fair enough. It’s another reason why grass doesn’t make sense to me – it’s so incompatible with the landscape unless you put in the effort to make it habitable. Maybe there’s a type of ivy that would have an acceptable max height instead?

I have lived in suburbs, subdivisions, and city neighborhoods with green space. People (or their landscapers) use leaf blowers in all of them.

Anarchists can have means of governing themselves – it’s not a big free-for all. The point is that there is no central hierarchy. For example, an anarchist collective could decide (via whatever method, that’s a separate convo) that each community member gets to use a piece of equipment one week per year, or that the community as a whole will operate that equipment to satisfy the needs of people in a mutually-decided order. They could also decide that the 20 electrical engineers among them should as a group have operational control on a day-to-day basis of the power generating infrastructure, but only as long as they operate it according to the expressed needs of the community, in the community’s interest, in a safe way.

None of that would be hierarchy or domination, as long as the underlying decision making process was democratic.

It’s tough to do anti-hierarchical practices in a hierarchical world! I’ve seen organizations have rotating roles that make sure people don’t get stuck.

Yup! Humans being imperfect is an argument against hierarchical power structures. How can we keep a few narcissists, bad actors, or even well-meaning but mistaken folks from causing bad outcomes for society? By getting rid of their ability to wield power. If you believe that power corrupts, then the answer to that is to distribute it so evenly and thinly that no one can accumulate institutional power. That’s why bottom-up decision making methods are better than top-down ones.

Unfortunately, lots of hierarchical systems are built into the fabric of our societies. Capitalism is a big one. Private property is an even more foundational one. Various kinds of bigotry rest on those systems. The authoritarian state will take whatever excuse it can (religious justifications, property-protection justifications, enemies-at-the-gates justifications, etc) to exercise power over society. So our struggle should ultimately be aimed at those things.

Finding ways to (1) give people the time, material security, and consciousness to organize together to change their lives for the better (tenant unions, labor unions, community-run non-police safety programs, etc); (2) decommodify essentials like food, shelter, clothing, etc; and (3) help populations learn to govern themselves at the local level and federate with others; would all go a very long way.

Look for lessons from existing and recent struggles. Anarchist Spain, the Zapatistas, and others have much to teach us.

They’re loud, they kick up dust, and they happen at intermittent times based on when the neighbors do it. they also use fossil fuels. Loud mowers are annoying, too! If you – heaven forbid – want to keep your windows open and feel a breeze, you’re going to get all of that noise and maybe even some of the dust.

I understand that we have to clear sidewalks and driveways so that accidents don’t happen. People usually don’t have so much sidewalk + driveway that a broom or something wouldn’t do that job quickly. But then we have to blow the leaves off the lawn, too? I know that your HOA will kill you if you don’t, but doesn’t it seem silly to remove the leaves from a lawn, then buy and put down commercial fertilizer, when the leaves would have biodegraded into new topsoil? To spend so much time watering a lawn to keep it alive when the leaves would have shielded it from the sun? Why are we spending so much time, money, water, and effort to maintain sterile grass lawns? We can have beautiful outdoors spaces without being slaves to an HOA enforcing what plants we grow.

I understand that it’s really the HOAs these days that are a big part of the problem. A good number of people in my HOA-less neighborhood have diverse plants in front of their homes. They look fantastic, they seem to take way less maintenance (I never see them mowing, watering, weeding, fertilizing, etc), and ofc they’re much better for the environment.

The sport does the bonding, which provides these shitheads with an in for their ideologies.

Yes, it can become part of one’s culture to appreciate another’s culture

It’s possible, sure, but you’d have to do a study. As I mentioned, there are plenty of ways to interpret it.

I thought by adding “or whatever it’s called” would make it clear that I’m aware that the theory is a racist and antijewish lie, but I guess that was not enough. How should I have worded that differently?

Ah, OK! I think “if white people were defensive of their culture” is what threw me.

What would it mean to take the time and effort to learn to play the Erhu, understand its history and context, but somehow not show real respect for it?

To begin with, there can always be some jerk out there who gives you a hard time no matter what, or who has had so many bad experiences with ppl thoughtlessly appropriating culture that their mind is just closed and they react badly. You’d just have to defend it and let reasonable ppl see that that person is wrong to call you out. That aside, I think showing respect means that if an instrument is sacred for some reason (I have no idea if the Erhu is), you don’t play it in a profane or silly way. Outside of that, using an instrument as like a way to make fun of the culture would be bad (e.g. playing it whenever a stereotyped character appears on screen). Just my two cents.

If you see a number of people from Asian cultures playing classical music originating from Europe, does that mean it has become part of their culture? What if they are appreciating music from another culture? What if their families originate somewhere in Asia but they feel no connection to that place? Or what if there are more extracurricular opportunities for European-style orchestras than for other kinds of musical ensembles from other cultures?

The Great Replacement Theory is a racist and antijewish lie.

Edit: a white person who put in time and effort learning to play the Erhu, understood a reasonable amount of its history and context, and showed real respect for it would be fine.

Basically, your instincts are right and the question in the last line of your post is a good one. Here’s why:

“Whiteness” doesn’t come from biology or culture. It’s really just a way of describing a hierarchy that was set up by European empires and early corporations at the dawn of capitalism to justify the enslavement of people around the world, the colonization of their lands, and the exploitation of their natural resources for profit.

This hierarchy is used to steamroll over the huge number of ethnic and cultural backgrounds people have, in order to label some “white”, others “black”, others “asian”, and so on. There can be no “white” culture (even within one country), because the boundaries of who is accepted as “white” have shifted more than once in the past few hundred years and could easily shift again. For example, look up when and why Irish people and Italian people were accepted as fully white and look up the “contingent” whiteness that Jewish people have had in the US. See How the Irish Became White, for example.

Another reason there is no white culture is because, even for people accepted as white, whiteness has erased the cultures they brought to America when they immigrated by forcing them to conform to its rules. Think about how badly even light-skinned immigrants were treated by others whose families had been in America for generations. The immense pressure to look, sound, and act “American” and “white” to avoid being bullied at school, to be able to get good jobs, and to be seen as “respectable” in the neighborhood, meant for many people that they had to give up large parts of their culture to be accepted. This compounds over the generations, until we end up with people asking questions like the post you’ve made right here.

Racists proudly defend white (or “western” if they’re cowards) culture. They’re completely unable to see how whiteness has stolen big pieces of the cultures of everyone it touches. It has bleached them into a blander, more sterile version of what they once were.

I didn’t know about this technique, thanks!

You can also season the whole pan once and the nonstick effect will last a very long time.

Lol that’s a better usage! Time to sell a “sleep deprived & over caffeinated on board” sticker

the subtext of the meme is: liberals pay lip service to “supporting” marginalized groups, but refuse to help when their own interests are on the line (e.g. can people who aren’t customers use the bathroom in the store? no, because making money comes first)

What you want is a seedbox with the *arrr suite of apps

Anecdotally, from teachers I know, they use chatgpt.

But libraries are not just print books! They have digital collections and online materials too.

What’s quicker: searching bad info sources online or searching better info sources at the library?

Also OP didn’t say it had to be quick

your local library is also a great option

I’d say that it’s on developers to try. It will take some learning, but that’s just part of developing the capacity

I can see we’re not going to reach an agreement on how to look at this particular instance. Still, I wish you well and I hope people like you and me can find a way to effectively fight fascism going forward.

It’s also the publics job to be informed.

We’d get an informed public if people had enough time, material security, and agency to get involved in politics.

Even if it was identical under harris. It was still better under biden. He wasn’t actively cheering the genocide on etc. And at least gave some appearance of trying to support relief and peace.

This is infuriating. The appearance of trying to support relief and peace? These people’s families are dying. The US is the number one funder and arms dealer to Israel. The few, milquetoast statements Biden/Harris made were only political cover to the overwhelming support for the genocide that the US provided. Look, you don’t have to personally care about this issue beyond appearances if you want, but it is a central issue to voters in a particularly politically-important location.

That you feel no responsibility or remorse. For helping to Usher fascism in. [etc]

Don’t make assumptions: I was not an activist in Michigan. I didn’t tell anyone not to vote for Biden/Harris. I voted for them, even in a place where it doesn’t matter. I’m just a stranger on the internet who is tired of Democrats paying more attention to the right than to, well, even the center, let alone the left. They know that there is no alternative vote for us, so they keep tacking right to try and pick off a few so-called “swing” voters. But, doing that demobilizes their base! You need to get people excited to vote, volunteer, donate, and campaign. It’s basic electoral strategy. They refuse to learn that lesson and so they lose to someone who has a smaller, but rabid base.

Also, why are we focusing on only the Palestinian voters in Michigan as the ones who lost the election when plenty of other voters there and other swing districts also didn’t vote Biden/Harris? Because they’re “supposed to” vote dem? Assumptions like that are part of why the democratic party loses elections to Trump. They made a decision to cater more to pro-Israel voters than voters who wanted to at least halt the genocide, it was an important strategic misstep. Zooming out, why aren’t dems able to contest more districts? There’s plenty of blame to go around.

Finally, if you think this one thing is what ushered fascism in, you haven’t been paying attention to the last 30 years of politics. Trump’s election is not an aberration, it’s an expression of a large and growing right-wing and fascist movement in the US.