911 is a joke and there's a non-zero chance they'll kill you if you get the wrong officer and you don't satisfy their favored supremacist purity criteria. I'd rather be armed and not outsource my safety to someone I cannot trust. I also trust myself to resolve situations in my home with better judgement than a person who more than likely joined the police to live out their violent power fantasies.

I'm having a hard time taking you seriously when you're discouraging organizing. 2A oriented groups are legitimate forms of organization and have a role to play. This isn't about becoming an army that will fight the military, it's about providing security when the state can no longer be trusted to do so and serving as a disincentive to right-wing paramilitary groups.

You've got this mixed messaging saying "the real resistance is talking" but alluding to "things beyond that" presumably organized direct action or civil disobedience. Why can't a 2A group do both of those things?

"Individuals cannot do anything"

The way you've framed this encourages apathy and the role we all have to play in any organized movement. Rather, we're all individuals and we all have a duty to do something. When 'individuals' work together with common interest that is the very definition of 'community'.

How long have you been hanging out with the military folk and officers you mentioned in this thread? I wonder if your harsh judgement of the means others which to assemble and express their rights is being influenced by overexposure to pig-headed thought.

I'm not advocating for that, but as the prior poster said, "Sooner or later someone is going to defend their home against these goons, using lethal force" and they'll use that as pretext to increase the boldness and spread of their violence. At that point with a totalitarian state, what recourse to the law remains?

You could look at Renee Good and see that they need no pretext at all to shoot and kill without repercussions. "Don't feed the troll" isn't a great strategy when it's already gnawing on your leg.

I don't frequent right-wing spaces, but are many genuinely upset about the BPP resurgence in Philly? If so, what are the mental gymnastics?

This might be relevant for following ICE around or direct action, but at this point there's almost zero personal risk from attending something like a rally or a march.

My relatives and even friends my age are afraid to go to protests. They read stuff like this, and it acts as demobilization messaging. In my experience, once you get them to go once they're no longer afraid to engage, but there's an initial fear and anticipatory obedience that has to be overcome.

inb4 protests do nothing: getting people to stick their toe in the water helps build commitment that will one day be necessary to gain critical mass for more organized disobedience.

I believe that "When they kick at your front door how you going to come? With your hands on your head or using proper trigger discipline with your gun?" doesn't fit the syllable count.

Thanks for following up. I am glad your friends still made their own song. I think AI as a conceptual tool is a more constructive application of the technology than AI as a direct generator of art.

Personally, I make things and am an artist as well. I don't think AI can directly replace what I do or what others in my field do with any satisfaction, but it can devalue the market in which I produce substantially and increase entropy and imitations to the point where signal from noise becomes harder to discern.

🤷 Let's hear it.

With the amount of energy put into GenAI and the sheer bulk of content generated, why don't advocates have at least one example of something artistically interesting, unique, or beautiful to showcase their claims? Has it yet made anything of cultural importance that will illicit more than a chuckle and a 'like'?

It seems to me I keep hearing non-artists assert that this will be a great thing for art, while real artists who disagree are labeled Luddites or not genuinely creative in some way. It's frustrating to watch them openly say easily disprovable things. This isn't speculative anymore these systems have been in production for years at this point. Let's look at the actual results.

Tahini is much healthier for you than cow cream. Less saturated fats, more nutrients, and better for the environment.