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Cake day: June 27th, 2023

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  • Israel is not even a good geopolitical partner in the Middle East. Nearly everyone hates them so whenever we do operations over there we keep them out because we know even their presence will increase tensions and lose hearts and minds. They’re good for spying on Iran but you have to take everything with a grain of salt because they could be lying in order to try and get us to be more confrontational because they despise Iran.

    The reasons the U.S. government overwhelmingly supports Israel is:

    • evangelicals think the Jews taking over Israel will cause the rapture, which they want…
    • Sheer inertia
    • the idea that Israel is “an island of liberal democracy” in a sea of authoritarian Arab states
    • Heavy lobbying from organizations like AIPAC, and if you don’t follow their line they’ll spend millions on you opponent’s campaign.
    • Military industrial complex loves sales to Israel
    • military industrial complex relies on technology and equipment from Israel
    • Islamaphobia and the idea that they’re fighting the good fight against the evil terrorists
    • residual guilt for the Holocaust and the west’s antisemitic past

  • I’m all for players getting payed and unionizing but I think getting rid of college sports would only hurt the players. Less people would watch them and therefore the players would get less money. A large part of the audience for college sports is students and alumni, if you take that away there’s not much reason for people to tune in or go up to Hanover New Hampshire to watch their basketball team play and buy merch, especially if they’re not a good team.

    It works in England because soccer’s the only big sport so you can make some money even if your a lower tier team.

    Not focusing on academics is a problem but if the option is to have to play in a minor league team, earn a middling to low income that’s going to basic neccesities, not make it to the big leagues and be left with no other career prospects or savings; or go to college, make a low income but be able to save it as room and board are covered, not make it to the big leagues but at least have the piece of paper that permits you to even think about having a decent life in this country, I’d go with the latter.



  • Not in California, there’s so many elections. In 2022 a similar situation happened here in San Francisco where a state assembly member retired and there was the same primary, main, primary, main election. Also the primary for everything but the president is open and the main acts as a runoff for the top two, this is why they’ll do a primary on every election whereas in other states the parties would just nominate someone. So in the state assembly race it was an open field for the first primary, than the same 2 nearly identical Democrats for the next three elections.

    Then there was also having to vote for newsom twice within a year because of the recall.

    It’s nearly all vote by mail these days and they automatically send a ballot to anyone registered though so it’s not that bad.


  • A publication can be credible and also still be extremely biased. If a right wing publication publishes a story " black people say affirmative action is unfair" the story may be factually correct in that they found a couple black people that said it’s bad and quoted them but at its core it’s just a “people are saying” story. Like any “people are saying” story who these people are?, how many of them are their?, do they represent or have power over the people the article is implying they do? Etc. is conveniently left out.

    the fact that they chose the story shows bias as well. If the only justification for calling a story news is the fact it fits your worldview than the publication is biased. The publication is responsible for reporting on stories that are relevant and effect a large amount of people. This story does not as it’s just some anecdotes reported to the IDF. If this was a large scale issue reported by independent aid organizations or shown through polling on the ground than that would be a story as it’s actually effecting a large amount of people.




  • I am not gambling anyone’s life. I have almost no power and can’t do anything to create or delay a crisis. The best I will do with my limited power is try and make it so the organization on the ground is ready to attempt that leftward shift if/when the crisis comes.

    It could end in a fascist dystopia, but I think that’s less likely. At least in the u.s. where fascism never took off in its heyday before it had any stigma. If your talking about something with no evidence then that fascist speculation would be something, at least there’s precedent for a Keynesian new deal in the U.S. I do recognize it as a possibility though and that’s why I said probably, not with “absolute certainty”.

    If the crisis doesn’t happen we may all die as well as neither party seems willing to deal with the climate catastrophe. That outcome seems way more certain to me, as shown by the repeated calls for action in the last 2 decades falling in deaf ears, than fascists taking over if a crisis does happen.

    The way I see it is there’s a 90% chance of severe climate catastrophe on the current course, and a 30% chance there will be a fascist takeover if there’s a crisis, but a 50% chance for a green new deal. These are all completely speculative, but so is any guess on the future and I like to believe my guess has some backing in historical reality.


  • I think your overestimating how much people will tolerate deprivation before turning on the system. After a certain point people will reject the system, sometimes violently , and seek a new way of organizing society. It’s why the great depression didn’t turn into the corporate hellscape you envision even though companies were just as powerful at the end of the 1920s. Barring some sort of military coup you can’t subject a majority of the population to slavery and poverty without those people revolting.

    The system relies on the at least tacit consent of the majority of the population, if you break that it becomes unstable and in that instability new ideas can come in. This is why most successful revolutions follow a crisis, one that discredits the current ruling order and allows something new to take it’s place.

    It can be dangerous though, that new thing could be FDR or it could be Hitler, but it’s bound to happen eventually and our best hope now is to lay the groundwork so that when it does we get a leader ready to usher in a new green economy.


  • I agree that initially people respond to crisis with conservatism and leaning on the current system, but that conservatism runs out though. If the system is able to solve the crisis, or at least show progress in solving it then it can be re-entrenched. If it can’t and proves utterly incapable of solving it, or even perpetuating it then people start to get radical. In 1929 and 1930 many people still believed laissez-faire could fix the depression but as conditions stayed the same or worsened people started to realize it’s flaws. By 1932 they were ready to give up on it and try anything to end it. 2007 was different as the neo liberal system was able to muster a response to the problem of speculative financial collapse in the form of financial bail outs which did bottom out the recession and start an upward trend.

    The crisis I’d “root for”, as much as I can root for something that’d cause immediate suffering to many people, is one that neo liberalism can’t handle and therefore discredits it as a governing system. That crisis will come eventually, just as the depression ended laissez-faire and stagflation ended keynesianism and if that pattern holds up we’ll probably see a swing to the left this time on this metronome of economic consensus.


  • Are you saying the green new deal will be a bad idea and unpopular or triggering a depression to get it would be unpopular and a bad idea? Because the former I’d say is necessary to stop and help heal both climate change and income inequality, and if it’s anything like the first new deal would bring the party into power for a generation and set a new economic consensus. I think the latter is a bit extreme to accomplish it but idk any other way to get people to completely turn away from the current system and it’ll just be boiling the frog as the planet gets hotter, the rich get richer and the parties lose popularity but retain power.



  • What is a government and what is a terrorist group, is Hezbollah a government or a terrorist group?, was the Jim crow bourbon democratic party a government or a terrorist group?, is the Iranian state a government or a terrorist group?

    Governments and terrorist groups aren’t mutually exclusive. Many governments, including the U.S., fund and support terrorist groups and terrorist acts, and many terrorist groups provide social and governmental services. Hamas does both, although there terror wing is where most of the resources and energy go, they still are, or at least were, the government of gaza and provided some governmental and social services. Them being a government doesn’t make there atrocities any better or worse, same with the Israeli state.