This is also kind of true of plants in the nightshade family like potatoes and tomatoes where they can be pretty poisonous if you eat the wrong parts, we just know which parts we can eat. We also don’t have cultural stigma against eating potatoes so more people know about them. Knowledge is power!

Also, tobacco and chile peppers are in the nightshade family as well, but the “poisonous” chemical in those is slightly altered in each case to make nicotine and capsaisin respectfully. Neat!

Make matrix as easy to use and understand and make sure all their friends are there first

Did Italy elect Mussolini’s granddaughter or something

Started a mutual aid group in our small town. Mostly deals with some local agriculture etc but hoping to expand it to more community needs etc. Trying to make the local community more resilient in turbulent times

I can’t think of any artist more divorced from their work than Orson Scott Card

Team Debian

Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me. Mat. 25

Go, sell your belongings and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me. Mat. 19

Of course if you quote Jesus’ literal words at these people they start screeching about how the Devil can quote scripture too

Is there some tool that turns like an eBook or PDF into this format?

Yes/yes

The benefits far outweigh the downsides and it’s my personal belief that this is a gateway conspiracy theory

There’s an argument to be made that charities and other 501c3 organizations both entrench capitalism and normalize its failures to care for marginalized people, and/or that they also mostly exist to provide the wealthy with tax breaks through which they can fund pet projects, bypassing any democratic processes and ignoring what society actually needs.

Old people being out of touch is a trend that has been happening at least since there was written language. That’s no reason to blame them for societal ills when it’s the wealth hoarders causing the problems. It is a shame they’re so easily manipulated by social media and cable news though.

Perhaps some people are out of touch, regardless of whatever arbitrary date they were born. But the response to that shouldn’t be infighting among other working class people, it should be conversation that addresses root cause.

It would be weird for the guy who only speaks in metaphor to not use a metaphor this one time.

Really this is just a modern reinterpretation of this verse that lets people drive their Mercedes from their gated community once a week to church and not feel bad about it

Miss me with the generational infighting. Its not your parents refusing to pay you appropriately, it’s capitalists

One of the major reasons the Civil Rights Acts were passed is because moderates saw how heinous and violent southern police and governments were to black Americans living there. The thing that galvanized the country to finally end Jim Crow and start repairing the damage done from slavery and the failure of Reconstruction was to get cameras on it and show “normal” people how bad it really was.

If I had to estimate it might be about three-fifths of a democracy on a good day

Yes I fully agree, and thank you for the conversation. However I am deeply cynical American society will excise their fascist tumor since they have such a long history of refusing to punish criminals, enforce laws, and enact meaningful reform.

The war was inevitable by the time Buchanan took office. He could have forestalled it or prepared the Union for it more adequately, and deserves blame for basically doing neither of those things, but he isn’t a direct cause. In fact, many of his political options for corralling the South in the antebellum period could have caused the war to start earlier than it did. It’s just a personal belief of mine that he gets more hate than he really deserves, especially compared to people who could have easily been better like Johnson.

It certainly wouldn’t have gone perfectly but I think the best evidence that it would have eventually worked out for the better is how much political power former slaves had shortly after the Civil War ended while Reconstruction, in whatever diluted form, was actually being attempted. This is the period we get the first black senator, Hiram Revels from Mississippi. Further, In 1868 black Americans made up a majority of the South Carolina’s state legislature and opened the South’s first public school system. Former slaves started taking up tons of local political offices as well. They wielded true local political power and although there were still racists opposed to their inclusion in society, it was much harder to extract former slaves from that society and subjugate them again. Once federal troops withdrew from the South all of these reforms were taken away, violently and illegally, by the people who weren’t punished under Johnson, the violence and subjugation became much easier. This is how we get Jim Crow etc.

I mean, if this period had gone on for long enough for white Southerners to benefit from it, maybe a generation or so, we wouldn’t even have the modern Republican party since it only exists today as an extension of white Southern racism that was enabled by Johnson. Instead, we get generation after generation of white Southern children being indoctrinated into racist beliefs because the leaders of the Confederacy were allowed to spread their hateful ideals throughout their society after they lost the war. We’d live in a much more egalitarian society as a whole if that hadn’t happened. Again, not without its problems, but we would have solved the major problem. It’s most of my issue with people today jumping to Trump being the worst president, not only is it recency bias but he’s just the obvious result of decisions made by Johnson et. al. during Reconstruction.

If Reconstruction had proceeded properly, the United States would have hung all of the Confederate officers and government officials and at least pulled up the root of the problems in the South. Johnson allowed them to fester and re-emerge, and we have been living with those problems since.

Not punishing heinous crimes like chattel slavery and violent insurrection is how we get precedent for not punishing even more crimes. Like Ford pardoning Nixon so “the country can heal” and then Reagan using that precedent for Iran-Contra and then Bush using that precedent to steal the 2000 election and commit the US illegally in Iraq etc etc. And now Trump realizing that laws don’t matter at all and doing whatever he wants with impunity. Most of the Supreme Court justices are direct descendants of politics Johnson enabled. Roberts clerked for Rehnquist ffs, an avowed segregationist who wouldn’t have been politically viable if Reconstruction had succeeded.