It's weird to juggle anywhere, but you shouldn't let that stop you cause everybody's weird in some way or another and that's fine. A park seems like as good a place as any.

Here's a tip: don't shove that phone in my face unless you want it smashed.

Joining a book and 2 movie clubs was one of the best things I've done in recent years. The book club sadly fizzled cause people didn't have time, but we have a bi-weekly movie club where we pick complex, difficult movies and talk about their themes and such, and a monthly kung-fu movie night where we just hang out and watch silly movies, and they're the highlight of my online week.

You know any discord servers for readers of sci-fi? I've looked around a couple times and the ones I've found are either tiny and inactive or huge and have way too much going on.

But it tends to be interpreted as “authority I disagree with”

I disagree with most hierarchical forms of authority, so at least statistically that seems like an adequate definition.

Conservatives have gleefully used the term

I dunno if you've noticed this, but conservatives don't seem to care much about where they get the words they turn into weapons or what they might've originally meant, so I wouldn't use them as a yardstick for the general meaning or utility of a term.

Capitalist growth drive contains the seeds of its own destruction.

I think you might've missed my point. You replied to my joking comment about authoritarianism by asking who would win between an authoritarian and an anarchist. I was countering by pointing out that we obviously care a lot more about things like justice than merely who would win, otherwise we would all back capitalism because it's winning like gangbusters right now despite being pretty unjust. The fact that it might stop winning some day really doesn't have much bearing on the point about only backing winners though, does it? I choose to assume that you've misunderstood, because the alternative is to assume that you are acting in bad faith in trying to distract from the original point.

It can’t just be vibes based individualism

Dismissing a whole-ass rich and nuanced political philosophy as 'vibes' - twice now - is not making me terribly inclined to continue giving you the benefit of the doubt for much longer though.

I think history has shown that authoritarianism tends to be pretty successful, not that that means it will continue to be so. But even if that wasn't the case, if we only cared about what succeeds we'd all be deliriously happy with capitalism, wouldn't we?

Yeah, what's a little authoritarianism between friends?

I got caught stealing cigarettes.

I was like 16 I think and a delinquent to be sure, but not a very smart one. I was out of smokes and went to the grocery store to get more, grabbed a pack off the shelf, then realized the woman who usually kept an eye on the smokes wasn't around so I started eyeing those cartons. I shoved 4 of those fucking things into my jacket, it was so obvious it was funny, and naturally they caught me on the way out and called the police.

I was also drunk at the time (listen, it was the 80s, it was a different time..) so I ended up having to take some bullshit 6 week class and go to AA meetings for 3 months which sucked, but by far the worst was when the police walked me up to the house and it was clear that they had already talked to mom cause man she was pissed. I don't even remember what the punishment was, but instead of yelling at me or lecturing and guilt-tripping me she just sat there not even looking at or talking to me for like an hour, and that was the worst.

I think there is no evidence. Witness testimony is not it itself sufficient evidence to convict someone of a crime, why should it be enough to convince you that physics-defying aliens exist in the universe and somehow, for some reason, came all the way across the galaxy/universe/whatever to.. what.. fly around and make pretty patterns in the sky?

Do I believe there is other intelligent life in the universe? Yes, statistics alone suggests there should be.

Do I believe it's making crop circles and buzzing F-18s for giggles? Almost certainly not.

Do I believe some guy saw absolute incontrovertible proof that aliens exist and somehow both failed to acquire any of it to present to the world and failed to be credible enough to be arrested or otherwise silenced by the people who care a whole lot about the leaking of classified info? Absolutely not, not under any circumstances.

If aliens exist and are here and you've seen them then the best advice I can give you is next time grab a fucking button off a control panel, a blood sample, a piece of metal we don't know how to make, like literally anything, because we've been drowning in bullshit witness testimony on this subject for most of a century now. I don't care how credible you are, If 99.99+% of people who talk about aliens are crazy/hoaxers/attention-seekers/etc, the odds are pretty good you're not the <0.01% who is totally legit. So without some actual, physical evidence I'm going to go ahead and assume that you're a crackpot regardless of your credentials.

Because the US congress is not in the business of speaking out against policies they support, and 'geopolitical interest' (ie, imperialism) will garner their support almost no matter the cost, especially if the people bearing the burden of that cost are not voters they need for reelection.

Sorry, are we under the impression that Israel after killing north of 50,000 people, most of whom are children, is in any way civilized? I guess that's what delusion will do for you.

Heh, I worked in IT for many years, I remember the days of obsessive wipes of Windows machines to restore ghosted drive images because users couldn't keep from installing malware or other bullshit on their system. One guy I had to wipe it every day for a fucking week straight to get the message across, and only then because he came whining to me about resetting his machine again and I got fed up and gave him what-for.