andrewrgross

Don't forget, though, that there's another cashflow that they're banking on: total surveillance.

AI can't do a lot of things, but the thing it's most suited for is creating a society run like a prison to try and keep the discontented masses in check.

They ONLY lost eighty billion dollars??

♫ Sounds like someone is ready for a trillion dollar IPO... ♫

This man, Father Molinari, died violently in front of a crowd of loved ones.

Jokes on him, because no one in the DSA trusts our candidates to actually hold anything up.

Joking aside, it's an odd and revealing posture for Carville to take, because it seems to give power to his enemies.

If someone like Carville says 'I've got no problem with the left. We're a big tent', that's politician speak for 'they're useless, and I'm not afraid of them having any influence.' But when he says that he'd rather leave the party than share it with Piker, he's basically cucking himself. Despite having far more power in the Democratic party, he's basically saying that some streamer most people have never heard of is the new kingmaker, and he for all his wealth and influence is a helpless has-been.

Which I like. But it's weird for Carville to say it.

Respectfully, you're missing a key piece.

You're making the point that you can't stand up to oppressive powers like Uber while operating within the law.

Crucially: so is she.

This woman is an academic expert on law and our rights, and what she's doing is exploiting a loophole in Uber's control scheme in public and forcing everyone to watch what happens.

She is creating a problem for Uber while denying them a legally justifiable reason to wield law against her. Which will either demonstrate to more people an action that allows protestors to impose harm on a powerful company while remaining out of reach of their ability to impose punishment, or force them to reveal that their ability to impose punishment isn't actually based on law, it's based on power.

In doing so, she helps analyze the strength of various legal rights that can still be used and unmasks which ones no longer exist.

Ya.

This meme takes a good point and then phrases it in the most peak smug lib voice possible.

Anyone seen Lanterns?

(Don't.)

First: I don't consider the term "Tankie" nebulous because I only apply it to people who self-identify as such.

Similarly, I don't go around bringing up authoritarianism. When someone else brings it up to defend it, I generally roll my eyes and move along.

Personally, I find this line of reasoning about definitions semantic in the least productive way. It's just Loki's Wager. So with all due respect, I don't wish to debate you. I answered your question in good faith and I'm content to leave it at that.

It sounds like you have no idea who Naomi Klein is and have never read a single thing she's written or said (including that article).

For anyone interested, the actual article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/11/why-are-some-of-the-left-celebrating-the-killings-of-israeli-jews

I think "authoritarian" is a principle of concentration and protection of power in the same way "democracy" is a conceptual term for structured collective guidance and oversight of an operation, and "anarchy" is the principle of maximizing agency of groups and minimizing the ability of any party to wield coercive power, etc.

They're concepts.

My interest isn't in categorizing and ranking nation states, it's in examining and weighing the qualities of different approaches.

When someone says that a term like "authoritarianism" is meaningless, I just don't feel like having an arugment. It's like 'I don't see color' or 'age of consent? I think maturity is what matters.' Alright, have a great day, I'm gonna go over there.

Is your gripe with "Democratic Socialism" as a concept? Because these authors were interviewed by the DSA? If so, that seems silly. I don't even know what political theory each of them identifies with.

Have you considered assessing the ideas presented by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor on their merits?

Here's the interview with Elia Ayoub: https://thefirethesetimes.com/2025/06/30/the-rise-of-end-times-fascism-w-naomi-klein-astra-taylor/

For anyone not familiar, Elia is a great thinker and interviewer. He's a Lebanese Palestinian journalist and historian. Check him out.

I'll be honest, I still don't understand what your critique is.

I haven't read this book, but fwiw I've heard Klein and Taylor discuss it on The Fire These Times and Know Your Enemy and found their ideas thoughtful and useful.