vonbaronhans

The whole point is that the rate of people doing that is increasing, meaning there's likely something driving that uptick.

Like, if you saw the murder rate jump 20% year over year, "people have always done murder" doesn't really explain that rise, y'know?

Edit: something, not someone

I think I actually agree with you overall.

My comment above was more trying to express what I think "small talk" means to the people who always complain about small talk, maybe. Unsure. Slightly elevated atm.

I'm not entirely sure what counts as small talk. When I think of it, it's usually conversation between strangers or acquaintances where neither party knows the safe topics, the topics to be avoided, or even the general preferences of the other. It's all testing water stuff.

I think that's what people actually mean when they say they hate small talk. They hate the awkwardness of not yet knowing enough about their interlocutor to know they won't accidentally upset anyone. Or they don't have the skill to navigate that social space to avoid negative consequences. It can feel downright dangerous in some circumstances.

And that's tough. Because the socialites think it's a skill issue, which it often is. And unfortunately if you don't learn that skill growing up, the social consequences of being bad at small talk only get bigger and more dangerous, which prevents folks from being able to practice freely.

I dunno. Just my $.02 I guess.

Biden and soon Harris are, to my understanding, the most progressive presidents we've had in the US. Why are they moving (slowly) left over time?

And yes, those Nordics. To my understanding it's not just social culture forming those coalitions, but an actual government system that allows for such coalition building. I would like the same or similar systems, sure.

Fascism and racism are systemic, nobody is disagreeing with you about that?

Anyway, that's as much energy as I'm willing to spend on someone who does not converse in good faith. Stay safe out there.

Cloak and dagger? It's literally just applying for positions of lower power to help influence systems to open the gates for higher levels of power. It's... normal everyday shit.

If there were "enough" socialists we'd either have a valid third party or we'd be able to democratically take over DNC primaries. So far that hasn't materialized.

Given there are other countries, like the Nordic countries, that have achieved greater quality of life for their people through democratic socialist means... yeah I'd much prefer that approach than a full on revolution led by some vanguard and the horrendous amount of risk that entails.

Local politicians > work way into DNC primary machine > work to change how the primaries work > reduce ability for $ and top brass to pave way in primaries for their chosen people > get candidates we actually want winning primaries. It's a long game.

If you're asking me how to get Kamala Harris herself to change course on all this immediately, I have no idea. But witholding your vote isn't going to sway things, either. Even if we got every leftist in the country to not vote in solidarity - that wouldn't be enough. There's not enough of us yet. That's the reality of working within a democracy, you need enough people organized to vote. But you need time and an actual strategy WELL BEFORE THIS STAGE OF THE ELECTION CYCLE. All that would do now is spoil the election, give it to Trump, and that very well may end democracy in the US as we know it.

Regarding "guaranteed leftist votes" you must consider that the opposite also applies. Why would Kamala Harris care about your views if you're never going to vote for her? (Maybe you would if she vowed to save Palestine and forego allyship with Israel until they stop genociding, though, which is fair. But a lot of folks out here making these arguments are not doing so in good faith.)

You've successfully looped back to my first point.

You vote in the current election to get the conditions to do your grassroots work under.

I'd say then you don't understand the purpose of on-the-ground political organizing or what it looks like. It's not about changing the whole system in one go, it's about radicalizing as many people as possible for a grassroots movement. You use that to get local politicians in power favorable to leftist causes. Then you apply pressure upward.

We're currently more radicalized as a country than we've been since the Red Scare. Just because the progress is frustratingly slow does not mean it isn't happening.

A take I've heard that maybe you'll understand is this:

Leftist organizing in the US isn't going to change the system 90 days before election day. There's simply too much momentum with the two party system we have.

So now the situation is, vote for whoever you'd rather have in charge of the country while you do your leftist organizing for the next several years. I know I'd rather do that work under a Harris presidency than a Trump one, for a million obvious reasons.

To do anything else is to simply not understand the reality of the situation.

You're certainly not wrong about GIMP having horrible UI/UX. Big reason I don't use it either.

I dunno "comics" in the US are still mostly superhero stuff. Once you get into the non-superhero stuff it generally gets referred to as "graphic novels". Maybe that term is used only to separate it from the superhero image, or it may have to do with syndication and release schedules? I'm not entirely sure.

DaVinci Resolve is not a replacement for Photoshop/Adobe as a whole, but it is a decent replacement for Adobe products AfterEffects and Premier.

For Photoshop alternatives, I'd start with GIMP for photo editing or Krita for illustration and digital painting.

I'm still on Windows because my drawing app of choice is Clip Studio Paint, which has no Linux version. I've read and watched several guides to getting CSP running on Linux, but it still scares me off.

But this Recall thing is so insidious to me... I might try to get it working on Linux anyway.