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Y'all been watching Smartypants on dropout?
  • Love it, big fan (except the one about eggs)(im-vegan)

  • Best way to talk to lib friends about Taiwan?
  • I don't think it's that important to press, if they want to put self destruct mechanisms on factories, it doesn't really matter. But what the majority of people want is maintenance of the status quo, not formal independence. The status quo of deliberate ambiguity has worked well enough for the past 40 years, and I fail to see how deviating from that would benefit anybody, except through scoring political points.

  • Anyone have any thoughts on this Twitter thread about the persistence of status?
  • This is complete nonsense. To prove even one of the points they're making, they'd need at least as much evidence and analysis as the entire thread. They're just cherry-picking random pieces of data and jumping from one case to the next, acting as if they've sufficiently proven each one in turn. It's just a gish gallop.

    Probably the most absurd piece of "evidence" they present is the picture of the night sky of the USSR, which is correlated with the number of prisoners from various areas. Because both of those are correlated with total population, obviously. This is literally their sole piece of evidence regarding the question of whether "elites bounced back" in the USSR, before moving on to the next point!

    The next point is about the landed gentry in the South after the abolition of slavery. Everything they say about this is irrelvant because there was never any attempt to eliminate these people as a class. There was no land reform or anything like that, and because of it, freed slaves sometimes found themselves in a position where they had little choice but to keep working for their former slavers, for a wage. Of course the rich "bounced back" from that.

    This is how conspiracy theories work. You find one extremely tenuous piece of evidence that shows how a major event validates what you want to believe, then, without any consideration of other explanations for the evidence, or other evidence that might invalidate your conclusion, you immediately move on to the next thing.

  • bUt BoTh SiDeS dA sAmE - Lemmy.World
  • They'd accuse you of being a foreign agent/bot

  • Locked
    Bulletins and News Discussion from May 13th to May 19th, 2024 - The Blazing Furnace - COTW: Vietnam
  • Oh yeah we're both into map games. I recently kinda got him into Vic 3.

  • Locked
    Bulletins and News Discussion from May 13th to May 19th, 2024 - The Blazing Furnace - COTW: Vietnam
  • the only weird part is rural disdain

    I think it's because he grew up in the South and got bullied a bunch in school.

  • Locked
    Bulletins and News Discussion from May 13th to May 19th, 2024 - The Blazing Furnace - COTW: Vietnam
  • This is a personal thing but I'm trying to parse my brother's politics and I need help. I just had a conversation with him about geopolitics where I was talking about like, Ukraine should accept territorial concessions (and should have from the start), a one state solution is the only viable path for peace in Palestine, our leaders' and governments' interests are completely divorced from those of ordinary people, and the military-industrial complex is a cancer and I'm worried that the US will start WWIII with China to maintain hegemony - and he didn't 100% agree with everything but there was way more common ground than I ever encounter regardless of whether I'm talking to a lib or a chud.

    At the same time, he's super Catholic and culturally chauvanist and is in love with Austria under the Hapsburgs. He's gen X, works in tech, and frequents Hacker News. He drives a Prius and is a long-time Musk-hater. He reads a lot of books and his bookshelves include Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, a book by the War Nerd guy, and a book called The Chief Culprit which blames Stalin for WWII. He was super ahead of the game on COVID and was stockpiling food and PPE in January 2020. Years ago I remember him describing his politics as similar to the German CDU (we're USian).

    There's plenty to hate about his politics but he's one of the only people I know irl who I can talk geopolitics with beyond cable news level bullshit. We share a lot of disdain for US culture war stuff and how it gets exported around the world.

    Does he fit anywhere in the type of guy taxonomy?

  • Confirmed: Karl Marx was a poster
  • Tagline this immediately.

  • Judith Butlerian Jihad now!
  • Beautiful, no notes.

  • No it wont
  • The West will soon pay

    John Bolton go on Hexbear

  • Babies being born without employment is a waste of resources.
  • Murray Rothbard, yes. The guy who coined the term, "anarcho-capitalism."

    "the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children".

    "the existence of a free baby market will bring such 'neglect' down to a minimum"

  • Babies being born without employment is a waste of resources.
  • Used to be if you wanted to sell baby futures, you just had to invest in coal.

  • Babies being born without employment is a waste of resources.
  • If someone doesn't care enough for their baby to feed it, they would simply sell their baby on the baby market to somebody with a use for it. Checkmate commies ancap-good

  • Europe? More like Bisexualope
  • Really passing on the opportunity to coin "Eurbisexual" smh

  • title
  • Problematic kink, he's literally just sunday-friend

  • What's with the chud hypocrisy gotchas?
  • Chuds are dumb and also don't care at all if what they're saying is actually true, it's bad faith gotchas all the way down. Rhetoric is a game to them, with zero consequences except getting to feel smug. They'll happily adopt whatever position let's them get an own in, even if it means ridiculous stuff like insisting everyone be "pro-barricade" or "anti-barricade" regardless of context. Don't ever go in assuming you can reason with them, just post PPB and tell them to post hog.

  • LMAO THIS BANGER FROM 3 YEARS AGO
  • "Reportedly" means "I'm super extra lying," in the same way "but at what cost?" means "I'm actually saying one true thing this time"

  • Correcting libs on CCP vs. CPC
  • There's a typo in your post:

    • CCP = Communal Communist Party
    • CPC = Communist Party of Communism
  • Wait, protests aren’t productive??
  • We need to give more money to the IDF, for training, so they stop accidentally killing so many civilians

    (Typing out "we need to give more money to the IDF" made me want to puke)

  • Maoist Standard English learner, looking for help with translations

    I know some of the basics but I'm still confused about certain rules. When does an S become a SS and when does it become a $ (and what about $$)? I also don't know how to handle words that don't have an S or a K in them.

    I was hoping to translate the core BDS list, but some of them are proving challenging:

    • HP (Hewlett Packard)
    • Siemans
    • AXA
    • SodaStream
    • Ahava
    • Sabra
    • Puma
    • Israeli fruits and vegetables

    I was thinking something like HeWaffen PacKKKard and SSodaSStream but I'm not sure about the rest.

    Thanks.

    Edit: Forgot to list Puma

    11
    How to deal with street preachers?

    I'm going to an event soon and the last time I was there there were some of those awful street preachers with megaphones shouting bigotry. They're a nuisance and nobody wants them there, but it's a public festival and evidentially they're allowed to be there.

    I tried looking online (!reddit-logo)and most of the advice was stupid lib shit, ranging from, "Call the cops and tell them they're violating statute blah blah blah" or, "Just ignore them, you can't change their minds and engaging just feeds their persecution complex." Obviously the cops do nothing, I don't care about changing their minds or what they think I just want to shut them up. But I also don't want to get arrested and if possible, it'd be nice to avoid disturbing the other people further.

    Most likely, I'm just gonna have to endure it, but I thought I'd raise the question for brainstorming bc it feels like a common enough situation that other people will encounter it too. Best I can think is screaming something back at them !emilie-shrug

    UPDATE: I ended up just wearing a bunch of pride stuff and then they weren't even there lol

    45
    PSA: The secret magic word to make Hexbears disappear is "Disengage."

    That's it. Our instance requires us to stop responding if you explicitly ask us to. It's right here buried in our Code of Conduct

    >Any discussions may be opted out of by disengaging.

    In the past, this rule has only applied to the specific user you say it to. I'd like to suggest going forward that if someone on another instance uses it, we treat it as applying to all of us.

    Unfortunately this rule wasn't communicated clearly before, so I'm making this post for visibility.

    Edit: As the comments clarify, this has to be done in good faith, typically just a one word "disengage" comment. If you add more stuff to the discussion and then say "disengage" at the end, you're not disengaging, it's a way to put a stop to a toxic argument not to get the last word in.

    7
    I Got Bullied By Authoritarian Socialists On Hexbear

    I don't usually use forums or Lemmy, I usually just post comments on SocDem blogs but they didn't seem appropriate places to post my story. So here goes, I just wanted to share this with all of you.

    Aug 8 I checked out Lemmy, I did lemmy.world then lemm.ee then hexbear.net next. I am an SocDem so I wanted to see socialists in these places. Yes, I know they are different kinds of "socialists" and not really full socialists like us. I went to Hexbear, which everyone knows is famous for its revolutionary socialism.

    We started talking about politics and socialism. I was trying to talk about the right, they were like yeah no doubt the right was bad. But they wanted to talk about Western hegemony, Western hegemony this and that. This is when we started to get into a debate.

    I told them that what they called Western hegemony is different from the rules based order. They said the rules based order is Western hegemony. And I said I agreed. That is what I am saying. Real Western hegemony is a rules based order. And they said yes, that is what we are trying to get rid of. And I said no, but we don't even have that right now. We need more Western hegemony. And everyone at the same time was like "nooo" we are socialists, we are against Western hegemony. Socialists oppose Western hegemony. And I said but not social democrats. Social democrats are the socialists who support NATO.

    I think that is when it started to get a really bad vibe, really tense in the air. The hegemony thing was funny, we disagreed but I think they thought I was just confused. Everyone was uncomfortable now. Then someone said the rules based order won't allow international solidarity. And I said exactly, that's it, international solidarity is against the rules based order. And they kind of agreed, and said yes, we don't have real international solidarity, just imperialism, and we needed to respect Russian security concerns. I said no, we need less support for Russia, Russia is the enemy. And we need to defeat Russia to have socialism. Then they were all like "noooo" again. You know that thing people do in groups when everyone all says "nooo" or expresses some disapproval at the same time.

    And one of them said "but Putin is a neoliberal transphobe" and then they kind of spoke back and forth in emojis. I didn't really understand it. And they asked me what I meant.

    So I said okay, I had the floor, I was going to tell them about social democracy. I tried to explain to them that Putin was exactly like Hitler and that China is genociding Uighurs. I said the democrats have our best interests at heart and they had to increase military spending to counter foreign threats. They are trying their best. They said what do we want instead of communism. I said we want to defend the international order against anyone who defies it. They said that is what we have now. I said no, it would be even better. One of the guys said it was imperialism. And I said it is not imperialism.

    Eventually one of the posters spoke up. He said he knew what social democracy was and that we were basically fascists. He asked me if the IMF should be the only choice for developing counties. And I said yes. And he asked me if I thought people outside the imperial core were brainwashed. And I told him yes. He said what about immigrants and racism. And I said that that wouldn't happen under Western hegemony. But yes, Democrats could put immigrants in cages if they wanted to. They had to respect Western hegemony.

    Then he called me a fascist again, and someone else said I was a fascist. And then they basically all started shouting fascist at me, and one of them posted a pig with shit on it's testicles and told me to go fuck myself. I remember yelling "you're being authoritarian!" and things like that. "Stop suppressing my free speech." Then the mods banned me for 1984 years.

    So they were rude and authoritarian. I knew the tankies were not real socialists, but I never knew they would do something that bad.

    18
    Surrogacyposting every day until Hexbears stop trying to control women's bodies, day 1: Reddit AMA

    >I talked to my boss when I first got hired about being pregnant and doing my job. It was a very physical job with long hours and could be quite dirty, but many women did it pregnant. He agreed with me that pregnancy was no hindurance to the job. For over a year I talked about becoming pregnant and he assured me it was okay. On the day I was supposed to fly out to meet the parents, he informed me that he would let me go if I went. I had my shift covered, everything was in line. I was dumb founded when he said that if I thought he was going to let me work there pregnant I was wrong. All that time he had been fine with it. So I prodded, trying to find out what changed his mind. His wife even did the same job while she was pregnant with their son! His response was "but she didn't sell the baby." He wouldn't let me explain, talk to him, or show him why he was wrong. He just told me to leave. I loved working there until that day and no amount of money could have brought me back after that. Selling my baby?? So far from the truth!

    Based leftist boss fighting against human trafficking?? :so-true:

    I mean, I gotta admit, like if someone's boss found out they were involved in selling children off to Little St. James and fired them, and I doubt anyone would fault them for it. And based on the thread we had the other day, it seems like a lot of this site believes that surrogacy is "literally buying babies" or equivalent to Murray Rothbard's "free market for infants" - or at least, a bunch of you think that's a reasonable position to have. So I'm curious if any of the 50 or so people who upbeared that thread see any problem with that boss's decision to fire his pregant worker for, as you would agree, "selling her baby." I'm curious to know if you'd make the same decision in his shoes, and if you see any problem with that situation - other than of course, that he couldn't hand her over to the cops as well.

    I guess I'm just trying to better understand your positions. Like, is this something that you actually believe, or is it a superficial, exaggerated rhetorical flourish that you know is bullshit but use anyway because it provides a pretext for infringing on women's rights? You know, like "abortion is murder?"

    I also wouldn't mind hearing from some centrists and moderates on the issue. Those who think both sides have a point, between, "Surrogate mothers are engaging in human trafficking by returning a child to their biological parent," and, "Surrogate mothers have a right to bodily autonomy." Is there one side that you think is more reasonable, or are you a true centrist, right in the middle of those two, equally extreme positions?

    While I'm at it, I'd also like to open up the discussion more broadly. Is there anything else women's bodies do that you think is immoral, or maybe just plain gross? Anything else you think ought to be illegal? I'm really looking to hear from some men here, because I feel like we never get their perspective on that.

    Anti-surrogacy is just anti-choice for anti-natalists.

    1
    I stole gay porn from work (follow up)

    Several people asked for a follow up after I asked if I should do it. Well, I did it. It didn't go quite as smoothly as it did in my head, but the important thing is that I saved the yaois and didn't get caught. Gay crime committed successfully

    :mission-accomplished::mission-accomplished-1::mission-accomplished-2::mission-accomplished:

    Posting about it might be dumb, but even if someone doxxed me, nobody else at work knew it existed so I'm pretty sure they'd just look like a crazy person. If anyone asks, I made this story up for Hexbear clout, also it was a satirical parody about capitalism's wasteful tendencies, also it all happened in Minecraft.

    Another funny angle to this story: years ago, I lived in Japan for a bit, and collected way too much stuff and tried to ship it back in a huge overstuffed box. The box burst open, and I lost most of what was in it - including some NSFW yuri stuff. Once, my gay porn wound up in the hands of a random warehouse worker. Now, I'm a random warehouse worker, and someone else's gay porn has wound up in my hands. The circle is now complete, the cosmic balance is restored. Just like the Biblical story of Job, the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away :theory-gary:

    I'm not quite at a place where I can inspect my haul throughly, so I will provide more details on this story as it develops.

    25
    Should I steal gay porn from work?

    So I work at this warehouse that salvages old technology, like when a company gets rid of stuff they send it to us and we sort out what's scrap and what's valuable. Sometimes, we get random office supplies like stress balls or desk organizers or whatever, and generally we either throw them out or swipe them to have at our workstations.

    Well, today I was going through a box and I found some weeb stuff, like anime posters and stuff. There was a big Monster Hunter: World book, a book about sushi, one about Edward Snowden, just random stuff. Then I see a book with Lelouch from Code Geass with his hand on Suzaku's chest, and at first I think it's just an art book because the official Code Geass art is super homoerotic, but nope. Turns out, I found someone's porn stash. And it's all in mint condition (thank god).

    So like, rationally, I should just throw it away, right? But then goblin brain just starts screaming at me, "You have to save the yaois!" It's not even, like, if I just wanted that stuff I could buy it, but like, gay porn that I stole from work is like, that's a fucking magic item. It's like, the story, the bragging rights, it's just this impulse. Also I hate throwing stuff away especially when it's like brand new, and the (sfw) Monster Hunter book looks like I could sell it for like, $80 or something if I could get it out. So for now I just put it in an inconspicuous box.

    Should I do gay crime??? I would have to get it past security, but they're mostly concerned about metal items. Should tell someone I found "some books" and see if I can get permission? Should I just forget about it because it's dumb and irresponsible??? Help.

    4
    Raises are worth so much more when you're poor than people realize.

    I feel like the bizarre, nonsense logic of capitalism does a lot to obscure how much of a difference even a small increase in wages can make for people. Like, many people may see it as, a $1 raise for someone making $10/hr is the equivalent of a $2 raise to someone making $20/hr. But this is totally wrong.

    The problem is that this accept the capitalistic logic in which everything is a commodity and all desires are the same and equal. You get your paycheck, and you may choose to spend it on food, video games, shelter, Funko Pops, you know, whatever you want. Obviously, this is a false equivalence. A certain standard of living is necessary just to survive and remain healthy enough to work. Since that standard of living is a prerequisite to working, treating it as just another option of what luxuries to buy makes no sense.

    Rather, since people will have to spend a certain amount of money on necessities, then we can treat that money as earmarked from the moment they collect their paycheck. Which means that, rather that saying, "You get paid $10/hr," from another perspective, we can say, "Your boss provides you with room and board and transportation, and then an additional $1/hr." I know these numbers aren't super accurate, but just for the example to get the concept, if we say that $9 is what you need to survive, then at $10/hr you're really making "Necessities + $1/hr," and an increase from $10 to $11 is not merely a 10% raise - it's double what you were making before (after necessities).

    The cost to provide the basic necessities does not increase as people get wealthier (contrary to what many economists seem to think), so you can subtract the same amount from the $20/hr wage and see that that person makes "Necessities + $11/hr." To get the same doubling of discretionary spending as a $1 raise at $10, you would have to go from $20 to $33. Which is fucking wild. As far as I can tell the biggest challenge to this is defining the cost of necessities, which can vary from place to place, but otherwise it sees to check out, conceptually.

    The lesson here is that the law of diminishing returns is way more powerful than people give it credit for, and that a job that pays even a little bit more can make a big difference for a lot of people.

    0