honestlyabby.bsky.social
Law student, academic hobbyist (for now), really fun at parties (probably)
I hate social media, existence, and most of you. But hopefully we can have some fun together anyways!
224 posts
46 followers
30 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
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Like forget the sadism in hoping your ex winds up homeless, but did he have to spend the whole song talking about how worthless homeless people are and relishing all the bad things they deal with?
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If a majority of voters feel responsible for that violence, rather than betrayed by it, then they regime is cleared for the second step: plainly illegitimate escalation against those minorities.
The piecemeal nature basically lets cognitive dissonance do 80% of the work to legitimize repression
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That said, while this regime's variant is certainly inelegantly executed, they have successfully completed the first step: identifying their political opposition with two amorphous, politically powerless minorities and initiating violence against them
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While I agree with all your anti-doomer advice regarding the strength of our opponents, overestimating my opponent's competence is probably my most consistent character trait.
I just kind of assume everyone is good at what they do and enjoy the surprising ease of beating them when they aren't.
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These guys aren't that good at strategy and probably aren't even doing it intentionally, but it's a political maneuver that basically plays itself when the circumstances are right
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Demonizing a small minority of indefinite size and indistinguishable appearance whole painting the opposition as supporting the malign proliferation of that minority can then justify the extremist action and political constraints necessary to sufficiently stigmatize and delegitimize the opposition
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Relatively small, invisible minorities are the fuel for populist authoritarianism. They don't need to destroy the Democratic voting base, just create a reality in which being a Democrat is more costly than compliance.
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Pity is a god awful organizing emotion.
You don't have to hypothesize best interests of "empathize" (project) if you're just in respectful community with vulnerable people.
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The whole sexual assault/harassment should be more of a problem, but then again it's not like those are problems foreign to our armed services.
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The ambiguous ending then drives that home. In a way she finds her own inner beauty, but doing so makes her a complete social reject.
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Like Demi Moore's character is not unattractive by any standard, that's a fact society projects onto her. The substance is supposed to return control over that duality but it fails because social influence causes those ignorant of decay (the young half) to chase self-destructive approval
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I'm pretty sure they're using the visceral imagery and dual personas to suggest that humanity is inherently beautiful and disgusting, and that attempts to act like aging is unattractive are really a representation of disgust for our own animal nature
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I don't think it's wrong to feel that way, only to use that feeling to excuse disproportionate and unsympathetic responses, which, just based on your tone here, I seriously doubt you are doing
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This video is really sweet and uplifting! Have a nice vacation!
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Wrong Hakeem my friend
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As someone who enjoys life, I think I'm gonna keep on eating one of the best foods ever made.
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That said, only egotistical jerks engage in stochastic terroristic murder under the guise of political virtue
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I think game design is a better answer. Cuz dreams include more than buildings lol
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Communication was not and has not been the Democrats problem. A lack of civic institutions bridging messaging and actions is more costly, and it's a problem the fixing of which improves people's lives directly.
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An advantage of leftist politics, the reason is tends to create better art and comedy, is it's ability to promote and combine ambiguous interpretations coherently.
Creating propaganda seems like ceding the game before it's begun, we should embrace our strengths not copy our opponent's
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Idk, if you use the dictionary definition (which is indistinguishable from political communication) then sure, we need effective ways of disseminating our message
But good propaganda has the additional authoritarian element that it allows only one interpretation
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If this is legitimately the language, like 80% of it is in open contravention of the Civil Rights Act and Gorsuch's opinion in Bostock.
The worst part would be the refusal to house trans women in women's prisons (the proposed language is unidirectional though, so hello Equal Protections)
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Despite it's other shortcomings K.O.S.A.'s framework applying limits based on the type and extent of algorithm used seems particularly promising if applied to children and adults alike
Similarly, tailoring liability protections to the level of algorithmic control is a good section 230 compromise
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I don't think the President can issue an executive order that contradicts an act of Congress
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I think we passed the same crew. It looked like a race in the rear view
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Good? Everyone should have dodged the draft in Viet Nam, it was an awful fucking war.
Also, isn't the first Rambo about how war is bad and traumatic and the second about how it's bad and caused by short-sighted colonists?
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In light of my professional obligations I'll refrain from sharing my true feelings which border on calling for insurrection.
Instead all I'll say is that if you deny a group of people a legal remedy long enough, they will inevitably avail themselves of extralegal remedies.
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In that spirit, I have a new policy proposal. Implement the death penalty exclusively for people who use the power of the state to knowingly or reckless cause the death of another or who issue an order from which such death is a foreseeable and actual result.
No, I'm not joking.
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"Protest the creeping rise of fascism without relying on misogyny or ableism challenge 2025" is off to a good start.
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Do you read Machiavelli as a satire of the cruelty unavoidably necessary to run an authoritarian regime or as a statement of real political principles?
Obviously, both are correct and useful, the distinction is mostly trivia. But very much my kind of trivia!
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If you try to get around it, you lose legitimacy, which is synonymous with power for the courts. State courts may stop following Federal precedent, and then you have a real situation, maybe even civil war.
There are informal constraints on power infinitely more effective than any rule.
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You can only wriggle so far around precedent. Now, there is a lot of damage that can be done in those confines, especially in the realm of court-made rights (right to privacy and P&I rights are pretty endangered) but at some point you really do run up against legal bedrock.
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And if you think our democracy is already completely lost, you should no longer be a systems-based liberal