How long until you start questioning if it will work and invite doubt? Or will you assume defeat if the vampire fills the gap with, “why, thank you my good sir”?

My understanding of the idea with many interpretations of magic is they are all just ways of focusing your will on the world.

Ergo, the words aren’t themselves the source of power, your expectation that the words will result in a certain outcome is.

Therefore, if your intention is to deny entry is strong, there could be a fairly good gap.

But on the other hand, playing around to try and see could create doubt and uncertainty, weakening the effect.

I see that fight too. Teachers still working despite the issues. Paying out of their own pockets to keep the system limping along. Trying to pack the wound of under supported education.

But there’s only so much you can do when your opponent vastly outnumbers you, and in fact now has the heavyweight punch of government behind it.

“Knowledge” is still being shared. The problem is we are eroding the difference between correct and incorrect “knowledge”, and as things change we are losing the support of the government that used to help with that.

“Truth” is now an opinion. Is Ivermectin a drug with some specific uses that may have had a secondary affected improving health for some patients who also had parasites eating at them, so they got a bit better because the parasites were dead and the immune response could work harder on fighting COVID?

Or is the truth that it’s directly a cure for COVID, cancer, and everything else, so buy it from the pet shop if you have to because “they” don’t want you to have it?

Different households will take different sides as truth. Different communities will take different sides as truth. And teach their young to make it their truth.

Government controlled education is a double edged sword. Right now we are upset that it is or could be used to push an agenda that we see as false, but we depend on a central authority to take in the advice of the educated and enforce true knowledge in the learning halls that educate our next generation.

Firstly, such unity would be hard to organize. Work culture down on the lower rungs where there would be people wanting change, are drowned in a conflict culture. Don’t talk about your wages. Unions are evils. You are Replaceable. The threat of termination is welded like a cudgel. One of my previous jobs had a point system. If you were late, point. Called out without enough sick hours and a doctor’s note? Point. Missed a shift for any reason and didn’t call in? 4 points. 4 points was terminated.

Would they actually follow through with it? A previous manager I’ve had absolutely would. Snow? Late? Should have shoveled your way over sooner. He changed someone’s schedule and they didn’t notice, failed to appear. Arguments were made, there was an appeal system after all to make it fair, right? They compromised on keeping the guy at 3 points. He spent the next while looking for a new job because he knew he was one mistake away from unemployed.

Would they fire the whole team for organizing? I think so. I think they’d quickly offer to re-hire their favorites while they picked up new blood but they’d do it. Everyone would be back on probation and back in line.

Another company taking over the country no longer has a fresh meat butcher department because they wanted to unionize years ago. Company made an example of them nationwide and now just does factory meat.

I agree.

But it’s a government system like any other, so like any other piece of it, the people in power ultimately decide what the people below get to have.

Public schools are being defunded and villainized by the powers that want them devalued and replaced with a different systems, where the rich can keep cash flowing through private schools the public gets their knowledge from what is approved by religion, with a preference on teaching the things that will improve dependence on and obedience to power.

The people in power are banning books, slashing budgets, using the already malleable to convince voters that teachers are the ones brainwashing their kids, that (public) education doesn’t work, so they can have another generation of under-educated malleable serfs.

Hopefully other countries can watch the US decay and learn from it, and keep systems like affordable and common healthcare and education available, so that at least some portion of humanity aren’t this gullible. The news is telling me about the attempts for this same crap to rise on other countries and I can only hope they hold strong.

And it is this way for a variety of reasons, be that lead in the gas and paint, or underfunded basic educational institutions, or overly profit-focused higher education.

Or political persons recognizing a dumb populace is easier to manipulate and make the road to power smoother.

The next phase is bringing back zealous doctrine. Time to replace the under-funded public schools with religious institutions, so that you are trained to follow faith blindly. Whatever “God(TM, a whoever corporation)” says will be the way forward. Of course, if you can pay the private school, you can be one of the wolves instead of the sheep.

To add one, have fun going to that rally when you are living paycheck to paycheck, working long hours with much exhaustion.

And if you did eke out the time to go do something, and get detained and prevented from coming back to work in time, you’ve lost your job. And your meager healthcare. Soon your home if you can’t bounce into another job.

That kind of living keeps people afraid of peeking outside the box.

For a non-violent option: Go to a rally or protest or something, yell for actual change. Talk your voice hoarse about injustice.

In the good ending, you sat there for a week, maybe were given weak platitudes from your target, and dispersed, went back to work, and were forgotten.

In the bad ending, you were called a disrupter, a terrorist, forced under militarized police order to disperse or have your life fucked up. Maybe you break under the pressure, maybe the situation devolves into a riot. You’ll never be taken seriously again.

For a violent option, look at the recent CEO thing. But even then, look at how disproportionately “justice” is dispensed. Because the victim was one of the elite, the case is being handled very differently than if a lowly serf killed another. An example must be made, of course.

Trouble is, would you consider someone best if they have imperialist values? Socialist ones? Would they require a Ph.D? And no matter what you answer, someone will believe the opposite. Who gets to pick the best of the best? In the current system, supposedly the common people do.

And they picked Felump.

Sure, stats say he wasn’t actually super popular, but the voters that could have gone another way made their vote too by leaving the box empty and giving him no opposition. To paraphrase Rush, “if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice”. So whether by checking the box or not, the people spoke, and here we are.

It’s a matter of perspective.

From your, and many rational being’s perspective, there being a felon for president is a bad thing. You trust the judicial system, you think they found and convicted rightly, so now we have a bad man in charge.

From the other perspective, the majority voting perspective, the judicial system has been usurped and politically weaponized, the trial was a sham and the conviction false. He’s not a felon, just an unjustly labeled political martyr. Or maybe even a felon is better than a woman, or, gasp, a colored woman! The racism and misogyny never died, just sat in the back until it was allowed to speak again.

Why do they think this? Well, why do you think opposite? Different upbringing, education, social media exposure, less lead in you/your parents?

The good ol’ Red Scare.

It’s not that there is superior heat output, it’s that there is superior heat collection and observation.

Not familiar with the meme directly, taking your attached picture example I can guess why they think it’s better:

It’s trapped closer to them.

Heat, that you recognize exists but usually rises out of reach of an uncapped candle, to the ceiling, is now trapped near the observation area. The pot is trapping it and radiating it much closer to the person thinking they’ve just solved the universe.

It’s observable. Like people who don’t understand the need for vaccines because they’ve never personally seen the disease the vaccine helped beat down, a majority of people struggle to grasp theory, and direct observation is all they understand.

Problem with that….

Whose idea of virtue?

You making a Catholic one? Buddhist? Right or alt-right idea of virtue? Lefty? Conservative values, socialist values? Etc.

Or is everyone going to make their own most virtuous AI and throw them in a virtual gladiator pit to finally decide whose (AI)God is right?