In November I woke up ready to bail. but upon reviewing my options, I determined that nowhere was really better.

There seem to be precious few countries that aren't flirting with authoritarian parties right now and leaving this one, where I have my social safety net (friends and family, if not government aid) and at least a small amount of power to vote for my values, to go somewhere where I am an immigrant or refugee and lose the power to change policy seemed to be a poor choice. so far. I'm white, straight and middle class, though, so that may be entirely different math for other people.

I'm choosing to stay and fight.

reviewing my replies much later.

What you are doing is perfect. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is normally a quote around material goods, but still applies to things like time and involvement. If you are uncomfortable calling your elected officials, that's fine. Adding a person to a protest is still an addition that shows engagement.

Your points indicate you are not only voting in presidential elections. You have choices to make things better: 'Vote blue no matter who', ceding your choice of "who" to others more involved; or to become involved even though it's uncomfortable.

I'm not talking to you alone, but also to all those who read your comment, identified with it, and then could use a prod to get involved. I'm also poking at those who vote once every 4 years and are unhappy at their options.

I'm pretty sure that 'heavy bags filled with books' is a backpack for school, but I think it's funny to imagine you also carrying a burlap sack with anti-goose novels specifically to ward off this creature.

Don't just hope, Act!

Find and join your local democratic organization. The initial cost in time is almost nothing. Just meet up and introduce yourself.

Once part of the conversation, you can help influence your local party and select candidates for local office that share your values. You can select delegates who vote in larger offices, and through them promote your goals.

It's not perfect, and we currently don't have a flawless democratic system, but participating only every 2-4 years during the major elections is not how you get the results you want. A lot of complaints exist online around weak candidates, or 'opposition party' that exists only to be a foil for the Right. Those things can only exist if we are not engaged.

The time to be engaged is NOW. Help find or support new House and Senate candidates for your state legislature as well as federal. Contest every office. Even if your precinct/district seems 100% red, not having candidates on the ballot is a huge disservice to anyone who would want to vote for them and hides our strength.

Now is the time to be loud.

I don't know that 'Conservative' exists anymore. I'm American, but I think these comments work everywhere else, as Authoritarianism rises.

Growing up, I believed that liberal/conservative was just a difference in approach, but not a difference in end-goal. Both 'teams' wanted the country to prosper. In my 40s, now, I clearly see that we have different goals: Liberals want everyone to be prosperous, healthy, fulfilled. Conservatives value the prosperity only of those on top.

You may identify as conservative, little 'c', respect tradition and be careful with spending, etc; but I want you to closely evaluate the actions of people using that label across the globe. A vote for a conservative or right-wing candidate is a vote for the top 1% or less of the population of the planet. They may align with you on some topics, such as religion, abortion, fiscal policies, regulations, and more; but that is a ploy and they are absolutely willing to throw you away as soon as they have your vote and will cut everything you depend on once in power in order to pad their own pockets.

There are certainly perverse incentives and systemic issues that make even liberal politicians support bad policies, but the voter bloc that is 'liberal' wants to make things better for everyone. The conservative politicians, at least in the US where I'm paying attention, seem to be hell-bent on making things worse instead.

This has less to do with Trump's actions, and more to do with how the convervatives behaved...

I'm confident that it's part of their marketing. Every store near me has a drive-thru line that impedes traffic and/or crosses over itself. I think this is so that you drive past one and cant help but go 'oh! look at how much demand they have,' as you are stuck the the line to get into their line.

1000% this. Half our problem is people bitching that their perfect candidate is not an option, and that they don't want to vote 'against' someone.

The time to be active is NOW, not complaining about your choices in October 2028. Left media isn't helping here, since they want to complain about how the election is still years away and yet we're talking about potential candidates.... YES, we are. If you're not talking now, then you're not in the conversation. Is it great to have a 24x365x4 political cycle? hell no. But is it what we have? yes.

Join your local democratic organization and get familiar with how things work. Help choose a 'not fascist' candidate for now and push for better down the line.

If you're here, reading this, and you want things to be better, then you have two choices: vote blue no matter who (ceding your choice to others who are involved), or get involved and be part of the decision of 'who' is blue.

As much as I understand and support the sentiment, destroying things that are still functional is a very republican action.

Perhaps deface the mugs (sharpie marks generally survive dishwashers and can be reapplied later for new fun mustaches) and turn the shirts into dishrags or washcloths. (especially fun since in languages with gendered nouns, like German for example, a shirt is a neutral gender and a washcloth is masculine, thus making this really transformational.)

You think children are getting undeserved money from the government.

I think children are getting money from the government.

We are not the same.

</meme>

Regardless of evidence provenance, children need to be our most sacred class of people, followed by the elderly and disabled. It shouldn't even be a question about how and why we take care of them, we just fucking should.

Misinformation is real, so I see part of your point, but the people outraged at this are WILDLY different from the people outraged that kids might be getting money they don't "deserve". Can we not just be nice to each other? This isn't actually a zero-sum game.

Every relationship is different, so I can't speak to your situation and this may not be the root cause. This isn't specifically for Darkmoon, but for anyone feeling the same way.

I'm male and my wife has a robust social network where I am included in some of their conversations. Most of her female friends are low-key angry at their husbands and resent how much work they (wives) do that goes unnoticed.

Make sure you are helping out in the home: obvious things like cleaning, cooking, dishes, laundry; but also kiddo maintenance like knowing what homework is needed, what they need to wear on Tuesday for spirit day, when the next dentist appointment is (or making it), etc; social maintenance like planning trips to grandparents, finding a babysitter for date night (and planning it), preparing for parties.

Take some of that work off her and she'll have more energy for you.

I 100% clicked on that link expecting it to be a TVTropes rabbit hole... I'm actually a little disappointed.

Not OP, but this is a principle thing. We should not have to change our behavior to make the computers work for us. They are unthinking, unfeeling tools, despite anyone's claims around "AI". They change for us.

That runs into a problem of tech literacy, though. If the companies running the tech we use don't have incentive to make it work better, you have to know how to do it yourself and that's generally not trivial. If I were OP, I'd look into self-hosted home automation. There's some overhead and tinkering required, but the customization and privacy gains are likely worth it.

Side note. Anyone have any knowledge of a Google Home Mini repurpose? I'm more of a software guy, and have no clue if or how I can make the hardware mine. I've been slowly removing my reliance on google products lately. I use it mostly as a speaker, though, so worst case is it ends up as e-waste.

I DESPISE AI in fast food restaurants... as well as just about everywhere else... but in fast food it really pisses me off.

I crave salty trash food every once in a while, but when my local Taco Bell greeted me with an obviously AI drive-thru, I just drove away and never came back.

Fast food and retail were the places you went to get your first job with no experience or school necessary. Using AI to 'take their jobs' in the pursuit of 'efficiency' is just adding velocity to our plunge into dystopia. I mean no disrespect to those working those currently jobs, though, as the 'were' in that sentence is carrying a lot and the article is right that the jobs are stressful and relentless, and it angers me that your livelihood is yet again being threatened by corporate greed.

If there were compensating factors, like UBI, free higher education and better worker protections, then sure, let's let "ai" take over the things that we don't want to do... but I don't think we're going in that direction.

My local one changed the play place into a conference room. That's where adults have fun.... right?

The McDonalds near me recently clobbered their tiny playplace and turned it into a ... conference room/center?

About the only time I went there was when I need a place for my kiddos to spend some energy on a rainy day at like 8am, before other things opened. I was happy to buy a coffee and biscuit for myself and maybe a treat for them to pay for my occupancy.

Now, though, and I know I wasn't a giant source of income, they have lost my custom and I just can't see how any real business would ever run a meeting in a McDonalds conference room, so it just seems like a dumb move.

Maybe they want to discourage parents bringing their children? That also seems pretty stupid.

Slight modification... Billionaires deserve to live, but they didn't deserve to be billionaires. There is no path to that much wealth that doesn't involve increasing someone else's suffering.

Fair enough. I haven't read it, but I knew that the term is not new and figured out where it originated. My understanding of it was a neutral term that became slang.

I'm tired of the right-wing taking ownership of terms/icons/etc and wanted to push back.

In the service of not bringing politics where it isn't wanted, I'll stop there.

I will continue to grok things, despite Heinlein's positions or elon's chatbot.

"Grok" way predates xitter and predates elon himself by a decade. It was coined by Heinlein in 'Stranger in a Strange Land' and means 'to understand fully'.

Just because some ass-hat uses a word doesn't immediately give it a negative connotation.

I'll repeat and elaborate on something I said a few times before the election. As a preface, I fully understand your desire to not just 'choose the lesser evil', but the timing of your (the collective you, all the people who either sat out the election or, worse, convinced others to sit out) decision to make a stand is the part I take offense to.

The time to choose the lesser evil is when you have only those two choices and neither are good. You did indeed have a third choice, but that third choice was to walk away and potentially let the greater evil win -- which it did. In that way, you are partially responsible for that greater evil succeeding. Had you (collectively) voted for the lesser evil, we would not be slashing federal staffing, waging cold trade wars, deporting people, and letting several idiotic and vengeful toddlers run this country into the ground right now.

The time to take your stand is actually, RIGHT NOW. If you are not engaged in trying to field a better candidate, then you are letting the "system" drive instead, and it will continue to present democratic leadership that is not aligned with your beliefs. You alone probably can't make any significant impact, unless you happen to be wealthy and have tons of free time and want to go run for office. However, if all those people who were 'BoTh SiDeS!'-ing in October would come back and continue to hammer on the Democratic party to put forth candidates that reflect their values, we might actually get somewhere.

The way to do this is simple, but hard:

1. Identify your local, precinct, Democratic party organization.
2. Join it.
3. (hard part) Engage and promote your values.

\ Either find candidates or run for offices. Failing that --which I'd admit is challenging; public service is not lucrative and is also very unstable, which is why we generally see already-rich old people in those positions -- become an advocate for your policies and rise up through precinct, district and state to reach the national stage.

If you are not working on those goals, Shut the fuck up and vote for the lesser evil. You are not helping anyone by posting here.

I've done step 2. My values mostly align with my precinct Democrats, and I helped with Get-Out-The-Vote initiatives in my area. What did you do to prevent fascism?

Still here, not going to appologize, I stand by my statement, both of them are facist, ...

I'd also like to point you to Wikipedia's article on Fascism and see if you can provide a few examples of where Kamala Harris espoused those particular values. For each item in that first paragraph, I could quickly find you something where trump tells you that's him. A lie will fly around the whole world while the truth is getting its boots on, though, and maybe someone else can take over if you need examples and can't google by yourself... Kamala was going to at least stay within the system, while trump is going to destroy it.

Home-brewer here. I've used a C02 canister and keg to carbonate my beer for a while, since it's simpler and more consistent than trying to add sugar to a bottle before capping it.

I also bought a $1 adapter that lets me connect my CO2 to a bottle and carbonate a few liters of water with a few moments of shaking. Add a few tiny bottles of flavoring and I can make a 12-pack of seltzer in about 30 seconds with any flavors I have on hand. Pear is my current favorite, but I also have cherry, vanilla, orange and others, and they can be mixed. My kiddos love the 'dreamsicle' that is a few drops of vanilla + orange. I rarely add sugar, unless I'm aiming for a more 'soda' vibe.

The CO2 canister and gas regulator assembly was probably $70-ish bucks around 10 years ago. Refilling the canister is $20 and I do it around quarterly, while making 5-10 liters of seltzer a week. I have a homebrew store nearby, but I'm pretty sure that I could find a food-grade CO2 provider too, since any bar needs one.

I have friends who use SodaStream, but their gas canisters are terrible for pricing when you can do it yourself.

I used seltzer to kick a soda habit. I swapped sugary sodas like Mountain Dew for a non-sugar fizzy drink. I just couldn't go for flat water and needed the bubbles. LaCroix and its cousins were a step in the right direction and having the ability to make my own on-demand was perfect.