ChunkMcHorkle

Truth.

Speaking solely for myself, I have accepted that I am as susceptible to marketing and propaganda as any other human, in an age where we are surrounded by it, none of it honest, none of it in my own best interest.

My response to this has been to cut off all possible routes of advertising: I literally do not watch or read anything that has ads, except possibly passing billboards and in-store ads. I don’t play games that have ads. I don’t listen to radio. I have adblocker on everything, or I simply leave. I can’t stand ads, and I have cut them out of everything I can. I’d genuinely rather quit a service than submit to ads. (And yes, I do love just plain silence, whenever I can get it.)

So yeah, I’m immune: they can’t influence me if they can’t get access. That’s the best kind of immunity there is.

You: I’ve pulled the ideas out my bum honestly.

Me, reading: This is intuitive genius. Seriously.

You’ve said your strategy essentially comes from listening/observing closely and winging it, but honestly what you’re achieving just through keeping at it every way you can is amazing. Apart from not being more condensed (smaller, tighter) that handwriting is actually more legible than I’ve seen from more than a few adults, including the slight nod to the presence of lines. I am not exaggerating.

Your creativity and temerity are both inspiring. Your son is lucky to have you.

All true, but the reflective “anti-paparazzi” scarves and such that I’ve seen do not appear to be reflective. They really just fuck up unwanted pictures/recordings by throwing off the camera’s light balance, especially when flash is used.

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Maybe, but speaking for myself, my revulsion to the way they are currently trying to use AI is nothing short of visceral. No headline has a chance. It is such an intrusion to personal privacy, and toward incredibly bad ends all around, that I don’t give a shit what they say at all.

To get past that, they’d have to stop trying to data farm everything that crosses someone’s monitor, stop using AI to support and further large-scale national operations like genocide, and not use every word that anyone’s ever written that they can get their hands on to train their LLMs. Oh, and something more than a “You’re overreacting!” when it is pointed out that AI output is not at all neutral, but shaped to deliver their own chosen narratives, which its devotees tend to accept without question. They could even – and I know this is a novel concept – pay authors and artists for all the work they used without consent and without compensation.

It’ll never happen. And I will never not hate AI, for all of these reasons and more (like how they took my fucking em-dash and made it unnatural, so now I’m taking it back).

TL;DR: I hate AI so much and so deeply it’s automatic, there’s literally nothing they can say I would care about, and the more they try the more repulsed I am. Fuck 'em all.

No, you’re right. It’s a problem. Someone in another thread said, “Hey, I’m considering moving to Linux from Windows, what do you think of these distros?” and got downvoted to hell just for asking, because apparently one of the distros they mentioned is disliked by others.

It’s a problem, generated by some of the exact same people who loudly wonder why more people aren’t on Linux without ever considering how having their own noob question thrown back in their own face by someone who has made their OS their identity would turn them wayyyyy the fuck off Linux as well.

For myself I will always be grateful for the many others who have generously and graciously answered my stupid Linux noob questions.

it seems the executive branch has moved on from deploying the national guard to instigate violence and instead is just outright committing acts of violence on its own.

You’re not wrong. That’s exactly what they are doing. But they are doing it out of desperation: if they get us to the midterms and states (all voting in the US is regulated by the states, not the feds) have elections, this administration becomes powerless and Trump is in the same danger he was in prior to regaining office, but now with a pissed off nation that wants him gone.

For myself, it’s too soon to tell whether this administration will succeed in overthrowing the legitimate government and substituting its own form of fascist authoritarianism. This is in progress; it is anything but complete. Plus, states have their own authority as well, and today, the Minnesota AG told the feds that the goon who shot Ms. Good can be prosecuted for murder by the state. So it may not be up to the feds after all. I guess we’ll see.

I get the sense that some of the people trying to incite violent action are feeling overwhelmed and powerless due to being so far away from what is happening.

I agree with this, and it shames me that my own humanity is dulled enough by constant challenges to consider it secondary. But a core part of what us anti-fascists actually tend to agree about is that words matter. I’d take it a step further and say that en masse we are individually creating change whether for better or worse, whether we acknowledge we have that power or not.

So when we incite others, we are making the problem bigger even in spite of ourselves, even as much as we claim to want the opposite (a return to sane leadership and at least superficially courteous discourse).

And that’s beyond the obvious logistics: these people arguing for violent resistance never say where or when or how they’d like others to fight, but those of us who have actually been to protests that got heated know it’s not that simple. Agents provocateurs are everywhere, because they want it to get violent, the administration wants to be able to run headlines that paint resistors as disgruntled agitators and hoodlums and troublemakers, not your neighbor or your coworker or your boss. Anything to dehumanize and label “the other”, and violent protests deliver us all up to that end. As soon as we are labeled, we cease to matter.

Compounding this problem, Americans have been firehosed with propaganda and mass manipulation from every direction for over a decade now, including mainstream media. The atmosphere here now is much what I have read of pre-WWII Germany: tight, cautious, foreboding, grim. And angry. Extremely angry. So when I see people who want to light a match to it, it’s almost impossible for me to see that as an act of good faith.

In the meantime, for all the media focus on this unconscionable murder of a citizen just trying to get home (apparently she was shot on the same street she lived) the existing cracks in the administration’s attempts to consolidate power are widening. I’d point you to Heather Cox Richardson, who mentioned in her chat today what the media is downplaying: that the Dems finally pushed through a vote on the healthcare subsidies today, and they got it through on a discharge petition because over a dozen Republicans voted for it in spite of Trump’s threats and Mike Johnson’s best efforts to keep it from a vote. The House is also set to overturn two Trump vetoes (one of which is a Trump revenge veto against Lauren Boebert of Colorado for standing firm on the Epstein files). EDITED to add that they failed to overturn the vetoes, but did get a War Powers Act resolution up for a vote through the Senate, meaning that they will vote on whether further action in Venezuela has to be approved by Congress. This was aided by five Republicans who voted with the Dems.

All of that is a big deal. This complicit Congress, without whom Trump would have nothing, are now working across the aisle on multiple issues in spite of him. Even Minnesota is standing firm and telling the feds that the ICE thug who shot Ms. Good can in fact be charged with murder by the state, and there’s really nothing the feds can do about it. The Supreme Court can only rule on what comes before it; meanwhile, lower courts are overturning his efforts right and left.

In short, he is losing power faster than he can consolidate it, and when it comes right down to it, his goons shot a woman whose only crime was trying to get home from dropping her son off at school. When American beliefs have shifted away from a prevailing wind, it has often been because of a victim like Ms. Good that we can all relate to. Again, the firehose of lies is flooding the media with their alternative narrative, but those videos are circulating faster than they can be shut down – and even the videos only exist because sane individuals were out there blowing whistles to let their neighbors know that ICE was there to begin with. That’s where real change happens, and where true power lies: with the individual.

So yeah. I can’t tell you how bad it is here right now: it is beyond anything I have ever experienced. But resistance is popping up everywhere, and outside of the roughly 20%-25% that are always going to support authoritarian rule in any society, there is no real support for him. That’s another reason why I’d tell people here to incite violence to knock it off: they could actually be part of the growing resistance if they let go of the rage and think about what’s next. Wisdom and rage rarely accomplish the same thing, and we’ve only just started to fight back. Anyone who wants to fight in the street will likely have their opportunity to do so, unfortunately. But right now it will only fuel the oppressor.

Thank you for your courteous reply; I was kind of shocked to see it, honestly. I appreciate it, more than you know.

Well said.

Thank you for saying this. I do not believe any of them are posting in good faith, and when challenged rely on logical fallacies and emotionally charged non-factual or barely factual statements.

They’re here solely to inflame and incite. No other conclusion left to draw.

The difference here is that none of what you are writing about is currently relevant: successful non-violent protest is.

Instead of addressing that, and absolutely avoiding the actual court order I posted with all your larping might, you’re diving into the weeds of how we got here, like Citizen’s United has anything DIRECTLY to do with choosing as an individual to hold your ground, think it out, and choose your own arena in which to most effectively fight.

As to the rest, I think what I think because many more educated and reasoned individuals than yourself have already researched the strategy of non-violence in topping unwanted regimes. I don’t need a misguided larper to rewrite history for me; I’ve already studied it, and many better than yourself have offered studied, intelligent analyses of both positions.

There’s a reason non-violence works, and a reason why you keep posting in defense of violence, while accusing me of non-specifics even as you pointedly ignore your own.

If you wanna get out on the streets and fight ICE, no one is stopping you. But I note you’re not. You’re posting here to incite others to do it for you.

I did respond with substance; you chose to reply to a different comment. You are the one without substance: all general urgings toward violence – “We can either let them, or we can do something about [it]” – but nothing specific. I referred to very specific points in history, and when and why they worked, while you blew right past that to be able to remain in your generalities.

But what I’d really like you to explain, which you cannot and never will, is how and why it is a winning measure to respond to provocation with violence when your violent response is exactly what they want, and will absolutely be used to cement their power further.

I just posted the court order that literally says the National Guard were posted to Portland, Oregon to quell existing violence. They got kicked out based on the fact there was no violence.

Your answer to this is to call others, not yourself, to unspecified violence.

So I’d say we’re not on the same team, regardless of what you write or how old your account (or you) are, because what you propose will only set cities on fire and cement this administration’s hold on power. As actual history shows.

I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re just writing because you already know this crew is drowning under the weight of their own unpopularity, and you are terrified they will get thrown out before they really get cemented in. Or like some others, you really do want to see American cities burn. Or like even others, you’re terrified because you left your regional and national security to the US for far too long and never took action to secure yourselves against the neighbor in your own backyard (Putin).

Whatever you’re writing to prove, you’ve failed. And yeah, your 22-hour old account is kind of a dead giveaway that this isn’t your battle to fight – or rather, to get others to fight for you.

And that’s just a lie. The legal system IS keeping up. The National Guard is NOT being redeployed. Hell, the NG isn’t even in Menneapolis, though Gov. Walz has put it on standby as is his prerogative as governor.

Ghandi is a great story, but guess who he had as a counter balance? The stick.

Then you should go back and reread that story, because “the stick” was hundreds of years worth of the British coming down on Indians with absolute brutality, the Indians rising up again with massive brutality of their own, and then the British coming back across with escalations like Amritsar.

What got the British their asses handed to them after hundreds of years of this bloody back and forth was a line of non-violent protesters who simply went to the beach to make salt. Thousands of them. Who at the end of their march walked straight into billy clubs without ever raising a hand or a stick.

You literally do not know the history you to seek to (mis)represent here. Hundreds of years of what you propose did nothing; it only secured the British power more firmly than ever. And it’s not just India; we have some semblance of civil rights here because of Martin Luther King, Jr. doing the same thing.

The line of violence is not for you to propose to others. It is for you to choose for yourself, and stop trying to get others to bleed in your stead.

So what specific violence do you recommend? Against whom? Where? When? Based on which historical precedent (pick just one)?

Because you’re both very light on specifics. “[T]his is the argument that caused people to permit the Nazis” is a statement made of smoke.

EDITED TO ADD: This is a 22-hour old account, whose only content is the above comment containing a misguided pastiche of current and historical points designed to produce an emotional response. This is exactly the kind of larper Americans need to be aware of.

Sometimes? No, always. The cost is ALWAYS blood. People have ALREADY died. It’s you who are naive.

I just posted the court order: BECAUSE Portland did not resist violently, the National Guard is no longer there.

Getting violent because someone is trying to get you to become violent is the most stupid thing you can do.

It’s not hard to run on rage. What’s infinitely more difficult is to suppress the rage until you know your enraged actions will have the maximum benefit. Right now, non-violence is having the maximum benefit.

It helps to have enough education to know that the last five minutes of world history are not the only ones that matter, and if you can’t stretch that far, tell me what got the British out of India after hundreds of years of brutal repression and subsequent uprisings.

History is NOT on your side. If you REALLY want to make a difference, then stop. Learn your enemy. Wait. Then act.

Hell, that’s what your enemy did. They built Cop City in Atlanta just for this time. You don’t have shit.

And son, we ALREADY know we have fascists on our streets. The only ones who don’t know are the ones sticking their fingers in their ears going la la la la la la doing everything in their power to avoid knowing.

Agreed. Though I would add, HE really wanted to do it himself, of his own sociopathy and deep insecurities, or he would have taken the much easier route and ignored them, letting someone else have the shot. He had to break inertia to unholster his gun.

You’re right, his superiors all the way up the chain absolutely wanted him to do it: they are desperate to the point of insane about avoiding midterms now.

But make no mistake. HE really wanted to do it, and do it under the cover of law. HE wanted to shoot an unarmed person who presented no threat and to know he got away with it, plus get whatever bonus people get for doing their dirty work.

For all the larpers here demanding violent response, here’s the link to Judge Karen Immergut’s final decision of November 7, 2025 kicking the National Guard out of Portland, Oregon.

https://www.opb.org/pdf/FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW_1762564569662.pdf

You don’t have to read the whole thing. In fact, you don’t have to read more than the first (long) paragraph to understand that the courts are still largely defending the Constitution, and that it was the lack of violent response to Trump’s provocations that caused her to rule against keeping the National Guard in Portland. I’ve added line breaks, but this is the first paragraph:

On September 27, 2025, the President of the United States federalized 200 members of the Oregon National Guard over the objection of Oregon’s governor and deployed them to a single federal building in Portland, Oregon. In the ensuing days, the President ordered the deployment of 400 federalized members of the Texas and California National Guards, all to the same federal building in Oregon. The mission of these deployments of military troops was ostensibly to quell violent protests outside the one-block Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) building in Portland.

But after a three-day trial that included the testimony of federal, state, and local law enforcement officials and hundreds of exhibits describing protest activity outside the Portland ICE building, the evidence demonstrates that these deployments, which were objected to by Oregon’s governor and not requested by the federal officials in charge of protection of the ICE building, exceeded the President’s authority.

While violent protests did occur in June, they quickly abated due to the efforts of civil law enforcement officers. And since that brief span of a few days in June, the protests outside the Portland ICE facility have been predominately peaceful, with only isolated and sporadic instances of relatively low-level violence, largely between protesters and counter-protesters.

When considering these conditions that persisted for months before the President’s federalization of the National Guard, this Court concludes that even giving great deference to the President’s determination, the President did not have a lawful basis to federalize the National Guard under 10 U.S.C. § 12406. (emphases and line breaks added by me)

And then, specifically BECAUSE of the non-violent response of Portland, in every successive paragraph Judge Immergut labeled the order to move the National Guard into Portland UNLAWFUL.

A violent response is NOT the answer at this point in time. I guarantee we will ALL know when it is. Save your shot.

In the meantime, my fellow countrymen, beware of larpers who don’t even live in the US, much less in Minneapolis, trying to whip up rage and get people to fight. It’s not their blood that will be shed, not their families destroyed, not the last shreds of their democracy thrown into the cesspit of an impotent orange excrescence’s lust for power and unending greed: it will be our own.

If you’re here to say you think people should fight, all you’re really telling me is that you’ve never had to fight, you don’t know how it works, you won’t be the one to pay the price in your own blood, AND you want Trump to consolidate his power even faster than he already is by giving him reason to occupy cities with the National Guard, declare martial law, and avoid having midterm elections. Think twice.

Child, I have to go to work. So off you pop. Have a lovely day.

And thank you for thinking of us, lol! At least I know we Americans will never leave YOUR thoughts!

Why would I be debased? I’ve fought my battles. I know who I am. I’m not unlearned enough to know there’s more history than what’s happened in the last five minutes, nor insecure enough to have to troll foreign communities and foreign nationals with ignorance, insults, and completely feigned valor because doing so eclipses living in my mom’s basement.

Your life must really suck and be completely empty for you to engage in this kind of distraction from it. You keep coming back with childish replies that reveal your complete ignorance not only of history, but of yourself, completely unaware that the person you speak of is yourself.

Again, do they not have mirrors in your shithole country? Because you sorely need one, kid.

But thank you for thinking of us! WE OWN YOUR HEAD. You can’t let go!!!