u/Electrical_Sorbet_31

Background [OC]: The late Yale Anthropologist David Graeber (an anarchist whose father was in the anti-fascist anarcho-syndicalist 1936 Spanish revolution) was one of the lead organizers of the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests against the influence of money in politics. The protests occurred in the same year as the Citizens United landmark Supreme Court ruling that lifted limitations on campaign financing.

During the protests, and during other anti-globalist protests beginning roughly in the early 21st century (starting with the 1999 WTO anti-globalization protests in Seattle), there was a development in "black bloc" tactics among protesters, where protesters wore black clothing and personal protective equipment (like respirators and goggles) to make them harder to differentiate, to make them harder to identify, and for protection against riot control tactics.

Chris Hedges is a Christian socialist who criticized the use of the tactic in a Truthdig column called "The Cancer in Occupy", where he censured black bloc tactics. He characterized protesters who use the tactic as "anarchists" seeking physical confrontations with police; destroying property; resulting in uninvolved nonviolent protests being shut down; hijacking movements and destroying their moral authority; of being "criminal" and hypermasuline"; of provoking police to use riot control methods; and doing "what our oppressors want." His associate, activist Derrick Jensen, accused black blockers of destroying movements and using nonviolent protesters as "human shields"; said they "hate the left more than they hate capitalists"; said they are "nonstrategic" and "stupid"; and said "we have to go through the process of trying to work with the system and getting screwed. It is only then that we get to move beyond it."

Graeber's essay you are about to read is in objection to anti-black bloc arguments like these. I hope everyone enjoys the read!

This is half venting, and yes I know it evens out and I belong in my rank etc. But every time lately I've splitpushed as Camille, even in Emerald, my team just starts pushing mid without any consideration for numbers disadvantage or being behind in gold and gets team wiped, then we lose inhibs and the game ends shortly after. This has been the lose con of so many of my recent games. I'll tell my teammates not to overextend or fight without me while I get sidelane prio but they often don't listen. Maybe I need to spend more of my mental stack on babysitting my teammates with danger pings when they're overextending, but it's just so frustrating seeing everyone on your team die when it was so obvious where that play was headed.

It seems like in general even a lot of Emerald non-top players struggle with basic macro concepts like when to push a lane vs reactively farm, how to not contest ANOTHER SOLO LANER'S WAVE when there's an empty lane being pushed in, how to not dive 1v4 and die, etc. Three games ago I had an Emerald Leona walk into a frozen top lane and start pushing the wave while I was running back to lane from base, denying me CS. Two games ago my Jax jungle, with full build and elixer, was farming wolves on soul point. And last game my team, while behind, ARAM'd without any prio until we got quadra'd enough times for us to lose rather than playing strategically for lane pressure, jungle vision, a pick... anything. Even simple things like ending after a teamwipe and getting baron when their whole team is bot are hard things to recruit your teammates to get on board with. I might just be lowrolling today, but generally speaking it seems like top laners are better than any other role in the game at knowing where to be at the right time. It's just annoying having to know in the back of your mind you can't just lock in and make the right macro play and trust everyone else to play correctly because there's a pretty decent chance your teammates will get quadrakilled from a 4v5 they forced while behind. Does anyone else feel this way when sidelaning?

Obviously there's no one-size-fits-all answer, and of course dying as a general rule of thumb is bad. But for example as Singed, dying is generally okay as long as you were front-lining for the team or drawing pressure at a good time. As Heimerdinger if you die splitpushing and your team gets the drag, it's a good death. For Swain dying is okay if you do so in a teamfight.

But as Camille, I'm stuck in Emerald because I feel like I don't fully understand the champion. I have very good mechanics and sidelaning, but her teamfighting decision-making when she's not sidelaning is foreign to me. I.E. knowing when it's worth it to dive is the hardest part, since she's a diver with so many kill (and death) opportunities.

If both teams are waiting for someone to engage, what are you supposed to do? Are there any principles that guide you in these scenarios, like use E1 to bait spells and E2 to disengage to bait abilities for your team without dying? Because a lot of the time when I dive I just get one shot, which often feels like the right play when my team wins with enemy spells on cd but I'm also not sure there was no way of winning without sacking my champ. What do the best Camille players do? Are they just extremely patient and look for "clean" kills, or do they generally speaking have the Valorant Duelist mindset of "I'm going to die for the team here and it'll be bad for my KDA but win us the fight"? Or is it (likely) down to the comp, e.g. engage after my Amumu jg engages and preserve my KDA, but otherwise have a bad KDA if I'm the only frontline on the team?

The most common scenario when I play Rengar top is I'll win lane and then start roaming for teamfights since I'm not allowed to splitpush. But when I'm roaming, it feels pretty useless into teams that stick together when both sides are just waiting for a pick, especially if the enemy team has lots of armor champs. What are you supposed to be doing macro-wise as Rengar? I am Emerald on Singed / Swain / Heimer top and they have reference points I understand: as Singed you look for unexpected engage angles to force teamfights and you 1vX to draw pressure, as Swain you look to frontline teamfights and bait the enemy team into overtrading, as Heimer you look to splitpush / oneshot people from bushes for picks / oneshot objectives, but as Rengar it feels like if you have no frontline you're expected to engage for your team and just die, and if you do have a frontline there's lots of contingencies on being in the right spot in the map (near lots of brushes) with ult on cooldown + 4 charges to be able to get kills without help from your teammates.

And one more question: a big thing that drew me into Rengar before I started picking him up last month was knowing how he has the highest tower killing speed in the game with the right build, but the build was usually something pretty troll. Is there any way to utilize his tower damage for splitpushing, beyond the rare occasion when you're safely able to take a T2?

All three legend options look like they'd be great on Rengar, but Alacrity seems to have overwhelming consensus. What gives?

Hi there - I'm an Emerald Heimerdinger / Singed / Swain top player. I've been looking for an AD champ to add to my pool/potentially main for over a year but haven't found the right fit. I saw in a Coach Chippys video Jayce is good in Emerald+ if you have good mechanics, so I figured I'd try him out. He's obviously very hard, so before putting in more games and realizing I don't like him, I wanted to ask some questions:

• How good is Jayce at splitpushing? He feels like he takes towers quickly but I've seen others say he wants to simply clear waves and roam to teamfights/to poke.
• How well can Jayce itemize multiple builds, e.g. bruiser if your team needs a frontline? Going lethality every game, including into armor itemizers, feels rough.
• When everyone is 6 items, in your average game, is Jayce below average, average, or above average strength?
• His Q-E poke damage feels pretty underwhelming in the games I've played so far compared with AP artillery champs like Xerath or Zoe. Does his Q-E poke ever feel broken, or is it just one aspect of his kit that is only good when paired with the rest of his kit?
• Every time I try to trade early, I get outdamaged. How early, generally, can Jayce start going for kills? It's hard for me to create a lead when I get one shot every time the Renekton all-ins me.

I was prescribed SSRIs by my new provider since I've used them in the past without issues, but I keep getting this strange sensation like I'm being tickled inside my head or I just want to laugh uncontrollably ever since starting them. It's a feeling in the middle of my brain (psychosomatic), and idk what it is. Has anyone else felt this way on SSRIs? Does it go away? I'm taking escitalopram/lexapro, just upgraded to 10MG per day.

Microsoft came into the world creating wonderful new technology, and once they realized they had a monopoly, they began devoting their efforts to acquiring and destroying beloved IP. If they didn't want to be responsible for ESO any more, then why not just let the devs split off into their own company so they can maintain it themselves without firing hundreds of people? You may as well acquire an art museum only to get tired of maintaining your art and toss it all in a ditch off the side of the road somewhere rather than passing it off to someone else capable of taking care of it in your place.

But if we're being real, as long as the rich get richer, I am thrilled to see Microsoft needlessly destroying art that has brought so many people joy and comfort in such a difficult time. Thank you, Microsoft!! Hopefully Copilot 365 will be able to thrive using the fifty cents you saved with these mass layoffs!! Because you guys know what consumers really want - more AI! AI EVERYWHERE! AI in your file explorer, AI in your search engine, AI buttons on your keyboards, AI refrigerators, AI girlfriends, AI doctors, AI cashiers, AI TVs, AI to identify and persecute political enemies of the establishment make us much much safer, and AI to do art for us, because who needs art!?? Who needs games like ESO when AI can procedurally generate something that APPEARS similar to ESO instead??? I LOVE AI I LOVE MICROSOFT I LOVE MEGACORPORATE CONGLOMERATE OLIGARCH SOCIOPATH TUXEDO-WEARING BUSINESS DEGREE-HOLDING GONKASS FREAKS SYSTEMATICALLY DESTROYING THE WORLD ONE IP AT A TIME YESS GO MICROSOFT I LOVE YOU MICROSOFT MAY YOU THRIVE FOR ONE THOUSAND YEARS AND MAY YOUR PROFITS TRICKLE DOWN ON US AND BRING US ALL ETERNAL GLORY !!!!!!!!💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍🔥🔥💻🤝🤝🫨😳😁😁🤯🤯🤯🎉🎉🎉

I am 24 years old and have had many serious friendships (and relationships), but almost all of them at one time or another end abruptly due to some form of drama, so I have very few long-term friends. I look back at all the friends I've had and most of them are gone. I'm sometimes impulsive and handle conflict poorly due to hypomania which causes issues. I also am just such an emotional person due to this illness and it causes me to change my mind really frequently about people and whether I want them in my life, and then later on I look back and regret my decision. But beyond that, I usually try to resolve things first and only end things if I feel like the other person is uninterested in resolving them, which happens to be most of the time.

But my question is: why at the start of any drama do people escalate things so quickly into some form of irreversible drama? Even though I don't always handle conflict the best, others always seem to escalate it and attack. Why do people never want to communicate our way through issues? Why is half of the human population cruel and sociopathic in their treatment of other human beings? Why do people derive a sense of joy from putting people in their place? Why do people enjoy harming others as much as they do? Why are people so judgmental, evil, and condescending? I don't think you should ever fully trust another human being. People are all evil and selfish and will betray you, except a select few that only temporarily will be kind to you until it's no longer momentarily convenient, or at least that's how it feels. But no one else sees things this way so clearly there is something wrong with me, unless all of my friends happen to be evil people. Idk has anyone experienced this?

Microsoft accounts are tied to an email they don't let you change. In circumstances like mine, where my dad set me up with an email when I was a kid and canceled this email when I was older, this basically means my account is stuck using a canceled email I no longer have access to. This includes my Minecraft account I've been using since I was a kid. Back before the Mojang acquisition, Minecraft accounts worked normally, but ever since Microsoft consumed Mojang and forced Microsoft accounts into their system, I now have to synchronize 5 accounts with 8 step verification that takes 90 minutes to get through every time I want to log in while unable to remove an email I no longer have access to from the process. It's ridiculous how poorly designed and frustrating to use Microsoft's most basic systems are. Didn't they pioneer computers to be sleek, technically competent, and just generally cutting edge? What happened?

What prompted me to post was how I missed one of the largest protests organized in a year in my city despite being on the Instagram app for a full hour earlier today and following hundreds of activists and organizers, many of whom posted about it before it happened. In 2024, I would see every protest announced by people I follow the moment it was announced (because that's how the app should work).

Now, Instagram's algorithm has completely stopped showing me any political posts and I've started to miss protests as a result, only hearing about them on the news after. Lots of activists I know no longer have any idea when a major protest is happening because the algorithm no longer shows them these posts. An SJP organizer I knew told me shortly after the Palestine encampments that people suddenly stopped being shown their posts on the algorithm. I noticed this at around the same time, but it's gotten much more noticeable during Trump's time in office. It felt like a progressive process rather than something they turned on all at once so that it's harder to identify.

I'm so fucking tired of social media platforms, one by one, falling to the US government. After I briefly reinstalled TikTok for the first time since deleting it when Trump's billionaire and pro-Israel friend Larry Ellison took it over, it told me I was banned (I also followed political content on TikTok). No reason was provided and no appeal process was made visible. I have no idea why but my suspicion is that I was banned because I used the platform to create private collections on the app of video footage of police attacking protesters called "Police Abuse" or something along those lines.

So now I use Instagram as my main social media platform, which is the main public platform currently used by activists and protest organizers in the US. But now that it's actively suppressing political information, where are we supposed to go instead? Reddit is much less consistent for organizing, and the government is coming after that now too. There's literally nowhere left to organize except for encrypted Signal chats the FBI is infiltrating to expose protest organizers' identities (I am not lying about this, look it up). They're trying to make it impossible for us to resist, and they're doing a great fucking job because every multi-billion dollar corporation in the country is kowtowing to Trump in exchange for private favors.

And it's insane to me how much activists are feeling oppression right now in a way that the rest of people simply don't understand because it is never reported by mainstream news outlets. Europeans say "I can't believe Americans haven't gotten rid of Trump yet!" as they're actively sending FBI agents to protesters' and journalists' homes for protected First Amendment activities.

One of my friends was literally expelled from college for their criticism of Israel and has received police visits at their home. And I had police posted outside my house after I was detained by police in an unmarked police car for hanging up a protest poster on campus after a Palestine encampment and I later had to go through student conduct. Another one of my friends at college, an immigrant student who was also detained, was threatened with expulsion and the university contacted ICE. A Palestinian girl I knew, a very sweet person who was a student organizer, was doxxed and has had more bad interactions with police than anyone else I know. I realize these are a bunch of big claims that sound inflammatory and outlandish, but everyone involved with activism has these types of experiences or stories that do not receive any significant coverage or discussion in the mainstream media.

After the Palestine encampments, I was dumbfounded by how the movement seemed to immediately die, so I asked people about why this happened eager to keep the momentum going at the start of next Fall. But one of my friends summed it up well: he said the people who were attacked and arrested by police, zip tied, thrown in a jail bus, and threatened with criminal charges. And they never want to experience that again in their entire lives. And the people this happens to are always the people who are most active and involved, leaving a power vacuum in the community when they back away with no one ready to step in and take their place. And if you do civil disobedience and get arrested, you get put on probation, meaning if you're arrested for civil disobedience a second time you get put in jail.

Because it's easy to look from the outside and say "well that's just a risk you have to take!" But no one seems to actually understand how horrible this violence inflicted on protesters is because the language we use to talk about this stuff is so incredibly whitewashed with vague bureaucratic language. For example, there was one person I knew of who the media reported the police "arrested" (and that was the end of it). The outlets made no mention of how this involved police tackling them to the ground, gathering around them placing knees on their back, and ziptying them, putting them in a cold metal jail bus for hours where they experienced someone pass out and hit their heads, worrying this person had just died as the police ignored their requests for paramedics.

And it doesn't help that wherever you go if you're in a city in the United States, there are police cameras literally everywhere. It no longer feels like you can walk around unnoticed by the government. It feels like we are in a panopticon where we are being passively surveilled at all times and so you never want to act out of line because you never know whether they're going to make an example of you next. When I graduated from college, I walked around campus, and the only thing I could focus on was just how many more police cameras had been installed on campus since freshman year, with at least 3 cameras watching you from multiple angles at all times no matter where you go.

And if you hold a peaceful protest, here's a secret a lot of people don't know: the police have the authority to declare protests unlawful at any time for literally any reason at all, as long as they call it "disorderly conduct" (or at universities, "violating campus space rules"). There is no protection for free speech. The police do this all of the time, and whenever they do, people usually freak out and disperse. But this isn't reported on in the media or considered "violence" in the mainstream because the police threatened violence rather than having to engage in it. And threatening to arrest someone and give them permanent criminal charges that all future potential employers will see for the rest of their lives is usually enough to scare off a crowd.

Every day I wake up I have this feeling of dread about what's happening and feel afraid of how much worse this is going to get if it continues, and it will get worse because nothing we are doing right now is working. Our country is so incredibly fucked up that at this point we are basically authoritarian, and the average American, now finally sensing this, is choosing to bury their head in the sand because they don't want to think about the implications of fact that we now live in an authoritarian country that does not protect free speech.