In Episode 68, Bill was asked what about living under MAGA he has had it with.

Subscribe, download and listen today! https://linktr.ee/bwabits

#MAGA #Democrats #Republicans #candidates #puritytest #winning

https://youtube.com/shorts/4O2H-xprBTE

Vance refuses to set red lines over bigotry as conservatives feud at Turning Point

'In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore'

https://sentinelcolorado.com/nation-world/nation/vance-refuses-to-set-red-lines-over-bigotry-as-conservatives-feud-at-turning-point/

#turningpointusa #Antisemitism #PurityTest

Vance refuses to set red lines over bigotry as conservatives feud at Turning Point

'In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore'

https://sentinelcolorado.com/nation-world/nation/vance-refuses-to-set-red-lines-over-bigotry-as-conservatives-feud-at-turning-point/

#turningpointusa #Antisemitism #PurityTest

@alice What the hecky?!

I generally don't use AI enhance so I hadn't noticed this. It doesn't surprise me, but like it's a private image library. I wonder if it was always like this or only after Google started adding AI watermarks?

I have noticed that Google AI Q and A results fail around queer stuff too. Example

#Google #AI #PurityTest

There's a division in left-leaning groups regarding protests like No Kings. The division is a bad thing,

TL;DR: If you think non-disruptive protests do nothing, then let them happen; they're harmless. If you think they harm resistance efforts, prove it.

There are many Very Online people criticizing the No Kings (and similar) protests because they are not strongly disruptive. Fair. They are likely to be much less effective than something that truly disrupts stuff (e.g., #GeneralStrike, which seems like a potentially excellent thing if we could get this to happen). However, the criticisms rarely stop at "useless." They often say or imply that such protests actually harm resistance efforts.

Then they tend not to present any convincing evidence of this claim. If you're going to make a strong claim like this, you need to do the hard work: Provide evidence (or at least clear reasoning) that non-disruptive protests have a negative cost-benefit ratio. That means you need to

a. List the costs/risks/damage with specifics (not simply "it does harm")

b. List or at least acknowledge the benefits of non-disruptive protests, such as awareness-raising, solidarity-building, message-sending, hope-inspiring, network-building, etc.

c. Make a clear, **head-to-head comparison **of some kind between (a) and (b)

Anything else, including a claim that there are no benefits, or listing a nerfed list of positives, is likely more propaganda than reasoned argumentation.

Also worth noting:

• If you claim non-disruptive protests "do nothing," then don't say or imply anything to dissuade people from attending. Are you telling people to stay home from their book clubs, their basketball leagues, or their D&D sessions because those also do not change the political situation? Something that "does nothing" also does no harm, so it's fine.

• If you think non-disruptive protests are a net negative--i.e., they actually harm resistance efforts--then you need to be willing to tell people to stay home and do NOTHING instead of going to the protests. Of course doing "something better" would be, you know, better, but apply some critical thinking: If something is harmful, then simply not doing anything is better than doing that thing. If you can't honestly tell people that staying home and doing nothing is better than going to a No Kings-type protest, then there's something not computing in your logic.

• It seems like a no-brainer that disruptive protests are more effective, but that needs to be spelled out, too. Disruptive protests do not always help; sometimes they provoke a backlash, for example, resulting in even more oppression, fewer rights, and reduced ability of anyone to protest in any way. Those risks need to be acknowledged along with the potential benefits.

• Comparing two courses of action like this has at least eight(ish) moving pieces. A reasonable comparison framework is:

1. Benefits (and probability of benefits) vs costs (and probability of costs) of Option A (e.g., disruptive protests)

2. Benefits (and probability of benefits) vs costs (and probability of costs) of Option B (e.g., non-disruptive protests)

3. Compare A to B

If any of those pieces are not specified, or specified badly, it's not a good comparison and is likely to result in bad decisions. It's also likely that ideology, personality, etc. drive the comparison, placing it farther up on the Propaganda Scale (which I just made up, but I think you can understand the concept).

One of the built-in problems here is that it can be hard to predict the probability of unknowns... i.e., to predict the future, which is what we are necessarily doing when we recommend various actions, hoping those result in certain outcomes.

Final thoughts: Given our recent history in the #USA, I think it's highly likely that good-faith "this is useless" positions are enhanced and pushed by MAGA trolls in disguise. The MAGA regime does not like these protests and spends a lot of energy bashing them in national media, so they are probably also doing what they always do: infiltrating progressive networks to send the same message.

I believe any message about activism that presents only one side of a comparison, or leaves out important pieces, ends up as some combination of #tribalism, self-soothing, #gatekeeping, and/or #PurityTest dynamics, even if it was not intended this way.

EDIT: Added this graphic, which might or might not be helpful. I'm not a "math person" so this might not be the right format or might make no sense.

EDIT 2: I should not post stuff like this until at least draft 5, because I keep needing to fix typos and other issues.

#NoKings #protest #disruptive #activism #resistance #influencers #CriticalThinking #comparison #uspol

Here's direct confirmation that at least some of the people who gave us Trump 2 because they couldn't bring themselves to compromise their moral purity by voting for the non-fascist candidate have learned nothing.
(To be clear, I agree with every word of criticism about Gaza leveled against the Democrats here. But that isn't going to stop me from welcoming any Democratic ally who recognizes and is fighting back against American fascism.)
#politics #USPol #PurityTest

Accurate.

Dems MUST learn to create a “big tent” party and stop doing purity tests. No one is aligned with you 100%, but PLENTY of people are aligned with you 90%. We must band together as allies, despite our imperfections.

#Democrats #leftWing #purityTest

#DemocraticParty, #Democrats, #FreeSpeech, #woke, #wokism, #wokeness, #PurityTest, #PoliticalCartoon, #EditorialCartoon, @Rattoons1776

https://crooksandliars.com/2024/11/whats-donkeys-mind?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_content=95874

@wdlindsy

The #Democrats do have a problem unifying themselves. Too many factions who all think they know what's best for the rest of us. So not only do they refuse to listen to us, they refuse to listen to each other.

Gotta hand it to the #GOP; they always fall in line behind whomever's in charge.

#PurityTest

$ purity /usr/share/games/purity/hacker

[...]

you answered 357 'no' answers out of 510 questions, which makes your purity score 70.00%.

If you score is between: You are

0x000 and 0x016 -> a Wizard
0x011 and 0x040 -> a Guru
0x041 and 0x080 -> a Hacker
0x081 and 0x0C0 -> a Nerd
0x0C1 and 0x100 -> an Operator
0x161 and 0x180 -> a User
0x181 and 0x200 -> Computer Illiterate

So 357 (aka 0x165) puts me very comfortably in "User", only 4 points shy of... wait, what?

#puritytest

Now there's a blast from the past - purity tests. I've not thought about those in... decades?

https://ohai.social/@rfc1036@hostux.social/112863497890500873

#nostalgia #puritytest

@LindaCollins11

We wouldn't be here if some misguided voters hadn't refused to vote for Hillary Clinton because she wasn't their perfect candidate. #PurityTest #JillStein #BernieSanders

I keep seeing people post their purity test scores, and I go check and am disappointed to see it's only the abbreviated 100 question version of the old test from the late 80s or so.

I remember the full 500 question version that existed on USENET, that was loads more fun. But I guess this one has a cool name and logo, so people think it's something new.

If I recall correclty, I scored in the mid-40s, and got more or less the same when I tried it out agin a few years ago.

#PurityTest