Yeah that’s why I asked this here instead of just googling reddit. Subscription models are very much not my vibe, I like buying a thing and consequentially owning that thing.

Although I kinda have the ick with Apple, I’ve never used their products and I can’t really imagine starting now.

I’ve dabbled, but based on my results I feel like dedicated hardware would provide enough benefit to justify. My computer is reasonably beefy, but I’d rather pair that with a beefy front end.

Yeah that’s what I’ve done so far, but anything that’s not made of a few simple shapes gets annoying real fast. Compound curves, tons of details, and organic shapes are more time commitment than I’m willing to spend modeling from scratch.

That was the main brand I was looking at, still it’s difficult to decide between the options.

Right, what I’m saying is where do you draw the line at where “in the sun” ends?

What? You didn’t verify anything, you just said you remember being told once. It’s not an obvious fact because it isn’t true, you made it up. It’s not foolish to believe a word means what it means, you can just look up the definition. Are you high or something?

Whoever told you that was incorrect. Literally means the plain textbook definition of the words written, as opposed to euphemism or metaphor. If I say “I would literally die on this hill”, it means that there is an actual large mound of dirt that I am willing to lose my life on.

Any other interpretation is literally incorrect.

I’m thinking about it, and I think they might be right. Sunbeams are a part of the sun, albeit mingled with atmosphere. If they were in direct line of the sun, i could consider them technically, literally, correct.

It all depends on whether you consider an object bathed in the radiance of something to be “in” that thing, but I’m kinda inclined to consider that.

Starship Troopers is not misunderstood satire

I’ve read a lot of Heinlein, and while I don’t think “satire” is quite the right word, I’d consider it more of a thought experiment than sincere belief.

As long as they stay to the right I don’t care that much

I’m fine with language evolving over time, but I reject “literally” being used to mean “figuratively”. Distinguishing figurative from literal is, literally, the word’s one job. Take that away, and the word literally doesn’t mean anything but a generic intensifier. There literally isn’t another word that fulfills that disambiguating purpose, this semantic drift only decreases clarity.

Not really, no. A lot of the major ones, like the Flood, but there’s plenty of original content in every religion. It’s silly to suggest otherwise.

And my point is that if all these same stories keep popping up, maybe there’s some significance to them.

Incorrect. The one form of leverage they have on the ratchet is choosing between the spinny part and the still part. Every vote for a Democrat is a vote for the still part. Every vote not cast for the still part is a willful gamble on the spinny part.

Both parts are bad, but the spinny part is worse and getting worser. Electoral leverage has a fairly narrow and unambiguous scope, and for anyone on the left who doesn’t have the luxury of RCV or competitive third parties, that leverage is best applied via BNMW.

Other forms of leverage (local elections, workplace unionization, direct action) are highly encouraged, but beyond the scope of elections. Those other forms of leverage will be more productive under the lesser evil than the greater one. Every vote cast for a Democrat (excepting districts where third parties are competitive, obviously) is a vote for the most favorable achievable conditions to effect other forms of leverage.

You don’t beat the ratchet effect by ignoring it, you beat it by keeping the ratchet in the stationary position until you can figure out how to loose the pawl. No one on the left benefits by letting the ratchet twist right. Well, accelerations do in theory, but I reject the collateral damage of that strategy.

Uh, no. The context is very clear, he offers it himself. He’s talking about movements in other countries, where class consciousness isn’t sufficient for more direct alternatives, specifically Germany. He didn’t mention the Czar or the Duma once in this text.

You should really just read it, it’s pretty short.

Yeah and I think 1) that was 175 years ago 2) that while a brilliant thinker on the subject of structures and inevitabilities, Marx was pretty naïve when it came to implementation.

You are in duty bound to call their bourgeois-democratic and parliamentary prejudices what they are—prejudices. But at the same time you must soberly follow the actual state of the class-consciousness and preparedness of the entire class (not only of its communist vanguard), and of all the working people (not only of their advanced elements).

We’re still in the pretty heavy wake of McCarthyism, we’re not at “run our own candidates on the general ballot” yet, we’re at “vote lesser evil on the general ballot while we run our own candidates locally and try to win primaries”.

Whilst you lack the strength to do away with bourgeois parliaments and every other type of reactionary institution, you must work within them because it is there that you will still find workers who are duped by the priests and stultified by the conditions of rural life; otherwise you risk turning into nothing but windbags.

How does it do that? The winner will be red or blue. Your options are whatever fascist the red side puts up, or whatever the blue side puts up. If you vote in primaries, maybe the blue option will be good. But even if it’s a corporate shill, that’s still a better outcome than the fascist.

If withholding your vote, or voting for a third party with no chance of winning, was going to make the DNC change their approach, it would’ve worked in 2016. We got Biden in 2020, obviously that strategy isn’t working.

If you want progressives off the sideline, they need support in the primaries. Ignoring electoral strategy is so fucking stupid.

You should read more theory

Like pwnd, which is something like pünd or /pʊnd/