I’d argue the propaganda campaign against the USSR was significantly stronger than the one currently going on against China, and that’s why it’s so much harder to find valid information.

Thanks, I got an 81, so not bad actually!

I’ve definitely given this a passing thought or two in the past. Perhaps the only species that survive the Great Filter are those who are able to move into a mode of production where there is no exploitation. I suppose that would hinge on alien society having a similar or even analagous economic development to humanity, though.

Fire when ready

I had made a post about it before, but she genuinely thought there was a mistranslation in either my or her end when I told her the police arrest poor people here

Anecdotal, but my Mandarin tutor lives in Xi’an and hasn’t ever visited the West.

The first time we started talking about jobs, life, and politics, she asked me if it is true that the American government is only for the rich. She seemed appalled and even upset at me confirming it. She started stuttering and then half-jokingly shook her fist and grumbled, then laughed it off and continued the lesson.

The next time we talk about such things, she learns more about the struggle of poor people in the USA. She is further bewildered, and expresses deep support for the CPC and the programs that assist the poor in China. She asked why the government couldn’t give the poor people jobs, and why healthcare and education aren’t given to everyone for free.

Seems, to me, that she’s not a fan of the rich at all.

Imagine you were born in 1931

You were twenty years old and had grown up in a wildly brutal society that abused and exploited you at every turn. You heard stories of friends who were sold off to people who mutilated them for fun, potentially to death. You toiled endlessly for some rich lord who would have you killed, raped, or tortured for nothing more his or his friend’s own amusement.

And then, when you were 20 years old, the PLA came.

In the next 70 years of your life, you would have free healthcare, be guaranteed housing, be given an education, be lifted from the poverty you were born in, and have any other remnants of your fetters shattered off of you. You were liberated in both mind and body. If you lived to your 90s—unlikely but not impossible—you would live to see your liberators, whom now consider you their own kin, become the most powerful society in history, and tirelessly defend you from the rabid masses that attempt to reinstate your enthrallment.

How would you feel about the leader that made it all possible? How would your children? And their children?

TL;DR: Yes, it is a good movie. You should go see it before it is out of theaters. It is more than worth a watch.

Like I said in the post, the animation really is an absolute spectacle. It really blows me away that every scene in the movie was stop motion animated. It is done so absurdly well that you forget that every one of these scenes are handcrafted. Multiple times throughout the movie I actually had to remind myself that everything I am seeing is handmade. It doesn’t have that ‘stop-motion’ feel the way other stop motion favorites of mine do (Coraline, Nightmare Before Christmas, etc) and its world really comes alive.

I thought that the plot and script themselves were good. Better than much of the Disneyslop coming out nowadays. I think I wanted more than what we ended up with, and I think the story is a bit lacking in some ways. Perhaps that was just because my expectations were set a bit highly walking in due to other people telling me it was an absolute masterpiece. Don’t get me wrong, the film still is, just not in writing specifically.

I thought there were aspects of the movie that, in a perfect world, would be dramatically improved with a longer runtime. I say in a perfect world because this movie already costed a massive amount of manpower and funding just to make in its current state. I could go on about it, but really I don’t think it’s that glaring of an issue.

The movie has tropes, yes, and even is a bit predictable at times, but what it does uniquely, it does very well. It’s very refreshing to see a young-adult movie have some of the takes that it has, namely the movie’s take on violence and what those themes imply. I would absolutely give it a rewatch just to further dissect those themes, and maybe I’d even enjoy it more on the second pass than the first.

Every day I am tolerating my family less and less, but I am currently financially dependent on them. They radiate more and more Hitler particles with each passing hour, and I can’t stand it. My friend group is getting more tense for me because one of my friends who I am trying to distance from has ‘taken the blackpill’ after a bad breakup with another member of the friend group and that shit is poison. I have yet to put a name on my political opinions to them, but I voice my political stances on major issues pretty brazenly.

I feel like there will come a time where something has to give, and I am gonna lose a lot of people over my politics, for better or for worse, and I won’t miss them. From here on out I’m gonna try to be more open about them to put up a warning sign early to people I may befriend in the future. “Nazis beware!”

Comrade, I’d never do such a thing on a laptop…

I’d do it on a Milk V Jupiter whenever Whonix finally gets support for RISC-V.

I will say that Stalin’s Dialectical & Historical Materialism was the easiest of the typically recommended classical communist literature to read. It was honestly more engaging to me than Blackshirts and Reds to the point I was disappointed it was so short. The words for that one flowed straight off the page for me for whatever reason, and to this date it has probably been the most significant work in my journey to understand materialism as a philosophy. Maybe it just has to do with the presence vs lack of historical context? I don’t recall any specific historical events being mentioned in Stalin’s work—or at least none that required substantial context to make sense—whereas in S&R and other ML works, there is usually some form of historical event going on that the authors consistently reference.

Regardless, I’ll check out Luna Oi’s study guide. Thanks for the recommendation!

I call driving the forklift

God man, I hope your mom can turn around on it. It got my dad, and by proxy my mom, some time ago. Their Twitter addiction has turned them into some of the most hateful, poisonous people I know. It’s really incredible. Years ago, my dad was completely in favor of the BLM protests, wore shirts publicly showing his support in the deep guts of multiple red states. Said things like “Black people should be allowed to burn down cities they were forced to build” and “reparations are the only way to make us truly equal.” He was always hardline anticommunist, but there was at least real potential for him to become an anti-imperialist type. Once he installed Twitter it was over and he became mecha-hitler.

That’s awful, but I guess what’s new for the healthcare systems of the West? I’ve known people who’ve been denied pain meds for hours because the doctors think they’re just ‘junkies’ looking for a ‘fix’ instead of real people in real pain. The lack of care doctors have for their patients is a real issue everywhere that doctors are minted, especially in the US where the average salary is hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. By virtue of being around many members of the petty-bourgeoisie during my upbringing, I’ve known many of them decide to go to med school — not for fulfillment or to save or improve lives, but rather for nothing more than greed. Like seriously, most of these people have no aspirations, no interest in a ‘valuable’ field like engineering or something. Instead, they’d rather go into medicine solely for money. The way some of these people talk about playing with peoples lives like it’s an investment decision is honestly disgusting. That’s who these doctors are.

I know it’s not much of a consolation, but I couldn’t imagine where I could find the strength to keep going if I had to deal with half of the shit you put up with in that comment. Stay strong comrade, we are here for you <3.

I guess just an answer as to whether or not I have it? I don’t believe it’d make a difference to me whether or not I’d have it. I’m still me. What it may do is teach me to be kinder to myself in periods of long procrastination or inability to do much, assuming I am diagnosed. If I find out I do not have either, then I suppose I can determine what deeper issue is affecting me—whether I have some form of depression or burnout. It’ll just allow me to understand myself further, really.

I’ve got several thousand in savings that I normally would put directly into the market, but I know the bottom’s gonna fall out on this shit anytime soon now. Sure, maybe I lose/have lost a year or so of gains, but this crash would borderline bankrupt me. RIP my IRA and may de-dollarization only accelerate so I can go and convert my USD to RMB.

I didn’t think Gregor Samsa would make it to Lemmygrad

WW3: Cold War WW4: War on Terror