Snot Flickerman

I’m less excited about this truck specifically as much as the idea of affordable economy vehicles with no-frills making a comeback.

A valid complaint, but at the same time, just watching the video, the person presenting the truck, if he was hit head-on, would fly over the top of the hood because the hood would hit him square in the hips, right underneath his belly, sending his top half flying over the top of the hood, instead of dragging him under.

The issue you raise is still valid, but its way more of a problem in the giant trucks that are everywhere now. The Slate seems to be one of the smallest trucks that will be available on the market. Sure, the sloped hood would help, but the height of the hood is going to be hitting pedestrians on their hips and legs, not their major internal organs in their stomach, nor does it risk dragging them under the wheels like most big trucks.

Take the little wins, sometimes.

https://www.motor1.com/news/757625/slate-truck-size-explained/

Slate’s electric Truck is about the size of a 1984 Toyota Truck. No, really. Both the Slate Truck and a short-bed, single-cab 1984 Toyota Truck SR5 share an overall length of 174.6 inches. A Slate Auto representative says this is purely coincidence.

Someone finally listened to me about manual roll up windows. This is tits.

Assholocene.

*chefs kiss

No problem, you still raised important points either way.

I didn’t mean to imply I support violence as a first strategy.

I actually wholeheartedly agree with your assessment. Partially because the violence against us is coming anyway. It is clearly planned. They are telegraphing what they intend to do, which is criminalize half the country so they can put us to death under the guise of “why couldn’t they just follow the law.”

That being said, just because the violence is coming doesn’t mean inviting it right away is the best solution. The best solutions are the kind you suggest but also using Mutual Aid to develop Parallel Systems.

Parallel systems are simply systems outside of the capitalist mode of production and integration. Providing water, food, medical care, housing, support, and so on. The efforts of the Black Panthers were an exercise in developing parallel systems. The Black Panthers also knew violence was coming which is why a contingent of them were armed. Having such systems in place makes it easier for individuals to survive a long-term General Strike.

The testimony and cross examination of undercover officers by Afeni Shakur stands the test of time when she showed that the people pushing violence in the Panthers were undercover police officers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afeni_Shakur#The_Panther_21

Shakur got White to admit under oath that he and two other agents had organized most of the unlawful activities. “She asked him if he’d ever seen her carry a gun or kill anyone or bomb anything and he answered no, no, no. Then she asked if he’d seen her doing Panther organizing in a school and a hospital and on the streets and he answered, yes, yes, yes.”

We must be prepared to resist the violence that is coming, but to do so without organizing and planning is a fools errand.

Evidence to support your view:

I have cancer, I have often been open about it here on Lemmy. Several times post-Luigi I was told I should “do some good” and “Luigi myself” since I’m already at risk of dying under this oppressive regime.

Lazy able bodied fucks asking the people who are actually suffering to do their dirty work for them. I remember distinctly saying at one point “Maybe for the first time in history it’s time for the able bodied to stand up for the ill, weak, and disabled instead of expecting us to off ourselves since in their eyes we have ‘nothing left to lose.’” It’s a cruel joke.

Truth. Treating it as nothing is doing the abusers jobs for them.

Reading, writing, and helping others read and write is liberation. Knowledge is power.

Why else would they be gutting educational institutions?

The Troubles 2.0 are indeed here.

With a World War, apparently.

I think a big issue is that the people educated enough to understand how desperate things may be are not naturally inclined to lead simply because we are more often than not deeply aware of our limitations and spend time telling ourselves we are not the right person to be leading.

But everything has to start somewhere. Someone had to throw the first brick at Stonewall. Being a leader can be scary because you don’t know if anyone else will actually follow. It is a massive personal risk, especially to someone already aware of their own limitations and need for others.

I struggle with it because I would rather join an already existing Mutual Aid group instead of doing the work of organizing it myself. I am inherently disorganized. I do not see myself as a leader. I see myself as good at following processes, reading, following directions. I am moderately good at writing but I say enough stupid stuff that others don’t agree with that I could accidentally alienate groups whose input and involvement are desperately needed. I fear leadership because of how often I put my foot in my mouth. I fear it because of how important it is and how many people come to rely on leadership. I think a great leader is one who teaches people how to lead themselves. Finally, if there is anything I have learned in life is that it is very easy to be thinking you’re teaching the right lesson but you actually taught people something completely different and disturbing to you. I fear accidentally teaching the wrong lessons.

But the question is this: Are all those fears, all those questions, all that awareness of our own limitations… Could that be perhaps what actually creates a good leader whose goals align with those they represent? A question we should all be asking ourselves.

That being said, I still have no idea where to start. Especially in a conservative, regressive area. Hunter Thompson was right that we need to learn to speak their language, which is why he wrote in sports metaphors. Problem is, I am not like him, I don’t know how to speak to them. I feel that may be my biggest limitation in making headway. Not just because I don’t know how but because the simplistic way they communicate eats at my soul, I don’t like it and struggle to think I could speak that language.

I unfortunately couldn’t tell you which communities to search in, because it always seemed to pop up on my radar in random feeds on places like reddit, hackernews, and slashdot. hackernews and slashdot both have slightly better search functions than reddit. I just know on reddit they were usually marijuana-related communities.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-zero-waters-your-plants-and-records-growth-timelapse/

Here’s another example from some googling around that’s not cannabis-related but still a vegetation project. I’m sure there’s are variety of projects that exist that are just waiting to be discovered by someone with the time and patience to pursue it.

On the internet nobody knows you’re a duck.

I’m looking at irrigating the garden and automating the process. I saw something about https://www.home-assistant.io/ online but would love any advice you might have. I’d like to automate and chart my watering as well as integrate moisture monitors and a weather monitoring system.

Seriously though, if you’re looking into stuff like this, you should go asking questions around the Marijuana cultivation community. There’s actually been a massive upsurge in the last 5-7 years of projects using off the shelf components like Raspberry Pi’s to essentially automate their cannabis grows. Some of them are related to home assistant, some are standalone.

Each time I read about it I keep hoping that others will take that work and start extending it to other types of plants. Cannabis is great and all, but you can’t really eat it for sustenance, you know?

https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/a375ib/raspberry_pi_powered_cannabis_microgrowery/

https://github.com/yieldbuddy

Just some quick examples.

Also, you might try the /c/selfhosted community for information on things like home assistant and getting it up and running.

Also, be warned, home automation of this type can quickly end up increasing your electricity usage by a lot.

I have an electric bike and an old 1996 honda crv. I’d like to switch to an electric vehicle, something like a Pickman 4x4 or another small farm vehicle, as I only need to get to the village bus stop, neighbouring farms, and the occasional trip into town via back roads.

As for the old Honda CRV, if you know anyone that speaks Spanish/Portuguese or have an ability to translate either easily, South America has a whole history in the last ten years of converting old cars into EVs. I’d start looking for forums for those countries and poking around for conversion kits for your model.

https://restofworld.org/2024/electric-vehicle-conversions-uruguay/

Democracy has been purposefully gridlocked by parties who want to make sure Democracy can’t work. So if they undermine it enough, make it so forward movement can’t happen for 40-50 years at a time, the citizens get restless and angry. That’s on purpose, too, because when people are restless and angry, then you can go balls to the wall and declare martial law.

There really should have been some laws on the books at some point that if you were clearly trying to undermine democratic principles that you could and should be blocked from being elected to or holding any type of office. Instead, we’ve just let the guys doing this shit do it worldwide for about 50 years now, and their plan worked, the whole shebang is about to fall apart.

Literally they spent 50 years running on “let’s prove democracy doesn’t work by fighting to kill democracy” and literally nobody stepped up to say “maybe we shouldn’t let these guys fucking do that??”

Sci-Fi about “Human Zoos” routinely ignores that humans make their own “Human Zoos” with other humans.

I think what’s more interesting about this is it lines up basically perfectly with:

1. Slaves being freed, and in this newfound freedom, the freedom to speculate on their own futures.

2. The growth and success of black entrepreneurs in 20th century capitalism, resulting in actions like the 1921 race massacre in Tulsa, which seemed to be driven by white anger that blacks were becoming successful due to the “invisible hand of the market.”

So it speaks to a period of rapid growth for black communities in the US, as well as access to education and capital, that allowed black writers to lean into black speculative fiction.