Can you tell me precisely what Ukraine did to provoke Russia into invading, other than just historically being part of the Russian empire?

Like Withers from BG3?

nazi invasion in 1941

Not commenting on '39-40?

everyone wanted them to collapse

This changes what exactly? Even if everyone wanted it to collapse for purely imperialistic reasons, that doesn’t actually say anything about the government being good or bad.

Don’t expect funny from jankforlife. The best you can get is “America bad therefore soviets good”

advocating for voting in genocidal right wingers

I am advocating for using your vote to reduce human cost as much as possible. What that means depends on the context.

If you’re in America, the decision right now is between one genocide, two genocides, or refusing to have an impact on that decision with how impossible the system is for third parties. One less genocide is the least bad option, unless you have a better one.

If you’re in New Zealand (where I live, so I’m more familiar with the politics here than anywhere else), there are multiple options because of MMP voting. That means I won’t be advocating for voting in genocidal right wingers.

citation needed

Labour coalitions have historically been the governments that have had the best impact on workers rights. At least far more than national coalitions.

Also, don’t think I’m saying you should vote for labour next year. Labour is shit, vote for someone better

“Very cheap” in terms of time, effort, money, and opportunity cost for each individual involved

OK maybe I read that wrong. The way I interpreted it, I read “electoralism” as using voting as a primary tool. Using that definition, I agree with that paragraph. Voting alone is nowhere near enough to produce real change.

But if the definition of “electoralism” is using voting in addition to direct action, I don’t think that paragraph gives much reasoning behind itself. It’s a good statement, but it needs more backing it up

Mate, I read the whole thing. The only claim I saw as to why voting is counter productive is that “voting convinces people that they’ve done all they need to” idea, which I think is flawed. All the other arguments are talking about voting having low impact and it can’t fundamentally change things.

Please, if there is another part that I missed, tell me what it is, whether that’s something backing up the complacency claim or another claim entirely. I’d love to be proven wrong here.

Let the man cook

Nowhere in that does it really explain why voting is counter productive. Voting is a tool, and a very cheap one. It only costs at most an hour once every 3 years and requiring knowledge of current events and politics, which is stuff you will know about anyway if you’re involved in any kind of direct action.

The only potential argument there is the psychological one, where people are lead to think voting is enough to do their part, but I don’t think that’s a strong enough argument to pass up choosing your opposition. As shit as Labour is, National and Act are worse, and by any logic other than accellerationism (which is a terrible idea of you care about the human cost), Labour will make fighting capitalism that little bit easier.

I understand not running for office. That article gives good reasons that actually joining politics is a wasted effort. It takes a lot of time and money, and almost always ends up making people slide towards the “reasonable politician”, not the radical that they promised to be.

GET YOUR HAND OFF MY PENIS

There are definitely cultural differences, but for its size, the US is really homogeneous. As an example, Tom Scott’s video on “jingle bells, batman smells” shows way more regional variation in the UK compared to the US, despite being smaller than some states.

I get that, but this wasn’t really a “look at the opportunities I’ve missed”, it was more of “huh, my life could have been completely different by now”. I like my job, I like my social life, and I have an amazing fiance that I’m marrying in less than 2 months. I don’t know what would be on my other paths, but I’m glad I chose this one.

There are some I’m glad i didn’t take. I started a degree in computer science in 2020, and I had plans to focus on machine learning research. If I hadn’t dropped it at the end of that year, I’d likely have finished my degree right at the start of the chat gpt shitshow.

That’s an upgrade compared to most of the ai products

Go ahead. Also feel free to add “automated incompetence” to the list as well

“Artificial ineptitude”

He’s low on the list for sure

A stopped clock is right twice a day. America has a terrible and corrupt government, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong about not trusting china’s government.

Given Americans, it wouldn’t surprise me

Ah yes, because the mayor of a city should be elected or not because of their opinions on a completely different country, not the policy in the city they’re running for. That makes a whole lot of sense.