if you’re going to be this confident, have the decency to be correct instead of saying something incredibly stupid like calling congestion pricing an infringement on “freedom of movement”. if you can drive into lower fucking Manhattan–one of the most car-free areas in the country, because a huge portion of NYC residents don’t drive a car and don’t need to drive a car because they have reliable public transportation–you can pay a toll.

yeah, no shit, that’s not the same as “your entire company being predicated on the unpaid labor of children who you also let do whatever they want without supervision or actually working filtering features”–not least because you could actually get banned for both of the things i mentioned from 2010, while what’s happening now is explicitly enabled by Roblox as their business model and an externality of doing business. as has been demonstrated by recent investigations into how they work down, they basically don’t have a company without systematically exploiting children

it’s been very strange to watch this game i grew up on–pretty innocuously, i should note–gradually morph into one of the most exploitative, undignifying, generally dangerous spaces for children online. the worst stuff i got into on Roblox in 2010 was online dating and learning about 4chan. now the company seems to openly revel in exploiting the labor of children and ripping them off

feels like Stop Antisemitism is really underrated in the “most evil domestic Zionist organization” department right now, this is literally a McCarthyist tactic

there will likely be in excess of a million people out on the streets today; there are at least 1,200 recorded Hands Off! protests today in addition to about 70 other scheduled protests against people like Elon Musk or rallying for Palestine. easily the largest mobilization so far either way–there are substantial protests in almost every city larger than about 100,000 people, and many significant ones in cities smaller than that

he assuredly won’t win as an independent given his appalling numbers in the primary so, lol, good riddance

maybe you can be skeptical of the data source–but i think it is fairly reasonable to conclude, at this point, that trying to ditch DEI to placate conservatives has at the very least not helped Target

What you mean? Have you seen all those articles publisher website just giving out 8-9 on every damn game they get early access to?

this has been an issue people have complained about in gaming journalism for–and i cannot stress this sufficiently–longer than i’ve been alive, and i’ve been alive for 25 years. so if we’re going by this metric video gaming has been “ruined” since at least the days of GTA2, Pokemon Gold & Silver, and Silent Hill. obviously, i don’t find that a very compelling argument.

if anything, the median game has gotten better and that explains the majority of review score inflation–most “bad” gaming experiences at this point are just “i didn’t enjoy my time with this game” rather than “this game is outright technically incompetent, broken, or incapable of being played to completion”.

no, obviously not; is this a serious question? because i have no idea how you could possibly sustain it

Seems like a pointlessly gendered classification.

sports bars by default cater to a male clientele, male sports, and male interests and therefore tend to have a “bro”-ey and “masculine” atmosphere that can often be offputting or outright hostile to the presence of women–women’s sports bars by contrast don’t, and generally have more interest in being inclusive community hubs and/or acting as substitutes to gay bars

in other words: no, it’s not really a pointlessly gendered classification in the current situation. it certainly is not what i’d call the norm (nor has it been my experience) for sports bars to have a code of conduct which tells you being homophobic or chauvinistic or ableist isn’t cool and could be grounds for your removal, as one of the women’s bars downthread has

i mean, you can research this for yourself. here’s what i found with about three minutes of Googling and following links

The Sports Bra:

The bar, which opened in Portland, Oregon, just last month, has already become a popular haunt for women and the LGBTQ community, especially since the city has lost all of its lesbian bars, a trend that has grown across the United States over the last several decades. There are only about 20 lesbian bars left in the country, compared to about 200 that existed in the 1980s. […] But Nguyen, who is gay, stresses that the bar is welcoming of everyone. While a majority of its patrons are women, she said, the Sports Bra is an inclusive space that also attracts a large number of families and even quite a few men — many of whom, according to her, say they prefer watching women’s sports because female athletes “give 110 percent all the time.”

1972 Pub:

1972 Pub represents more than just a place to gather — it’s a symbol of progress, representation, and the power of community. Having a women’s sports pub in Austin means more spaces where everyone, regardless of gender or identity, can feel seen and celebrated. ⛹️‍♀️🏆

A Bar of Their Own:

• has an entire code of conduct that is gender inclusive

the names and addresses of many of these bars: right here

i’m not exactly a fan of gender roles or the nature of “manhood” or “masculinity” or gender expression generally myself and am supportive of their total de-emphasis, so my presumption is that the case for this is something like “manhood as a concept is so toxic and so intrinsic to the worldview that creates patriarchy and men oppressing themselves and others that we cannot create a better form of it, we can only get rid of it.”

the problem is that this is almost exclusively the purview of radical feminism, and this was not productive for them historically (mostly it just took them very weird places, the SCUM manifesto being the most infamous manifestation of this). to say nothing of the fact that most radical feminism–and radical feminists–suck and have bad politics and analysis on queer issues in large part because of how that space of politics developed

Manhood ultimately will have to die though

bizarre take; i don’t see why this is true or necessary at all

Then we slap a random-ass speed limit sign down and say “job’s done.”

we don’t actually–the basis we derive most speed limits from is actually much worse, if you can believe that. from Killed by a Traffic Engineer:

Traffic engineers use what we call the 85th percentile speed. The 85th percentile speed is whatever speed 85 percent of drivers are traveling slower than. If we have 100 drivers on the road and rank them in order from fastest to slowest, the 15th fastest driver would give us our 85th percentile speed.

Traffic engineers will then look 5 mph faster and 5 mph slower to see what percentage of drivers fall into different 10 mph ranges. According to David Solomon and his curves, the magnitude of the speed range doesn’t matter as long as we get as many drivers as possible into that 10 mph range.

and, as applied to the example of the Legacy Parkway, to show how this invariably spirals out of control:

North of Salt Lake City, the Legacy Parkway parallels Interstate 15 up to the Wasatch Weave interchange where these highways come together. It’s a four-lane, controlled-access highway with a wide, grassy median and more than its fair share of safety problems.

So how did the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) respond?

It increased the speed limit from 55 mph to 65 mph. It said the speed limit jump will “eliminate the safety risk” on the Legacy Parkway.

UDOT conducted speed studies up and down the Legacy Parkway. It found that most drivers were going much faster than the 55 mph speed limit. Channeling the ghost of traffic engineers past, the safety director for UDOT said, “We decided to raise the speed limit to a speed that is closer to what drivers are actually driving. In doing so, we hope to eliminate the safety risk of speed discrepancy, which can happen when you have a significant difference between the speed most drivers are actually traveling and those who are driving the posted speed limit.”

In the case of the Legacy Parkway, the 85th percentile speeds ranged from 65 mph to 75 mph. Based on that and what it deems engineering judgment, UDOT originally proposed raising the speed limit to 70 mph. After community pushback, it settled for 65 mph.

According to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), this slight adjustment is acceptable. The MUTCD specifies that speed limits “should be within 5 mph of the 85th percentile speed of free-flowing traffic.”

Columbia effectively committed to a punitive line that threw its student protesters under the bus last year; this is, unfortunately, not a very surprising development with that in mind

i’m removing this because it’s a completely empty calorie comment with literally no relation to an extremely detailed, well done article. please don’t make comments like this, thanks.

Aside from the obvious stuff like promoting mutual aid, grassroots agitation efforts are probably your best bet. Organize in workplaces and other places where people meet, get them angry and suggest effective courses of action.

respectfully: this is just not a serious proposal. and the fact that you think nobody is doing these things—rather than what is actually the case, which is that people do them but they are simply not effective or easy-to-scale acts of political praxis in an American context—is indicative that you should stop making confidently bad tactical prescriptions.

and i’m not even going to address your fantastical idea of how to build a spontaneous general strike out of “mass protests” when it is evident you have bad tactical prescriptions. you’re not even treading new ground here, really. Peter Camejo’s speech “Liberalism, ultraleftism, or mass action” is the definitive dunk on your flavor of politically delusional theorycrafting, and that speech turns 55 this year:

This is the key thing to understand about the ultraleftists. The actions they propose are not aimed at the American people; they’re aimed at those who have already radicalized. They know beforehand that masses of people won’t respond to the tactics they propose.

They have not only given up on the masses but really have contempt for them. Because on top of all this do you know what else the ultralefts propose? They call for a general strike! They get up and say, “General Strike.” Only they don’t have the slightest hope whatsoever that it will come off.

Every last one of them who raises his hand to vote for a general strike knows it’s not going to happen. So what the hell do they raise their hands for? Because it’s part of the game. They play games, they play revolution, because they have no hope. Just during the month of May the New Mobe called not one but two general strikes. One for GIs and one for workers.

Being out for the count before anything actually happens doesn’t seem to be good strategy

you’re right, people have never martyred themselves (and, in a sense “been out for the count before anything happens”) for successful political change before. do you realize how ridiculous this sounds? you are the classic person who–even if they are legitimately radical, which i don’t think you are–upholds the status quo by, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr, “lives by a mythical concept of time” and always wants to wait for a more convenient season to do something. but plainly, the more convenient season will never come if nobody does anything because they might be “out for the count”.

this is not serious enough for the mod shield, but my god stop misusing the word clickbait and stop being confidently incorrect. some of you literally just use this to mean “thing i don’t like” or even “thing that explains itself in a way that is not my fancy”–neither of which is what the word actually means.

So… I’m not really pro-capitalism as you’d likely conceive of that term,

i don’t know what you think “not really [being] pro-capitalism” means, but the fact that you can neither straightforwardly state that you believe in socialism nor elaborate substantively on your economic beliefs is an indicator you’re just some sort of radical liberal. and that’s fine–and radical liberalism is nice and all for this moment–but it is not a serious ideological system with credible tactics that will eradicate fascism or solve the inequalities and inequities that create the basis of right-wing authoritarianism.

I don’t think you get me. You likely don’t have until 2026. A lot of the infrastructure for a full authoritarian takeover is already in place.

okay, let’s suppose this is true: what would you like me as an individual to do besides what i am already doing. help organize a general strike? one is already being organized for 2028, and you can’t exactly spin up the infrastructure for one of those in a matter of months unless you operate under a very incorrect idea of how unions work. a strike is a massive financial, political, and organizational commitment–to say nothing of how a strike necessitates buy-in from the workers who engage in it (perhaps 40% of whom are in favor of the current administration, and would thus need to be convinced to organize against it).

or maybe you propose some sort of political violence? maybe firebombing a government office or assassinating an elected official? aside from op-sec considerations, those would be very stupid ideas to take up. bluntly: we’ve been there and done this. most left-wing political violence in the West does nothing to substantially harm the state, and frequently, it actually legitimizes authoritarian violence in the eyes of the public. the primary base of support for ideas like this are ultraliberals and ultraleftists who confuse the spectacle of political violence for meaningful political action–people who, in other words, think the most transgressive action they can take is the most correct one.

and if not these, what else? organize boycotts? people already do those. organize public marches? people already do those, to the point where it’s impossible to keep up with all of the ones being organized. organize sit-ins and other nonviolent protest? people already do those. i don’t know what you expect here that isn’t already happening.

If not wanting to get arrested and tortured (again, this is not a hypothetical) is slothfulness then… Uh… Okay?

if you aren’t willing to face meaningful political consequences for what you believe in, then what tactical or ideological advice could you possibly have that i should care about? the law has already pacified your politics and your convictions into uselessness–you have essentially stated you won’t fight for what’s right because it would inconvenience you.

this is also contradictory to what you’re arguing in the first place: how is this position of yours any different from Sanders’ supposed failure to meet the moment with tactics and radical politics? if fighting for what’s right means potentially being arrested and tortured then, yes, as unpleasant as such a commitment sounds you should be willing to be arrested and tortured!