So all the authoritarian regimes of today and the countless ones in the past are in my head? All the hierarchical corporate structures with a male CEO at the top is in my head? What world are you living in where there isn’t a small group or even a single male at the top making the major decisions?

I never said this is the right way to organize things, or that those people should be leading, I literally said we shouldnt idolize them and let them rule us, I think outside of times of crisis that shouldn’t be how we organize society. I believe we need to fight these systems of organization but to do that we need to understand them, denying there existence or the drives that propel them just maintains the status quo. In order to fight fascism you need to understand what drives fascism.

You could say it’s not true for bonobos but I have no idea how you could make the case that a silverback gorilla is not an “alpha” unless you have some very specific definition. Just pulling from Wikipedia as I’m lazy, but if you have better sources please provide them:

The silverback is the centre of the troop’s attention, making all the decisions, mediating conflicts, determining the movements of the group, leading the others to feeding sites, and taking responsibility for the safety and well-being of the troop. Younger males subordinate to the silverback, known as blackbacks, may serve as backup protection. Blackbacks are aged between 8 and 12 years

That seems to describe an alpha beta hierarchy structure to me. With chimps it may be a little less obvious and more variable but still, according to wikipedia again:

Among males, there is generally a dominance hierarchy, and males are dominant over females.

And

Male chimpanzees exist in a linear dominance hierarchy. Top-ranking males tend to be aggressive even during dominance stability

Yes humans have way more complex social structures but almost always there is a hierarchy of men at the top usually with a single man at the apex, call them alphas, the patriarchy, the oppressors, the greats or whatever you want, they exist. Denying their existence or the fundamental drive powering them only helps to obfuscate there motives. We as a society need to recognize those people and harness them for the benefit of society instead of the benefit of themselves.

I mean it may not be true for wolves, but it definitely is true for gorillas and chimps who are very closely related to us. Also most societies from hunter gathering bands all the way up to multi-national empires usually have a single male at the top. Is that right, probably not. Is it natural?, sort of. There seems to be a drive in a lot of men to dominate society and reach the top of the hierarchy. If you combine that natural drive with someone naturally capable to reach the top of the hierarchy and you get an alpha male. You also don’t have to be an incel to recognize a lot of women are attracted to these driven capable men.

The question isn’t whether alpha males exist, it’s what we as a society should do with them. We shouldn’t idolize them and let them rule over us. We should harness there drive and capabilities to help society as a whole

She’s voting for Kamala but not endorsing her.

He staffed his administration with a bunch of cronies and they’ve been up to various extortion and pay for play schemes. I’m unaware of he himself has gotten directly caught up in anything.

Yeah but this is a “needle in a haystack” problem that chatgpt and AI in general are actually very useful for, ie. Solutions that are hard to find but easy to verify. Issues like this are hard to find as it requires combing through your code , config files and documentation to find the problem, but once you find the solution it either works or it doesn’t.

At least there’s a carrot now, before we were just getting the stick of “vote for me or the fascists will take over”

Probably cause he thinks he’ll spoil the Democrats campaign. Probably doesn’t like his politics since if he ever did get in his policies would liquidate people like crow. West did return the money though

Meanwhile Harris’ donors are just as sus and are expecting something for their money. Whether that be AIPAC and getting her to continue the genocide or health insurance companies getting her to flip on Medicare for all. You don’t see her returning or rejecting any money from them.

As a west supporter I’m fine with this. Though I’m not fully convinced on the magnitude of the spoiler effect, eg. If 2% want to vote for west that doesn’t mean that those 2% vote for Kamala if he’s off the ballot, they’ll most likely just not vote. The race in Penn seems really tight though so anything to get Harris over the line is good.

If you arent in a swing state ( eg. Margin bigger then 10%) and think Kamala’s tacking too far right then id recommend looking into west. He and stein get a lot of slander on here because people are deathly afraid of spoilers but his platform is actually pretty good if you want to do a protest vote. Again in a non-swing state so everyone doesn’t come after me for “helping trump”

I mean you’re gonna find a lot more plutocratic ghouls on Harris’ donor list then his.

That’s an imperial war where local knowledge is extremely limited and your relying on sympathetic locals to let you know the terrain and who the enemy are. If that sympathetic population is low like in Afghanistan or Vietnam then you’ll walk into every ambush and never root out the enemy. In this environment guerilla war with small arms can work

If tyrrany comes to the u.s. though it’ll come with at least 30% support if not more, ironically most likely by the 2a nuts. They’ll happily point out every enemy of the state on there block and warn you about every ambush, hell they’ll probably shoot them for you.

Read “insurrections” as slave revolts and you can get a real sense of what the 2a was for.

It’s genuinely great that China offers that to the people they don’t imprison for asking for their rights and speaking out against the state.

I mean that’s the vast majority of the people, looks like they have a little under 10,000 political prisoners in a country of 1.4 billion, so 0.0007% of people. That’s not good and should be 0 but it’s not some orwellian police state with stazi on every corner checking if you said xi looks like Winnie the Pooh.

I’m no fan of Chinese authoritarianism and there human rights record but pretending there authoritarianism is the same as the totalitarianism of the 20th century is naive. It’s Definitely not an “open air prison” and does a disservice to people who live in actual open air prisons like Gaza or North Korea.

If you live in a swing state or any state that is up for grabs, then yeah don’t vote for third party. If your in a deep blue/red state, I’m talking > 15 percent swing, vote for whoever you want in the presidential, your votes just going to get collapsed into the state vote for the electoral college any way. Should still vote for the two parties or whoever’s competitive in state and local elections because your vote can have an effect.

If the electoral college says my vote effectively doesn’t matter in deciding the next president since I’m in California, then at least let me use my vote to send some sort of message.

did you not get sent some fucked up videos

Oh yeah, all that shit, I wasn’t talking about porn and fetish stuff though cause my comment was getting long, was just talking about actual atrocities like war, famine genocide etc. I don’t think preteens have an interest in that stuff. They definitely do have an interest in porn / gross stuff but I’m not convinced that stuff is necessarily detrimental or traumatic. I’m open to being convinced but most of the arguments seem to be pearl clutching about them losing their innocence and anecdotally I know most of my friends watched porn / gross videos at that age and turned out fine and don’t mention it as some traumatic or life changing experience unless they tie it up with some religious guilt.

The video seems to mostly be nostalgia and her lamenting over the death of the consumerist mall based culture she grew up in and trying to naturalize it or imply it’s the right way to grow up, ie. Kids these days. Half the video seems to be about how companies aren’t marketing to preteens which I’m fine with and is pretty normal in even recent historical terms. The 90s-10s marketing specifically to preteens on cable is more an anomaly then anything natural. If you were 11 in the 70s no one was marketing to you and when you went to the department store there was a kids section and an adults section for you to look through, I’m sure people who grew up then had fond memories of first exploring the adult section just as much as the author does of going to Claire’s.

I did find it funny when she said the advertisements didn’t effect her. Those ads and media were selling you a vision of what a happy preteen lifestyle is and you bought it so much you made a whole video years later on how that vision is correct.

As for the atrocities I don’t think kids are watching that. As someone who grew up with full Internet access in my preteen years I could’ve looked up isis beheading videos or famines in Africa, but I didn’t because 11 year olds don’t care about that stuff. Even pre internet if a kid had access to cable they could watch CNN and see all the horrors of the world but they don’t because it’s boring.

None of this is to say that I think social media is fine for preteens, but the reasons I think it’s bad like decreased physical activity, unrealistic beauty standards, social isolation aren’t shown in this video, I’m sure she has others addressing it but the death of the preteen market doesn’t seem like the best reason to ban it for preteens.

They’ll also be exposed to other external views that are a bit more unsavory. For every kid that watches a video by an LGBT creator and learns being gay is okay, there’s another kid who watches some alpha douche Andrew Tate type that teach them women are objects. The internet is the definition of a mixed bag and should not be used to educate children

Which is why we shouldn’t be relying on social media for this stuff anyway, this should be done by schools. If a child is in an oppressive abusive house they probably won’t get social media anyway, but they will more likely have to go to school. Also teachers and counselors are professionals who know how to educate children and handle abusive situations way better then some stranger online.

I mean you probably are a communist to this guy. If you mace him and he can’t insult you based on your race / ethnicity then he’ll probably just call you a communist.

I mean openais not getting off Scott free, they’ve been getting sued a lot recently for this exact copy right argument. New York times is suing them for potential billions.

They throw the book at us

Do they though, since the Metallica lawsuits in the aughts there hasnt been much prosecution at the consumer level for piracy, and what little there is is mostly cease and desists.

It’s the trans women in sports of veganism, it’s such a small part of the issue and no one in the group will usually bring it up. But people who are against them will use it to discredit and divide them even though they don’t really care about the underlying issues they claim to be for: women’s sports, cat nutrition and the way larger problems with them.