Some cities outlaw the usage of these types of brakes within city limits (in my experience enforcement is kinda lax, but I think it does make some difference) but this city did not. They also didn’t have those sound-dampening walls you find in a lot of places. Living there was a real psychic attack lmao

Lived for a couple years within a few hundred feet of an interstate in tennessee. It was horrible; I could tune it out a lot of the time, but all the semi-trucks with their Jake brakes were terrible.
Then the company that owned the billboard right between our street and the interstate clearcut ALL the foliage around it. Just made things louder🙃 and I didn’t even really think about the increased pollution, I’m sure that has harmed me

I was talking with someone on here this week about how the Nicaraguan revolution very explicitly tried to limit violence and executions, and mandated a max prison sentence (for any crime) of 30 years. And they based this on their Christian faith, and what they believed to be the most faithful interpretation of this.

Contrast this to online left spaces, and principally western online spaces, which have a lot of people whose politics looks like posting (self-crit to myself here too). The impotency of the western left, combined with the counter-insurgent nature of the Internet in general, I think breeds extreme opinions, even if they’re “in jest”. I definitely feel those ways myself sometimes, but I think the only real solution is engaging with people physically, directly, and in common cause. The internet is corrosive and is designed to be, and I think we have to develop habits and discipline to combat this in ourselves. Which ultimately necessitates logging off.

I’ve been reading a collection of speeches/essays/letters from Tomás Borge, one of the founding members of Nicaragua’s FSLN. At least in his writings, he’s very consistent and persistent in how the revolution needs to keep violence in check, and bases this explicitly in his Christian faith. Apparently when he met the man who had tortured and murdered his wife, he chose to forgive the man, rather than call for his execution or any sort of violent retribution. And he physically intervened to stop a group of peasants who were about to kill a bunch of Somoza’s men they had captured.

It’s definitely challenging my perspective, but I have more reading to do. I don’t know how many of these spared soldiers and shock troops came back to cause issues for the revolution down the line.
I think it mostly has me thinking about the “making a new person” aspect of the revolution and how to most effectively make that happen, and to what ends.

I recently learned Copperhead Road was one of Tennessee’s state songs. Which means 2 of their state songs speak positively of killing federal agents lmao

Ok that’s good to hear! I’ll have to get around to it one weekend.

Speaking for myself, yeah that’s the goal. I’ve actually had the exact same idea of recreating an adult swim lineup, but jellyfin only lets you shuffle within a show, so you still have to make the choice of show. This would let you choose a suite of shows and it would randomize the lineup, and you could insert the adult swim bumps for some variety.

were you planning to use Tunarr to do that? I’ve really been wanting to set up something like that, but my friend said it used a lot of resources and I haven’t found an alternative.

Joe is usually pretty on the ball, but I think he’s reacted poorly to the Maduro kidnapping and Delcy government.

It feels like it’s fed shit all the way down.

Yeah, I’ve got a lot of half baked essays to be written about the dichotomization of the sciences from the arts and humanities. I think it leads to a lot of malformed thought processes and worldviews.

Engineers who literally can’t do basic financial and media analysis.

Lol, this one drives me nuts, because I love to talk about shows and movies with people (no one reads anymore) but even then it’s just the most surface-level vibes discussion. I guess my frustrations are just numerous, but I think the academy is much worse than I imagined it to be when I got here, and that’s been driving me crazy.

yeah, as cool as a general strike would be, labor in the US (speaking just for my country) is not remotely organized enough to pull it off. Getting dues-paying members of my union to even attend a twice-monthly zoom meeting is incredibly difficult. A strike? We just plainly don’t have the organizational capacity for something like that, let alone the will.
You call us feds, but I just don’t think you’ve really truly thought about what an action like that would require.

There’s arguments to be had about reach and influence, but Brian Becker on the Socialist Program and others on Liberation News/Breakthrough News (which are all at least somewhat affiliated with PSL) have had a pretty solid analysis of the Russia/Ukraine war since the start.
I sent this article from Liberation News to a lib (ex-)friend back in May 2022 (the articles says it was published in July, but I guess they edited it because I have my email receipts). I don’t disagree with your broad point, but I think it’s a bit more complicated, or you might be in a bit of a media bubble.

I got to see Amy-Jill Levine give a talk once, I found her book on the parables really interesting

I’ll be real, if I find an academic paper that looks solid from the abstract, I’ll have ChatGPT summarize a coupler sections for me, and if it seems worth my time, I’ll commit to reading the whole thing. I think there’s too much moralizing around the issue, and if you can use it to help you, then you should

This show very quickly became one of my top favorites after I found it

I did anaheim, cayenne, and habanero this year, and they all did really well; I’m having to learn how to dry them properly. I’m in zone 7b, and I was worried a little bit about the heat for a few weeks, but I just made sure to water them a little more often. I hope whatever you choose to grow you do well!

My peppers were so easy this year, and I got quite a few. A lot of my tomatoes got blight, though, which is a bummer :/
growing plants is pretty straight forward though, just give them a ton of sunlight and water every few days (if they’re outside)!

I know I’m preaching to the choir, but in Communism: The Highest Stage of Ecology, Suing makes a pretty strong argument, I believe, that most of the framework for the environmental degradation that did happen in the USSR came about under Krushchev, not Stalin. I know this is just supposed to be a hyperbolic comparison, but it’s not even an accurate one ffs.

Honestly I think if the term “cybernetics” had won over “artificial intelligence” there’d be less of this obfuscation. But “AI” is more marketable, and of course that’s all that matters.