This is all very true, and I agree completely. But you’ve overlooked two very important factors that I can think of:

1. Many people attending these meetings do not have the authority to cancel them, and the people who do have the authority may not be receptive to this argument.
2. Some people will benefit from assisted notetaking even if the meeting was worthy of the time.

I’m neurodivergent and when I’m writing notes my brain shuts off audio processing. I literally can’t take notes without missing more of the meeting than I’m writing down. And unfortunately most people above me in the hierarchy can’t fathom writing a message instead of speaking for an hour.

Reminder that you can also do this if your rep voted against tabling to express support for what they’re doing and they they’re representing you well.

That’s awesome, I love how excited cats are about their favorite routines. Does she ever go sit there and look at you like she’s asking for something to sniff?

What a warm, loving thing to do for your companion. He got to keep some normalcy with the added comfort of being held by his person. Thank you for sharing, that made me happy.

Definitely, my cats love to sniff all of my cooked meals. I’ll bring it to them if they’re lounging to pay the sniff tax!

I normally set the grocery bags down when I get home and let them investigate before I put stuff away.

That’s good enrichment right there! Cats love to investigate new and interesting smells within their territory.

Might want to tone down the bigotry there. Criticize the government and the individuals running it, criticize the citizens that are supporting this genocide. Don’t make it about the ethnic group.

The effort you put into this is so impressive! What a lovely post to read.

I quite agree with what you’re talking about with local elections.

But you’ve misinterpreted what I’m mad about. I’m not mad that they don’t support progressives. I’m mad that the Democratic Party (the DNC, not your local party chairs) spends more time and effort demonizing and sidelining progressives than learning to work with us. That has effects all the way down to local primary elections where voters who have been fed anti-progressive propaganda are voting against progressive candidates.

What I’m mad about is not the lack of support, I’m mad about the absolutely ridiculous hypocrisy of a party clearly working against progressives at every turn and then blaming us when they don’t get their way.

As a side note, I’m also mad that the progressive movement has a lot of real shitty candidates in local elections. Many of them are clearly just absolute weirdos who shouldn’t be anywhere near an elected office. But a small movement isn’t going to have the reach everywhere. My House rep is progressive, and I get to watch as the person that represents me gets hamstrung by their own party time after time after time. And then the very same Party blames us for Donald Trump. It’s absolutely infuriating.

I am left of the Democrats, and do not feel represented by what they do (regardless of what they say). I vote in Democratic primaries to try to move the party left. I vote D in the general. But you continue to dismiss what I’m saying. You seem to agree that the Republicans trained their party to move to the right but act like it’s some crazy idea that the Democrats are doing the same thing? The wrong side is winning within the Democratic Party, and we’re all going to lose everything because of it.

I’m not saying they’re a shadowy cabal. They’re very openly anti-progressive, no shadows necessary. They spend so much of primary time shitting on progressives and then complain when progressives don’t want to vote for their neoliberal hacks in the general.

If you’re taking the “progressives are irrelevant” position, please make sure to never blame progressives for the losses of the Democrats. Not even nonvoters. If we’re not important enough to justify catering to, then we’re not important enough to blame. You don’t get to eat our cake and shit in it too.

Gonna continue to call bullshit here. The grassroots movement failing to gather momentum in the face of propaganda at the cost of the nation’s future is not the same as the Democrats blaming a minority for their own failures. Not even a little bit, can you please reflect a little on how absurd that claim is?

You’re also not comparing apples to apples here. First: the Tea Party was an unknown element, there hadn’t been a growing fringe movement like that within a major party for a century. The Democrats had the benefit of seeing that happen on the right. Second, the Republicans were willing to embrace the crazy of the Tea Party for the sake of their continuing victory. Very much in contrast, the Democrats are very clearly willing to sacrifice national victory in order to keep progressives down. Three elections in a row they’ve insisted on running the most centrist candidate possible, resulting two very predictable losses and one surprising victory.

Democrats insist on siding with money and corporations every time, their failures are their own fault, and very much also the fault of their supporters.

See the part about the Democratic Party actively working against progressives, to the point of funding propaganda against them. The Dems saw the Tea Party and care more about avoiding that with progressives than they do about running candidates that can either beat the Republicans or serve the people.

And from what you just said: you’d better have never once blamed progressives for losing the Democrats an election if you’re taking the “progressives are too weak” position.

Some of us have been trying. The masses tend to bully and tell us it’s all our fault, somehow. According to the Democrats and their base, progressives are simultaneously too weak and unimportant to listen to, and so powerful that we can swing entire elections. I’m still waiting to hear how that one makes sense.

Kinda horseshit. The Democratic Party needs to stop racing to the bottom and running candidates that are so bad they can only win against garbage like Trump. Because sometimes they’re even wrong about that. Apparently 2/3 of the time.

Neither “Playable” nor “Verified” status means no issues, unfortunately. It’s still good, but IMO the current rating system leaves a lot to be desired.

If Ukraine wants a breather they can agree to it knowing they need to stay alert for the Russians to break it.

If Ukraine doesn’t want to play that game, they can just say “we’ll agree to a ceasefire when you leave Ukraine permanently” and carry on.

Good for you, but still wrong. The party fucked up. It’s their job to win elections, and they had loads of opportunities over the last 10 years to act differently and chose not to every time.

It’s not the voters’ fault that a heavily corporate-friendly party doesn’t represent them well enough to reliably get votes. That’s some victim blaming thinking right there.

Uh, you missed a few steps. Like the people voicing concerns over Biden’s mental health and being told to shove it while the party hid him from public view as much as possible. And then when they couldn’t hide it anymore they still tried to gaslight us that we didn’t see what we just saw.

And then finally they succumbed to that public pressure when it was far too late to have an actual primary and rally as a party, instead being told to vote for someone who was candidate-by-default.

The Dems constantly try to pander to the right which only fuels their real enemy in elections: voter apathy. If they actually governed and gave more than lip service, they’d never lose another election.

I think Jerboa was being pitched as the best RiF alternative super early on in the exodus. I also found myself on it but it never clicked for me.

I was on Connect for a while but there were some things that were a bit harder than they needed to be with different account/instance/filter management. Moved to Voyager and I’m quite happy with it, very smooth experience.

This is very true. ALSO, if you think the Democratic party gives two shits about the economy for working class people, then I have a bridge to sell you.