Absolutely right. The only power we have now is local.

Agreed.

If only.

If you want that to change, you have start local

You’re partly right.

The only power we have now is local, unless you’re a billionaire or willing to commit a terrorist act, both of which do not apply to me. You can always do good with your own two hands, but we can look at the last two decades and conclude correctly and definitively that voting for either major party is throwing your vote away, at least if you’re a wage earner.

The thing is, fascism’s already here for most. Abortion is criminalized in part of the country and will soon be criminalized in most of it, and it happened with Democrats in power. A vast majority of Americans have to work 2-3 jobs to survive now, and it happened while Democrats were in charge. If you have a major injury or illness, you will be bankrupted, and that remains true no matter who we elect. If you’re a person of color, a police officer can kill you at will and there won’t be any meaningful blowback to the police system, and not only did it happen under Democrats, Joe Biden mocked the defund movement in a SOTU speech.

It seems most people want to give credit to Democrats for what they say. I’m giving them credit for what they actually do.

I respect your right to vote as you choose.

Thank you for your perspective.

Voting system reform is my #1 issue

Respectfully, I don’t think it is. You’ve seen the same history I have and, whether you want to acknowledge it or not, you know how your Democratic vote reinforces that which you say you want to change.

Thank you for your response.

I’m asking a legitimate question here.

We can look back at the last 40 years, but the last 20 in particular, when Democrats were handed a mandate not once but twice.

And they’ve used that power to make us poorer, not wealthier.

So how exactly are you not throwing your vote away voting Harris or Trump, given that we can look at recent history and infer exactly what they’re going to do once elected?

I could vote Harris, but my eighty year-old parents are still going to have to drive for DoorDash, in the car I lent them, and if they can’t Harris or Trump will gladly allow their monied friends to take everything away from them. You and I both know it, so all of the discussion about ‘throwing your vote away’ just rings very hollow to me. My vote is already worthless, at least as concerns the Federal Government.

How exactly are you not throwing your vote away voting Harris or Trump, in full knowledge that neither is going to do anything meaningful to help the poor and working class?

Every two years, 99% of voters here in the US choose to put their stamp of approval on capitalism. Then they inexplicably clutch their pearls when capitalists do capitalist things, as if it’s somehow shocking.

Looks like public pressure brought a positive outcome in this case, so that’s something, but this is the stuff you should consider when voting for the two ruling parties.

Literally just Mint.

And yeah, I kind of just assumed dual-boot was a big part of the issue. I’m planning to repurpose my old PC to be a non-gaming Linux PC for everything but gaming when I upgrade later this year. Will be perfect for me to have a system for gaming only and one I can use for everything-but to protect my privacy.

That’s good to know. Is it user-friendly?

Sadly, that’s the distro I had when I did my dual boot last summer. My Lenovo just isn’t compatible with it.

Issues are not worth my free time.

Exactly. I will say though that I learned a lot, so it’ll be easier when I go back. I do plan to give Ubuntu a try as I’ve read it plays nicer with Nvidia.

My plan is to have a gaming-dedicated system for Windows and a non-gaming system for literally everything else on Linux.

Also, I too love Linux, but when I ran a dual-boot for six weeks last summer I had to troubleshoot it almost every single day. Because of that I ended up just going back to Windows and making sure I keep it clean with O&O ShutUp. Some systems just aren’t compatible with Linux and mine is one of them.

Even when it was working, only approximately half of my games ran on it, so I needed Windows anyway. (Though that may be on me for choosing Mint instead of a more gaming-centric distro.)

I’m going to go back to Linux when get a new system and can have a gaming-dedicated PC, but for now, I’m stuck with Windows.

Definitely.

Also, don’t invest in companies that hand total control to one person. That’s a recipe for having that one idiot blow all of your money, like Adam Neumann did. (Fun fact: Toward the end of WeWork’s heyday, Neumann was burning $3k in cash a minute.)

It’s WeWork and Adam Neumann all over again.

You couldn’t pay me to invest in this shit and it feels a little insane that seemingly intelligent VC’s are doing so.

Happened a few times under Trump, like when the US redeployed from Syria, doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, that is.

This is the stuff people need to remember whenever Congress and other federal politicians make exorbitant promises this fall. What they’re actually going to do is make your lives harder.

More like bots, really. Threads had a huge user influx but also a ton of inorganic activity.

Yeah, it is.

Could even get Trump reelected in a few months. Super bleak.