I just find it frustrating, everyone argues about the fluff and the system grinds on unabated. I am far from alone in shouting about this, for centuries now, and the predictions always seem to come true anyway…

Where you direct that support matters, if you send it above yourself just please be conscious that you are ceding that power to someone who can hold it above and use it against you, unless you have some mechanism to retract it (maybe instantly recallable representatives, for example).

I don’t know, I may be preaching to the choir here, and I am not meaning to be condescending nor (incidentally) proselytise or anything, people need to come to their own conclusions.

Either way, good luck and I hope that it all works out, I suspect this ride still has a way to go.

I suppose all of these conversations blend into one after a point in some regards, that isn’t your fault so sorry for being so ranty.

That is not how systems work, there are myriad problems that stem directly from the hierarchy of ruler and ruled (whether they nominally represent you or not, the reality is that their lived experience isolates them from you and your lived experience), and they require that dynamic to persist in order to enact their will no matter how benevolent the current rulers might be.

The whole arrangement relies upon always having incorruptible, benevolent and competent people in charge, and even then there are material realities such as market crashes that will derail things, the idea is a caricature of instability.

I am starting a revolution in a sense, I have been for a long time, it just isn’t focused on some quick and easy (for presumed onlookers such as yourself, at least) miracle event that fixes everything, because in reality to beat structures you have to build your own- in this particular case one fundamentally built upon mutual aid is what we aspire to.

Best option for what exactly? The ends are completely different there, progressive wave or not, if you leave the fundamental structures and power relations intact we end up back here. The best we can expect are calls to alter some relatively superficial aspects that get quickly moderated once in power, as ever before.

Edit: this became a distracted rant somewhere along the line, so please feel free to disregard.

The GOP loves playing games, this is them playing games and you’re falling for it.

The whole thing is a spectacle. One side plays the comical baddy which some people turn to in ineffectual anger, allowing this anger to be dissipated against the usual scapegoats of the state (in short, minorities of any kind), and so not allowing it to congeal into any kind of threat to power.

Meanwhile the other side plays to fear around the comical baddy (who does do real harm, using exactly the same tools that they themselves dutifully maintain, and not infrequently use); to the point of effectively platforming some of the worst of them; as they flounder around realising they can’t offer anything but austerity and token gestures (most often repealing offenses against the population carried out in legal form, see slavery, segregation, gender rights, the list goes on) without stepping on the toes of power.

Realistically, the past both sides of this are yearning for is one that worked in a period of prodigious exploitation of new avenues and expansion of old ones as they related to the new (or growth, if you prefer).

This is no longer the case as the appearance of anything that has the momentum to keep the whole mass of debt moving becomes a rarer and rarer event, LLMs are/were the next big thing that was being banked on to keep it all going for the next decade or two, but even if that pays off the same crisis is looming down the road.

Neither ‘side’ has a satisfactory solution to this problem as their power all acts through the same levers, hence the recurring patterns absolutely everywhere. Insofar as I can see, the answer has to come from us seizing back power to dissipate its concentrations throughout us as a whole, or these things are going to keep happening.

The head of the army says the UK’s political leaders are about to start a “frank conversation” with the public about the need to prepare for war.

General Sir Roly Walker said every citizen will be asked to make sacrifices and to play their part in the defence of the nation.

He was speaking very bluntly to troops during a visit to Catterick Garrison in North Yorkshire this week.

The comments were captured on camera by British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS).

“You didn’t know this, but our nation is going to need you,” the chief of the general staff told the group of around 700 soldiers.

“There was a time that our nation didn’t want to think of a time when it would need its soldiers to fight in a war,” he said.

"Indeed, very soon, the political leaders of this country will start to have a frank conversation with the citizens of this country about just what is going on and where the risk lies.

"They are going to try and explain to our citizens that our citizens have got to consent to sacrifices to prioritise defence and security.

"And then they are going to ask those citizens, for whom we are not necessarily at the front of their mind, that they too need to play a part in the defence and security of this country.

"They need to understand what we do for them. They need to consent to allow us to do that. Which means sacrifices by them.

“And ultimately we are going to need them to back us, to back you to do the one thing that you do that nobody else gets to do and that is to take the fight to the enemy.”

Andy Burnham inherited a promise made by Sir Keir Starmer to start a national conversation on defence.

However that pledge was made more than 18 months ago.

Without a push from the centre of government, conversations have been taking place all across defence and security circles, including with a Sky News podcast and Sky TV series, both called The Wargame.

The prime minister is also meant to be launching a new campaign to encourage every household to be better prepared for every kind of crisis, from floods and droughts to armed conflict - another plan that he took over from the previous administration that he has yet to deliver.

For the sake of clarity, I meant actions in the sense of direct action; typically some sort of anarchism flavoured so prefiguration was often at least kept in mind. Nothing has ever snowballed of course, although some actions have spawned some lovely little related communities that are thriving too (and others that since ran out of steam, true); I’ll always choose small victories over chasing the best loss as electoralism endlessly expounds. But I don’t at all disagree with the sentiment!

I have been told this my whole life, how our silly little actions didn’t mean anything because they were too small or fringe or whatever.

The difference is I can look back across the decades and see a lot of people who I have helped, and who have helped me in turn, things have been directly made better as a result (well, at least some of the time). Meanwhile, their “more realistic” approach centred on voting has seen periods of glacial progress and rapid retreat, leaving them further back than ever before in my lifetime.

Why are you running defence for them? Their job is to manage your expectations into extinction, they are your rulers not your friends.