I’m conflicted. The stock photo industry has been broken for a long time, with Getty actively maintaining and orchestrating an illegal monopolistic trust. I feel inclined to champion almost anything that threatens their illegal, predatory business model.

You can believe that people stuck in wheelchairs deserve equal access to public spaces via accommodations like ramps or elevators, and still hate Ted, who happens to be paraplegic, because he is a hateful, racist, fascist MAGA jerk. In this case, your shunning of Ted is not ableist because the reason you treat Ted differently is unrelated to his disability and you are well aware of the fact. He doesn’t get a pass for things unrelated to his disability.

However, if you are aware of someones disability and treat them prejudiciously because of it (or it’s symptoms) then you are the ableist jerk. If you are the one with a disability and people treat you in a prejudicious manner because your disabilities or their symptoms, then they are jerks and not friends.

Um, the point of Helldivers is that we are the baddies.

I feel like we have more than enough death-cult machismo fascism in real life.

I understand your logic, but I don’t think this is the community for you.

I think we may have different definitions for “replaceable”.

None. The goal was a classless, stateless society. The exact opposite of an authoritarian state.

… but Lenin didn’t end wealth inequality, just changed who had the wealth.

It is unfair to lay that on Lenin, as it was Stalin that consolidated and bureaucratized soviet government against Lenin’s wishes as Lenin fell ill. While Bolsheviks most certainly did loot and pillage like bandits and barbarians during both the revolution and civil war, that was never a part of Lenin’s vision or goals. See Lenin’s Testament, which he essentially dictated from his death bed in a last ditch attempt to rescue his vision from Stalin’s dictatorial takeover. Unfortunately, Stalin suppressed the testament and it would not be seen again until years after Lenin’s death… and then only privately among party elite.

Of course, because only those two very specific options can/will/do exist.

Waiting until the genocide is complete to grow a conscience? A lot of good that does the people of Palestine.

Oh, you thought you owned that thing you bought? No. This is 2025. You own nothing. It doesn’t matter how much money you gave them. Yeah, gave them. Because you didn’t buy that stuff. You’re just borrowing it.

So long as it’s as lovingly and carefully polished as the first one was, I will be content with the delay.

The police protecting the ICE thugs and targeting the good samaritans should result in every single one of them facing the same Nuremberg style trials as the I E gestapo.

One of the differences these days is that marginalized groups are having their existences threatened… and not hollow threats, but meaningful ones that have had, and continue to have, very real consequences in the form of policies, hate crimes, etc.

That is legitimate, very real violence, and it results in very understandable hostility. And then those perpetuating, supporting, and celebrating the violence pretend they are victims when people treat them like the orcs they are.

“Why are you being so divisive?” “You’re not very TOLERANT of different opinions, are you?” “Why are you so angry all the time, snowflakes?”

Violent bullies need to be put in their place, and with more than just “hostility on the internet”.

The problem with Lenin’s failed roadmap (and Marx’s, for that matter) was that neither considered the intrinsic corruption and selfishness of humanity. The “dictatorship of the proletariat” is not supposed to be an actual dictatorship, but a kind of democratic power where a minority of wealthy capitalists can’t simply use their wealth and power to supersede the will of the people. Hence why neoliberal capitalists are so happy to misuse the term “tyranny of the majority” in regards to direct democracy. Instead, following communist revolutions, a new ruling class emerged, composed of selfish, self-centered bandits. Not “The People” writ large, but a small controlling class of party members. That was never supposed to happen, and even Lenin tried to warn of this in his final days. There was also the matter of international isolation… where powerful, wealthy imperialist countries cut them off as a risk to their own rulers authority.

My point is… there is no roadmap. The American experiment failed, and for exactly the reasons founders like John Adams, George Washington, John Hamilton, et al warned about. Incidentally, the same reason Lenin’s experiment failed as Stalinism took it over… power was allowed to be concentrated into the hands of a small ruling class or singular political party. I don’t have a solution. I wish I did. There is just no way for any major movement to survive individual human ambition, greed, and selfishness. It will always be tainted and that taint will always eventually metastasize. Unless we already have a stateless, classless society where everyone shares a cultural and moral system where greed, selfishness, and preying on others for personal gain is immediately and staunched stamped out, the system cannot be sustainable… and that means there is no path to such a system at a national scale.

Such a system would need to start small and be protected from without. It would need to grow organically over multiple generations and be accepted broadly by it’s own merits. And how likely do you think that is given the realities I just discussed? The rich and powerful would never let such an experiment survive. Just look at current culture. If you don’t buy into neoliberalism aggressively and religiously, you get called “communist” and “marxist” and “woke” and any number of emotionally-loaded pejoratives.

So… no roadmap. Not yet.

Woke means “I noticed that society and it’s systems treat certain groups of people much worse than others. We should fix that.”

Which, yeah, means “live it and let live” but in a way that implies a call to action, lest you be a willing participant in oppression.

Gotta love how “divisive” is always a dog whistle for “how dare you do anything that would question our authoritarianism.”

• Diversity: No, no, no! We can’t have that. Obscenely wealthy, white, male, cis, hetero, neurotypical, Christian nationalist, Republicans only. Diversity means giving others a voice, and letting them have a voice means we lose power… unacceptable.
• Equity: Absolutely not. Neoliberalism demands that anything someone does or create belongs to their corporate liege-lords. You will rent and subscribe to everything you need to survive. You will own NOTHING. Even your taxes will be funneled to the wealthy so that you will get nothing in return. No equity. You are serfs. We OWN you.
• Inclusion: If you aren’t an obscenely wealthy, white, male, cis, hetero, neurotypical, Christian nationalist Republican who has the desire and means to cheat, steal, and destroy so that the club can amass even more wealth and power, then you shall not be included. You can still white knight for that behavior, we like that, encourage it even, but you still will never be included. It’s a small club, and you ain’t in it.

I used to identify as “libertarian” but it was obvious that the party itself was in no way, shape or form ideologically libertarian. They were neolibs at best, and alt-right, goosestepping fascists at worst. I no longer use the term to describe me or my ideology because it’s been completely co-opted by the right.

Literally everyone warned you. Everyone.

But you wanted to “own the libs” so those leopards you let brainwash and manipulate you are now feasting on faces.

I know there are as many distros as there are stars in the sky, but definitely give it a test drive! It’s one of the better distros out there IMO, especially for gaming.

I definitely blame the patent office.

But also, patents should not exist. They need to be completely abolished. Copyrights are one thing, copyrights make sense, patents are another entirely, existing solely to facilitate intellectual theft from both individual entities and the broader public.