If it were real facts we'd just call them facts.

If it were real medicine we'd just call it medicine.

If it were real news we'd just call it news.

I'm not saying this rule always works, just sometimes.

If you live in NYC and you're a registered Democrat it's super important you vote in the primary. Early voting is already happening or you can vote on June 24 (last day). I recommend you do it early and get it taken care of as soon as you can.

NYC uses ranked choice for the primary, they allow you to pick up to five names. You should fully fill out your ballot if you can. If you can't decide on five names, don't sweat it, participating is the most important part. Here is a list of the candidates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_New_York_City_Democratic_mayoral_primary#Other_declared_candidates

You should rank the following names and rank them from #1 to #5, #1 being the person you like the most.

Zohran Mamdani, Brad Lander, Adrienne Adams, Michael Blake, Zellnor Myrie, Selma Bartholomew*

Urge all likeminded friends and family to participate in the primary. Never assume someone is going to vote, I've had times where I contacted people I knew were reliable Democrat voters and they told me if I hadn't asked them, they would have forgotten.

I recommend voting for candidates that you feel will inspire and motivate lots of door knockers and volunteers for the general election, that's why I endorse Zohran as the #1 choice.

The worst candidates should be entirely excluded from your ballot, this includes Cuomo who has a history of sexual abuse and also killing people in nursing homes. I would hope the conversation about not ranking Cuomo would stop here, this should be a dealbreaker for everyone but sadly some people might need more reasons. Additional reasons for not ranking Cuomo include the fact that he will almost certainly lose the general election. The reason why is because Adams is running as an independent. Cuomo and Adams are cut from the same cloth. They are both uninspiring and easy to attack. Democrats won't feel excited about the election and will stay home if Cuomo wins or Adams and Cuomo will split the vote since they both suck. You got to give people a good inspiring alternative to win.

In addition to Cuomo following names should not appear on your ballot:

Jessica Ramos: She endorsed Cuomo.

Scott Stringer: also has some sexual accusations.

Whitney Tilson: says he's a hedge fund manager right on the Wikipedia table.

Paperboy Prince: I wasn't sure if I should put him here but Wikipedia says he's a perennial candidate which usually means not serious.

* Selma Bartholomew seemed OK to rank but I could not find much information about her. She's not listed as a major candidate and this guide suggests not ranking her.

What's the difference between a German in the 1930s who said "I don't support Hitler's stance on Jewish people but he promised to make the economy great again so I'm voting for the Nazis" and a German who said "I fully support Hitler and I'm voting for the Nazis"?

What's the difference between a German who said "I don't support the regime's actions but this job at the weapons factory pays the bills" and a German who said "I'm fulling my patriotic duty building weapons for the Nazis who I fully support"?

What's the difference between a German solider who said "I don't agree with the regime but I'm just following orders" and a German solider who said "I'm doing this because I support the regime"?

The answer is not very much. Their actions accomplish the same end result and they're judged by history to be almost no different. The Nazis were in part comprised of millions of people who unintentionally or intentionally supported the regime with their small daily actions.

This time around things must be different. Make ensuring your actions don't support the Trump regime your mission. Be bold and speak out whenever you can. Teach others that silence is tacit consent in the regime's actions. Don't worry about imperfection, your actions no matter how small will make a difference. You could be grain of rice that tips the scale.

When you visit Twitter's website your browser is fingerprinted and tracked. Then instead of being able to see the Tweet you're prompted to login or if for some reason you don't get the login prompt you might be shown advertisements which fund Elon Musk's Nazi bar. Using a Tweet viewer solves all three of these problems: you're not being tracked by Twitter, you're not shown a login prompt and lastly no advertisement money going in Elon Musk's pockets.

This should be your routine if you must share a Tweet:

1. Search for the text of the tweet and see if the same person crossposted to another social media platform like Bluesky. If that person did instead prefer a link to Bluesky. Avoiding Twitter all together is the best option.

2. If you cannot find the Tweet on any other platform edit the link to strip it of any tracking parameters. Generally you can remove the part with the question mark and everything after it. Then replace x.com or twitter.com with xcancel.com or nitter.net or another similar Tweet viewer. If you're posting on your website never use Twitter's embed code because that can put Twitter's tracking on your website. Instead consider taking a screenshot and including a link using a Tweet viewer instead of a direct link.

3. You can now safely share that link.

Avoiding linking to Twitter shows empathy because you care that other people can see what you wanted to share and are not inconvenienced with a login prompt.

It's a minor thing but I've found that some accounts especially some of the bigger ones cross post to both Twitter and Bluesky so often times when someone shares a screenshot of Twitter the same exact post is available on Bluesky. I urge you to consider screenshoting the post on Bluesky instead of the Tweet. This helps support Bluesky and helps chip away at Twitter.

Here's an example: https://lemm.ee/post/65627384/20884823. Same exact post available on Bluesky.

When you're posting on Bluesky prefer quoting posts instead of screenshots of Twitter or even screenshots of Bluesky because quoting lets people watch videos if the original post has a video and because it helps support whoever originally made the post.

If you have a website consider taking a screenshot of the Bluesky post as a personal backup in case the post gets deleted later and embed the post instead of uploading the screenshot. The reason why is because there's a chance someone might register for Bluesky after clicking on the embedded post.

The book "48 Laws of Power" contains the exact answer for how you deal with fascists. It's rule 15:

Some people can be considered to be a “Dangerous Enemy”, and that if you do not vanquish the enemy totally that it will regroup, strong and better, and continue to attack you. Do not assume that everyone thinks, acts or behaves as you do. There are many kinds of people “out there” and some are very, very dangerous. Take no chances.

Crush your enemy totally. Don’t go halfway with them or give them any options whatsoever. If you leave even one ember smoldering, it will eventually ignite. You can’t afford to be lenient.

Kill or be killed. It’s the law of the jungle.

Fascism starts out as a fringe movement like as rule 15 says an ember smoldering, the flames spread and they grow until one day you wake up to a forest fire that has engulfed your country and left it in ruin.

That's why I'm calling on you to a fire extinguisher for fascists. Put them out with everything you got. The earlier you do it, the easier it will be.

I'll admit I don't have all the answers on what you can do about fascism and far-right extremists but I have a few suggestions:

1. Call it out and don't tolerate it. Don't put up with fascist friends. I highly recommend reading the Nazi bar story.

2. Ensure your dollars don't fund fascism. Boycott companies that enable or contribute to far-right extremists political parties. In particular I'd strongly recommend boycotting Twitter and Tesla and urging as many people to do likewise. Also try to reduce your fossil fuel usage however way you can.

3. Get to the root cause of why people turn to fascism and work to fix the societal and political causes for people turning to fascism. For example people feel left behind and the extremely wealthy are accumulating more power while some are barely getting by despite working hard everyday. The extremely wealthy realize what's happening and realize soon people will call for change so they create a scapegoat so people won't realize it's them who are really the cause of their problems. The solution is to ensure that people have their needs met, things like good healthcare, access to affordable nutritious food, good paying jobs.

4. Advocate for better education, teach people how to stop fascism and why it's bad, give people good media literacy, emotional resilience and intelligence, and classes designed to teach people how to recognize manipulation.

5. Advocate for laws banning fascism, ban things like overt hate speech, discrimination and far-right political parties that threaten your country. If laws are already on the books but are not being enforced demand enforcement of existing laws. I'd highly recommend reading about the Lapua Movement. The key reasons it was stopped was because people united against it and because judges banned it and imposed harsh penalties on those who were involved. This is why MAGA is trying to undermine our judicial system right now.

It's for sure a little bit of a longer read than news articles that typically get posted here but I feel it's still accessible and really can get people thinking about problems that cause democratic backsliding.

stabby_cicada made an interesting comment on how personal choice and leading by example can be combined with politics to effectively address climate change. This is a good article that combines the two approaches, it shows you some changes you can make along with reminding people the importance of voting, and being involved politically. The article mentioned the biggest user of fossil fuels in homes may be a gas fired furnace so if it's time to replace your furnace you may want to consider an electric heat pump.

One thing not mentioned in the article is if you have any incandescent light bulbs that receive regular use consider replacing them with LED. The payback period can be pretty fast for example if you replace a 60w light with a 10w LED assuming you use it for an average of two hours a day and you pay $0.20 kw/h you'll save $7.3 per year. This was calculated as follows:

(60 energy usage of old bulb - 10 energy usage of new bulb) * 2 hours per day average usage * 365 days in a year / 1000 to convert from watts to kilowatts * 0.2 cost per kwh = $7.3.

Over a 10 year period that's $73 in savings.

If the light bulb cost $2.5 to buy you'd break even in only 125 days (a little over 4 months) if we use the same usage assumptions.

Payback period can be calculated like this:

$2.5 cost of light bulb/(50 our energy savings*2 hours of average use)*(1000kw /0.2 price per kwh)

The article says:

Ken Griffin says Trump’s tariff strategy is eroding America’s global standing and investor trust in U.S. financial stability.

We already knew this was going to happen. On June 26, 2024 Reuters released an article with the headline "16 Nobel Prize-winning economists say Trump policies will fuel inflation". Trump campaigned on tariffs.

In my view this really undermines the creditably of Ken Griffin because an investor should be able to accurately asses information and determine its credibility to make proper investing decisions. Someone who falls for Fox "News" drivel wouldn't be a good investor. This is why Warren Buffet is outperforming other investors now, he properly prepared himself for Trump's tariffs.

Source for donation amount: https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/biggest-donors

You can see how much individuals associated with British American Tobacco contributed to campaigns. In 2024 it was over $26 million a vast majority of that going to Republicans. https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/british-american-tobacco/summary?id=D000067317 they also spent over $5 million in lobbying in 2024.

Some other notable quotes from the article:

In February 2021, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (OCCRP) published an investigation according to which trafficking of BAT cigarettes had helped finance jihadist and separatist groups in northern Mali using, among other mechanisms, a system of oversupplying the country with tobacco. This has allowed billions of cigarettes to be smuggled out of the country.

In November 2012, the Zimbabwean government arrested several people for spying on factories owned by local tobacco companies, including Pacific Cigarette Company (PCC). BAT's involvement was suspected but not proven.[76][77][78] Later that month, President Robert Mugabe accused BAT of spying and hijacking PCC trucks to "kill competition".[79][80][81] In September 2021, a BBC Panorama investigation found evidence that BAT had enlisted Forensic Security Services, a South African Security firm, to sabotage and surveil factories owned by competitors, including PCC. After the spies were arrested, BAT negotiated a bribe so that the government would release them from jail.[82][83]