I mean, there could be a worse answer.

You know what, this would be easier if done in person. I have your address as ____. I’ll be by in ten minutes.

Granted, you have to tell/text me to find a time that works for both.

My nightmare: when I ask someone what times they are good for, and they give one specific time on one specific day.

How to really be Satan: send an important video note. Make it recorded outside with a lot of wind and background noise. Then, just to be fun, slow the video down to 80% playback speed, reencode it, and send that!

What if I send you a link to a video message I recorded and posted on YouTube? Also it has ads on it.

BUT, it is also pretty clear that direct speech is the most efficient way of communication when you don’t need a written record

That is simply not true. I’ve had many phones calls that would be far more efficiently done with a text or email.

That does make me wonder. What is the official Guinness World Record for the longest continuous sex act?

I just realized something amazing.

I’ve heard said that in a modern battlefield like Ukraine, where recon drones are ubiquitous and satellite data is better and better, that stealth effectively doesn’t exist. You know where all your enemy’s forces are with high accuracy, and they know where yours are. Even if this is an exaggeration, the fog of war does seem to be dissipating with time. Eventually, recon tech will be so good that there will be no point for even having camouflage.

So what this means is…WE CAN BRING BACK FABULOUS MILITARY UNIFORMS!!!

I think you mean the Mandala Effect.

The Native Americans would have been much better off if they had simply strangled Columbus and all his crew the moment they made landfall…

The problem with the fetishization of non-violence is that it ignores that most transformative non-violent social movements have occurred concurrently with violent co-movements. Ghandi preached non-violence, but at the same time, violent Hindu radicals were running around slitting the throats of every British official they could get their hands on. MLK preached non-violence, but the Black Panthers were waiting in the wings, offering a much more unpleasant option if MLK failed.

Violent social movements have very real tangible value, but their value isn’t in the violence itself. We’re not going to change the health insurance system through pure violence, no matter how many CEOs lay dead on the streets of Manhattan.

On the other hand, non-violent social movements rarely succeed either. Even the most modest, centrist, and conciliatory of reforms are derided as extreme or “Communist.” Look at Obamacare, a reform designed from the ground up to NOT disrupt the profits of the insurance or healthcare industries. This was a modest market-based reform that was originally a Republican reform plan. The right spent a decade going nuts calling it the second coming of Mao. And they still oppose it to this day. In the end it tinkered around the edges, but it was hardly transformative change.

The real value of violence is that it makes modest peaceful reforms much more palatable. The civil rights amendments and acts passed in the 1960s and 1970s would have never passed if there were only peaceful movements behind them. They amended the damn constitution! That took people on both sides of the aisle saying, “damn, we really need to change some things. This is getting out of hand.”

And that kind of broad bipartisan consensus that reform was needed was only possible because of the threat of violence. Violent radicals like the Black Panthers made MLK palatable to middle America. Without them, MLK would have just been another radical socialist to be demonized. And even then, they still killed him anyway.

The real value of violent social movements is that they make non-violent social movements possible. In fact, without violence, non-violent social movements rarely succeed. You need BOTH violence and non-violence if you want to make substantial change to the system. The violence puts the fear of God into the placid middle classes and wealthy corporate interests. This allows the non-violent reformers to show up with a solution to the problem that allows these centrist factions to feel that they’re not giving in to the violent radicals. Violence and non-violence are two sides of the same coin. And they are both essential.