brandon

joined 4 years ago
[–] brandon@lemmy.ml 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm curious where this notion comes from:

By voting you are essentially expressing that you submit to the electoral process as the sole means for the exercise of political power.

Do you? Does voting necessarily mean that you can't also express political power in other ways? Sure, it's true that most voters don't really engage with politics outside of the major elections, but that's got nothing to do with them being voters, many Americans don't even engage with the elections at all. Why would it be the case that participating in voting means you submit to the electoral process as the sole means of exercising political power? In fact this seems easily disproven by the fact that most political power in this country is exercised by the capital class, but those people still vote.

Even if you don’t like the results, you’ve agreed to accept it because the rules are more important than the results.

Is this actually a condition of voting? What sets these conditions? Are you talking about the social notions of 'civility politics' or 'decorum' that liberals are so fond of? They'll try to hold you to those standards regardless of whether or not you vote.

For what it's worth, I agree with you broadly that there are serious problems with the electoral system, capitalism, the United States, whatever. I also agree that chastising nonvoters is also counter productive. I also agree that voting is probably not going to get us the broad systemic changes that we need. I just don't really understand the argument that voting somehow precludes one from also doing the actual organizing and activism work we need.

[–] brandon@lemmy.ml 40 points 6 months ago (1 children)

alienation

Careful now, that sounds like one of them there socialism words.

[–] brandon@lemmy.ml 158 points 7 months ago (4 children)

I once got called the f-slur for having the audacity to read a book in public, outdoors in front of the library.

[–] brandon@lemmy.ml 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Is that the world's most cursed SEO, or is that repetition something that's significant to the cult?

Nevermind, I see the "for search engines" now. Missed it in all the nonsense.

[–] brandon@lemmy.ml 28 points 8 months ago

We don’t blink an eye when told to not stand under something being lifted by a crane, so why balk at being told to be safe around the two ton travelling metal boxes?

Nobody is saying that you shouldn't act safely around cars. People are saying we shouldn't design transportation infrastructure that prioritizes driver convenience over pedestrian safety. Cranes are only allowed to operate in much more tightly controlled situations than drivers.

[–] brandon@lemmy.ml 24 points 8 months ago

This is the first beard I've ever seen make someone's chin look weaker.

[–] brandon@lemmy.ml 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Edit: is it accessible without knowing much Japanese?

It is, if you look a few things up, but there's also a readily available translated "backup copy" floating around.

[–] brandon@lemmy.ml 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Dōþ hīe spēcāþ Englisc on hwæt?

[–] brandon@lemmy.ml 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The question I am posing is not "do modern farm workers labor harder than prehistoric hunter gathers" (they do).

Instead, the question is "should modern farm workers labor harder than prehistoric hunter gathers".

Farming is more efficient than gathering. That's why we farm. So why is it the case that modern farm workers are working harder?

[–] brandon@lemmy.ml 19 points 9 months ago (4 children)

If the required labor was split up more equitably then farmers wouldn't have to work sunup to sundown.

The entire point of large scale agriculture is that it's more efficient than individual peasants working a single field or whatever.

Nobody is saying that farming isn't hard work, but modern farming should produce more food per man-hour than neolithic farming (or hunter/gathering), right? So why should it be that farm workers now have to work harder than prehistoric people?

[–] brandon@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

And iirc the next fedora release will finally unify everything under /usr/bin.

On my current Fedora 40 install /bin is already a symlink to /usr/bin

[–] brandon@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

Lord of the Rings will start entering the public domain in 2044, so all the rights holders are going to squeeze the IP as much as they can over the next twenty years.

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1608756

From the article:

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that colleges can't explicitly consider applicants' race in admissions, a landmark ruling that will radically transform how colleges are able to attract a diverse student body.

There's also an article from the AP.

 

You can listen to the recording on the article.

From the text:

The recording, which first aired on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” includes new details from the conversation that is a critical piece of evidence in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump over the mishandling of classified information, including a moment when Trump seems to indicate he was holding a secret Pentagon document with plans to attack Iran.

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1212709

I recently finished Moon Witch, Spider King, the second novel of James' fantasy trilogy after reading the first novel, Black Leopard, Red Wolf earlier this year. I'd love to hear if anyone else has any thoughts on these two books.

I was drawn into Jame's world building. The epic fantasy world he creates draws primarily from African folklore and culture. From the perspective of someone used to the ideology of Western fantasy, I was engrossed in the lore. The prose can be meandering--I had to go back and re-read paragraphs regularly ("wait, what did I just miss?"), but it's masterfully written.

The book is vulgar and incredibly violent. There are numerous scenes of graphic sexual violence, some of which was bad enough my immersion and had me questioning "does this really need to be in the book?". If you're sensitive about that, I would definitely avoid this one. I still feel uncomfortable about some of the scenes I read.

The plot of the books is centered around the same series of events (more or less), from different characters' perspectives. The first novel is narrated by Tracker--a mercenary with a supernatural 'scent', and the second by Sogolon, a misandrist with her own mysterious abilities. Both are unreliable narrators, and sometimes recount their stories in non-chronological order. By the end of the second book I was re-evaluating what I thought had happened from reading Tracker's tale in the first. I am sure the upcoming third novel will continue that trend.

Both books were fairly long, and dense reading, but they felt like only a short glimpse into the world of the North and South Kingdoms. I really want to learn more about that world, so I will probably pick up the third book when it arrives, even if I'm also still a little apprehensive about some of the more extreme scenes.

 

I recently finished Moon Witch, Spider King, the second novel of James' fantasy trilogy after reading the first novel, Black Leopard, Red Wolf earlier this year. I'd love to hear if anyone else has any thoughts on these two books.

I was drawn into Jame's world building. The epic fantasy world he creates draws primarily from African folklore and culture. From the perspective of someone used to the ideology of Western fantasy, I was engrossed in the lore. The prose can be meandering--I had to go back and re-read paragraphs regularly ("wait, what did I just miss?"), but it's masterfully written.

The book is vulgar and incredibly violent. There are numerous scenes of graphic sexual violence, some of which was bad enough my immersion and had me questioning "does this really need to be in the book?". If you're sensitive about that, I would definitely avoid this one. I still feel uncomfortable about some of the scenes I read.

The plot of the books is centered around the same series of events (more or less), from different characters' perspectives. The first novel is narrated by Tracker--a mercenary with a supernatural 'scent', and the second by Sogolon, a misandrist with her own mysterious abilities. Both are unreliable narrators, and sometimes recount their stories in non-chronological order. By the end of the second book I was re-evaluating what I thought had happened from reading Tracker's tale in the first. I am sure the upcoming third novel will continue that trend.

Both books were fairly long, and dense reading, but they felt like only a short glimpse into the world of the North and South Kingdoms. I really want to learn more about that world, so I will probably pick up the third book when it arrives, even if I'm also still a little apprehensive about some of the more extreme scenes.

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