chat

i dont understand
why other peoples brains
dont think as good as mine do
just like
think more gooder
for goshsakes
it aint that hard

thinking
is one of the
most important things
your brain can do
so if your brain
aint that good at thinking
just practice at it some
and get gooder at it

i use my brain for thinking
almost every day
thats how i got so good
at having ideas and stuff
and saying words good

The classic one is, of course, "ACAB," but I've already gotten into these arguments so I will spare you reading too much on it. Let it suffice to say all US cops are bastards (or, you know, they serve an especially malignant bastard function), all German cops, all UK cops, etc. But, to find a diplomatic way of getting this across, the security patrols deployed by the Panthers were also cops if that word has a non-moral meaning.

I think, and this is why I even bring ACAB up, that it gives people something to rally around and maybe even encouraged them to see things differently, and they get attached to it as essentially a dogma without seeing the analysis that produced it (or justified it, in any case). The slogan becomes the analysis. It becomes what exists in place of having reasons for what you believe, even when good reasons are out there!

I don't know how to do dividing lines

I think it's pretty funny when some asshole chud gets fired or injured or whatever and someone comments "another kkrakkka down, unlimited genocide on the first world". The humor comes from the absurdity, that there is no such genocide in the works and the subject in this case usually isn't even dead. It seems like a perfectly fine meme.

So then a huge hurricane hits Florida, we have hundreds of normal, mostly poor people dying and people are saying this and, when someone goes "Hey, that's not right" they double down. [I was busy when this was happening, this isn't me complaining about being dog piled or whatever]

The weird thing about it is that I thought it was 100% a joke, but some people got attached to the phrase in a way that reminds me of people going "ACAB means ACAB" as though it's anything other than an unhinged exclamation that is funny because it's unhinged. I don't know how this happened, but I am forced to conclude that the way the meme was treated up to this point was conditioning people in a detrimental way. Or maybe they were always bloodthirsty chauvinists, but that seems like the greater leap to me.

Of course there were a couple of pathetic, cowardly losers in the mix saying "Oh, don't take it so seriously, it's a shitposting site". Those people I direct to 4chan. Antisocial behavior is antisocial behavior, and calling it meaningless to escape that it does have a meaning and that meaning is quite negative is contemptible behavior that should be rejected by the policy of any space that claims to be leftist.

Anyway, I don't really have a call to action or anything, except perhaps: Oppose Slogan Worship.

Every time this ghoul is asked a question he avoids answering it any meaningful way and often straight up lies. He has insulted journalists for asking real questions, I just saw an example of this. A journo asked him about the double standards between US stance of human rights violations by Russia and Iran and he fucking ignored it and called it a "speech" passive aggressively and asked him to leave. Fucking soulless ghoul

And goddamn, that shit does not even look good does it. Like idk I sorta had this idea in my head that the cybertruck at least accomplished Elon’s dream of making a cool futuristic looking car, even if the functionality was shit, but wow he didn’t even do that. It looked like - you ever see those things on Instagram where artists take children’s drawings and make them into realistic looking artwork? It look’s like he took a child’s crappy drawing of a car and turned it into real life. It’s blocky, it looks clumsy and it has no sense of space.

The original Tesla car I get. I’m not a car guy, but to me that’s what a “cool” car looks like. It’s shiny, it’s sleek, it looks luxurious. The cybertruck looks like Elon just went to a scrapyard, found a bunch of metal sheets and haphazardly strung them together. The whole car looks like it’s about to fall apart if you so much as touch it. It’s also extremely dull looking. Not only is it gray, but it’s an extremely dull gray. No sheen to it at all.

I feel like the look Elon wanted was “imposing” and it doesn’t even accomplish that. I’m bigger than the car. And because it looks so crap and so fragile, there’s nothing imposing about it at all. Just buy an F150 or a big ass hummer if you really need an imposing looking car. Sorry for the rant but I’m just in shock at how shitty that car looked.

That's it. That's the post.

Dear centrist friend,

First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.

I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.

Your pal,

Wertheimer

P.S. Read Settlers.

And I got vegetables in my t-shirt pocket. Those are for later I guess.

For reference, here's the video even if it isn't directly the topic of this post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzVj5ID9K88

People work, in many cases harder than they've ever worked, yet what little they get out of it buys less than it did before.

Just about everything is more expensive, from groceries to housing to medicine.

But here comes "Gala Games" offering pretend internet real estate in often-never-completed "Web3" garbage games and credulous bazingas with money repeatedly give them tens of millions of dollars, per promised game, and after years of this same business model of lying and laying off the developers or getting into lawsuit slapfights, the bazingas are there hoping to buy their way into being digital landlords, overlords, or space lords (motherfuckers), and they seem to have both the credulity as a demographic and the disposable income to continue buying into this shit while so many other people are struggling to eat, survive illnesses, and just get by.

That's the post. Fuck cryptobros, and fuck techbro speculative investors in general. I want to be mad at "Gala Games" but at least they're just robbing some of the smuggest assholes in the world.

I am an Asexual, Heteroromantic Cisgender Man, I am 24, and I am studying to be an accountant.

My interests consist of Fairytale retellings, talking about the negative effects of Toxic Positivity, having imaginary conversations with myself and talking to imaginary people that care about me, playing Fallout and Minecraft and 7 Days To Die. I am also a fan of Star Wars. And Tomboys.

Today, I got a 3 day temporary ban on Reddit, on a bullcrap "Glorifying Violence" Charge, when all I did was point out how beneficial it was for the people of The Soviet Union when the Capitalists were killed off in Russia. (There goes my 153 day streak for Reddit)

Now, I realize, without my Reddit account, I have nothing to myself. No friends, at least none that I am able to regularly talk to due to them being busy, but does that count as friends? And yeah, I just realized just how lonely and miserable I truly am. I have been at university for about 3 years now, and I have not made a single friend, because all the people there are too-optimistic-for-their-own-good capitalists, who think that they can make their own small business within 2 years of graduation. And they are Liberals or Republicans.

So, given my narrow set of interests, partially due to having Aspergers, where would be a good place for me. Again, I am not a fan of doing anything unplanned, or something without even a second of thought before acting.

I am a pretty boring person otherwise.

Could someone try to parse why this is funny? I can't find the funny bone this is scratching right now.

hey so, i wanna go down a kind of deranged rabbit hole, as i sometimes wanna do, and i need to be able to browse local nyc news through the 1960s, but doing that is gated behind a lot of paywalls as far as i can tell

i really don't have the fucking funds to drop on archive access, so i'm wondering how people get around this?

I happen to live in a different big metro but i can't imagine their archives are either easy to access nor worth the hassle of travelling 2 hours via transit to check out, but i guess i will if i have to.

hoping hexbear has solutions

Poverty. The answer is always poverty. Evacuation is not free and never has been.

Currently sitting in the Tampa Bay area while a category 5+ hurricane comes barreling at me. I'm in flood zone D next to E so I shouldn't have any issues there. In a building that is solid brick/cinderblock construction, built like a bunker. Don't worry about me. I got water, food, and enough fat to get me through the winter as they say.

The one thing I don't have is the hundreds or thousands of dollars it would take to drive 2+ states away and get a hotel for a week. I simply don't have it. Then you have all these people in places like Missouri or Montana posting this question about why people would not evacuate. We don't have the goddamn money. It's not hubris. We SHOULD evacuate. I don't see any of the people saying this offering up a spot on their couch. We should always evacuate... somewhere other than the house of the person who thinks we should, apparently.

Found out today that we've had a rash of rogue accounts trying to join confidential calls at work. Meetings about students' 504s happen over Google Meet, for example. The accounts are always named after the person in the call like "John's Notetaker" or what have you.

Apparently, it's some kind of extension people are using that transcribes meeting notes from the call. AKA it listens and likely records the call in real time to then transcribe the call into notes. Very dumb, and also, a huge privacy issue when we're talking about 504s. There isn't a way to stop it from what I can tell because the user joining the call has the extension, and the extension detects the meeting and attempts to join as well.

Very stupid, very annoying.

Hi folks, Welcome to That Tracks, a Podcast where we break down the latest news about the Train barreling down the rails towards us! In this complicated and ever-changing landscape we exist in, we know that there can be a lot to digest about our impending head on collision with a train, and we're here to help you parse that information!

In this week's episode, we'll lay the groundwork for understanding exactly what the Train is and how it got here. We'll deep dive into the history of the American railway system, and discuss the impact that history has on us today as we sit right here on these rails.

But before we get into that, let's take a moment to shout out our Patreon. We wouldn't be able to produce this show without the support of listeners like you. If you become a Patreon, you will unlock all kinds of extras each episode, from our notes to an extended version of that week's episode, and you'll get to interact with us, your resident rail-heads, where you can ask us questions, and you can get them read on the show! Like this one, from Paul Smith:

"Hey guys! Very excited about this new show you're doing. I've been following you all since your days microbloging about how hot the pot seemed to be getting! Anyway, my question is this: So what advice do you have for others who are stuck here on the rails with you? I've been reading a lot recently, and this idea of 'getting off the rails' keeps coming up, but wanted to get your input! Thanks again, look forward to the show!"

Thanks, Paul! Listen, we've felt the same way as you before as well. It's a very tempting idea to simply 'get off the rails', and it's a great idea in theory! We have nothing against this notion, but what about everyone else on the rails? That's where this idea falls apart for us. At best, all you're doing is getting off the rails yourself, and leaving those who can't simply get off the rails behind. So think about your fellow rail sitters before you fall too deeply into this "off the rails" ideology! Hope that answers your question!

Now, on with the show...

After several start-stops, I decided to give it another go during Rosh Hashanah with the idea that I would not bring it with me into the new year. The past few times I have quit, I have managed to stay off for 5-6 months. It feels a bit like the anti-depressant trap of "I feel better, so I'll stop." Or in this case, "oh, I'm not addicted anymore so it must be okay for me to have a cigarette every now and again at parties or hanging out with so-and-so," which quickly spirals.

This Summer, I learned that I was using nicotine to self-medicate ADHD and anxiety which is a catastrophic plan since nicotine dependency and the attendant mini-withdrawals of smoking addiction massively exacerbate both conditions. I am now in the initial stages of treatment for both so I am guardedly optimistic that this quit will go better.

And yes, I have read 'the easy way to quit smoking'! :p Great book up to a point.

I've basically lost all desire to socialize with people and improve myself. I've been seeing a therapist and taking various different psych meds for years and have basically made no improvement. All I want to do anymore is eat way too much junk food (I feel like my friends and family would judge me very hard if I went back to toking and drinking like I did before rehab), play video games, and lie down doomscrolling chapo.chat.

The worst part is I know I have a lot going for me in life and I have a negative number of excuses to be this way: I'm in a cushy overpaid computer toucher job with a promotion on the near horizon, I'm doing well in my education, I haven't had anything really bad happen to me in years, and even the things that have gone bad for me are incredibly mild at most - first world problems. Even when I do the occasional good thing like walking or not eating like complete garbage for a day, I'm incapable of actually feeling any sense of accomplishment.

Whenever I talk to any of my mental healthcare providers about it, their advice basically boils down to "let yourself feel good about good things". There's also the more actionable advice, like use a sun lamp to make up for lack of sunlight and make some time to write my thoughts down every day, but I suck about following through on them. Trying to make myself feel good beyond split-second dopamine hits from base activities like stuffing my hamplanet pie hole with empty calorie laden garbage feels like trying to draw blood from a stone.

Often times I find myself thinking that maybe people like OrganizeOrDie are right. Depression is no excuse to stay out of organizing (something I'm also shirking my responsibility to do, largely because I'm at an intersection of privilege where I benefit from capitalism and imperialism far more than I am harmed by it), let alone doing the barest minimum to keep myself healthy, all of which will at least increase my chances of not feeling like an soulless automoton all the time. I know that humans are social beings and that community is essential to being human, but my temperment makes it so I don't actually feel good from socializing - not even in a social anxiety or lack of social skills kind of way - so I stay in my room and continue to rot. I feel like I'm part of the problem and not part of the solution and that if I'm incapable of actually becoming better then I may as well just self-destruct in silence.

I've been depressed basically since I was a child - over 20 years at this point - and it's so ingrained in who I am that I don't know how to get rid of it, or if I even want to. People who want things work to make them a reality after all.

I'm not sure what I want or expect from this vent-post. I just hate that I am the way I am and have no will to change.

I watch a lot of the Hasan Abi industrial complex to keep up on the news. There's more and more of these channels skip clipping over words like "killed", "bomb", "war", and even "gun". One of the clips I saw earlier kept the word "missile" too... That's just a bomb with propellant!! I don't get why they keep doing this, it's really annoying. It just feels like yuppy bullshit, I have yet to encounter someone who gets triggered by these words, online or irl.

Thanks for reading my rant, goodnight.

I wouldn't have guessed decades ago that the greatest and grandest material promise (setting aside the usual nerd shit about godlike waifu mommy bangmaids that exceed human consciousness but are also somehow unconditionally loving of the nerds and maybe wont kill their nerd masters) of some up and coming hyped up venture capital thirsty technology is that it might somehow someday solve the problems that it is making worse, and that by making them that much worse that surely those worsening problems would get solved.

The next self-described "leftist" that concern trolls on this site about how everyone needs to stop complaining, stop being "emotional" or "afraid" and come up with (always unspecified by the glazer) "solutions" that align with the expansion and amplification of the problem as desired by terminal stage capitalists will be reminded by me that their belief system aligns with fucking former Google CEO Eric Schmidt that says energy demand for AI is infinite and we are never going to meet our climate goals anyway, so we may as well bet on building AI to solve the problem.

My disgust for that take is vast and maybe infinite.*

spoiler

Just like in the cyberpunkerinos!

Crossposting this because anti_cishet_action has been buggy lately

The idea of men being unsexy past a certain age is really disturbing. Not only does it ape a harmful part of straight culture (women hitting "the wall") but it ignores the reality of actual gay death. How many gay people, twinks included, were lost to the worst of the AIDS crisis under Reagan? How many gay people have been lost to suicide? How many more queer people have to die before people learn that arbitrary beauty standards doesn't help the queer community?

I would like to encourage the comments of this post to be filled with examples of twinks in their 40s or older.

It's funny how right-wing trolls are opening blank issues for Redot, trolling them equally as much as opposed to the original project. Cry harder, enlightened centrists - that's what you get for bargaining with bigots. Now go on, remove the "woke" code.

Oh my god that was so scary, dark as fuck outside going 55 on country roads when I see a weird dark spot ahead-oh fuck that’s a family of bears. I swerved and slammed the brakes and everything is okay but holy fuck.

It was a mother black bear and 2-3 cubs, they were super cute for the second I could see them.

I have an N2B parka jacket I bought years ago and I didn't wear it once last year now that I think about it. We'd usually always get a Indian Summer, but it was very brief and only through early September, not all the way into October.

Like I mentioned it doesn't feel right at night time. Climate change is very real.

Gathering a few comrades this afternoon to carve pumpkins, and starting tomorrow going thru the end of the week, I'm running sessions for my band to record a bunch of songs for a few different releases. Gonna do 2x guitar and bass tracking while the drummer is on tour with another project, then they'll do drums and noise/synth when they're back. Tons of new gear to play with including an Echoplex preamp, and this week I'm hopefully snagging a 150w Randy Rhodes modded plexi clone to go with a new 4x12 someone is wiring up.