No, I’m not laughing at the strategy. I’m laughing at the idea that the democrats will implement the strategy correctly.

But hey, crazier things have happened.

if democrats play the manipulation game right.

lol.

You’re leading with two questions, here… and it kind of looks like an attempt to frame this as though I’m the one making assumptions. But I want to backtrack to how we got here, real quick:

Someone: Airbnb makes sense for a lot of people under one roof, like for a family reunion.

You: It’s cheaper to rent an event space.

Yeah, sure, your commentary about sharing hotel rooms and amenities and group packages and blah blah might be relevant, but that’s not what you said. You just said to get an event space. That doesn’t have any information in it about where people are actually supposed to stay and sleep, which is what an Airbnb is for.

The comparison of Airbnb to Event Space doesn’t make sense without all of that other stuff, at which point it all very much depends on all of these other factors like headcounts and group rates, so unless you’re making a bunch of extra assumptions, you don’t actually know which solution is cheaper.

And, the plan for sleeping…?

Reunions often involve travel.

That’s the French public. They’re already doing this, without this article’s influence.

Ask a random English-speaking person (because this article is in English) about austerity measures, and half of the time, their first response will be to look up the definition. What will they find?

After they look up the definition, ask if they would support austerity measures, without being specific. What will they say?

If you instead ask them if they would support slashing the education budget, do you think they would say something different?

We don’t have to play this game where they slash the education budget and then dress it up with flowery language to make it more marketable, or to avoid accountability.

In practice, stripping funding from education and healthcare and poverty prevention is irresponsible, I agree. Those specific austerity measures are irresponsible.

And yet, people still use the term on purpose. Why? Because it’s easy to sell to the public by saying, “It’s just responsible money management,” with the followup benefit that “Anyone opposed to this austerity measure is opposed to responsible money management.”

They’re bullshitting the public by covering up their intentions with language that is marketable. That’s my point. If you agree that this is a “rebellion against austerity”, you’re giving the propagandists what they need to turn public opinion against the thing that these protesters stand for.

We both know that the word is used by liberals in government to justify cutting very SPECIFIC things.

That’s true. Why do they do that? Why do they use a very general word, which could mean a variety of good or bad things, and then exclusively do bad things with it?

… is it because it’s in their best interest to cover up their evil intentions with a term that might convince the general public that it’s a good idea?

And… if that were the case… should we be playing along with it by framing our opposition to a very specific budget cut, as an opposition to a very general thing that the general public might believe is a good thing?

My position is that framing education budget cuts as “austerity measures” is giving them the benefit of the doubt, and allowing them to strip away even the crumbs allocated to the poor, while maintaining plausible deniability that it was all in the name of saving the budget. I reject that framing. I reject the headline.

As I mentioned, cutting defense spending or increasing corporate taxes are also austerity measures. Presumably you’re not opposed to those.

Some austerity measures kill people. Those are the ones you’re opposed to. That does not mean you are opposed to austerity policies; it means you are opposed to those specific policies.

And regardless of my personal opinion on what “austerity” means, the point stands that a skilled propagandist would want the general public to believe these protesters are irrationally opposed to responsible money management, and calling it a “rebellion against austerity” is an effective way to do that. This is because most people treat “austerity” and “fiscally responsible” as synonyms, whether we like it or not.

Well, like, cutting defense spending would also be austerity. Increasing corporate taxes would also be austerity.

A “rebellion against austerity” only serves to paint the protesters as irrationally opposed to responsible money management, in general.

It does make a difference to communication that they are protesting against a specific kind of budget cut. A skilled propagandist would want everyone to think the protesters are making irrational demands, rather than the reasonable and specific demand to not cut education funding.

Shit.

That’s super dark and super dystopian… and I feel terrible for chuckling.

A shame that John C Woods isn’t still around.

Okay, so a person says

We have a very simple purity test, don’t support genocide or wars on the global south and we have no issue with you.

and then, in the course of responding to them, you write,

I’m not going to aid fascists by out casting moderates. You can do that and reap what you sow.

What moderates are being outcast by the proposed purity test? Is supporting half of the genocide moderate enough to be included? Is supporting half of the proxy wars moderate enough to be included? Which people, holding pro-genocide attitudes, do you think we should be trying to include, to beat the fascists?

I dunno, we already have fast chargers that can go from 20% to 80% in 20 minutes. A full tank of gas still takes 5 to 15 minutes (big tanks).

I think it’s feasible that we could someday figure out chargers that are even faster than standard pumps, for a comparable mileage.

I have ONE.

He’s been president for a total of 8 6 years, and there’s been ONE policy that I’ve seen him pass that

1. Is actually a good thing, I think

2. Isn’t something that I would expect someone to do just by virtue of having a brain. (e.g., Operation Warp Speed was good, but also I would expect any moderately intelligent person to do the same.)

That one thing is establishing a sovereign wealth fund.

I can’t imagine any other result from a microblog that turned Publicly Traded Company.

Think of the risk to the investors, putting out language like that!

Ties are a descendent of the cravat. It’s just another way to accessorize. We used to have plain shirts and coats, and it was something to add a little pizzazz somewhere.

You might do the same thing, but with graphic tees, face piercings, tattoos, hairstyles, or any other thing that differentiates your appearance from anyone else’s. Basically, our monkey brains see other people with a cool new look, and we want it, too. That’s what happened with the necktie, once upon a time.

Exercise:

• Set a timer for 1 minute.

• Sit down and do nothing.

Do that every day. After a while, you’ll adjust and it wont be painful. Then do 2 minutes. Then do 5. Then do 15. Every day.

Here’s what happened:

You’ve lived your entire life in a bowl of cocaine. You were born into it. When your parents wanted a break, they gave you some coke. When you were good, they gave you some coke. After you completed your homework, you were allowed a little coke. When you grew up, if you feel tired, or feel like you don’t want to do something, you can have a little nose candy to recharge.

If you want to stop using so much cocaine, you can’t just go cold turkey. You need to start by being able to survive one minute at a time without it.

It’s easy to just remove the bowl of cocaine and not use cocaine. But that’s not going to help you practice choosing not to do cocaine when it is available.

Well that’s true, though, right?

If you call yourself a centrist, but then support an interventionist policy that makes trans healthcare more difficult… you’re probably just wrong about being a centrist.

The same applies the other way. If you support governmental protections for trans healthcare (broadly), and enshrining basic protections across state lines, you’re, again, not a centrist.

The difference is that the latter group isn’t ashamed, so they aren’t hiding their opinions for the sake of being less controversial. We’re proudly supporting our trans friends because good people don’t take the middle ground when one side wants to e.g. prosecute their friends’ doctors for providing healthcare across state lines.

Voting Dems to protect people is equally pointless, or didn’t you read the OP?

I wouldn’t say “equally”. This is for sure a bad thing… but for every anti-trans thing Newsom does, any given Republican does two. And voting third party is functionally equivalent to not voting.

Your first priority should be being organized enough to ensure safety for your trans friends, anyway. Second is voting in the primaries so that you have a better choice than Fascist vs Diet Fascist.

After that, just be honest with yourself about the impact of your General Election vote. It’s far less important, on average, than having a single conversation with your neighbors.

If tiktok never pushed this then Clancy would have went to prison and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation

Her lawyer was discussing the parameters of an insanity plea back in March. This was long before the case blew up on social media.

It’s entirely feasible that she would have gotten an insanity ruling without social media influence.