I mean I would argue the whole system of having to show up in person to a place to vote on a non-holiday day and wait in a long line is in of itself a way to stop poorer people from voting. I’ve lived in a state with only mail in voting for my whole life and as result we have some of the highest voter turn out. It makes sense the Republicans want to do everything they can to to alter that as the harder they make it for poorer people to vote the better their odds of winning are.

They do that cause Republicans win the less people are able to vote. When you disenfranchise people who don’t have the time or care to deal with getting an ID you are left with either richer people or older people who both tend to vote Republican. So of course they’re gonna require ID to vote and make it as hard as possible for working people to get a valid ID for voting.

As someone who’s 23 and grew up with smartphones and all of that as they were starting to become popular I feel like I have some takes on a lot of the opinions I’ve seen on the different sides of issues like this. I lean in general towards giving your kid a phone once they’re old enough to want to be able to talk with friends and do things on their own afterschool but having some non-intrusive ways to keep an eye on what they’re doing with it until sometime when they’re a teenager. That just seems like the best way to not ostracize them from other kids while still making sure they’re being safe online. Even though in general things worked out fine for me with my parents letting me have my own laptop and iPod touch and eventually iPhone from a pretty young age without really watching what I did on them I definitely see a lot of times that I could have ended up being taken advantage of online if things had been slightly different. And the reason I say non-intrusive ways to keep track of what your kid is doing is because I knew kids who did have like parental restrictions on their phones and all of them knew ways to bypass them and do what they wanted to do anyways. So the only way you’re gonna successfully keep an eye on them is if they don’t know you are and you only interfere if it’s a genuine safety problem, and even then you make sure to not punish them for it as that will make them start hiding things from you actively, you treat it as a learning moment and help them understand why what they were doing wasn’t safe. I’m still very much figuring out what my exact views on this are but I think leaning too far in either direction of not letting them have social media or a smartphone at all even when they’re starting to reach middle school or letting them have unrestricted access to social media and a phone both have their problems and you have to find a good balance in the middle.

I would also make an argument that the limited technology at the time led to different kinds of games versus what we see now. Sure there’s the obvious things like internet enabled games and being able to get updates but I think even the less thought about things like restrictions on RAM and the power of computers led to restrictions on what you could do which led to specific types of games which aren’t made that way anymore because they don’t have to work around those restrictions. And while in a lot of cases those restrictions going away has allowed for better mechanics and gameplay it also still makes the games different which to people who were used to and liked those games will feel not as good anymore.

That’s cause the business side keeps pushing for increasingly unrealistic deadlines and will only accept delaying so much before forcing it out.

I mean they basically already do this, my student loan was moved to a private servicer which basically is just a company that collects the money from my loans.

I mean the problem with your argument is then that there’s nothing we can do, as there isn’t really any pathway towards impeachment right now. As Republicans hold both houses and have pretty clearly shown their loyalty to Trump even with the fact that they’re getting so much backlash they won’t hold town halls anymore. So at this point these kinds of protests are one of the few ways to try and hurt the people in power, as well as to start building community that is needed for any kind of more direct action. It also gives Trump and Elon the opportunity to overreact against protests (like if they decide to follow through on the domestic terrorism thing) which will further galvanize people into action.

I think that ended with the death of their fascist leader and then a peaceful transition towards democracy. So it can happen but only if your leader dies and the successor wants to reform the country back to democracy.

After 9/11 terrorism gained a much more negative connotation I think. Idk fully about what it was like before since I wasn’t alive but in Deep Space Nine you literally have a character who said she was a terrorist and that’s not really seen as like an inherently evil thing like it would be in the current day. I think people understood the nuance back then that sometimes terrorism ends up being justified when you’re fighting for freedom against an oppressor.

It’s not really competition anymore though, since they often use SpaceX rockets for what they do now.

The way it’s written my mind immediately read it in the voice of Wheatley from Portal 2.

I mean I’m pretty sure a bit ago I saw something that leaked from a meeting of Dems about strategy going forward where they were talking about trying to shift more to the right by presenting themselves as more patriotic and pushing for more focus on larger donors rather than lots of small donors which is basically just doubling down on what they just tried. I still have some hope that maybe people get so fed up a Bernie like candidate can win despite major push back from donors and the establishment of the party and shape the party to be more progressive rather than allowing the party apparatus and donors to shape them to be less progressive but if that did happen it would be a bigger upset then what happened with Trump winning and shaping the Republican party into his personal Maga party.

I would add, says the corporate Dems, sitting on the bus with a parachute made of money.

Those small businesses you shop at still get their products from big businesses at the end of the day. Or their workers who you’re paying by shopping there will spend money at big businesses. It won’t significantly affect the engine that is the economy at the end of the day. Consumer choice only works against specific businesses you can target which if you wanted to have a campaign to for example not to shop at big chain grocery stores that could be good. If anything though that’s another mixed message I’ve seen with this event, is it no spending in general like what a lot of the original fliers for the event said or is it just no spending at big businesses? Either way if your goal is to shut down the economy to show businesses and the government that the people don’t want what Trump is doing then you’re gonna be much more effective through unions and shutting down workplaces through strikes. If your goal is instead to punish businesses that support Trump that can work depending on the business but needs to be more targeted and there are a lot of companies that even if you try to boycott you’ll still end up supporting them indirectly.

It still has to be organized though with a union, you need things like strike funds and the small amount of legal protections that come with having a union such as preventing them from just firing the workers who don’t show up. It has to be a large amount of people that are organized, otherwise the companies can just fire them and find replacements and the strike will be over.

Then there should be a stronger focus on getting people to organize and unionize in their workplace. Cause a general strike won’t work without a strong organized work force and this kind of action focuses much more on individual action that makes you feel like you’re doing something when you’re really not. I’d rather direct the energy that people have right now towards things that will actually have an impact like providing resources and pushing people to unionize to build the base needed for a general strike.

It’s different when targeting a specific business as that kind of boycott can continue indefinitely. A boycott against spending any money or going to any business can only last so long and therefore companies will see a downturn and then probably a spike in sales as people buy a bunch of stuff at once that they were planning to buy during the boycott. I agree with the other comments that organizing workplaces to eventually form the base for a real general strike would be a more effective strategy to actually hurt businesses.

I mean yeah I think the main problem is just Google having all that data about you and potentially selling it to others whether that be for advertising, robocalling, or other things. So it really just comes down to how comfortable you are allowing Google to be able to use your emails and communications from corporations to see what things you like. Only time it really matters more is if you are using email for more personal or secure communications which yeah I would always prefer using better encrypted more messaging focused apps like signal for or just talking in person when possible.

The guard rail should have been prosecuting Trump before he ran again. Or you can have enforcement come from outside the government by having strong unions that can shut down the economy if the government starts breaking the law and doing bad things. There are guard rails that can be put in place to help but the US has very few that are still left trying to hold back the illegal actions.

Yeah the problem there is you’re gonna get horrific working conditions and if you try to speak up about it they’ll call ICE on you and get another immigrant to replace you.