BranBucket
The problem is that the more you fight change, the more you change things. Your movement becomes more and more focused on resisting change, and less focused on preserving any good qualities it once had. It’s an inescapable bit of futility, hard coded into the human condition.
The ship was built as simply as possible and fueled with the precise amount needed for it’s weight, there was nothing else to jettison besides the young woman. The plot was intentionally structured around an impossible scenario because the editor of the magazine the story originally appeared in wanted to subvert the “engineer action hero saves the day with a clever idea” trope that was common when it was written. The heavily contrived scenario is the weak point by most people’s estimation, but overall the writing is well done and characterizations are very good.
The story bugs a lot of people due to the total lack of any safety margin for such an important mission as delivering emergency medical supplies. A guy named Don Sakers even wrote a rebuttal called The Cold Solution that was meant to point out a few things the original story overlooked without the idea of a bare minimum ship being changed.
I live in deep red country, and work in a deep red career field, a lot of today’s Trumpers have never forgiven Obama for being black, popular, and competent. They took it personally. Harris is going to mobilize the fuck out of them.
I think she’s the right pick, I think she can govern well, I’m voting for her 100%. But the Dems need to be prepared. This was a dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t situation for them. But replacing Biden isn’t even a fraction of the work they’re gonna have to do, and AOC is on point for speaking up about it.
Small things you can do:
Document things. Download speeches and clips, save articles, pictures, record your own videos and photos. Keep your receipts, build a weather station, log the effects of this administration on yourself locally. Write a journal. Keep it all offline and be discreet about it. When they try to distance themselves from the inevitable fallout, you can share your own evidence, your own story, and throw it right back in their smug faces.
Take upward flowing money out of the economy any way you can. Repair, reuse, rebuild, swap, share, create, grow, buy local, take on a roommate, do anything you can to avoid pumping cash into the orphan killing, billionare making, machine. Stop feeding Google/Amazon/Meta clicks and advertising dollars. Get a used laptop. Put Linux on it. Get VPN incorporated in a country that doesn’t give a fuck about the US and pirate media. Better yet, make your own media and give it away. Starve the people who will profit off this administration and the chaos it’ll create as much as you can.
Practice opsec. Limit your online profile. Keep location services off. Don’t talk about how you can’t agree with Trump’s policies because the trans kid next door is a good person. Don’t tell people a trans kid lives next door to you. Get a dumb phone or use a privacy focused OS on your smart phone. You can learn how to install a custom ROM, I have faith in you. Help others do the same, make it harder for them to dox people and reduce the data they have to target propaganda and manipulative media with.