Two men holding hands? A line of people marching in a pride parade? Anyone with Grindr installed on their phones?

Take your pick.

It’s literally just guys in vans cruising around town snatching people. You don’t need anything particularly high tech for that

I mean, the materials still have to come from somewhere. They could be less ruinous, but when you’re talking about something with the footprint of Manhattan Island, that’s going to leave an ecological mark no matter how you slice it.

When plutocrats don’t get what they want, they have a simple and effective way of torturing the public into compliance.

The next recession will be used to force people onto Crypto and into AI the same way prior recessions were used to force people into mortgages and credit cards and health insurance and automobiles and Internet connections. If you don’t get on board, you’re cut out of the economy.

This isn’t the end. It’s just the beginning.

In another 20 years we’ll be talking about “reforming AI” and “guaranting equal access to Bitcoin” like it’s some kind of privilege.

People aren’t being “disappeared” for nebulous and secret reasons. They’re being disappeared because they’re brown, they speak a non-English language, or they have some minor criminal citation in the public record.

We’re making up hypotheticals to be afraid of surveillance when the modern state is already snatching people up for very superficial and arbitrary reasons

This is in India, but coming soon to a country near you

It came here first

What starts in Gaza demolishes the world

I would simply be in the top 1%

I’ve been a bad, bad little boy. I haven’t achieved any of the goals on my five-year plan. My gym membership has lapsed and I don’t think I’ve done any laundry in over three weeks.

What are you going to do about it? French maid’s outfit? Very kinky. And… degreaser? A sponge? Okay, what are we planning here? These are not the sexiest rubber gloves. Why are you pointing me towards the oven like that?

Drink more water

I swear to fucking god, I can be in the middle of chugging a gallon jug and people will say this.

There are a million non-violent ways to oppose authoritarianism such as boycotts, labour strikes, voting blocs, etc. but since they involve at least some amount of effort and inconvenience no one (in the USA, at least) wants to do them.

These economic levers typically need a critical mass of participation. And one way to get that participation is via buy-in from the government (regulation) or capital (BSD). Random people refusing to shop at Starbucks doesn’t mean much. But when a location is shut down for violating ordinances or because the landlord kicks them out, that’s a material hit to their pocketbook the owners can’t ignore.

Rallying that critical mass of support is difficult and frustrating. I’ve heard more than one organizer describe it as “herding cats”. This isn’t a trivial issue of inconvenience or effort. It requires an industrial scale of activism.

However, by wanking about a revolution that you know will never come you can claim to be on the right side of history while still taking the path of least resistance in every way that matters.

“The Revolution” is a critical mass of critical mass events. Its something you can only really talk about in hindsight, because it requires a bunch of constantly moving social parts to kinda line up at the right moment and move in the right direction together.

Revolutions aren’t uncommon. Large institutional shifts in composition, function, and ideology happen regularly. But they’re a lot easier when the people executing them already have a bunch of institutional controls to operate. “Wanking” often feels like the only thing you can do, because you’re so cut out of the so-called democratic process.

I mean, I volunteer with Food Not Bombs, and their politics is well to the left of the DSA. But if you ask them what their accomplishments are, its a pretty straightforward “We feed the homeless people that the police would rather see starved to death”. That’s it. Every week, getting out and distributing food, even if people get arrested for it.

Now, there’s definitely other people who just spend all their days shitposting and doing nothing else of consequence. But they’re not typically the people I meet in person when I’m out trying to make my neighborhood a better place.

“I hit the bones with my sword”

“They fall over, defeated”

“This was a fairly trivial encounter”

“The wizard casts a spell. Save verses Newt.”

Americans in 2005: “If people just knew what I know, they would agree with me. Ergo, I must dedicate myself to prostylitizing my Truths.”

Americans in 2025: “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Stop trying to put information into my brain! I can’t take anymore!”

Sure. But those are the ones I’m most inclined to pay for.

Not much is cheaper than free

Cooking is cost negative relative to eating out. You just need a decent kitchen and plenty of free time

D&D costs $90 for the hard cover core book set and $0 for the pirated pdfs.

Biking can have a high upfront cost, but I’ve been using the same bike for 20 years with tune-ups and replacements running in the low three figures over that time.

I’m a big fan of podcasts, particularly ones that cover old movies. Criterion collection films are everywhere, they’re dirt cheap, and they’re classics for a reason.

Delivering swift and terrible justice to the gaggle of sociopaths and bigots that have channeled our collective wealth into institutionalized misery is cool and good.

But the wealth building doesn’t come from taking a few bourgeois fucks out back to the wood chipper. Real wealth means building real infrastructure and bureaucracy that can sustain and improve the lives of your neighbors. I see a lot of progressive-ish folks who cheer guys like Luigi and whatisface the Charlie Kirk guy, then frown at the state bureaucrats in the AES states of Cuba and Venezuela and Sankara-era Burkino Faso. They lose track of the fact that the folks running the literacy programs and maintaining the train lines and working their way through the medical schools are doing 1000x more for their comrades than some vigilante in a western hellhole who got his lick in.

Truthiness!

It feels right, because I find young wealthy parents to be annoying.