I was recently accused on Lemmy of using AI to write up a post (laced with links to appropriate Wikipedia articles).

I’m still not sure how I feel about it.

In your society you can openly protest against people calling the shots, or be rude to cops, and not expect legal (and physical) retribution

You are obviously not watching the dozens of phone videos displaying counterexamples to this statement.

Granted, it’s true for a shrinking privileged set, and the US saw for the first time in the 2014 Ferguson Unrest, just how brutal and militant the police will get if protests or rudeness to officers occur in a minority neighborhood. It’s not that police brutality wasn’t common before, but this time there were press on the ground streaming live video to the internet, and it wasn’t being filtered through news agencies.

Conservative protests get the light touch, such as the 2017 Unite the Right rally. In contrast, the George Floyd protests in 2020 were saturated with CS gas just like Ferguson in 2014.

Granted, protestors taken to court by the current regime are usually acquitted (if a grand jury succeeds in indicting them; they’re failing a lot), but then we’re now seeing protestors accused of being part of an Antifa terrorist conspiracy, and getting sentenced disproportionately for minor crimes.

Americans presume they have civil rights, as per those enumerated in the Constitution of the United States, but they’re legally being stripped away by federal courts, and law enforcement (and regime-loyal paramilitaries like ICE) are disregarding those rights more and more without accountability.

Even birthright citizenship is being challenged, and that face-eating leopard is going to take a lot of Americans by surprise.

The US is failing as a liberal society.

I will grant you I’m referring to what popular culture teaches us masculinity looks like. I’m taking my cues from what social media is popular, what US cinema has to say about masculinity. But that’s because it’s also about the expectations of displays of manhood, what we are obligated to do if we’re real men.

There’s also this video (on YouTube) from J. Draper and PBS which asserts that there’s been a masculinity crisis for about as long as there’s been a moral panic about new fads corrupting our kids (id est, always), that there have always been pundits and editorial correspondents saying that men are becoming too effeminate.

One source I haven’t yet been able to tap is what trans men have to say about masculinity, because to them social expression of their gender is super important. But I don’t know any trans men well enough to stop and ask them.

While I entirely agree with the premise of this position, it’s going to be entirely unpopular, or rather as unpopular as suggesting Americans should pull up stakes and leave the continent since we did, in fact, steal this land from the native Americans.

There’s no practical way to get there from here. But we might be able to either establish a two state solution, in which Palestine has a fair amount of land and its own sovereignty (and is facilitated with support from the international community and reparations), or a single state solution in which Israel relinquishes its identity as a Jewish state for a secular one in which all its inhabitants are afforded the same access to civil rights and justice.

The road to either of these (imperfect) solutions is going to be long and arduous, and opposed by most of the monied interests that currently dominate the world.

In a purple state like Michigan, you should run the most conservative democrat possible. Otherwise, you’ll lose.

Yeah, that’s not necessarily true.

People who vote for conservative Democrats are way more into the things that MAGA Republicans like: Voting R to prove your manhood; Voting R to own the libs; Voting R to deport all the immigrants; Voting R to keep trans women out of women’s sports (all ten of them.)

Then there’s independents who are really only concerned about how the economy is doing, or rather how their own household is doing. If it’s doing poorly, they vote against the incumbent. If their household is doing well, they’ll keep the current guy to avoid rocking the boat.

Then there’s the breed of Democrat who is interested in platform issues. They’re not all interested in the same platform issues:
Some really want universal healthcare.
Some really want to stop support of the Gaza genocide.
Some want serious action on the climate crisis.
Some want a jobs guarantee.
Some want full access to women’s reproductive healthcare, including abortion, to be guaranteed nationwide.

Some want a combination of these things.

And then there’s those Democrats who will vote blue no matter who, because they acknowledge the crisis of democracy that’s unfolding in the US. The Republican party is actively attempting a coup in order to secure themselves a permanent majority, a step towards a one-party state, and autocracy. If that happens, then our elected officials don’t need to care at all about what the public thinks, since the peaceful transition of power as been eliminated. (That also puts non-peaceful transition of power in the center of the table, but that’s a different conversation.)

But this last batch of Democrats try to express their policy opinions in the primaries rather than in the general elections, and back any Democratic candidate that makes it to the general. So some of these Dems are voting in progressive candidates in the belief that progressive Democrats are better winners against Republicans than centrist ones.

(To elaborate on this hypothesis, Republicans are going to Republican: FOX News just has them by the balls, and there’s nothing for them, but a Democratic candidate that has something to offer will draw apathetic Democrats to the election polls, tipping the election in their favor. And in the current clime, we’re seeing this happen repeatedly.)

So what the centrists are banking on is a voting bloc that likes establishment Democrats that take corporate money and are beholden to the lobbies of their campaign contributors, that doesn’t like progressives (who try to be beholden to their constituency) and yet are not so hardline that they vote Republican, who do the same thing. That would be the corporations and the lobbyists themselves, I think.

Democrats as a group don’t identify as blue the way Republicans identify as Red. This is evident in the messaging crisis on the Democratic side. They vote D because they’re interested in the policies that benefit them, or to stop MAGA from taking over the country. Establishment Democrats seem to be looking for blues that identify as blue.

Maybe there’s a demographic that I’m missing, but from here it seems that our Blue Dog Democrats are out of touch.

In a purple state like Michigan, you should run the most conservative democrat possible. Otherwise, you’ll lose.

Yeah, that’s not necessarily true.

People who vote for conservative Democrats are way more into the things that MAGA Republicans like: Voting R to prove your manhood; Voting R to own the libs; Voting R to deport all the immigrants; Voting R to keep trans women out of women’s sports (all ten of them.)

Then there’s independents who are really only concerned about how the economy is doing, or rather how their own household is doing. If it’s doing poorly, they vote against the incumbent. If their household is doing well, they’ll keep the current guy to avoid rocking the boat.

Then there’s the breed of Democrat who is interested in platform issues. They’re not all interested in the same platform issues:
Some really want universal healthcare.
Some really want to stop support of the Gaza genocide.
Some want serious action on the climate crisis.
Some want a jobs guarantee.
Some want full access to women’s reproductive healthcare, including abortion, to be guaranteed nationwide.

Some want a combination of these things.

And then there’s those Democrats who will vote blue no matter who, because they acknowledge the crisis of democracy that’s unfolding in the US. The Republican party is actively attempting a coup in order to secure themselves a permanent majority, a step towards a one-party state, and autocracy. If that happens, then our elected officials don’t need to care at all about what the public thinks, since the peaceful transition of power as been eliminated. (That also puts non-peaceful transition of power in the center of the table, but that’s a different conversation.)

But this last batch of Democrats try to express their policy opinions in the primaries rather than in the general elections, and back any Democratic candidate that makes it to the general. So some of these Dems are voting in progressive candidates in the belief that progressive Democrats are better winners against Republicans than centrist ones.

(To elaborate on this hypothesis, Republicans are going to Republican: FOX News just has them by the balls, and there’s nothing for them, but a Democratic candidate that has something to offer will draw apathetic Democrats to the election polls, tipping the election in their favor. And in the current clime, we’re seeing this happen repeatedly.)

So what the centrists are banking on is a voting bloc that likes establishment Democrats that take corporate money and are beholden to the lobbies of their campaign contributors, that doesn’t like progressives (who try to be beholden to their constituency) and yet are not so hardline that they vote Republican, who do the same thing. That would be the corporations and the lobbyists themselves, I think.

Democrats as a group don’t identify as blue the way Republicans identify as Red. This is evident in the messaging crisis on the Democratic side. They vote D because they’re interested in the policies that benefit them, or to stop MAGA from taking over the country. Establishment Democrats seem to be looking for blues that identify as blue.

Maybe there’s a demographic that I’m missing, but from here it seems that our Blue Dog Democrats are out of touch.

That handful of jackasses dominate social media in contrast to their opposition counterparts, and it’s creating a public divide between the sexes, hence the 4B movement and the choose the bear thought experiment.

I don’t know to what degree this factors into the observable trend that zoomers are having less sex and less romance than prior generations at their age. (I’m sure the affordability crisis is a major factor.) But in the US in 2026, our exemplars of masculinity are demonstrating they are entirely transactional and only understand the power of brute force.

And it’s going to be a long, long time before stereotypes of masculinity change for the better.

Feel free to set a counterexample. Plenty of men do. And we need more of them. But when they do, they’re not demonstrating what it is to be a man. They’re demonstrating what it is to be a functional adult in a cooperative society.

I also think society gender roles should be abolished, and that every gender identity (including non-binary ones) should be respected.

Men are fine. Masculinity in 2026 as an ideology or a cultural institution is a problem.

Men exist in concerning numbers who submit to the manosphere logic, who follow the far-right influencers I’ve mentioned, who vote R because letting the libs win is effeminate. And curiously, conservative, tradwife-minded women don’t like them much either.

Manhood as expressed in media isn’t much better, with scriptwriters diegetically presuming the alpha male model is a valid theory. (It’s been debunked even for wolves.)

There are plenty of men who do not submit to these notions, and generally they tend to not be concerned about expressing their manhood or being seen as inadequately masculine. They are more concerned about being adult or being functional than being manly.

There’s two problems, and the Kurzgesagt two-parter on nuclear fission power discusses them both.

One is that nuclear power plants are long term projects and you’re stuck with what you built, even as improved versions are designed and flaws are discovered with what you have. Yes, sometimes we retrofit our nuclear plants to make them safer (or more efficient, or prettier).

The other is that contractor firms have had a bad habit of just designing the same simple LWRs over and over again, even as engineers have developed designs that are safer, more efficient, more elegant, etc.

But this doesn’t mean either of those can change.

Battery technology is booming!

Capital agglomerates until it is concentrated within a few massive, monopolistic corporations, controlled by a few powerful men.

Karl Marx takes a toke.

Capitalism as a public serving economy doesn’t work when it can be zerodayed by an entity with a resource advantage.

Before capitalism, when we were just doing markets and feudalism, the concentration of wealth at the top was even then a terminal illness for civilizations.

This time, the plutocrats at the top are richer (and proportionately richer) than they’ve ever been in history. They can literally buy the world out from under the rest of us. They can buy all the elections, bribe all the officials, and take over all the governments.

Watch what is happening in the United States: This leopard is totally coming to eat your face.

This is not a paywall, but it can be bypassed if it were a paywall.

Incidentally, I live in Sacramento, in the California Central Valley, which is desert. Recently, its gotten up to 117° here (which is still low compared to Death Valley).

Solar is awesome.

All the nuclear stuff happens in one place, with a few people minding it. But they do have to be super careful and know what they’re doing.

And if there’s a critical flaw in the reactor design (looking at you Chernobyl) it can go very very wrong.

Renewables are all spread out, and a lot more people manage it for the power output.

That also means a lot more people have power-related jobs.

Fossil Fuels, Methane (Natural Gas) and Coal are just ugly all around. But they have really, really great lobbyists.

How are we going to pay for it is an example of a thought terminating cliché. Much like It’s just a theory referring to biological evolution. There are mountains of arguments to be made to the contrary, but for the indoctrinated individual, the phrase is enough.

See also, the clobber passages in the bible regarding LGBT+ folk (specifically gay men). Scholars might explain what they mean, that their intent is not for committed same-sex relationships as they appear in modern society, or that biblical mores are generally not applicable to modern society (for example its full endorsement of slavery). But none of that matters to the loyal indoctrinated cult follower, whose thinking terminates at the passage itself.

In the 1970s and 1980s, there were traits that were positive traits characterized as masculine. Only with time as the workforce got integrated, and as women got more personal autonomy (such as property rights), we noticed women, too, could man up and take responsibility. In fact they had to.

Through my thirties, my model was Captain Jerry Lawson in Wargames, ([here] on YouTube) an air force missileer who was run through a surprise missile drill, and refused to turn the key and launch a nuclear strike against the USSR. The capacity to hold vast power and not use it (or to use it judiciously and proportionately) was highly prized during the cold war.

See also, The West Wing s01e03, A Proportional Response (also featuring John Spencer!). Bartlett is emotionally caught up when an attack by Syria kills someone he knows personally, and his cabinet has to reign him in.

See also To Kill A Mockingbird, specifically when Atticus Finch has to put down a rabid dog at range with a rifle.

Women are also capable of holding responsibility and not using it, so I still hold the capacity as a virtue, it’s just no longer a man thing.

And then in the Trump era, we’re seeing an awful lot of men who have immense power and clearly should not be trusted with it. Trump’s fire and fury speech regarding the conflict in North Korea was an early portent to the rest of us of his later decisions to misuse US military might.

Indeed, after Trump’s first term, we learned that he had called to use nuclear weapons more than once, and his military cabinet deflected his orders every time.

During his second term, I don’t know if those safeguards are still there, or if he’s still as eager to use the US nuclear arsenal.

In my case Peach Tree Health, Sacramento.

A friend of mine got Paralives for her birthday, and says it has its charm.

I assumed that they’re buying things that some people like in the hopes that they’ll glean some of that like for themselves.

The Saudi family has long been a font of cruelty, ruthlessness and abuse of power, long before Mr. Bone Saw.

When EA Origin (the EA client) became mandated for EA games, I quit purchasing EA games entirely.

No regrets. I avoided the entire lootbox thing.

Now EA is under private equity, which means, I suspect, it’ll soon go the way of Toys 'R Us and Radio Shack.

Appropriate, given EA’s long standing policy of buying up development companies and gutting them.