Only choice, viable choice, what’s the difference?

The urge to walk beyond the streets, beyond the lights, until you all you can hear is your footsteps, until you can see the shadow you cast in the moonlight and feel your inherent place power and purpose return, the peace and strength of unity, at least for a moment free from the demands and machinations of their system

Hot take: this is their plan to choke out smaller publishers who can’t afford to just eat these losses. Once there’s no more real alternatives they’ll start to squeeze

The telltale sheen of SHARK TESTOSTERONE

You mean “three lies”, right? It’s not so bad

Work with hands good. Need place, purpose

I was actually thinking about this wrt healthcare access earlier. I have a genuinely religious conviction against the intimate, personal details of my condition being processed by a machine and made available online. That is the business of myself and a professional caregiver, not a tech company and whatever “partners” they feel like sharing it with. You’re supposed to be able to opt out, but practically that’s almost never possible

Anyways I know it’s in an entirely different field, but this felt like a hopeful precedent. Thanks for sharing :)

Or that comfort makes you tolerant. This would explain Florida’s position of being relatively gay for how poor it is: mostly beach, pretty chill. Less need for a scapegoat I guess ;)

100%

Just osmosis I guess, never been near either one. I’m kinda bored with the regional rivalry thing, if you’re interested I replied elsewhere in this same thread

Everyone isolated behind their screens with every interaction mediated by tech corpos is the worst case scenario. A fully captive population with no chance to relate to one another directly at all. Ingroups and enemies dictated entirely by what is useful to that power structure. Steps toward unity are worth taking. The paranoia that’s been inflicted on you is worth rejecting. A better world is possible, and if you believe that you should try working towards it. At the very least you could stop (consciously or not) reinforcing the us vs us paradigm of your oppressors.

Or keep mocking the concepts of unity, cooperation, and shared purpose themselves. I’m not your real mom. Just don’t think it’ll get you anywhere worth being.

I wouldn’t go out of my way to construct a fearsome other to react to, but “to each their own”. A slavering racist is a freakish anomaly, and you’ve got a lot more in common with even that guy than either of you do with any billionaire. The only thing that will get us anywhere is collective action and a sense of shared humanity, something you seem to be actively propagandizing against for whatever reason. Really don’t love the “so you must be cool with nazis” angle, or much else about your violent, divisive schtick for that matter

I am happy for your cousins and didn’t really mean to dunk on Delaware! It’s a wide world and there are a lot of ways to live in it. My only perceptions are that it’s expensive, densely populated, kinda boring, and a popular place to register corporations for tax reasons. Without getting too specific I’ll say I’m in the “western states” and 20k is worth more than most houses anyone’ll let me into. More a “mobile home behind on lot rent” kind of guy. Lot of great hiking, camping, hunting, etc though. Possibly a dumb question but can you collect firewood where you’re at?

From this distance they almost blur into the same place. NYC would be ground zero for like, rats and pizza and graffiti and everything being really expensive and NJ kinda sounds like more of the same but less intense and with the Sopranos and beach boardwalks. Can you tell I’ve never been anywhere near either one? :p

Thank you for your service. Every little bit counts :)

I’m glad :) wouldn’t say no if the opportunity presented itself, but think I’m more a national parks than quaint b&b type. Also it’s really far!

Marriage is at its core property law that promotes social stability and commitment to a status quo. If you’re gay but willing to pay a mortgage, raise a kid, and keep number going up they’re happy to have you for the moment. I don’t see it as a prize to be won but as a culture war touchpoint that has served its purpose and an option for those with previously subversive lifestyles to give up/buy in.

It’s not as appealing or accessible of an option as it once was, and I don’t think they can afford to be as picky as they might like. If we get to a point where the Department of Family needs your home for a couple with more traditional values it’ll be another story, but I imagine religion, race, and political affiliation (in roughly that order) will be greater risk factors than sexuality. As is, getting married at all is a clear enough signal of alignment to be left alone

“Buy a gun” is good advice. The whole framing where you’re on a team vs other regular people and should be clutching one in fear is fucked. The second amendment exists to prevent a state monopoly on violence. Spreading that power as thinly as possible is the whole point. Worry about what police and military are consistently doing with theirs every day, not the 1:10000 chance of what your shittiest neighbor might do with his in your nightmares

You could at least not be shitty about the people who do bother. Think of fascists kicking down your door as a disease and firearm ownership as a vaccine. Be fuckin grateful for the people around you who exercise that right/responsibility instead of buying a ps5 or whatever. Correlate ICE “enforcement actions” with regional firearm ownership stats some time for a much more compelling argument than I can give here. You’re larping as a helpless bootlicker right now and acting against your own interests in doing so. ~$300 for the ability to defend resist and protect is a pretty good deal.

You done good. Imo it needs more squares though, I’m so close to a bingo