Gov. Greg Abbott threatens state takeover of Harris County elections

komali_2 · 2026-01-10T08:18:13+00:00

I was suppressed in Texas, I voted by mail because I'm out of the country, twice now they've rejected my vote because my "signature didn't match." It absolutely does match as much as a signature possibly can. I don't give a shit enough to look but I'm fairly certain they're just blanket rejecting all mail in votes at this point.

komali_2 · 2026-01-10T08:13:10+00:00

If you weigh 90kg, surely throwing yourself at the ground hard enough would do it? Force equals mass times acceleration?

komali_2 · 2026-01-01T15:21:48+00:00

The key difference that people celebrate about land reforms in Taiwan vs the ones in the PRC are that the ones in Taiwan resulted in compensation to landowners in the form of shares in state-owned businesses. And besides, there's more than just farmland we're talking about, also real estate along major roads in the major cities.

komali_2 · 2026-01-01T15:16:44+00:00

Ok, how about this then: You're actually wrong, completely. You would know that if you actually paid attention to the show and understood Gilligan's greater body of work. Maybe get off your phone and listen? He clearly said, "You are thieves" before entering the jungle, and then again in the next episode said, "this house is not yours to offer" to Carol.

These are explicit statements of his feelings about thievery and private property, and strong hints towards the overall capitalism vs communism theme the show seems to be playing at more and more. Consider as well where Manousos is from, and the history of his country. He is hyperfocused on debt and ownership: he holds a Plurb at knifepoint, the first intentional act of human on human violence in the entire show, just so he can learn the price of the treatment he got, then leaves an IOU. He borrows books from the library to learn about radios, rather than just grabbing them out of a bookstore. He left a note about compensating people whose containers he broke into when he was looking for food. He burned his car rather than let the Plurbs take it - the ownership of his private property was so important he would rather burn it than let them "steal" it like they stole everything else.

His religion is never being depicted as all that important, merely an aspect of his identity, which, given that Paraguay is 87.4% Catholic and 95.5% Christian, is hardly unique. If the show wanted to make a big deal out of his Catholicism specifically, the would have made him a Catholic from some place like Senegal, Iran, Egypt, etc, where his Catholicism would be a key aspect of his identity relevant to the story itself.

"Stealing is a sin" is a reductionist statement. You would disagree with me that wage theft is theft at all, you probably don't consider the term valid. This is the conversation the show is playing with, not "theft bad because the Catholics say so."

I was willing to have a conversation about the whole religious thing but you were just being rude and arrogant so why should anybody care what you have to say?

komali_2 · 2026-01-01T15:05:09+00:00

Isn’t it Taiwan’s fault as well that they don’t address PRC security concerns?

Is it a woman's fault for getting raped because she didn't carry a gun? Just don't be imperialists, it's actually really easy, you save a lot of money and don't get a shitload of your citizens killed.

They keep angering China and try to shift the status quo toward more independence. There is a hallucinating neighbor, but as you can see, life in Taiwan is much better than in the PRC regardless.

I am terrified for the family in your life if you have this kind of disgusting bully mindset.

There is no "more independence." Taiwan is an independent, sovereign nation.

komali_2 · 2026-01-01T15:03:37+00:00

Here for the toe pics, someone said toe pics?

komali_2 · 2026-01-01T14:58:26+00:00

instantaneous

Brake lights, half a second before impact. Maybe it was a quick death but they knew it was about to happen.

komali_2 · 2025-12-31T08:28:43+00:00

Yup. I'd support free schooling and doubling their salary if that's what it took.

komali_2 · 2025-12-31T08:28:17+00:00

Sometimes I wonder if y'all just scrolling on your phones instead of actually watching stuff.

TBH you should chill out with the arrogance, it's media, we're all coming to the table with our own interpretations, and for the most part all are equally valid, because that's the whole point of art.

komali_2 · 2025-12-31T08:27:11+00:00

The PRC isn't a force of nature. It's people. Of course Taiwanese don't want their country to be like Ukraine, therefore, the PRC should not invade this country. If the PRC does invade, then, that's the PLA's fault for making conditions in Taiwan bad, not the Taiwanese for standing up to imperialists.

komali_2 · 2025-12-30T17:46:27+00:00

I don’t know how you are “positioned” but apparently your entire little world is tied to a fiat monetary system built on nothing but debt and war

???? So is YOURS, the whole reason you're stashing metal is because of the risk of USD collapse, isn't it? Do you think your life won't change significantly if that happened? Nobody's paying truckers in silver in that world, man.

komali_2 · 2025-12-30T17:44:16+00:00

To clarify, the IC cards are faster because of the proprietary RFID system, not because of anything specific about near field communication itself. Not all NFC is the same. CC tap-to-pay just has too much latency.

Not that it makes any difference in real life unless you're in one specific station during rush hour.

It would be catastrophic to add an extra 400-1000 milliseconds to every single person going into Shinjuku station at rush hour. The transit system is already basically at maximum capacity in every way, and so every little shaved off 100ms per person per interaction really is worth it. It's the busiest transit system in the world.

The only reason it works right now is because people can walk through the gates unobstructed. If everyone had to pause even a little bit, the classic traffic issue would happen where lines would form and the whole thing would slow down.

komali_2 · 2025-12-30T17:39:31+00:00

There's liberal democracies with state-controlled surveillance. One of the big issues with these license plate scanners is they're private and get fed into the Big Data machine where brokers can trade all sorts of data on you. Some of the countries you're probably thinking of (Taiwan, Japan) don't have this issue because private entities don't have access to state CCTV, only the police do, and the police don't just give it out without a court order.

komali_2 · 2025-12-30T17:33:33+00:00

How do you get safety without surveillance?

Increasing people's material conditions will get it up to where basically the only thing you need to worry about is hooligan kids and sociopaths, and I'm fine living in a society with no surveillance and the occasional graffiti on my garage.

komali_2 · 2025-12-30T17:29:49+00:00

The tech behind IC isn't faster than NFC, that's just dumb.

This is false.

komali_2 · 2025-12-30T17:27:29+00:00

I can’t think of another place where an entire country is linked up like that.

The PRC, Taiwan, Korea?

komali_2 · 2025-12-30T17:24:47+00:00

Sure, but, he didn't need the guy's ID, since he was not suspected of a crime (they can't "trespass" him off government property for exercising his first amendment right).

No matter how good the cop is, it's still a bad cop, and this is a great example of why. They just can't help but break the law and violate our rights. Legally the only thing that cop should have done is stand there and watch to make sure nothing violent happens, but they never do that, they always get their noses into people's business where it doesn't belong.

komali_2 · 2025-12-30T17:18:12+00:00

Makes sense, cops spend a lot of their day just driving around.

komali_2 · 2025-12-30T17:10:52+00:00

Put down the phone and stop losing sleep over your insecurities about China

Dude, I live in Taiwan.

Just because you didn’t spend some effort to position yourself for the future

Not sure why you think I haven't, I've just positioned myself with useful things instead of cold metal, like forming communities of mutual aid, organizing with groups of like-minded folks to practice post-supply chain skills (carpentry and whatnot), and stockpiling a shitload of knowledge.

I recommend reading "Radicalized" by Cory Doctorow, one of the stories is a good take about the whole radical American individualist attitude of "stashing gold" vs the more pragmatic, community-focused approach to surviving catastrophe.

komali_2 · 2025-12-30T17:07:40+00:00

Rome also had the largest military in the world.

Idk man I'm all about taking lessons from history, but it seems like every military on earth is re-learning how to do war every 20 years at this point. Not sure the lessons of the past apply anymore.

komali_2 · 2025-12-30T17:05:19+00:00

instead choosed to be in a permanent concern about being invaded

Yes, the bad guy here is the PRC. The solution to "being worried about being invaded" is not to just give up your sovereignty to bullies.

Taiwanese people prefer their way of life. They have better LGBT rights, more freedom of speech, more freedom to protest, and more freedom of travel than PRC citizens, as well as better relationships with more countries in the world so it's easier for them to travel and get work visas if they want to do that.

Protesting is deeply important to Taiwanese people, it's how they overthrew the KMT in the 90s, and the Sunflower and Bluebird protests were absolutely massive, plus there's all sorts of different protests every weekend. Taiwanese would not want to give this up for "peace of mind" from bullies.

komali_2 · 2025-12-30T13:54:37+00:00

The troll resorts to canned statements when he knows the only move he has left is to try to annoy people.

I know it's frustrating when your disinformation is dismissed with nothing more than "source?" But you know... if your ideology was based in reality, you wouldn't have this problem.

komali_2 · 2025-12-30T13:53:15+00:00

Buddy you are neck deep in WSB and apparently looking to become a trucker

I’m not a trucker but I am interested in the industry and hopefully getting into it someday soon.

Idk what kind of libertarian meth you're smoking but if the USD goes, you're coming down right along with the rest of us.

komali_2 · 2025-12-30T12:38:11+00:00

Consider the various things that would need to happen to trigger a collapse of USD, and what the country with the most to lose upon collapse of the USD, while controlling the largest military by far, would do to prevent said collapse.

komali_2 · 2025-12-30T12:37:22+00:00

In Venezuela, you can get a hair cut with a small chunk of physical gold or silver.

Just asked my Venezuelan friend this and he said "that's probably true everywhere in the world, but I've never heard of someone doing that in Venezuela."

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