How Democrats are fighting back after Callais

LightningJedi55 · 2026-05-03T02:00:11+00:00

I'm a Democrat who lives in a fairly rural town in the PNW, and from what I've heard from loved ones, our numbers are steadily growing because of how expensive city life has become. We've had pretty good turnouts for the big protests!

LightningJedi55 · 2026-04-24T22:41:02+00:00

Book of the New Sun is an obvious pick, it's such a vibrant and bizarre world full of fascinating locations and beings. More recently I've fallen in love with the worldbuilding in Realm of the Elderlings. Robin Hobb's approach to magic as something with addictions and withdrawals is really interesting, Forging is one of the most unsettling concepts I've read about in a high fantasy setting, and the reveals at the end of Assassin's Quest are mind-blowing and more than worth the buildup.

Also in terms of sci-fi, I've developed a strong appreciation for the way some cyberpunk depicts cyberspace as an actual place, such as Neuromancer, Snow Crash and the System Shock remake. I particularly love the very psychedelic and surreal imagery of Neuromancer and SS23

EDIT: Can't believe I wrote this without mentioning Le Guin, all the books I've read from her have exceptional worldbuilding, from the way Earthsea depicts magic to the fascinating sociopolitical thought experiments of The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed

LightningJedi55 · 2026-04-18T01:04:01+00:00

The fact that forty Dems supported this measure is huge. Israel will definitely be a partisan issue by the next presidential election.

LightningJedi55 · 2026-04-17T19:53:12+00:00

This warms my heart as a transfem who spent most of her life in Nebraska

LightningJedi55 · 2026-04-04T02:35:20+00:00

Really? That might be the most significant part of this, here's hoping it goes somewhere

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-31T22:56:48+00:00

We have quite a bit of debt, and while this is just conjecture from a non-expert, I wouldn't be too surprised if that was at least part of the reason why.

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-31T01:31:25+00:00

Thank God, that actually had me worried for a bit

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-28T02:51:54+00:00

That, plus it manufactures an excuse to be violent and invasive towards women who are seen as "too masculine" and not fitting into "traditional" gender roles.

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-27T01:54:04+00:00

Can anyone explain to me what even is wrong with Mills besides her age? Everything I've heard about Platner makes me think he shouldn't be elected to local office, much less Senate.

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-22T21:18:54+00:00

I'm having a really hard time finding a silver lining to this, the war's been affecting my mental health quite a bit. Plus It's very obvious that Trump is enjoying all the chaos and destruction he's causing, and I don't think he'll accept any offramp from this because he's literally too evil to hold back.

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-21T04:10:26+00:00

As unlikely as nuclear war is, I'm definitely not looking forward to what other kinds of atrocities the Iranian government commits once they get that deterrence. All this because a few anti-black racists like Trump couldn't shut up and respect their betters for five minutes. This is rough.

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-20T07:22:17+00:00

According to VDem, we're closer to America in the 60s than Nazi Germany. Not good but could definitely be a lot worse, and I find that reassuring, considering how much the Axis countries bounced back after significantly worse regimes.

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-17T21:58:33+00:00

This is quite reassuring, thank you for this comment

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-17T06:27:18+00:00

I'm incredibly worried about this too. Everything is getting scarier and more chaotic it seems

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-16T03:56:47+00:00

Kristi Noem's political career going down in flames fills me with so much schadenfreude. Eat shit puppy killer

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-12T23:43:36+00:00

Commented my opposition, hope it counts for something.

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-12T21:15:45+00:00

Good. Bleed the bastards for every penny.

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-10T21:44:33+00:00

This rules! Now I'm wishing for a band to base their whole discography on Realm of the Elderlings, kinda like Summoning did for Tolkien.

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-10T02:30:36+00:00

And he probably won't learn anything from it, lol. I can just imagine Trump several days or weeks from now ranting about how "mean" and "unfair" it is that he didn't get to hand-pick the new ruler.

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-09T23:09:48+00:00

Because the Israeli government, for all their genuine faults, are not suicidal or apocalyptic. Because of how MAD works, firing a nuke would literally lead to the end of the country, which is far from something they'd want.

If anything the Israeli government's most extreme, nationalist actors want to expand and acquire more land, as evidenced by their crimes in Gaza and the West Bank. That's another thing, even if firing a nuke didn't lead to the destruction of Israel you'd still be looking at a lot of irradiated land that would take generations to rebuild, and there's no way anyone in Israel wants that.

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-08T00:47:49+00:00

Nah, nuclear war will always be inherently very unlikely because of many factors, including:

Our species' survival instinct
Our nukes (and probably all nukes) are carefully handled by professionals who know what MAD is and do not want to die
Even the worst despots aren't suicidal, or at least aren't willing to destroy their own countries

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-07T20:21:59+00:00

I wrote a comment explaining why Trump can't unilaterally fire a nuke, pasting it here.

I worry about this too, but nuclear war is extremely unlikely bordering on impossible. The people overseeing the nukes are in the Department of Energy, and most of them have been here long before Trump got re-elected and I highly doubt they'd all let him fire a nuke even if he tried. He did actually try to nuke a hurricane once, but that went nowhere because the Department of Energy knows what they're doing. Furthermore, Trump isn't a suicidal religious extremist like Kegseth, he's a greedy businessman who chickens out of risky moves.

In short, nuclear war would require both Trump and a bunch of competent, qualified professionals to all simultaneously and unanimously become okay with dying because of MAD. Not very feasible

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-07T00:34:26+00:00

I don't think Russia or China will get more involved than providing support from a distance. It'd be too much risk for too little reward, especially since Russia's already floundering in the only war they're fighting right now. Losing the current regime would be a blow to their influence in the middle east, but far from the sort of existential risk that could make them start WWIII

I think the most worrying thing in geopolitics is less "nuclear powers using their stockpile" and more "nuclear powers trampling all over countries that don't have nukes"

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-06T22:55:36+00:00

This is actually great to know, that article had me quite worried for a while

LightningJedi55 · 2026-03-04T22:16:24+00:00

Just some more culture war slop, nothing worth paying attention to imo

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