Andrewism is great.

When Alfredo Cospito kneecapped Roberto Adinolfi, Adinolfi yelled “I know who sent you!” as if they were professionals and he was expecting a hit from a rival. It’s not impossible, but Hollywood has produced enough assassin movies that 1) people know how to pull off a hit and 2) when others see the hit, they think “just like the movies, this guy is a professional”

That sounds like a really nice neighborhood to live in.

Thanks! Fixed the link.

Thanks.

Biome name ideas:

• Arroyo
• Chaparral
• Garrigue
• Maquis (pronounced mah-KEE)
• Tundra
• Taiga
• Veldt
• Oued (pronounced “Wade”) / Wadi
• Xeric is a pretty cool name

Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Yes, the Bandcamp page is endorsed by the Russian ABC. I’ve also linked the album here.

A reasonable criticism. Be the change you want to see in the world.

Yes, they are musicians from the band m6th. I’m not sure what the shirt refers to, but I think it means ‘helmsman’ and Lyubov’s version includes a chaos star in the form of a nautical wheel, which is fucking perfect.

Great find.

The Onion article is absolutely incredible.

Are you saying it is hypocritical for him to campaign for the people in Gaza under Biden, and then continue to campaign for the people in Gaza under Trump? That’s the opposite of hypocrisy.

It is ironic that he condemned Biden because of a genocide and they both lost, and now you are condemning him because of a genocide.

In run-up to the 1964 election, civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr. were given an audience with incumbent president Lyndon Johnson, where he asked them to scale down their protest activity until after the election so he could be confident he could win. They understood correctly that by continuing to protest, they had political leverage.

Imagine an alternative reality where LBJ had not signed the Civil Rights Act, and instead Barry Goldwater had won and increased the segregation and discrimination facing African-americans. Would you blame them for using the only electoral political leverage they had available, and laugh at their misfortune?

The only check the worst excesses of the Trump presidency has is the potential for widespread civil unrest. The Democrats aren’t capable of that. Grassroots Palestinian-american organizations are. In building that base of resistance, we shouldn’t make the same mistakes that caused the Democrats to lose the election. In the words of Nate Silver:

Democrats…often get angry with you when you only halfway agree with them. And I really think this difference in personality profiles tells you a little something about why Trump won: Trump was happy to take on all comers, whereas with Democrats, disagreement on any hot-button topic (say, COVID school closures or Biden’s age) will have you cast out as a heretic. That’s not a good way to build a majority, and now Democrats no longer have one.

Abbas Alawieh is concerned for the lives of his family and friends under another Trump regime. We all are. He is one of us.

I enjoy her writing too. Her piece on the threat of Facebook entering the Fediverse does a great job of making the case.

Congratulations!

Most of the darker skinned ones were already run over further back on the track.

The second half of Luthen’s conversation with Saw is him trying to convince Saw to lend air support to another faction so that they can make a combined hit on an Imperial power station. In rage, Saw tells off Luthen for calling his adherence to his own ideology as “petty differences” and says that he’s not risking his people for someone else. Saw has a reputation for being an extremist, and Luthen knows that his operation is well-funded and successful. Saw, however, is right to refuse the tactical alliance.

I’d like to add that the doomed faction Luthen was trying to get Saw to support were remnants of the separatist forces from the Clone Wars. The Separatists were often coded in fiction as the Confederate side of the US Civil War by emphasizing their role as the aggressor and their colonial / race-supremacist / pro-slavery politics. Names in Star Wars often are linguistic and historical references, with Gerrera being both similar to Guerrera (warrior in Castilian) and the character is directly inspired by Che Guevara, for example. The name Anto Kreegyr conjures the German word ‘Krieger’ which also means warrior. This is perhaps intentional to draw a comparison between Saw and Anto, both warriors and rebels, but with very different implied motivations. Anto is linguistically similar to Anton, a common Slavic name. The German language is unfortunately closely associated with the Kaiser during WWI and Nazis during WWII to English audiences, and Russian is similarly associated with the authoritarian Soviet Union.

The implied subtext is that the opportunist Luthen wants the anarchists to work with fascists and authoritarians in the name of defeating a greater fascist threat. Saw’s outrage at the suggestion is much more reasonable given this interpretation, as well as his eventual decision to permit their sacrifice to increase the chances of ultimate victory.

This was tried in 1968. It failed, and the Democratic Party instituted superdelegates to prevent it from ever having a chance at being successful again. You can’t vote your way out of capitalism.

No, it invigorated it.

Bloody Sunday in Selma was one of the most successful protests in history, where police disproportionately responded to nonviolent disobedience by beating marchers with batons. It was successful not in spite of police violence, but because of it. The hundreds of demonstrators grew to thousands as people came from all across the country in solidarity.

A new Trump era means a renaissance of civil disruption. The methods competent police have developed to blunt the effect of protest don’t project the strong-man image fascists crave. Protest will become much more dangerous again, but will also become much more effective.