It was probably more than just one kid being rowdy and that was just the last straw. Could be just a shitty teacher though.

I have a hard barrier around expressing anything like that, online or off. The inherent hetero power dynamics make it creepy even if it’s not a sexual impulse.

The real answer for a black bear is make yourself look as big as possible, back away slowly, and tell it to fuck off in a deep voice. If it charges you it’s hopefully feinting, but if not whack it right in the snout with whatever you have.

There are ways to hide your power level but you have to be very accomodating, not get heated, and figure out what direction to guide someone to get them started questioning the dominant narrative, instead of going debate bro mode. People want to be listened to and respected, and will remember your tone, affect, and willingness to treat them like a person far more than they will your points 90% of the time.

It means you have to tread carefully when organizing, and that it’s important not to be callous about hardship.

If your position is, “bring on the US collapse; maybe it’ll ease the boot off the Palestinians’ necks,” all I can say is that I hope you’re right and I hope you’re prepared.

If your position is, “bring on the US collapse; I mean how much worse can it actually get?” you probably have no clue what you’re talking about unless you’ve personally spent time in a war zone or lived through Katrina or something like that.

One of the things that struck me while studying the Russian revolution is just how much of an academic relationship we communists have to major periods of historical change. From our position it’s way easier to imagine ourselves in the room with Lenin trying to make a tough decision on agricultural policy than it is to imagine stretching your food store through a region-wide famine and crop failure, or watching your family all catch cholera, or getting shot by the white army…

A radical anti-porn activist, upset at his affair with Stormy Daniels, who was completely juiced up on a 93-day nofap streak.

That or a YIMBY who felt betrayed that a developer president never deregulated zoning via executive order.

RIP to a legit organizer. I took one of her courses a few years back. Super solid info and strategy.

It’s hard when you’re not American and at least two of the categories are references to American media, places, or lingo.

Thanks for keeping my beaver in your thoughts ❤️

Absolutely not! I’m lucky that the trail wasn’t actually backcountry for most of it, and I had an emergency sat phone, first aid kit, etc. with me, but I have seen some shit go down in the woods and know when to be careful.

I probably planned it a bit too ambitious in retrospect. I’m a very experienced adventurer and camper with some long canoe and cycling trips under my belt, so I’m well used to keeping up spirit and mental resilience in tough conditions, but never done a hike longer than a few days.

The pace was forced on me by the rest of my summer and fall being busy af, as well as difficult logistics on spots to stay (the trail I was doing has few official camping spots and they are far between). If I dedicate more time to it next year I could go quite a bit slower but I’ll just miss out on all the other shit I wanna do in life, especially in the warm weather.

I found very few of them had any close contact with “outsider” groups - the big two that come to mind are queer people and neurodivergent people (at least those who would have trouble masking all day so as to conform to the culture, dress, etc.) Some of them were certainly a bit socially isolated, but they could count on being able to pay for not just basic needs but treats, comforts, and brand identity markers to paper over that. With an above-median personal income, the main next steps are to secure house ownership and then start a family, which can serve as your main purpose in life and also your main social unit that isn’t governed by economic transactions. I found very little interest in community building or intersectional solidarity.

When you’re on that level there’s no reason to question eating out or ordering food several times a week, flying across the world and staying in hotels several times a year, or ridesharing into work every day. There’s no need to think about the massive amounts of service labour that go into making those comforts accessible at the push of a button, nor anything that would lead them to realize that very few of those labourers can afford any of that themselves. For them, service labour is something you do in high school for some extra spending cash and a way to teach diligence to the youth.

I was in tech for two years recently. It gave me enough money to purchase a vehicle to live in and to coast for the next little bit, but among the many reasons I quit (it was bad for my brain, it took up way too much of my time) was feeling the distinction in class interests. The biggest expression of this was that my coworkers had such bubbled views of social relations and had strange expectations of what the world owes them simply on account of how much money they have.

I think if you’re committed to your principles you’ll be fine. I just found I didn’t like being around people of that class for such extended periods of time.

Lol I love how Varn has been ranting about MMTers for a while but each time with a bigger disclaimer that he agrees with their fundamental analysis, up to the point where he has the founder on. I’ll have to give it a listen.

Maybe OP identifies with some kind of nihilism and doesn’t like seeing it criticized in broad strokes?

It’s so stupid because there’s such a simple gotchya response. You think there are too many people for the resources we have, and some need to go one way or another? Then it makes sense to start with the people that use the most resources, right?

In fact we probably don’t even need to get rid of that many - let’s just off the 5000 or so richest people on the planet, expropriate their stuff, and that will free up far more fuel, land, water, energy, money, whatever than you could possibly hope to get from letting millions in the global south perish.