He could be a union supporter though - in my experience of doing labor organizing, the younger folks are usually more pro-union, then there’s a dead zone of support from the Boomers, and then the really old folks are much more supportive because they grew up when unions were more of an active force.

If Wallace is down to organize, then I’d pick him and just take the risk that he’s got some shitty opinions that I’ll have to work through and re-educate him on.

Give it to a group like Just Stop Oil or other direct action / sabotage focused climate activism group - they’re perpetually broke and could do a lot of good with that money.

Oh lol, that’s weird, I thought it was common knowledge that China censors some types of speech, similarly to every other nation. If I was running a state, I’d want to censor transphobic slurs, arguments for gender inequality, pro-Capitalist propaganda, racism, etc. IMO there’s nothing inherently morally wrong about censorship, and I see a lot of think pieces from US / NATO outlets like Voice of America yelling that China is bad because it censors speech, without giving any context or nuance about what type of speech is being censored and also distracting from the US’s massive censorship.

On the oppression point - I guess it mostly matters who’s getting oppressed. If it’s regular working people being oppressed, fuck that, but if we implemented policies as a society that forced billionaires to give up their wealth I’m sure they’d cry about being “oppressed”. I don’t have any sympathy for the cries of CEOs and mega-landlords about how they’re being oppressed by being forced to give back their stolen wealth.

Actually, the opinion I see most often on .ml is that modern day Russia sucks, and is bad because they’ve turned into a capitalist warmongering empire similar to the US. People are pretty mixed on China, but legit if you just look at the technological advances coming out of China - just verified stuff that’s been scientifically proven and then deployed - it’s pretty impressive, especially surrounding batteries. So, if you’re suspicious of China then any good news about China will come off as a conspiracy, but in reality things are pretty mixed and there’s a lot of good and bad about nations, and no one state is all good or all bad. Anyone reducing the complexity of geopolitics down to one nation = good / other nation = bad is either dumb, trolling, not speaking in good faith, indoctrinated or just repeating propaganda.

Capitalists can choose to give up their property and become workers like the rest of us, or they can get the wall and then their property is redistributed. The capitalist class has colonized our society, and their enforcers are the police. And according to Franz Fanon’s books on anticolonial struggle in Algeria, colonial relations never go away unless fought with anticolonial violence to oppose the violence of the colonizers. Ultimately, violence is what is needed to force those in power to give up their wealth, and if they gave up their wealth willingly then violence would not be necessary.

Did someone say “One Big Union”? Sounds like the IWW would be right up your alley. It’s coming back to life again - definitely check if you have a local branch!

https://www.iww.org/

The IWW is an explicitly radical militant union devoted to overthrowing the tyranny of the wage system and settling the class war through full worker control of all enterprises. It’s an entirely different animal than the bloated business unions who settle for a “fair share” of the profits. The IWW asserts that all of the value produced by the labor of workers should go to workers, and the bosses can just become workers like the rest of us.

Both Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion are great, and protests should be disruptive, otherwise they’re just ignored. Maybe they’re not doing enough disruption and damage to force governments to listen. Or, maybe someone should go after energy/oil companies directly via sabotage or other means and cause enough economic damage that the cost of polluting and resource extraction becomes too high for them to profit from.

Last time I looked there wasn’t anything particularly associated with being queer, but the sample set of people who both have this and know that they do is pretty small so who knows! Could be, and we could just be missing the data. Or they could both be correlated with some other factor

Yeah, as I commented elsewhere, I’m damn impressed my code managed to compile and run. I guess life has a pretty fault-tolerant compiler at times, or maybe I was just super lucky to not have the errors be in spots that’d completely screw me over.

I really feel for the inevitable handful of trans men with Androgen Insensitivity syndrome. Imagine how bad it’d be if you were born with the wrong body, and couldn’t change it through hormones - it’d be an actual nightmare.

I found out because I was doing genetic work to test for Ehlers Danlos and I’d gotten my entire genome sequenced, so I figured I’d look for other stuff as well. I’ve suspected for a few years now that I’ve got some sort of intersex condition for a while because of very low testosterone and a weirdly fast transition, but finally got the confirmation earlier this week and wow my genetics are kinda a mess. Tbh I’m amazed that my code actually compiled XD

IMO being infertile is a plus - can’t accidentally have any kids, and can’t be coerced into doing so.

OMG yes it is - it’s especially fun to tell it to TERFs who are all “but muh chromosomes”

Oh look, it’s me! I found out a few years ago that I have De La Chapelle syndrome. I’m actually a trans woman though and not a guy, so I consider it a bonus rather than a downside since it made me have very little testosterone growing up.