Thank you for reading it!

I agree. Biden’s presidency was the biggest lost opportunity of my lifetime for exactly that reason.

FDR responded to a similar global challenge - the Great Depression - by transforming the American government to serve the needs of struggling Americans - and the American people rewarded his courage and vision with overwhelming support when he ran for his second term.

Biden? Barely tried to improve America. And everything he tried failed. He couldn’t even reduce student loan payments. And when Harris had the opportunity to break with him and fight for her own vision of what America could be, she either had no vision of her own or was too afraid to fight for it.

The American “left” is terrified to promote anything more than a return to the Obama-era status quo. But if they don’t find their vision and courage the United States is guaranteed one party Republican rule for another generation.

I cannot say I agree, and I think I recall that some indicators currently suggest we’d need about 3 planets to keep going at the same pace.

The back of the envelope calculation says if everybody on Earth lived like an average American we’d need the resources of about four Earths to cover it:

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33133712

That being said, from the same source, if everyone on Earth lived like an average Indian we’d only use half the Earth’s resources and could support twice as many people.

So it’s not about the number of people - it’s about the standard of living those people have and the resources they use.

I think the most effective way forward is more efficient and sustainable lifeways - if the richest countries learn to consume less, if people around the world get access to better technology and better institutions to raise their standard of living without raising their resource consumption.

And it’s interesting to note, the better off people are, the fewer children they tend to have. If we improve people’s lives worldwide, a steadily declining population will be a natural side effect.

An incredibly difficult goal, of course, but worth pursuing.

In addition, I find it rather hilarious that someone seriously thinks humans procreate because of long term thinking 😅

I mean, kids are a lifetime investment. Most people think about whether they can afford to feed and educate their kids over the next few decades, and what kind of life the kids will have after that. In countries without social safety nets, children are often the only retirement plan. I think the decision to have kids (or not) is the longest term planning the average person will ever do.

I’m not saying it’s necessarily good planning, but it’s certainly thinking long term.

With that being said, I think this article isn’t claiming not having kids is a problem in itself. It’s a symptom of the real problem - despair for the future.

People choosing not to have kids for positive reasons? Because they have a vision of the future with a lower population and choose to live their values? Great! No problem there.

But when people choose not to have kids because they think the world is collapsing around them, that they can’t give children a good life, that there’s no hope for the future and it would be immoral to expose a child to the coming tribulations - those decisions are made because people give up on the future.

The despair is the problem - the decisions made out of despair are just the symptoms.

And it’s hard to motivate people to work for a better world now when they have no hope for a better world in the future. If we’re all doomed anyway, why not burn all the oil you want and let the fascists take over?

This is Trump’s strategy too. Make a brutal enough example of a few universities, or law firms, or immigrants, or other countries’ economies, and the rest will comply in advance. Like Trump said in his West Point commencement speech recently: "As much as you wanna fight, I’d rather do it without having to fight. I just wanna look at them and have them fold.”

Reminder: Ender Wiggin is not a fucking hero.

Yeah, that’s definitely a camping/survivalist/prepping question and outside my expertise. I suspect it’ll take you a long time to learn to be “comfortable” living that way, though 😆

poVoq linked an article from Low Tech Magazine, which is a great resource for low energy sustainable living. I wanted to highlight this older article from them, too:

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2016/05/how-to-get-your-apartment-off-the-grid/

It’s not clear to me, from your post, if you’re thinking about making a home/apartment “off grid”, and limiting your powered appliances to what solar power can cover to prepare for future disruptions to the power grid, or about living outside a fixed dwelling and using portable solar to power a few accessories like a portable induction stove. This matters because solar panels are bulky and batteries are heavy - charging a laptop and phone is trivial with a man-portable setup, but a solar generator capable of boiling water and cooking is not going to fit in a reasonably sized backpack 😆

If you’re thinking about “bugging out” or “going off the grid” in the survivalist sense, living with only the equipment you take with you, you might get better answers on equipment from camping and survivalist forums.

On the one hand, yes, it does.

On the other hand, I don’t want to hear it from an AI content farm.

And when Kamala had the entire DNC establishment behind her, what was stopping her from distancing herself from Biden? What was she afraid of?

My guess? The entire DNC establishment wasn’t behind Harris. They were behind Biden, and supported Harris as Biden’s successor rather than on her own (nonexistent) merits. She hadn’t earned their support, and knew it.

Exactly. And the Democrats made it even worse for themselves by claiming there was no economic crisis - that Biden had beaten inflation, beaten unemployment, and claims of a bad economy were just Republican propaganda. The American people looked at their paychecks and grocery bills and called bullshit. Harris was right that Trump would govern as a fascist dictator with Project 2025 as the roadmap - but the Democrats lied to America’s face about the economy and that made everything else they said sound untrustworthy too.

If the Dems had taken America’s economic struggles seriously, Harris would be President now. But Biden refused to admit his economy was bad and Harris didn’t have the guts to contradict Biden. And here we are.

Unfortunately not. She’s already moving to run for governor of California in 2026, as a platform for another 2028 Presidential run.

Was it really an imaginary rule? I think it was Original Sin that talked about how Biden made his support for Harris contingent on “protecting his legacy” - ie, no criticizing Biden, no claiming she would do things different than Biden.

Edit: the claim comes from “FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House”:

But the day of the debate Biden called to give Harris an unusual kind of pep talk — and another reminder about the loyalty he demanded. No longer able to defend his own record, he expected Harris to protect his legacy.

Whether she won or lost the election, he thought, she would only harm him by publicly distancing herself from him — especially during a debate that would be watched by millions of Americans. To the extent that she wanted to forge her own path, Biden had no interest in giving her room to do so. He needed just three words to convey how much all of that mattered to him.

“No daylight, kid,” Biden said.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5191087-harris-trump-biden-harris/

I think that’s what happens when you wear pants too big for you - the extra material has to go somewhere.

I know it’s not intuitive, but taking in the waist - actually reducing the waist instead of just cinching it with a belt - can help with crotch bulge. You take it in in the back, so that the front is pulled tighter and lays flatter; some excess material is removed, and the rest gets bunched up in the back where it’s not as noticeable.

https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Your-Jeans-Tighter

I’d suggest practicing on a pair of jeans you don’t really mind putting holes in first - I totally screwed up the first time I tried 😆

In this particular article, I think, the author is advocating for rural communes as a solution to the American housing crisis - and, in general, as one potential form of sustainable living - that’s both cheaper and more sustainable than what the United States has been trying for decades.

The author does believe Western urban society is unsustainable due to fundamental resource constraints, but you don’t have to agree on that to think about “Hobbit villages” as one possible sustainable community model.

Let a thousand flowers bloom, right?

Yes. Exactly. Harris lost, and it is her fault, and her responsibility.

The average American is not a political expert. (Duh.) They rely on information, and persuasion, from the actual political experts, to decide whose policies fit their values and who their best choices as political representatives are.

If a political party has the best policies, but fails to make the case for those policies to the American people, the fault is not with the American people, but with the party that failed to make its case.

In this case, Trump waged a vicious propaganda campaign based on blatant fucking lies. And the Harris campaign was too incompetent or cowardly to effectively call out those blatant fucking lies - partially because Trump was so much better at social media than Harris, and partially because Harris was afraid to stand up for the trans people and immigrants and other marginalized groups Trump was attacking.

(Biden shit the bed so badly nobody in his administration could have won by running on his record, of course, but that doesn’t absolve Harris for her own failures.)

Any political party that starts blaming voters for not agreeing with it, instead of accepting its own responsibility to convince voters, is headed to permanent minority party status. And as happy as I’d be to see the Democrats permanently marginalize themselves and make room for an actual progressive party, right now they’re the only roadblock in Congress against Project 2025.

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Is Craigslist shit now? What happened to it?

You’re not a poser. You’re starting somewhere. And starting anywhere is better than not starting at all.

To supplement what you’re already doing: I strongly believe the most important thing you can do to create change is talk about it.

https://www.talkingclimate.ca/p/the-most-impactful-climate-actions?triedRedirect=true

So when you grow a native lawn, you could let people know what you’re growing and why - talk to your neighbors, put up signs next to your flowers with QR codes linking to species identification, etc. If you’re deciding what to buy based on packaging, tell friends and family why you buy what you buy - you could even write to companies thanking them for using less/no plastic or whatever, you’d be surprised how few people contact companies and how big an impact a single letter can have. Etc.

Your individual action may not have much of an impact, but collective action starts with individual action - with one person inspiring another, and then they go on to inspire more, and more, and more. Be the change you want to see in the world 😆

That makes a certain amount of sense. Cartels go after the families of snitches, so I imagine this guy wanted them safe in the US before he cooperated.

The plan is to argue that only two consecutive terms bar someone from running for a third term, and have the Supreme Court’s Republican majority rubber stamp it, so Trump can run and Obama can’t.