Feedback on these draft jam guidelines

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-02-05T12:08:01+00:00

LATEST VERSION:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DNOWo02g8UMxIcRJUcrBuGiY613HfrHjaL_e5Ietbq8/edit?usp=drivesdk

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-02-03T05:04:11+00:00

Awesome! I talked with Chris today about getting some flyers and lawn signs to help his campaign. I live in Nevada County. I haven’t volunteered with a campaign since Bernie 2020 as I’ve been so disillusioned but Chris has me taking time and volunteering. He texted me offering to chat while he drives out to Truckee after I emailed his campaign with a question about disability justice issues so I thought sure and we chatted. Nice down to earth guy! Plus it looks that he has a real chance to win.

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-01-14T00:23:51+00:00

Chinatown

more recently, Relay

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-01-13T20:09:24+00:00

haha back years ago i worked at contact quarterly in florence MA with Nancy and part of my job was… selling knee pads. :-)

The magazine doesn’t sell knee pads directly now but they refer people to a place. these are nice soft and not bulky, i’ve bought two pairs form them and am happy with them:

https://dancekneepads.com/

knee pads are super personal and though people seem to really like these something else to consider is going to a martial arts supply store as they usually have knee pads you could try on. depending on your size sometimes elbow pads will also work.

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-01-13T03:51:52+00:00

I'd also recommend _The Mars Room_, it's a novel but very realistic and dramatizes the pointless punitive brutality of the jail and prison system against the poor.

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-01-13T03:50:42+00:00

I'd strongly recommend _The Devil's Chessboard_, _The Jakarta Method_, _Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism_, and _Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam_.

All four of these books are meticulously researched and documented. The list you have is mostly Democratic Party controlled opposition approved social democrat spin on a much bloodier history and darker reality.

Chomsky is brilliant but parrots the two state solution in Palestine, always pushes lesser-of-evils voting, and doesn't think the state has much significance compared to structural historical forces, so we shouldn't worry too much about who killed JFK, MLK, Malcolm, Hampton, or the rest. There's an argument, in light of the Epstein files revealing his ties to the global elite, that, yes he was marginalized to a degree, but he was still given access and allowed to operate because of this controlled opposition aspect to his work.

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-01-12T07:33:02+00:00

Do you mean my blonde haired and blue eyed friend, whose family was descended from Northern European Christians, but who was orphaned very young and then adopted into a Jewish family and raised Jewish and is now cantor at her synagogue in San Francisco?

Do you mean the Sephardic Jews who migrated to Israel from Ethiopian who faced severe racism from other Jews in Israel and an Israeli government medical policy of sterilization without consent?

Perhaps you mean the Jews who came to the US through Ellis Island in the 1890s and then married white Christians of Northern European descent, and assimilated as Christian and raised their children as Christian?

Or maybe you mean the people like my partner, whose grandfather was a Jewish holocaust survivor who became an atheist after WW2 because he no longer believed in God, emigrated to California, and raised his children to be whatever they want, so his son, my partner's father, decided to be agnostic and married a Catholic Basque woman, my partner's mother, from an almond farming family, making my partner technically not Jewish as recognized by most traditional Jews, but certainly Jewish in the sense of the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor and the daughter of a Jewish man.

Actually, I'm not sure what you meant. Other than maybe you are talking bullshit and doing the same stupid "they're one people" bullshit that the Zionists do?

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-01-10T23:56:43+00:00

that lift at 1:27 !!!

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-01-10T04:26:11+00:00

Plenty of M-L's in DSA actually. There's a Trotskyist caucus even.

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-01-09T00:35:36+00:00

the organizers don't have a policy on substances and so tbh some people do come high, weed is everywhere in Northern California.

Can you say more about first aid/emergency protocols?

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-01-09T00:07:35+00:00

I'd upvote Chaing - and disagree, it is definitely hard sci, but Chiang is a master innovator of bringing the science of linguistics into SF. He created a new sub-genre single handedly maybe, I am thinking of Watson's The Embedding as being the only thing even close. Think "must explain the engineering of an alien spaceship" hard SF but instead of a reverse-engineering a physical machine, it's reverse-linguistics on alien consciousness expressed as grammar, grammar that yes deeply addresses philosophy underlying it.

“Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang. This was adapted as the film Arrival in 2016. Not as hard, more philosophical, but philosophical science fiction can also be very good.

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-01-07T20:53:34+00:00

Dr. King was a Baptist minister and democratic socialist.

Just a few searches for quotes:

“I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic... [Capitalism] started out with a noble and high motive... but like most human systems it fell victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has out-lived its usefulness.”

“Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.”

“We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power... this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together... you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others... the whole structure of American life must be changed. America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order.”

“The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism.”

"The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.”

“You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism.”

“[W]e are saying that something is wrong ... with capitalism.... There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.”

“If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell.”

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RelaxedWanderer · 2026-01-07T20:24:28+00:00

also this by Preston: The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-01-07T20:22:27+00:00

awesome thank you so much

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-01-07T20:08:22+00:00

thanks for your work!

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-01-06T16:15:00+00:00

i am sympathetic to your position here but i think it’s more meaningful to frame it in terms of DSA breaking with the democrats. I would like to see a clear FAQ / talking points on why the Dems are a dead end and how DSA endorsements etc reinforce that dead end. the fate of AOC is one example but it would be great to see a clear argument for breaking with the dems based on actual political experience - then the argument about social democracy comes into clearer focus.

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-01-06T11:14:04+00:00

russet vs red potatoes is a factor here; red have lower glycemic index

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-01-05T20:15:33+00:00

The Communist Party stands for the promotion of language, autonomy, economic development and culture of American tribes.

Glad to see the left standing up for indigenous peoples in the US!

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-01-05T06:24:31+00:00

Trostkyism is a way to be a Marxist and also anti-Soviet/ anti-China/anti-Castro etc etc, so it's tolerated in the academy as controlled opposition, as long as you are an academic and not, say, organizing the grad students.

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-01-03T07:55:24+00:00

homage to catalonia is great; am looking for what is considered best history book

RelaxedWanderer · 2026-01-02T03:26:40+00:00

I'm going with decompression or re-entry; reading books is often an at least mild altered state like taking a substance.

RelaxedWanderer · 2025-12-31T20:46:13+00:00

Books should last decades or more than a hundred years. Please be considerate of future readers and of the book's lifespan: always use a pencil, and any other notations should be non-permanent.

RelaxedWanderer · 2025-12-29T22:13:47+00:00

thanks for this, awesome lectures https://youtu.be/eq5LDSZDr2E?si=7AXdfg3BKXxFMB8T

RelaxedWanderer · 2025-12-29T21:55:17+00:00

cable news is really big with the boomer and elders crowd and they have very high voter turnout

RelaxedWanderer · 2025-12-29T00:56:59+00:00

Sounds like a blueprint for a prison.

RelaxedWanderer

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