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20 votes
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Spending cuts are often false economies that end up costing society dearly
16 votes -
Georgia rocked by protests as government pushes Vladimir Putin-style ‘foreign agent’ bill
27 votes -
George Monbiot comes face to face with his local conspiracy theorist
12 votes -
Arizona governor Katie Hobbs signs abortion ban repeal bill
49 votes -
Denmark to liberalize its abortion law to allow the procedure until eighteenth week of pregnancy
22 votes -
Britain's Foreign Secretary David Cameron, in Kyiv, promises Ukraine aid for 'as long as it takes'
18 votes -
Former US President Donald Trump will speak at the Libertarian National Convention
28 votes -
New EPA regulation requires coal plants in the United States to reduce 90 percent of their greenhouse pollution by 2039
33 votes -
Canada bet big on immigration. Now it’s hitting the brakes.
31 votes -
Colorado lawmakers approve broad, nation-leading Right to Repair law
22 votes -
US Supreme Court leaves in place a Texas law requiring pornographic websites to verify users' ages
33 votes -
Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of April 29
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate...
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.
3 votes -
Opinion: The many US campaign finance violations divulged in Donald Trump’s hush-money criminal trial
25 votes -
Ferrying voting machines to mountains and tropical areas in Indian elections is a Herculean task
13 votes -
How (and why) the right stole Christianity
22 votes -
US drug control agency will move to reclassify marijuana in a historic shift, AP sources say
75 votes -
UK becomes first country to outlaw easily guessable default passwords on connected devices
37 votes -
US House Democratic leaders say they would help save Speaker Mike Johnson's job
16 votes -
How do you accidentally run for President of Iceland?
30 votes -
It’s hard being black in France, says Omar Sy after Aya Nakamura racism row
19 votes -
Iraq criminalises same-sex relationships in new law
8 votes -
Ireland plans to send asylum seekers back to UK under emergency law
14 votes -
British Columbia to recriminalize use of drugs in public spaces
35 votes -
US government reportedly ponders crimping China's use of RISC-V
20 votes -
New American military aid for Ukraine - What's in the package and what impact will it have?
13 votes -
Book ban fight in Nevada would create LGBTQ section of libraries
9 votes -
Ronald Reagan-era emergency health care law is the next abortion flashpoint at the US Supreme Court
18 votes -
Student revolt and the curtailing of critical speech
19 votes -
The tech baron seeking to “ethnically cleanse” San Francisco
49 votes -
US Federal Reserve official lamented how “bashing the Fed is a bipartisan sport”
6 votes -
As I get older, I get more and more disillusioned with "activism", and I'm fine with this
Long story short, I grew up believing that a great deal of worth of someone's life was effecting change, especially politically. That's why I valued activism. It took courage, especially...
Long story short, I grew up believing that a great deal of worth of someone's life was effecting change, especially politically. That's why I valued activism. It took courage, especially considering I don't live in a developed country.
The older I got and more problems I faced, I started to realize how unsatisfactory, even hollow this was. Modes of activism I engaged in didn't seem to fulfill me emotionally anymore, they were mostly impersonal, and they didn't seem to change anything. I have a lot of views that are extremely unorthodox for the place I live in, and I don't see any political movement that internalizes those values. I am extremely alienated from the "nation" I am supposedly part of, and from the political movements within it.
Another angle is that I recently realized how misguided I was. I was mostly doing mental labor, believing in the axiom that ideas can change things. But after some time and readings, I started thinking activities that aim for collective action and concrete changes (e.g. syndicates) were much more important. These are not available to me.
I feel like I have wasted a lot of my time. I pursued ideals more than my own emotional needs, believing they would make me happy and fulfilled, and they didn't. I pursued a way of engaging in politics that felt good but didn't effect change.
Don't get me wrong, while this is exasperating, it's also extremely liberating, joyful even. I enjoy the moments of quiet destruction that bring about the new. I no longer feel ashamed to admit I want comfort and stability in my life, and I don't want to take unnecessary risks. I have enough problems as is.
With this being said, I haven't given up on effecting change. I think it's much more convoluted and different than what I imagined when I was younger, and it's not generally about "going out there and showing up" or writing political texts and such. There are also levels to creating change, as it's not a binary thing.
At this point, I want to primarily live for myself, participate in some kind of change without risking myself to the point of overwhelming anxiety, and make more personal and real connections with people in general, including during effecting change.
What I've written here is a bit rough, but it's still an ongoing and raw process for me, and this post is more of a conversation topic, rather than a properly structured argument. I am interested in hearing your opinions. Has anyone had similar experiences, or things this post reminded you of?
49 votes -
US Congress approves bill banning TikTok unless Chinese owner ByteDance sells platform
69 votes -
Key moments from landmark US Supreme Court arguments on Donald Trump’s immunity claims
35 votes -
The Anglosphere has an advantage on immigration – English-speaking countries generally do better at both attracting and integrating talent
13 votes -
UK asylum seekers will be deported to Rwanda
18 votes -
Critical psychiatry and the political backlash against disabilities: a closer look at James Davies
11 votes -
American non-compete clauses could become a thing of the past thanks to a new ruling
15 votes -
Arizona grand jury indicts eleven Republicans who falsely declared Donald Trump won the state in 2020
59 votes -
Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of April 22
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate...
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.
6 votes -
Somalia bans fishing trawlers from its waters
15 votes -
Lies, confections, distortions: how the right made London the most vilified place in Britain
9 votes -
CO-VIDS: The Ghandi trap
3 votes -
HHS strengthens privacy of US reproductive health care data
10 votes -
China is battening down for the gathering storm over Taiwan
26 votes -
How Sweden is failing its spacetechs – it's not about the budget, says one founder who moved his company to Finland
7 votes -
Iran's missile strike on Israel - The attack, defence & Israel's counter-strike
14 votes -
Dominica High Court overturns ban on same-sex relations
14 votes -
Fellow Canadians, what's on your mind this week?
I'm preoccupied with a couple of things. The first being that the federal budget was just released and I'm feeling like a national school lunch program and an injection of money into housing with...
I'm preoccupied with a couple of things.
The first being that the federal budget was just released and I'm feeling like a national school lunch program and an injection of money into housing with the expectation that cities build higher density dwellings is... Something they should have done mid mandate?
Is there even time to implement this stuff? Are we getting close to the point where we've spent too much?
Second is a quote from a compilation of personal accounts from travellers into this country's north in the 1800s. Farley Mowat assembled the stories and wrote the forward for "Tundra" in the 1960s and says the following
"Until 50 or 60 years ago, the Arctic was a living reality to North Americans of every walk of life. It had become real because men of their own kind were daring it's remote fastness in search of pure adventure", unprotected by the vast mechanical shields that we now demand whenever we step out of our air conditioned sanctuaries".
He goes on to talk about how -- most of all -- easily heated dwellings and running water had a softening effect on people, and that (basically) we fear and avoid Canada's climate far more than our forebearers did.
Wondering what people's thoughts on this are.
From what you learned from grandparents or earlier generations about spending time outside, would you agree that the comforts of home are just too damned seductive?
13 votes -
The persistence of the Venezuelan migrant and refugee crisis (2023)
5 votes