Thank you for the recommendation, I’ll give it a read! I’ve never really studied urban planning, that’s more my wife’s field, but I’m sure they’d love if I read this and we had a good discussion. Appreciate it <3

There are a lot of great criticisms to be made about academics and how they eventually get caught up in little self-contained idea vortices that don’t actually matter to the world at large; they lose sight of how small their field is in the grand scheme of things and start to project its importance in their life to the wider society.

However the thing about using words like this: they are specific. It’s important to learn that just because two words are synonyms does not mean they are interchangeable. Some words are more correct for the specific idea you are trying to communicate.

These complete goobers are probably using it for visual symmetry with swastikas, but the symbol itself is a shield knot, which is like, a super common and basic knot that’s been around for ages. It’s a ward knot, and was often used to decorate, you guessed it, shields.

Unfortunately (and this is true outside of Ireland as well), a lot of fascists love Celtic knotwork (almost as much as they love Norse motifs).

ohh thank you <3, sure I can do that. I think I know how haha

Oh hey, so this isn’t specifically communist (and isn’t on my larger reading list), but if you’re interested in examining how to build better relationships I recommend Dean Spade’s Love in a Fucked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together.

Dean Spade is one of the founders of the Silvia Rivera Law Project, and has some great writing on abolition (Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of the Law is a great/terrible read), and this book just came out. It’s about fostering healthy relationships while acknowledging the impact that politics plays on every aspect of your life. So how to find the balance/bring to the forefront your desire to change the world around you, the pain caused by the systems of oppression we experience, and that desire for community and fostering mutual power in your relationships.

Hello! May I please direct you to this massive reading list I put together the other day: https://hexbear.net/post/4435465

In particular, the introduction to feminism and the Queer Marxism sections will likely have some things that catch your eye.

I can give you some more specific and narrow recommendations if you want, depending on what specifically interests you (eg., historical accounts of communist feminists, feminist philosophy, writings by socialists, etc.)

Ohh this is a great conversation, thank you!

To add onto this: many Christians may be familiar with the term “benediction”, which is literally “good speech.” This is a blessing, where good words are invoked to bless you (usually as the end of a sermon, to bless you as you depart).

Its opposite also exists: malediction. A malediction (literally “evil speech”) is a curse. Curse stems from Gaeilge (Irish). Cúrsachadh means abuse, so to curse someone is to literally wish harm upon them; it is a very real and dangerous threat. Malediction stems from Latin, but there is also an Irish term, mallacht, that has the same root as malediction.

Cursing in Irish was seen as a literal violence: it is a poetic art with the power to disrupt lives. In fact, it was common for a poet to be brought to battles to curse enemies. The satirical verse (glám dícenn) was one such form, and often the point was to render the target unclean (escaine). Essentially, to besmirch them. Another was conntracht (from Latin contradictio), which was literally to speak against someone. With conntracht, someone could even speak against royalty, which was a serious accusation that required legal arbitration. In the County Waterford area, a word for curse–guídóireacht–is also used to mean praying.

All of this to say that cursing was built on the belief that speaking evil against someone was actually harmful–that it would be literally damaging to them, not just through diminishing of reputation. And that this evil was usually connected to making unclean, impure, abusing, or making common–in a Christian society, this then naturally lent to the most powerful curses being ones that targeted someone’s connection to God. To paint someone with sin, or to curse–to pray–to God to bring justice and punishment. (Pre-Christian curses were wild too, I could go on forever about Irish curse-culture, but I just wanted to add a bit on the Christian elements and why praying to God to damn someone was a literal call for someone to be tortured for eternity and seen as one of the highest forms of punishment).

Edit: recommend The Book of Irish Curses by Dr. Patrick C. Power

So what this person is saying with that sentence is that trump is the “plummet” and that anyone standing up to him is the “parachute” that will help protect people from the plummet, and so it doesn’t matter if the parachute is red (republican) or blue (democrat). The idea being that regardless of party affiliation, standing up to Trump is a good that must be supported.

How does this idea fit into the context of what this person is replying to?

It doesn’t (because Booker is “blue” and should be expected to be a “parachute” against Trump’s “plummet” in this worldview). But coherence should never be expected.

Hope you find something you enjoy, and please feel free to let me know what you think of any of them, I’m always up for a good discussion <3

It is very interesting that only one of them has been in your coursework, there are a couple here that are usually pretty ubiquitous

Thank you so much for the recommendation! I see that it just came out last year, I’ll have to dive into that one this weekend. The list is stuff I’ve read, so I’ll update it once I’ve had a chance to check it out! Very much appreciated <3 <3

Haha yeah there’s a solid amount of books here that might be a little Irish-specific, but I think they’re well worth reading!

Glad to be of service! I think these should all be available on libgen, but if you ever catch sight of one you’re interested in and can’t find, shoot me a message and I’ll track it down for you <3

The confusion is definitely the shitty journalist’s fault, because the article is about AOC calling him out for his sexual assault but the journalist opened with a random tweet about democrats calling republicans the r-word, a thing that exists entirely in the imagination of the tweeter

who will be the first Democrat to call Republicans the R-word? Setting aside the question of whether they should use a term widely considered an ableist slur

No this section very definitely is talking about using the ableist slur. The r-word for sexual assaulters is not censored in the article since it is not considered a slur.

who will be the first Democrat to call Republicans the R-word? Setting aside the question of whether they should use a term widely considered an ableist slur

This section was, in fact, about the ableist slur. The term for a sexual assaulter only comes into the article later, and is not called the r-word or censored.

This isn’t “caving” to America, Canada is built on militarized repression of motility. This is a win for them, because they get to do something they already want (more cops to target migrants and Indigenous people under the guise of “security”) and now they even get to say that this thing they already wanted is absolutely definitely worth the money and really quite a “cheap” tradeoff to stop big bad America’s unreasonable tariffs.

Increased border security and larger military/police budgets is just standard operating procedure.

deleted by creator

Malaysia doesn’t recognize the state of Israel, and acknowledges its existence as occupation as national policy. They have a Palestinian embassy with diplomatic relations with Hamas. There’s a Malaysia Street in Gaza.

Lots of great options here, and may I also recommend one of my favourite comfort foods: colcannon. Irish dish of cabbage in mashed potatoes.