I’m generally likable, but I don’t have much charisma -so people listen to me to a certain extent because of that. Past a point, their eyes glaze over

I think there’s a reason you have such a different experience. I’ve found you quite negative in our very short interaction.

I just think you come across as patronizing in general TBH. I mean this genuinely, you lack the puppy dog energy of OP, and you shouldn’t expect to get the same results

That’s a very strange line… but in that context I don’t think what we’re saying is very far apart

I say “there are no adults” because no one knows what is going on. Everyone is improvising, no one has all the answers

But people often put on the trappings of an adult. They tell you they understand the world and are in control. And that’s not a bad thing. But sometimes they wear it so hard they convince themselves

The people that convince themselves, those are the people who have stopped growing. They have decided what the world is and how it works, they think they know what is going on… But they don’t. No one does. They’ve just stopped changing. They don’t challenge their beliefs, they become fixed in place relative to society

There are no adults. There are people who can fill the social role of an adult while still changing, and then there’s people who believe they already understand everything

Okay, then where’s the line? When do you become an adult?

Ask them if they consider themselves adults. Be sure to phrase it not as “are you physically fully developed” but “are you an adult on the inside”

I bet most of them laugh and admit they’re a child on the inside

Adults aren’t real. They just aren’t. It’s people deciding they no longer need to grow

Eww. Hell no

I want to still have the curiosity and empathy of a child on my deathbed. I want to grow and change until I die.

What is an adult but someone who does paperwork and is confidently wrong about how the ever changing world works?

Well, it’s a zero day for 24 hours, right?

There are no adults. Never have been

Agreed. And it’s a real problem on the left, because we actually believe in things.

We really need to take a breath, ask where are we and where do I want us to go, and ask if this person is pushing in the same general direction

It’s all about momentum

I don’t think that’s true… People like learning, but you have to make it fun. It’s not condescending at all to give a talk on something you know about, you just have to put in the effort to make it interesting for your audience. A lot of that is prep, and the rest is reading the room

Scams are easy to make people care about, because everyone gets a billion spam calls a day now. There’s a fear there, and sharing a few tips to look for is the kind of wives tale factoids that sticks with people

Lots of people are curious about how computers work, but in an idle sort of way. Kind of like space, they like hearing “there’s a planet here that rains diamonds”, but there’s a very limited amount of interest they have in how we discovered it

Security… Well you get to sprinkle in one or two tips before they lose interest

Privacy… Tell them the NSA looks at their dick picks, and we have proof of them sharing them around. That’s about the only thing people seem to remotely care about

Yep.

It’s one issue, and she’s not out there declaring fealty to Israel, it’s specifically the iron dome. It’s a bad take, but I think it’s an honest one. I think she doesn’t have the stomach to do the math with civilian lives, she’s just trying to save everyone, which is understandable but naive

I feel for the Palestinians, but they’re already building camps and disappearing people in our country. The only way to actually stop this is to twist Bibi’s nuts until he allows the world to come in and enforce an end to this.

And we’re never going to do that without progressives in power anyways, so we can’t declare her lost over a less than perfect take on one issue. And she is with us on putting a stop to this

Hell, for all I know Pelosi showed her IDF plans to glass the entire strip instantly if the dome ever goes down

My real problem is how she handled the criticism. That part was weak and whiny, someone with the sauce would have owned it. She could have said “look, I hear you, but this is a hard choice and I can only do what I think is right”. She could have just taken it on the chin and waited for it to go away.

Instead she tried to weasel out of it, and that’s what losers do. And we’re all going to die if we don’t start winning, so I still want her high up in Democratic leadership. I definitely want her on the team

I just think she isn’t the hero we all rally behind, and unfortunately Mumdani can’t be president

It seems like they’re field testing him as a potential candidate. He’s very loyal to his father, and the establishment loves that

They’re just determined to learn the wrong lesson. Right now they’re thinking “well, Mumdani won in an upset, how did that happen?”. And so now they’re like “well, maybe it’s the on the ground stuff” so they made Cuomo do street interviews. Then they’re like “ok, maybe it’s because he doesn’t talk like a normal politician”, and so they pulled out Hunter Biden, who is irrelevant, to see if he could get support by being very open and frank about drug use

They’re so consultant brained they think the policies don’t matter at all, they’re looking for loyalty and trying to build a populist candidate

Only countries where the local rich or the government bought up enough that when the real capitol arrived, they said “not for sale”

Oh yeah, and also had a military strong enough to make it too risky to send in the private armies that companies used to have

I think that’s sometimes true, but mostly there’s just a lot of vibes based people going around. Proof won’t change their minds, pointing out contradictions won’t change their mind, they just feel a way about an idea

And those people are almost the opposite - they’re often not confident in their own judgement. They fall back to the default human behavior - to take a position relative what they perceive to be the group consensus

I take pride in admitting when I realize I’m wrong, and I respect people who you can show proof and flip on the spot

Yeah, but here there’s no real algorithm. That’s a huge difference, even if you jump into their platform, you just have to jump back before they serve up the next thing

He cheated and still barely won against the worst campaign like… Ever. It was so weak and tone deaf, the Democrats are now the least popular they’ve been since the party was founded

He’s actually shedding core cult members over the Epstein thing, and we’re seeing a huge progressive shift in every election that pops up.

And who’s the cult’s successor? JD Vance? MTG? Eric Trump? Elon Musk? I don’t think there’s anyone with the sauce right now, so I think the non-Nazi cult members are not transferrable

But we do now have a cult of gleeful Nazis that need to be handled, but they don’t have the numbers, they just have the microphone.

This too will end. It’s just a question of when, but it could be as soon as the midterms if we can do a progressive sweep

She’s not a barrier, she’s still signal boosting progressives all over. She’s just not the fighter we need, but she’s not truly compromised… At least not yet

We can’t just totally disavow people at the first mistake. She’s still on our team, even if she’s getting valid criticism and responding terribly.

I honestly wonder why she came out crying, and since then has actually been consistent on the iron dome. What did Pelosi say? What did she show her? My guess is she showed her dead Israeli children from before the iron dome. Her position is coherent, it’s just naive

And I think Bernie is the main reason she hasn’t been vocal in her criticism for Democrats. AOC has been open in that she doesn’t know what she’s doing but is trying her best…I believe she’s still is. Now she’s just getting bad/dated guidance and turning into another Bernie

And Bernie has been consistent and good his entire career… I’m confident she’ll be the same

That being said, I thought people were mostly being sexist when they said she was too young to be president… But now I just think she doesn’t have the sauce

She’s still on our side, she just can’t be the leader. And that’s disappointing

“here’s how to install Graphene on a pixel and linux on a desktop” to break the ice and build the group.

I think the “what to look for in a phone” is great, but most people don’t even really grasp the concept of an operating system as something different than the hardware, and will respond to the idea of changing it by freaking out.

You have to introduce them to Linux by giving them a machine already running it, which seems difficult in this context

It’s also very difficult to get people to understand why they should care about privacy, let alone inconveniencing themselves to achieve it.

You could maybe show them how to use pcpartpicker? You might be able to find one or two people interested in building a new computer, and it kind of demystifies computers a bit.

You could encourage them to change their wifi password and make sure they don’t use one password. Maybe talk about scams, things like short links in texts and such

But IDK, I’m in the comic too

Nothing, probably. But putting on the pressure does matter

I want to say “fair enough”, but they’re trying to do a genocide

I kinda think you might have to keep yourself sane by getting involved in the resistance. Phone bank for progressive victory, get involved with your local DSA… Or something

Do what you can, but do enough that you won’t feel ashamed when children ask about it. It will make you feel better today too