Weydemeyer

She’s like a less crass version of Bill Maher.

As a Christian, my worldview is inherently superior and correct in all instances

I know you are being facetious but there is something called presuppositionalism that is gaining steam in the evangelical / Christian nationalist community right now. For most Christians, they try and “prove” their faith through apologetics or their own (incorrect) interpretations of science and history. Some will skip that and say that whether or not Christianity is true is irrelevant, because there’s a “judeo-christian” foundation to our society, so our government should reflect that.

Presuppositionalism just says “assume Christianity is true”. Presuppositionalist feel no need to prove Christianity is true or even that governance should be democratic. To them, Christianity’s truth is a given that isn’t up for discussion, so the discussion starts around how to make laws that reflect Christianity i.e. a theocracy.

Take abortion for example. To a presuppositionalist Christian, they don’t have to provide any sort of secular justification as to why it should be outlawed. It is against God’s will, and our God is the true god, so it should be outlawed. If people vote to legalize it, then they shouldn’t be allowed to vote on it.

Presuppositionalism is also behind all those theobro fascists shouting “Christ is King!” That is a very specific, presuppositionalist statement. Christ is King over the earth to them; it is an assertion they are making and they don’t care about backing that up; they only care about implementing their King’s will on “His” earth.

Communism killed 100 ~~million~~ ~~billion~~ trillion people.

Also that ethnostates are bad.

Yes, definitely. I do think there’s something to in-person meeting but on Zoom or even just in a discussion group on something like Discord is great too.

What an odd thing to say….

We are almost 3 years away from the election. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone, republican or democrat, say they endorse a candidate other than her.

are there any methods on studying socialist/communist theory that makes it easy and fun?

If you’re able to find an IRL Marxist / socialist reading group, those are pretty great.

For Capital specifically, I think working though companion pieces helps. I like the podcast Reading Capital with Comrades. Michael Heinrich’s companion book is good, though it only covers the first 7 chapters (the most important part).

I will also take this moment to plug another book: Stasi State or Socialist Paradise by Bruni de la Motte. The author was born and raised in the GDR and speaks from firsthand experience. It’s a very comprehensive primer on East Germany and a great resource for someone who want to learn more about it.

I think this is something that’s not being considered enough. This really struck me a few months ago when Trump was talking about Portland being some lawless, smoldering ruin when everything there was just fine (except for the ICE presence ofc). Obviously Trump lies about everything but the way he talked about Portland was odd, like he really believed it. Also just a weird thing to lie about, when it’s so obviously not only not true but incredibly not true.

I think the people around Trump were feeding him false info about Portland. Probably telling him things like “sir Portland is literally burning to the ground and crime is out of control”. I honestly think they are probably feeding him a steady diet of AI slop videos and telling him it’s what’s actually happening in the world.

GM, hands down. Ford is also very good. I would personally feel very safe in either one. I am hoping to buy an Equinox soon.

They both just have an entirely different philosophy from Tesla. Tesla, being from Musk, has these ideas of the car (trying) to be this cool piece of tech that does everything for you, but without putting in the real work to make that happen. Musk wants to take the human out of driving entirely and we’re just not there yet.

For GM and Ford (and really, everyone who isn’t Tesla), they see self-driving more as a way to assist you in driving on the highways, not some replacement. If you take your eyes for the road for more than a couple seconds it starts to warn you. Then it takes increasing measures to get to you to pay attention, eventually it will just pull itself over the to shoulder.

BYD doesn’t have that in the US at least (I don’t know about China) because you need to to have the US highways all mapped out in detail and keep it updated.

As someone who has followed the self-driving car news for nearly a decade, I can say that Tesla’s is dogshit. Even going back to 2017/18, people who understand these systems were saying that while Tesla was first out the gate, their system had inherent, unresolvable issues and they would eventually be surpassed by the legacy manufacturers who were taking a slower but more measured and thought-out approach to self-driving, with systems that would surpass Tesla in short order.

Fast forward to today. Ford and GM both have self-driving systems for highways that are truly remarkable. GM’s Super Cruise has 700 million miles recorded and no reported accidents, which is truly incredible. Now that we have such safe and reliable systems, Tesla has no business selling cars with Autopilot, IMO it should be banned.

Understanding this helped me understand how the Romans would tell a Germanic tribe “hey sure we’ve got some open land over in Aquitaine, just settle there and pay us taxes”. Thinking of it terms of borders as lines on a map just left me more confused.

Honestly, I am hoping it really is just him whine bragging like he always does. He seems bothered that Americans don’t realize how “great” the economy is, so maybe he’s gonna try and talk about that. Anything that isn’t a declaration of war against Venezuela (or anyone else for that matter) I will be relieved by.