Once our neighbor’s cat Butter was hanging out and asking for food and wouldn’t leave so we called the neighbor who said Butter was actually at home. We named kitty Chiffon instead.

Also just reminding your less politically interested acquaintances about the possibility of a general strike.

I prefer to keep it vague and chit chatty because I’d like it to feel like a natural common sense solution next time they themselves have a what the fuck moment over some policy or over price fixing or over whatever is getting them worked up.

“If things get too bad, we can always walk out en masse and bully the state into changing course. The economy needs us all working or it doesn’t work.”

I want more lay-people saying at the dinner table “you know what might work? A general strike.”

Maybe the installer didn’t notice it said minimum haha

They used them at my parents’ church in the late 90’s— parents of little kids would hold one during the service in case the nursery needed them

When I was little I was at a science store and they had one of these out on the the counter which was a glass counter with metal seams. The clerk was showing us kids how if we held hands and one of us touched it we could all feel it. I was already familiar with touching doorknobs after shuffling in slippers so I got the bright idea to touch the metal seam on the counter and shocked the whole line of kids. good times

I think this cycle is more like half a generation above you than a whole generation. My fav bands in my teen prime were in their early 30’s, while my parents were closer to early 50s at the time.

Primary elections aren’t democratic either (see party delegates). I feel like people who say this are rarely politically engaged in their communities. Same with the people who say to get involved in local city politics to make change.

Ultimately you’re supporting a facist system that is historically atrocious and currently financially supporting a genocide almost singlehandedly but go ahead and keep telling people that the best way to maintain some semblance of moral character is to vote in this sham.

For sure, and with even a teensy bit of reflection I think most people would agree that people are generally quite shit at expressing themselves with words. We say things we don’t mean or imply things we didn’t intend to all the time. A well written book or article takes hundreds of hours of re-writing and getting feedback and re-writing again just to try to communicate the author’s idea effectively. Snap judgments based on social media posts alone are pretty baseless.

Yes, best to assume you’re always misunderstanding, or at least not understanding completely, a conversational comment until you have a holistic understanding of where they’re coming from (ie you become familiar with them and how they think and what they value).

Sounds like aliens settled everywhere else to me—that’s the last human settlement