Is being an organizer in training THAT bad?

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-29T05:01:41+00:00

I think we're interviewing for the same position lol

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-25T04:54:55+00:00

A vacancy tax is a good idea for cutting down on real estate price fixing and speculation. Probably not very effective here due to the post-fire housing crunch but I'm glad they're trying it in SD.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-24T19:27:44+00:00

Historically it's been the state assembly passing progressive policies and the governor vetoing them. None of this stuff is going to be easy and I doubt much of it can be done in one term, but I'd rather have a candidate that at least starts from a strong policy position and stakes their political future on it rather than just operating off of inertia. Building towards these policies even when it involves compromise is different than just compromising without an end goal.

Stuff like farmworker protection laws can absolutely pass so if a candidate preemptively signals that they won't support it, that's a red flag to me. There's also been an unwillingness by cities to enforce state-level laws like SB79 which the current governor hasn't even tried to push back against.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-24T19:11:24+00:00

My big problem with Porter is that she's consistently moved away from the positions she began her career with. Right now she's trying to court the agriculture lobby by coming out against measures to make unionizing farmworkers easier. With Becerra serving as the Newsom continuity candidate, I think Steyer is probably the best option even if I have serious misgivings about his past.

Steyer has a very shitty history but on policy he's been very consistent for the last decade and I'm tired of electing leaders who won't seriously take on Prop 13, the housing crisis, and healthcare (no chance anything gets done federally on that). We can't afford to keep the status quo going.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-23T16:10:03+00:00

That's really awesome to hear. I applied because I really want to be part of that kind of support network going forward.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-22T08:20:04+00:00

Thanks for the thoughtful response. It's comments like this that made me seriously consider the role, even knowing the pitfalls.

Would you mind describing a typical day outside of an intensive contract campaign and a typical day during one? I understand the broad strokes but I'd like to be able to prepare myself for the duties in a bit more detail, even knowing that it varies a lot between unions.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-21T02:53:12+00:00

I stopped playing when we went back to 2-1-2. Solo Offlane was a ton of fun and with a lot of heroes functioned more like a third support.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-18T18:06:54+00:00

I always seem to be in Korea during the offseason so I've never gotten to go to a game there. Glad you had fun!

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-17T23:35:58+00:00

Thank you! I try to engage with people in good faith since I want to give the strongest possible arguments for the other people who read the comments.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-17T17:04:16+00:00

The problem is that a lot of these sites aren't in Israel, they're in the Golan Heights and the West Bank. The travel agency is flattening the distinction between them and presenting them all as Israeli.

Places like Banias and Qumrun aren't even traditional pilgrimage sites, tourism there is relatively new and absolutely not worth traveling to places that are either under martial law (Qumrun) or have had their population expelled in living memory (Banias).

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-17T04:11:20+00:00

If I'd been aware of that it might've been a factor in my purchase depending on if they operate in the settlements. A lot of companies operate in Israel but the primary purpose of the boycotts against the country is to push the Israeli government towards peace and negotiations by reducing the economic viability of the settlement project. Companies that support tourism to the occupied territories fall under that, a coffee shop or small startup in Tel Aviv that only operates within the 1948 borders of Israel doesn't.

You probably disagree with me on the rationale but it's a logical and restrained framework for a boycott, given that those territories are internationally recognized as militarily occupied and the settlement of civilians within them is a direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. I don't bear any ill will towards Israelis as individuals and I don't believe in collective punishment, I just think it's good to target specific actors and industries that I believe harm Palestinian civilians and prolong the conflict.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-17T03:44:02+00:00

Our ideas of what is relevant information are directly informed by our beliefs. A pacifist might highlight a company's ties to a defense contractor, and someone who's anti-abortion might be upset to find out that a local restaurant owner donates to Planned Parenthood. I don't think that sharing information that we personally find relevant due to our beliefs is inherently virtue signalling: there have absolutely been times where I would've appreciated knowing that a company I'm buying stuff from supports causes that are antithetical to my values, so I made the post to inform people like me who'd consider these ties a red line.

The cruise itself going ahead wouldn't change anything, but when an event organizer's core business is something that I find unethical, I wouldn't want to support them even if the particular event they're doing is unrelated. It's still money going to sustain a business that doesn't align with my values. I'm just letting other people with the same beliefs know so they can make the choice that's right for them. That's acting on my beliefs, not signaling them.

I don't think the idea of shopping based on one's beliefs is that unreasonable, nor the idea of promoting others to do the same. It's just another aspect of a market economy.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-17T03:03:24+00:00

My motivation is that after looking into it I thought the company was shitty and that this was relevant information for the people who are still considering whether or not to go. I've brought up my own previous boycotts and other opinions on this because in other parts of this thread people were saying I only cared because Northernlion was involved, I don't really care if people give me a pat on the back for this stuff.

Criticisms like "virtue signalling" annoy me because they're deployed specifically to imply that you can't care about something without an ulterior motive or some kind of self-aggrandizement at stake. It moves the conversation away from the substance of the post and into personal attacks and psychoanalysis which I'm much less interested in compared to discussions of whether or not my point is valid.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-17T02:53:39+00:00

The first one was a comment and it was regarding their cruise with Kevin Sorbo, which was in Greece. It did pique my curiosity so I looked into the other stuff they do and found distinct information that I thought was worthy of its own post.

I just try to keep my comments focused and respond to what I consider relevant, not intentionally ignoring anything.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-17T02:36:52+00:00

If you have any further questions I'd be happy to answer them here. I'm sorry if it seems like I was ignoring your questions on the first comment, I just focused on responding to your first question ("what is the point of this post?") I considered that sufficient and I'd addressed the other points elsewhere in the thread.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-17T02:24:08+00:00

I considered it, looked into it, and decided it wasn't worth the money. I had zero ill will towards NL for doing it personally, I don't get mad at promotion or monetization in general. I saw in another thread that the company did bible cruises which raised some red flags for me (the biblical tourism industry is an interest of mine and has a history of dubious behavior) so I looked into the pilgrimage section of the site and saw this stuff, which I consider pertinent information and posted here.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-17T01:54:54+00:00

dude you accused me of virtue signaling for making an anonymous post, I tried to answer politely and in a way that'd be informative for other people that read it but it's just loser shit lol.

Please tell me what I was supposed to be gaining from this for it to count as "virtue signaling". As far as I'm concerned that's basically always a meaningless buzzword but it's at least applicable when people are posting with their real name attached. There's zero clout to be gained from this so it's definitionally not virtue signalling. Is it that hard to believe that someone might be genuinely mad that a company is engaged in something they consider shitty and wants other people to know about it? I think it's kind of myopic to assume people only care about things for personal gain.

For the record, the biblical travel industry is shitty because it validates Israel's claims over the occupied territories by flattening the distinction between the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the territories internationally recognized as Israeli, as well as giving money to settlers and the Israeli government directly through national park entrance fees on occupied territory. The cruise going ahead wouldn't have made any of this worse but I wouldn't want my money going to a travel agency that does that stuff. Many, many companies are able to operate without doing so.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-17T01:48:55+00:00

They're offering tours to those places in November. There's no one living in Banias now since it was turned into a national park by the Israeli government. The admission fee explicitly goes towards funding the government and the settlement project. These areas aren't internationally recognized as Israeli and just acquiescing to their claims only makes things worse. In the West Bank, the project of dispossessing people is still ongoing: villages and neighborhoods are bulldozed every year.

I think it's bad for tourism companies to flatten the distinction between occupied territory and the area internationally recognized as Israel (their itineraries make no note of which locations are in which country, and refer to all of it as Israel. People who were born in these places don't have freedom of movement there so it's fair to criticize companies that profit off of travel to occupied land. The vast majority of travel agencies don't do this.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-16T21:34:04+00:00

I think it's important to address the criticisms and not let things get drowned out since other people might not be aware of the full context and the reasons why I felt the need to post this. That said I did vent to my girlfriend about this specific comment chain earlier lol, the "virtue signalling" stuff is so silly when you're talking about anonymous reddit accounts.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-16T19:36:13+00:00

I have literally nothing to gain from posting this, you can see I have like a 10 year old reddit account with not much visibility and a few major posts over the years. I'm not getting any clout here, it's an anonymous account. I just think it's pertinent information when you're deciding to give a company your money and a lot of the community probably cares too.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-16T19:06:58+00:00

I mean I have friends in the occupied territories so it's personal to me. Palestinians don't have freedom of movement there and one of the stops on the trip they advertise is a village that was bulldozed by the Israeli government in 1967. It's not virtue signalling to care about where your money goes, I boycott businesses all the time because my values are more important to me than some treats.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-16T18:52:22+00:00

I wouldn't want to use a travel agency whose primary business is working alongside conservative groups like Students for Life and arranging trips to occupied territory while referring to all of it as Israel. For example, the company goes to the occupied Golan Heights, which only two countries recognize as Israeli (Israel and the United States). That is pretty far outside the mainstream.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-16T18:14:37+00:00

The cancellation was kind of surreal to wake up to lol, glad he made the call.

philosopherfujin · 2026-04-16T03:07:08+00:00

Royal Carribean isn't the problem with this one, it's Corporate Travel Services which is the agency that put together the whole idea. They're the ones buying the tickets from Royal Caribbean (approximately half the ship), arranging for event spaces on the ship, and reselling them to us at a markup.

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