It's a bad position to be in. If they crash it will be bad, but if they keep growing and then crash it could be worse.

According to Chenoweth, the number refers to peak, not cumulative participation. She also says 3.5% is not absolute – even non-violent campaigns can succeed with less participation, according to her 2020 update to the rule.

That's the opposite of what her update said (well, it's rather misleading). Her update noted cases where nonviolence failed even when they beat 3.5% - including one case that achieved 6% participation. She did note that most successful attempts didn't need to reach 3.5%, but also that reaching that is no longer a guarantee.

Her original research only went to 2006, there's been a few recent cases which broke the rule. Like she said in her update, history isn't necessarily a predictor of future results. I think there are also some very recent cases like Nepal where 95% of the movement is nonviolent, but violence at the very end of the movement tips the scale. (IIRC something similar happened with the Iranian revolution, though the results of that were decidedly undemocratic in the long run). There's some nuance with Nepal as well- the organizers did not choose to go for violence, it was largely an unplanned mob reaction.

Based on the totality of her research (which is publicly accessible and based on publicly accessible data), I still think nonviolence is more likely to achieve success than violence, but it really annoys me when articles like this one overstate the effects. It makes it really easy to tear apart the argument.

The politics of preservation is definitely an interesting one. I suppose one argument in favor of preserving more popular music is that there are going to be fewer popular tracks than unpopular tracks - and they're already at 300TB, which is nothing to sneeze at, especially since it's a third the size of their existing library of ebooks.

Do you think that all a mayor does is send press releases and give the key to the city to the Powerpuff girls? In NYC especially, local government controls a lot

Steam's business model does prevent it from pricing its consoles like Sony, Xbox, Nintendo, etc. since they need the console itself to be profitable, not just a means of bringing in games sales.

It's plausible that they're taking into account an uptick in overall game sales from this console - at least for me, I've been purchasing new games mostly off of steam rather than playstation/nintendo ever since I got a steamdeck - but you're right that they aren't going to sell at a loss.

Regardless of the price (and whether or not I even buy one), I think it's healthy to have another "big" player in the console market.

We are living in great times for small studio and indie games!

It has a little more gameplay than past telltale games with its dispatch sections (a bit of strategy, deciding which heroes go on what calls), but otherwise you are right, it's a fancy choose your own adventure game. They have done some interesting things with superhero tropes so far (e.g., superheroes working out of a corporate call center), but it's a bit early to tell if they'll subvert some of my expectations for the "final boss".

Hey man, the playing-pinball-while-a-cat-interferes peertube community is very close-knit (https://video.apz.fi/).

I kid, but it's true that peertube lacks the dopamine hooks and variety that youtube does. It's much harder to sink hours into watching a bunch of videos that you'll only half remember by the next day.

"Staying peaceful" and "fighting back" aren't mutually exclusive. Anyone who thinks nonviolent tactics don't work hasn't read up on their history (East Timor, Philippines, etc.). Every time ICE shows up to pepper spray cops and shoot at priests, local police gets more pissed, and they drive a wedge between local and federal law enforcement, weakening the administration's ability to project power. Don't underestimate that opportunity.

That being said, current actions are far more symbolic than transformative. No kings protests don't do anything on their own, but could easily be leveraged into an enabler of things like boycotts and general strikes which will have a strong impact.

Ah, but they were wearing a bright yellow vest! Be honest - would you think twice if you saw someone wearing a safety yellow vest and carrying a drill? Apparently there was construction going on nearby as well, so the basket lift didn't really stand out.

The assumption that you'll lose a lawsuit against a large corporation probably stops a lot of viable lawsuits from ever happening - good for him for giving it a go.

One of the factors in whether a nonviolent resistance movement can succeed or not is whether any state forces end up shifting loyalty. "Appealing to the moral sense of the people oppressing them" may be false if you're just talking about whoever's at the top, but it absolutely is a factor for the day-to-day bureaucrats and security forces. Nonviolent campaigns are more likely to cause these sorts of changes (particularly when violent crackdowns against nonviolent resistance backfires).

Consider the success of the following movements:

• Peoples Power Revolution (First one in 1986) - several military leaders defected from the Marcos regime
• Velvet Revolution (1989) - had several government officials defect
• Malagasy Political Crisis (2002) - Defense minister resigned, generals and military officers were split on who to support (source for this one, since the article is hard to find). In fairness, although this one would largely be classified as nonviolent, at the time, it was hard to say whether or not there would be any armed conflict (aside from some incidents with police attacking protesters early in the movement)

There's several other cases of this happening over the past century, but I hope you get my point - nobody's appealing to the guy on the throne, they're appealing to all the other cogs in the machine.