Notices by sidereal (sidereal@kolektiva.social)

@MakBerberovic "Leftist unity is when you do as I say, not as I do"

Joe Lieberman personified everything that is wrong with the Democrats as a party. His actions contributed to making this country profoundly worse.

@futurebird @jakemiller @alloydflanagan @hazelnot This is why I was glad that Biden didn't run in 2016 and was so irritated that he did run in 2020. Biden was a conservative compromise candidate... in 2008. It's not like his politics have gotten better since then.

I don't think Biden is going to stop American fascism. I worry he's just making it more palatable for democrats.

@futurebird @alloydflanagan @hazelnot This is why I've been saying for years now that the Democrats aren't gaining anything by attempting to meet the Republicans halfway on any issue.

They scream and call Biden a communist while he busts the rail workers' unions. It's absurd. Biden could try to pass actual communist policies, and he would apparently get the exact same amount of pushback. So why not? What is he getting out of "cooperating" with people who won't cooperate back?

@Adam_Cadmon1 Me and some buddies used to just make a bunch of sandwiches and walk around town giving them out to whoever wanted them. I should start doing that again, it was fun

In the past year one of the main things I have learned is that rural America is way more fucked up than I ever perceived as a "city guy."

@HeavenlyPossum I saw this awhile back and can't stop chuckling about it: https://old.reddit.com/r/PostCollapse/comments/v8gm4u/what_happened_to_this_oncemighty_sub/

Nuclear power was always a very obviously bad idea, but the amount of pro nuclear shills on fediverse is pretty incredible 🙂

When people crowdsource their medical bills on the Fediverse: Fedicare

The only and sole advantage of a self driving car over a taxi is that you don't have to pay the driver.

Everyone says "robocars will be able to outdrive humans" but like that's a theoretical future robocar. The existing ones actually just suck compared to an experienced cabbie.

Like maybe we should have left urban planning to the urban planners and tech brodom to the tech bros.

Bus Rapid Transit systems are so much cooler than self driving cars could ever be. You will never convince me otherwise.

They may eventually figure out the self-driving car technology, I'm of course open to being wrong, but I don't think it's going to be accomplished in an economical fashion anytime soon. Too many weird edge cases.

As I never get sick of reminding people, for all of the 2010's, 2019 was supposed to be the year self driving cars took over. Uber and Lyft hedged their entire bets on robocars being practically available by 2019 and have been frantically expanding the uber-eats services ever since.

@RD4Anarchy @hakan_geijer @stevewfolds @HeavenlyPossum @TomSwirly When I first found out about Edward Abbey I looked him up and found a bunch of ranting about stopping immigration from Mexico to protect the Sonoran Desert.

As though people being on one side of the desert in Mexico is any different from being on the other side of the desert in the USA.

I was like... this guy completely missed the point of both environmentalism and anarchism. IDK how this stuff isn't more well known.

All these people talking about how Biden is too old and it’s like y’all this is literally what VPs are for.

I am not a Biden fan, but this is a poor criticism of him (don’t be ageist!). If his age really becomes an issue Harris can just take over. I’m just not seeing how this is a big deal.

Capitalist weirdos: The invisible hand of the free market is great at sending price signals

Also capitalist weirdos: WHAT ARE YOU DOING YOU CAN’T HAGGLE ON RENT

I assure you: I can, will, & have successfully haggled on rent.

As with all haggling, it helps if you have some kind of leverage over your target.

In my experience, most landlords are the right combination of shady + incompetent that there is probably SOMETHING illegal in every rental unit. Go find it! Imply you know a lawyer.

My new hobby is getting in touch with the landlords of units I have no intention of renting and haggling them down on the rent purely to neg them.

"Nice unit, I'd like to tour it. According to my records, it's been on the market for almost a year now, was rented last month, and is now open again. So what's wrong with it? And given this context, why would I want to pay more than [3/4ths the advertised rent]"

It is worth it for the free sodium 😂

"A survey performed in Fallujah in 2010 found that the overall cancer rate in the time after the 2003 war had increased four-fold compared to standard rates ... Childhood cancer had increased 12-fold, while leukemia rates had increased 38-fold."

It's horrific to use weapons like this against Gaza.

Not to mention poisoning it with white phosphorus. If you want to steal land, you shouldn't use white phosphorus weapons to do so.

Gaza is too small to use white phosphorus weapons and not have them effect the births at Israeli hospitals. These Israeli nationalists are too fucking short sighted to survive.

The US used these weapons in the war in Iraq, and now they have cancer-causing dust storms.

There's that myth about how Israelis "turned the deserts green" which has been righteously dispelled (Palestinians have always farmed, Israelis tear up their olive trees). But it becomes even more ironic when looking at pictures of Palestine and reflecting on all of the time and energy that went into building all of these walls and fortresses everywhere. It's like anti-infrastructure that makes it harder to live and get around. They are making the country worse.

In case you were ever wondering what living in America is like, a buddy of mine who is couchsurfing just got his food stamps taken away by a social worker who very cheerfully informed him "you don't need the help because you don't have to pay rent anymore."