the_abecedarian

Yup, it's the cylinder shape above the ball

Nothing wrong with voting, or running for low-level offices especially if you can take the right-wing pressure off your local library or school board. But we've seen with Bernie in 2016, with attempts to primary The Squad and other even slightly center-left Democrats in Congress (and if AOC runs for president, we'll see it again), that the Democratic party organizations, national and local, will largely come together against any leftist candidate. They have been tacking right for several elections now, for decades since Reagan, and I think it's about time we learn the lesson that electoral pressure isn't effective on them at this point. They know that we have no choice but to vote for them because the Republican party is so monstrous, so why on earth would they suddenly let a bunch of leftists spoil that?

Tenant unions work. They will get your plumbing fixed, your heating fixed, and can even (eventually) make your landlord sell the building to a tenant co-op. What if multiple tenant unions organize together? You can really make things happen. The real estate lobby is a huge part of what is screwing us over, so why not fight back directly instead of trying to elect someone who somehow has the superhuman ideological purity to be immune to the RE lobby's propaganda?

Direct action gets the goods. The civil rights movement wasn't just marching, speeches, and voting -- it was disruptive! It had boycotts, sit-ins, and the Black Panthers. The 5-day, 40-hour work week (and the entire New Deal) wasn't won by "getting our candidates in office", it was won by strikes and labor actions, supported by towns and municipalities' worth of people. Our indigenous water protectors, forest defenders, and other formations have stopped pipelines from being built and actually prevented ecological destruction.

It's electoralism that takes too long.

The Democratic party would love to turn this movement into nothing more than a "vote blue!" movement. We all know that we need to turn to more effective alternatives than that, that we need to stop and abolish ICE & cop cities, form tenant unions against the landlords eating our paychecks, and so much more.

Use these protests as a chance to connect with groups that are on the same page, even if it's at a local level. Make connections, meet neighbors, refuse to be policed by so-called "protest leaders", look for opportunities for direct action (but not near the protests)

A one day boycott is meaningless to companies of that size. You would need a massive, long term boycott with specific demands of these businesses.

I think mine was gentoo, waaaay back in the day. It didn't go great lol.

I'm loving opensuse rn though!

Some people simply like to be contrarian and troll online communities, including leftist ones. Or they're doing it out of anger or despair or low self esteem (or they're paid to by a government lol). Good modding, that has the tools, time, and numbers to do a good job, may be an answer to that side of it.

Otherwise, I think being involved with local irl groups doing things and then posting report backs is going to be a less-theoretical form of posting. I'd hope that would lead to more productive and inspiring discussions.

Thanks for your post!

It's a Triumph Gabriele-e. I love this machine.

Yes, I'm much more wary of corporate invasions of privacy than the odd looky-loo peering over my shoulder. There are ways of keeping your data away from prying eyes -- see Selfhosted -- but the brain-to-hand-to-mechanical machine (or pen) feeling is more satisfying, permanent, and tangible.

I would never trust a billionaire to do anything for us. If he doesn't just carve out an exception for only people like himself at first, he'll still lobby to have new restrictions on sharing if they threaten his business model.

It'll end up being a back-and-forth between him and the IP companies, so if he has enough leverage, they'll just find a way to give him what he wants without doing so for regular folks.

Mostly, I journal at home on my dining table. But, while I was on a trip recently, I felt the need to journal and of course didn't have my trusty typewriter with me. Writing on my phone would have been easy, but I felt that, in doing it that way, I would have missed the physicality of doing it on paper.

So I gladly accepted it as an excuse to go to the stationery store and browse the journal options. Given that I tend to like medium- or broad-nib pens -- in fact, I've recently fallen in love with a stub nib fountain pen -- I knew it'd have to be bigger than the pocket-sized options. For my Goldilocks combination of carrying size, size during use on a train or flight, fountain pen compatible paper, and minimalism, I ended up with a Mnemosyne 104. I've done one entry in it, but I plan to tear out the page and enter it into my springback binder, with all the looseleaf I usually use with my typewriter, so that it is integrated into my chronological order.

I realized that I didn't really care if people on public transit next to me were reading what I was writing.

Very cool! For the user scores, are you using monthly active users, total registered users, or something else?

https://thedigradio.com/

Also all of the Jacobin magazine podcasts are socialist

One of those Canon Selphy printers will make small prints fairly cheaply. Not as cheaply as a thermal printer, but it will be a real, full-color print that should last.