#COMSERVE

[retrocgads]

UK 1982

[souvenir116]

Max trying to get Charles a community service while Charles giggles about him in interviews 💔

[aisling-saoirse]

Tamarack thicket in Tannerville Bog - October 1st 2023

[effervescent-fool]

alright goodnight gay people in my phone

[likelyapsychopath]

Y'ALL this is exciting

as hell! Idk how many of you are familiar with chytrid fungi, but they cause a nasty disease in amphibians called chytridiomycosis, where the fungus infected and spreads across the skin. Amphibians both breathe and absorb water through their skin, so once the infection spreads enough it makes it difficult for them to breathe and drink. It's often deadly and has been introduced all over the world, likely from people releasing captive amphibians into the wild. Research has linked chytridiomycosis to the extinction of over 90 species, and is considered one of the primary causes of the global amphibian population crisis we're fighting.

Worst of all, there is no cure viable enough to use on wild populations.

This 'hothouse' method, if it continues to prove effective, would be a cheap and easily-implemented tool to help wild frogs cure themselves!! This could help save dozens -- if not hundreds -- of species from extinction!

Be excited about this! (Otherwise I will find you)

These little dudes are not only chillin' but also warming themselves in heated cubbies to help them beat a fungal infection!!

Photo from the article in Science.

Research abstract: Nature

[poopy-pants-gremlin]

"if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck"

If it looks like a racoon and chirps like a racoon it's a canine

[venter12313]

I hate when my mom plays her conservative videos and forces me to listen to someone bashing my entire generation

[eileennatural]

is the american public education system really that bad or did you perhaps not pay attention in history class.

[ravenstone12]

I just saw an add for a "documentary" called gender transformation.

It's a documentary that is full of legit bullshit based on solely the ads and proven wrong stuff, and yet, it's portraying it as fact.

It's about how trans people are finding your vulnerable kids and transing there gender. And how the education system is indoctrinating kids into be liveing they are trans(the example was a teacher telling the whole class they er gonna learn about gender, and that she'd support them all... I wish.)

They only interviewed parents of trans people and 1 de-transitioners. Yeah I see NO bias here

.

.

.

I'm scared guys

This won't end in our generation

[allthecanadianpolitics]

maybe a dumbass question but are we still fucked? at work today my coworker said that the conservatives are just gonna force another election and that pp can just run again in the by election to regain his seat (shes a pessimist and so am i) and i wanna know how long i can breathe a sigh of relief before we're completely fucked again (i dont LOVE carney but unfortunately he was the lesser of 2 evils)

Conservatives don’t have a majority, so they can’t force an election without other parties support.

To declare non-confidence and force an election requires majority support.

From what I’ve heard even the bloc want to work with the liberals now, so there’s no chance in the near future of the government collapsing.

It may happen eventually if Carney fucks up, but until then I don’t expect any progressive party to want to force an election or be seen as supporting the Comservatives.

[jeff-the-accountant]

it do be feeling like that lol @teeny-tiny-revenge perfectly captured

i just got randomly an "izzy saved the crew from drunk ed sacrificing himself and let stede in later on cus he was happy someone else will take responsibility" in my face

like dear lord in strawberry sauce, hold me cus i can'T

also the show is perfect and i love everything about it. and i love how it is able to show complexity of domestic abuse/relationship abuse without triggering severe PTSD in me, but still putting it very straightforward.

what is wrong is that domestic/relationship abuse is still a topic most of our dear society doesn't see and will do anything to not have to cope with the cognitive dissonance and doing the work they have to do themselves; often face the fact they are a survivor of an abusive relationship or have abusive behaviour patterns.

and then the intersection of stereotypes about race, violence, abuse in same-sex relationships and all the tropes of the brilliant mean white hero and his sidekick (which have been so well talked through in many metas).

If show so good why half of fandom so toxic?

[warrioreowynofrohan]

This is one of the best articles I’ve seen yet on Trump, Trumpism, and the upcoming election. It’s directed at the right and centre-right (whereas most tumblr posts on this are directed at the left), but it’s saying – with detailed analysis and evidence – exactly what needs to be said, to everyone. This is not a normal election. How you vote this November determines whether you ever get the chance to vote in a democratic election again. This is not a game. Fascism is not a buzzword or a rhetorical device to hurl at anyone and everyone you disagree with. It is real, it is dangerous, and Trump is openly running on a fascist platform.

There are only two sides in this election: those who want the United States to be a fascist dictatorship and those who do not.

I live in Canada. I do not want to live next to a fascist state (especially since the Comservatives here are way ahead in the polls and their leader gives every sign of wanting to cozy up to Trump).

Please, stop this while you still have a chance.

Today we’re going to look at definitions of fascism and ask the question – you may have guessed – if Donald Trump is running for President as a fascist. Worry not, this isn’t me shifting to full-time political pundit, nor is this the formal end of the hiatus (which will happen on Nov 1, when I hope to have a post answering some history questions from the ACOUP Senate to start off on), but this was an essay I had in me that I had to get out, and working on the book I haven’t the time to get it out in any other forum but this one. And I’ll be frank, some of Donald Trump’s recent statements and promises have raised the urgency of writing this; the political science suggests that politicians do, broadly, attempt to do the things they promise to do – and the things Trump is promising are dark indeed.

Now I want to be clear what we’re doing here. I am not asking if the Republican Party is fascist (I think, broadly speaking, it isn’t) and certainly not if you are fascist (I certainly hope not). But I want to employ the concept of fascism as an ideology with more precision than its normal use (‘thing I don’t like’) and in that context ask if Donald Trump fits the definition of a fascist based on his own statements and if so, what does that mean. And I want to do it in a long-form context where we can get beyond slogans or tweet-length arguments and into some detail.

Now the response from some folks is going to be anger that I am even asking this question and demands for me to ‘stay in my lane.’ To which I must remind them that the purpose of history and historians is, as Thucydides put it, is to offer “an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the course of human affairs must resemble if it does not reflect it” (Thuc. 1.22.4). This is my lane. Goodness knows, I’d much rather be discussing the historical implications of tax policy or long-term interstate strategy, but that isn’t the election we’re having. And if hearing about these things that happened is unpleasant, well, Polybius offers the solution: “men have no more ready corrective of conduct than knowledge of the past” (Plb. 1.1.1). We must correct our conduct.

The author, Bret Devereaux, lays out the history of the rise to power of Hitler and Mussolini and draws out the lessons

What I want to note here are two key commonalities: First, fascists were only able to take power because of the gullibility of those who thought they could ‘use’ the fascists against some other enemy (usually communists). Traditional conservative politicians (your Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham types) and conservative business leaders (your Elon Musks) fooled themselves into believing that, because the would-be tyrant seemed foolish, buffoonish, and uneducated that such an individual could be controlled to their ends, shaped in more productive, more ‘moderate,’ more ‘business friendly’ directions. They were wrong; many of them paid for their foolish error with their lives (Victor Emmanuel III paid for it with his crown). Mussolini and Hitler would not be ‘shaped,’ – they would be exactly the violent, tyrannical dictators they had promised to be – to the total and utter ruin of their countries.

Note that these men were not exactly subtle about what they wanted to do. Mein Kampf is not a subtle book. But they both knew how to promise violence to their followers while prevaricating to their temporary allies; be wary of the fascist who promises violence in his rally speeches but assures you that, if you just give him power, he won’t hurt anyone (except the people you don’t like) – because it is a lie, of course.

Second: once these fascist leaders were in power it was already too late to stop them. Precisely because fascists had no respect for democratic processes and the rule of law – things they had declared openly in seeking power – once in power, they were unconstrained by them and swiftly set about converting all of the powers of the government into a machine to keep them in power. And the conversion from democracy to dictatorship was remarkably swift, in Italy, Mussolini marched in October of ’22, rewrote the election rules in November of ’23 and by December of ’24 had effectively dropped even the pretense of democracy; just two years. Hitler was faster: appointed chancellor in January 1933, by March of that year he had suspended constitutional protections and ruled by fiat; just three months.

The time to stop an authoritarian takeover of a democratic system is before the authoritarian is in office, because once they are in power, they will use that power, to stay in power and it becomes almost impossible to remove them without considerable violence (and difficult to do even with considerable violence).

That, however, creates a tricky situation. With most political ideologies, voters can adopt a strategy of judging by outputs: “if you don’t like the current government’s policies, let these other fellows here have a go at it and see if they do better. If not, you can always vote them out next time.” But with fascists and other authoritarians there may not be a next time and this strategy fails: by the time the actions of the fascists make it clear they are dangerous, it is too late to vote them out.

This is why it is important to listen carefully to what fascists say and what they promise and most importantly to take their threats of political violence and authoritarianism seriously.

Which is not to say that everything on the right is fascism (just as not everything on the left is its own authoritarian variant, communism). Ronald Reagan was not a fascist, nor was George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush or John McCain or Mitt Romney. They were conservatives within the liberal tradition (again, ‘liberal’ here in the old Jefferson-Locke-and-Washington sense). Most Republicans today are not fascists, although a distressing number appear ready to repeat Franz von Papen’s mistake of assuming they can achieve their goals through an alliance with fascists. Only the devil wins such a devil’s bargain.

How is one to tell the difference? Listen to the things they promise to do and understand that they make speak out of both sides of their mouth: promising violence to one audience and then toning down their rhetoric to another. But politicians speaking from within the tradition of liberty don’t need to speak that way because they don’t promise violence in the first place.

Listen for the promises of violence, the promises to suspend press freedoms, the promises to persecute political adversaries and when you hear them believe them.

I strongly recommend reading the whole article, as the author goes on to lay out two of the more common definitions of fascism and analyze, point-by-point, how Trumpism fits them.

There is a reason why some Republicans, even some of the people who were in Trump’s inner circle in 2016-2020, have jumped ship now. The Republicans who are willing to vote for Kamala aren’t doing it because she’s conservative – they’re doing it because they’re anti-fascist. It would be deeply ironic if people on the left who have been calling themselves anti-fascists for the last eight years proved to be less so than those Republicans. This may be one of the most crucial moments in American history. Take it seriously.

[souvenir116]

okay but why does no one talk about Max getting comserved while lando says shit in a more important press con and no one bats an eye.

[its-elvie-innit]

And then there are other moments wher3 you go oohhhhhhh no. O. Ohhhhhhh gosh.

it is so validating and real when you go six years into your screenshots and find an argument you still agree with your side on. Like yeah kid from six years ago. Merrow is NOT a nonbinary merperson. it's a guy in a red hat. Merfolk is a word you could've used. Good job little me

[centralcoastlandscaping]

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Central Coast Landscaping NSW CCL 6 Comserv Cl, West Gosford NSW 2250

[wildpeachfarm]

yeah mcyt twitter always houses comservative views under the guise of leftist activism. the terf rhetoric, the “people can’t change from ten years ago” shit they hold over dreams head, weaponizing racism and other forms of bigotry—all right wing talking points that have been “flipped” as a way for twitter left wingers to feel morally superior

I think it's really also just the twitter environment and how the site works these days. Elon is constantly filling people's FYP with conservative posts from random ass accounts and conservative things are getting boosted by the algorithm and being put in unavoidable sponsored posts and that site is just RANCID