|
Top-level
Governments are nowhere near as omniscient as you think, and have nowhere near enough resporces to follow up on what data they do have. Wanna resist? One of the very best things you can do is look suspicious as fuck while doing *absolutely nothing* illegal. Consume their resources. Frustrate the machine. *That* is how you save lives. Not weapons. Not for the overwhelming majority of you. Leave that trouble for those truly prepared for it. (5/5). 115 comments
@Impossible_PhD Also also? Not to put too fine a point on it, but arming one's self is a responsibility - to do so safely involves building and maintaining perishable skills. And the best time to have started that is not "now" it's "some years ago". Weapons aren't magic talismans; they're tools with a specific purpose and like any other tool they're not that useful for someone who doesn't know what they're doing.  @Dani Saying "you must do this thing, but you have to have started some years ago" is never useful. It's redundant to those who already have done it and worthless to those who haven't.  @daviddlevine @Dani It's not at all worthless to those who haven't in this case, the point is don't start now if you don't want to get dead because you can't get to where you need to be to stay alive in the time you have left. The most important thing is, if you bring a gun to the fight, the fight will be about the gun. Are you prepared to struggle for possession of a firearm? Doubt it. @daviddlevine it's extremely useful; it establishes a reality check on what investment is necessary to be competent to with a tool in order to accomplish some goal. If someone isn't capable of coming to terms with that idea, I'd prefer they not do the thing. @Dani Okay, I see now what you were trying to say. It's a valid and very important point, but I'm afraid the words in your initial post didn't convey that message well.  @daviddlevine @Dani I would say it advises those that haven’t how they might better use their precious time. @Dani @Impossible_PhD  @Dani @Impossible_PhD Meh, pretty much everyone knows how to use a hammer and it's not a whole lot more complex than that. You have to maintain and secure it because it's more dangerous than a hammer. Mistakes are a bit more costly. It's not complicated though. You can go practice aiming and such to be better, but you don't need to be Rambo to rid the world of bigots trying to rid it of you. You better be willing though, and you might lose still and lose harder so...everyone's got choices I own guns. Despite everything I believe about guns, I have thought about carrying because I just haven't felt safe. This is exactly why I have decided I cannot allow myself to carry one. @Wendy But doing _anything_ under pressure is different. And under that much pressure...? @Impossible_PhD @Impossible_PhD "Meal Team Six vs. Rainbow Division" would make a great team v team game akin to team fortress though. Addendum: What the fuck, people?! I talk about how bad an idea it is to arm yourselves and a bunch of yall start arguing about blades and homemade bombs instead of firearms?! When I said weapons and not firearms, I meant ***all*** weapons. This is not a fucking movie. This is your lives. All your posturing is gonna do is get you and the people around you dead. Knock it off, dummies. Knee jerk, I am afraid. Folks, don't be daft, don't get killed. You will not respawn. Or, if you have such a death wish, do not write about it in public (which means internet at large). Save your contacts from unwanted visitors. @Impossible_PhD Out of all topics... I guess "missing the point" illustrates the point, huh. I am absolutely NOT questioning your practical advice with respect to the current situation AT ALL, but out of curiosity, given your position, what is your take on the role that armed self-defense historically played for Black resistance in the he US? I know there are people who argue it was crucial in that situation. Not to anticipate your response, but I suppose that DID include Black veterans from WWII and Korea, and therefore partly fell under the exceptions you mentioned? @bifouba armed self defense was *always* the minority for Black folks. There were a few who carried, and in doing so made it much riskier for white oppressors to harass Black folks. And most of those people who did were indeed veterans, as I understand the history. Which, honestly, is exactly my point. @Impossible_PhD not just that but also maybe don't (plan to) commit crimes on the public internet. It's a bad time for everyone @ahuggingsam lol, yeah, that's a dumb fucking idea too. Seriously, the number of people in this thread who *absolutely do not get it* is astounding. And for the record, everyone? I'm from a military family and I don't own a weapon of any kind *because I'm from a military family*. I did not enter service because I know myself well enough to know that I am not capable of enacting that sort of harm. @Tattie @Impossible_PhD I heard of this thing a while back, and maybe it could also be a good self-defense weapon. It’s also something that wouldn’t be seen as one until it’s used as such. https://poshmark.com/listing/Cat-Knuckle-Keychain-2-Pack-Self-Defense-Ring-5f736336fadba46e29a133ba  @Impossible_PhD I agree with all of this. It's very interesting that we can more easily imagine taking a life than not being as efficient as possible.  @Impossible_PhD Well you know how Americans are, thinking everything can be solved with guns…. @MisuseCase It's apocalyptic thinking. People want to go out in a heroic blaze of glory, because doing so has been held up as an ideal. Its just evangelical rapture-thinking. Yeah, in the grimmest times, someone has to do the dangerous work, but they need to *live* afterwards. The fascist machine wasting resources fruitlessly chasing them is the real benefit to what they do. @Impossible_PhD @MisuseCase If people absolutely need them, you can get a three hole punch at Staples and punch up to three holes at a time. Less risk to self and others. And everyone knows a good binder's at the heart of every revolution.  @aadmaa @Impossible_PhD @MisuseCase Particularly a transmasc revolution @aadmaa @Impossible_PhD @MisuseCase Yeah, but what good binder requires a three-hole punch? Although... I've always found 2 too few, and 4 too many... Maybe it's the UK's Big Binder keeping us in a state of under equipment! The stationary-industrial complex up to its old, tired playbook of dirty tricks SMH @MrBerard @Impossible_PhD @MisuseCase Two hole binders? Four hole binders? I finally understand Brexit. British policy statements were incompatible with those of Brussels. Doomed from the start to be left out of every proposal since 1973. All for want of a good, three-hole punch. How are you for staplers btw? @aadmaa @Impossible_PhD @MisuseCase I think we're using... Staplers... But I wouldn't put it past the Brits to use a set of staple gauges completely incompatible with the staplers of the world. @Impossible_PhD @MisuseCase Yep. People like trump have no idea what it takes to serve. He only knows how to manipulate in order to take.   @Impossible_PhD So I've been thinking about this, and if he goes through with this whole Mass Deportation thing, it will be ridiculously difficult and impractical, and I think there's room there to get mud in the gears. @Impossible_PhD Read Machiavelli and turn them against one another - the same tactic Putin is using to great effect against the western world. Talk about how Musk is trying to push Trump out and how Vance despises Trump Jr. How Hawley secretly wants to blow Jim Jordan and has video of Lindsey Graham cavorting in a nightgown alone in his mansion. How Clarence Thomas blackmailed his fellow justice into resigning to make room for Kavanaugh  @Impossible_PhD I also recommend reading “Steal this book” by Abby Hoffman. It’s got some amazing ideas, and even though it was written a while back (Nixon’s time) it’s got a lot of applications today. @CWilbur @Impossible_PhD even older but not without its charms is the simple sabotage field manual [1] which has a lot of fun & plausibly deniable ideas for how to slow the gears of a large machine of which you have no choice but to be a part  *Steal this book* is not by "by" Abbie Hoffman. It's by Emmett Grogan. Abbie stole the manuscript from him. Emmett describes this in *Ringolevio*, a much better book.  @Impossible_PhD Well said. Force them to dedicate resources to something they didn’t plan for. That diverts and slows their efforts to their goals.  @Impossible_PhD Dumb advice. "Looking suspicious" while doing nothing wrong.   @Impossible_PhD slowing down and pretending incompetence should be as effective  @Impossible_PhD Another good example about how little power governments can have is Russia right now. No matter how much power Putin wields, Ukraine is holding the line, and will continue to do so for some time. Even straight up dictators are limited by what they can and cannot do.  @Impossible_PhD  Take into consideration, dependency. What we're calling fascism now, is probably a lot more sophisticated than the fascism of the past (though built on it). It's possible to smash things, but a lot more difficult to destroy things that we're dependent on, or feel dependent on Then there's the better the devil you know. If people are so used to something harmful, they might not try to escape it, because of fear of the unknown > Governments are nowhere near as omniscient as you think Are you sure that's still true in the age of mass surveillance, big data, and large language models? @matt Yes. First of all, LLMs are not intelligent. They're autocomplete on steroids. Their use actively degrades work efficiency according to every survey I'm aware of. Second, the mass surveillance is the problem. The government now captures *trillions* of hours of video a year, plus an absolutely incomprehensible amount of text data--so much that it hasn't known what to do with it for decades. The point of the observation regime is your post. It's the panipticon. @Impossible_PhD Fair enough. But now, if we assume that whatever's left of due process and rule of law are about to go away, then wouldn't looking suspicious as fuck be enough to make them come down on you with extreme prejudice, even if they haven't sifted through *all* the data? I think doc is arguing on a macro scale. If even just 5 million people look suspicious every day, it's infeasible to send cops to 5 million doors. I would caution that the machine's favorite tactic in such a case is to just pick a few and "make an example" though. and that they are more likely to pick those based on class and identity. so it's really important white guys and especially middle class white guys do their part. @chairgirlhands @Impossible_PhD Interesting. My sister and I, both middle-class white, were thinking that we should *not* look suspicious, the better to keep ourselves safe so we can protect others more at risk. @chairgirlhands @Impossible_PhD Of course, I might have already ruined that by posting here. I think a good example to keep in mind is "partner" and "significant other" being used by heterosexual people. That could be viewed as "suspicious" by homophobes. But the more straight people that do it, the harder it is for them to guess that anyone doing it is gay. Does that make sense? @matt @Impossible_PhD this is why i like poisoning the well of data in other ways, like just flat-out lying to disrupt fingerprinting using librewolf and editing metadata on photos and all that... i kinda wish there was some secure way to swap peoples' data somewhat to confuse the algorithms heavily because both would be structured data and that would make mass surveillance absolutely break entirely... not targeted surveillance though, that has different constraints  @Impossible_PhD YES. I have already offered to the community to be a red herring on call :) @Impossible_PhD so in other words be like the scambaiters, flood trans reporting hotlines with the bee movie script, do r/maliciouscompliance, poison the data well, and overall be a total prankster gremlin? can do! @technobaboo Precisely. The script of the bee movie has done more to defend trans rights in the last twenty years than all the weapons owned by all trans people in America combined, as bizarre as it is to say. @Impossible_PhD that reminds me of the end of Bonelab, this super innovative VR game where everything has physics and avatar/body switching is a main mechanic (and jimmy here just saved you from a conservative small town where any modification of body, mind, environment is against the law and they hung you at the start of the game for it): @Impossible_PhD, at this point, being a pre menopausal woman with a pixie cut is an act of rebellion. Long hair is definitely an cis- XX signifier. Really don't agree with this last part. Bullies will bully you for being different. The fascists, and they ARE fascists, don't care about whether you're actually breaking the law. If you look suspicious to them, if you look other to them, they're going to f*** you up. This. I'm a middle aged cis het white guy. I use encrypted communications. I made it as hard as possible to surveille me. Go ahead. Spend the time and energy to break in and figure out what I'm doing. Because if and when you come after me, I'll use my white privilege and in the end, you can't do much to me. And even if you can, I'm old. I don't have that much left to do. But while you're coming after me... Others, more important and more vulnerable than me, will pass unnoticed. |
Gregory's Server
Tl;dr: Don't be the queer version of Meal Team Six. You're gonna be just as ineffective as they are.