lot of people hate the drink, but idk. I thought it was fine. Maybe better to assume it will suck though, that way you at least can't be disappointed.
> In the end they nothing was found, not even polyps.
I just had my hole inspected and all the preparation was with over-the-counter supplies. My prep drink was gatorade with some flavorless powder mixed in. It made no change in the taste or texture of this drink. Having the squirts for a day was no fun, but other than that it was a breeze.
I see. So I escaped the experience of the nasty drink, then. I thought it was just "the standard" because it was also word for word what I saw when I googled it at the time. (Gatorade + Miralax.)
Same here. I didn't find the drink especially nasty. I drank it very cold, it had a somewhat chemical taste but very fluid, not disgusting texture. I do remember it was a lot of liquid to drink though. As for the bathroom part, no pain or discomfort whatsoever. It took a couple of hours total if I remember correctly.
No, the worst part is the risk of puncture. Rare, but it happens. Happened to a colleague of mine.
That doesn't solve cancer at all... At best it would modestly reduce certain kinds of cancer. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't do much at all for the most common kind of cancer (skin cancer) and I reckon wouldn't do much, if anything, for the deadliest kind of cancer (lung cancer. At least in terms of how many people die from it.)
I know that wasn't the point but it nonetheless does detract from the point when it is suggested that we have all the answers. We could lower cancer moderately by lowering air pollution and improving diets in general (not necessarily requiring everyone to go vegan) but that is neither simple nor a panacea. (It would still be totally worth it.)
Every single thing about this site is AI generated: the hero images, the text, and even all of the author personas and profile pictures. Think I'm joking? See for yourself.
Looks like someone recently bought the techjournal.org domain (last change was this year, right before the first articles) and turned it into a slop factory. Weirdly, there are actually a lot of sites doing this exact same thing down to implementation details, so I'm guessing there is probably someone running hundreds or thousands of these things.
There doesn't seem to be anything notable or new here that wasn't already either described last year or literally announced at Google I/O.
On the other hand, those links have distracting ads and animations. And the article answers questions that I had based on the Google I/O announcement. (I don't normally read what's reported by rumor sites before the announcement.)
Despite the prose clearly being AI-generated, in all other respects, it seems... better? I was unable to find a clean, up to date summary of what's known about Aluminum on an actual news site.
It saves me the trouble of running ChatGPT myself, I suppose?
For the past 3 decades, it really has been normal for companies to remain very unprofitable even up until their IPO, but I don't think it's actually normal in general. In fact, if AI investment really is a bubble and it pops, I reckon it could very well mark the end of this era!
(Is there a more extreme example so far of this than AI companies, just in terms of raw losses? As far as I know, Netscape's lifetime losses as an independent company "only" total a bit over $100 million dollars, which is a lot, it just doesn't look like all that much when put into perspective...)
I am truly, deeply sorry for revealing my true feelings on how much I value some of the employees that helped me become utterly, filthy rich. It will not happen again.
Okay. So if I copy and paste an AI response written by Claude and you can't actually find a specific problem with it, are you still fine with that? If so, please start your own damn website and enjoy talking to AI and reading AI text all day. I'd really really rather not.
I would go on to use Bloodshed Dev-C++ next. Which was also quite great for the time.
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