[-] [email protected] 18 points 6 days ago

Bill need not worry about the revolution reappropriating his hoard of wealth, he will adapt

[-] [email protected] 19 points 6 days ago

I don't know anything about the first tweet but isn't the joke, the one that went over the replier's head, that either applies to both candidates?

Trump doesn't fit the label of infirm to the degree that Biden does, sure, but the Democrat supporters have spent about the past 8 years describing all the ways that Trump is himself infirm. Seems odd that this guy forgot all about that, just as much as he seems to have forgotten how Biden has governed in his first term.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

Chapter One

Burning stuff felt good.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago

Throwback to when he was touting the "plan" to push Biden left.

It's a massive self-report that Vaushites will accuse you of doing no real-world organising because it's 100% projection; if you ask them whatever happened to pushing Biden left, where you can learn about Vaush's strategy to do this, and how his followers went about achieving this plan, they inevitably get infuriated by the questions.

These people, who will accuse you of ableism if you tell them to read theory, are very comfortable demanding that you account for how much real-world organising you've done without a single consideration for the fact that theory is much more accessible than irl organising is for most people with disability.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Why did the anarchist drop out of their post-graduate degree?No gods, no masters!

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

I know what you're saying here but the king is absolutely a part of the Australian government and this is cheap equivocation on behalf of the Australian prime minister who should know very well that Australia is a not a republic.

You can't be the head of state for a constitutional monarchy and claim that the monarch isn't a part of the government.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

i stupidly took another this morning, i've heard that there can be really bad symptoms from stopping medication like this suddenly so i just took another but i'm already regretting that decision

You're not stupid, you're doing what you've been advised to do by medical professionals. I'm guessing they didn't tell you what to do if you have a serious negative reaction to the meds because they almost never do this. So you're just doing your best with info and circumstances that are far less than ideal.

If you're keeping it together then you will probably be able to taper down on the meds over the coming few days or a week, give or take. A pharmacist or doctor should be able to give you better advice on this.

The bupropion manufacturer claims that there are minimal side effects if you stop cold turkey and that you don't need to taper down. I don't believe that to be true but there doesn't appear to be any major concerns with tapering down fairly quickly.

If you're doing an emergency taper, my general advice is to drop the dose by half each day until you're at the point where you're down to a quarter of a pill or if you're noticing that you're getting bad withdrawals, at which point you can either go back up on the dose somewhat or you can plateau for a couple of doses before you continue tapering down.

If you're on a high dose or you've been on antidepressants for a long period then it's almost certainly going to need a more gentle taper, but you're probably on a fairly low dose and you haven't been on them for long so that's unlikely to be a concern.

With regards to escitalopram, that can be harder to withdraw from. I went cold turkey from a high dose due to necessity. Wouldn't recommend unless it's urgent. You might need a more gradual taper with this one but tbh it really hasn't been long enough to warrant this unless you're a very rare case.

My guess is that it's probably the bupropion that's causing you trouble. My hunch then is that tapering down on the escitalopram more gradually should be fine if the bupropion is the cause.

Glad to hear that this isn't going to really screw up your plans for the next week or two.

General advice moving forward with meds:

Go one at a time in future and if your prescribing doctor tries starting you on two meds at the same time, tell them that you aren't willing to do that again.

You could ask the prescribing doctor if you can try going back on one first to see your response, then trying the other later to see which one is the cause of the problems. Though if you're done with taking these meds and you're not interested in trying them again, that's understandable.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

Not a government decision?

Help me understand where I'm getting confused here.

[-] [email protected] 33 points 1 week ago

Yeah but if this happened under Trump they would have signed this motion pressing down harder on their pens and Trump would have said something mean and/or ridiculous on TV, so we can't get distracted by this because we need to vote for 99.999% Hitler instead of 100% Hitler, okay?

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

I don't think this can be measured in a vacuum.

Let's explore some different cases as a thought experiment:

A country achieves communism. I don't think this is possible tbh but let's go with it.

We can expect to see the "proles" consuming more than they would otherwise as they'd have all the products of their labour.

Let's presume that people are people and that they aren't going to suddenly develop much more class consciousness and a spirit of internationalism. Obviously I think that a communist society would go a long way towards this but let's ignore that for argument's sake.

Unequal exchange would mean that the communist society would be taking advantage of this arrangement, perhaps more than they would be able to otherwise.

But if this is the situation, we also have no bourgeoisie who do rampant exploitation of the third world. We have no more corporations. We have no more bourgeois democracy inflicting imperialism upon the world.

Perhaps consumption drops a whole lot purely by virtue of the fact that people would rather work 4 hours a day or 3 days a week. Perhaps in freeing up the products of labour and what would otherwise be capital and surplus value under the previous system, people are able to manufacture and acquire products designed for repairing with replaceable parts rather than for planned obsolescence. Perhaps people would be able to be more conscious consumers, opting for the things that have a lower environmental and social impact rather than working two jobs as part of a single-parent nuclear(ish) family and only being able to choose the simplest and most readily available options rather than carefully considering what they would genuinely prefer. Perhaps lots of people devote their time to things like gardening and producing food themselves because they only need to work 15 hours a week in their factory job to cover the rest of their needs.

It's hard to estimate what it would look like exactly, especially in an unbiased way, but even in a conservative estimate I'd say that it would be a net-benefit for the third world as the degree of exploitation and the worst excesses of consumption would be largely curbed, not to mention all of the excesses of capitalism and imperialism being eliminated (from that society anyway).

So let's look at a genuinely SocDem society next:

Imperialism is dead in the water. Capitalism is hemmed in. Billionaires are reduced to having no more than, say $10 million in net worth. If corporations still exist they are brought to heel and they are held accountable for their inevitable excesses.

Honestly in this society I would expect the net benefit to the third world to be worse than the example above but it would still be much better than what we have today.

Next is to consider things as they are today:

Increased wages are going to lead to increased consumption. But things like earlier retirement and better healthcare, education, environmental and workplace safety etc. are going to reduce the impacts on the third world - healthcare, especially stuff that is way downstream, has a big footprint. Workplace and public health and safety makes things better for everyone. Carving out chunks of profit to go towards better conditions generally means less money for wars and less money going towards imperialism, not always but more so than not. Workers having unions and solidarity means that there's more chance of things like general strikes, which can achieve good outcomes for the third world.

I think under this scenario we could expect to see a net benefit that is significantly reduced compared to a SocDem hypothetical scenario. It might even come out as a wash, if you really want to make a conservative estimate.

Idk this argument seems overly simplistic and very undialectical honestly. It's a bit like the reactionaries who complain about veganism or measures that benefit the environment and they charge vegans with being responsible for the deaths of animals due to industrialised agriculture or they concern-troll over the carbon footprint of a proposed expansion to rail transport.

I mean, yeah, there's definitely an environmental footprint that gets incurred when you manufacture a car seatbelt and that's fine. But if 100,000 seatbelts prevent one single person from becoming a permanent wheelchair user then the comparative environmental footprint is vastly in favour of making those 100,000 seatbelts because the environmental footprint incurred by the necessary medical and accessibility interventions from one preventable case of someone ending up as a permanent wheelchair user are far greater.

This is not an argument in favour of eugenics or to lay the blame for the social and environmental impacts of being disabled at the feet of the individual though. I'm just trying to highlight that we should not fall victim to an overly reductionist assessment of things in a very static way or otherwise we end up with well-intentioned measures that can have ramifications that are far worse than what we prevent.

Likewise we should not oppose fighting for better working conditions in the first world out of concern that any improvements here are simply going to make things worse in the third world because it's not nearly as simple an arrangement as one where improvements here necessarily make things worse over there in equal measure.

[-] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago

Waiting on the CIA to issue me with a stinger so I can go and pose with it out the front of Killiechassie for a photo op

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Sorry to hear that you're having a negative reaction to the meds.

Aside from contacting people, I would recommend creating a calm environment in your room and riding this out.

Put on some relaxing music, spend some time doing the minimum amount of stuff that you are able to. If you can sit and relax, cool. If you feel like you can't contain the energy and you need to keep busy that's okay too - don't force yourself to do nothing if that feels like torture but maybe play a video game or do some drawing or anything else. Peel some labels off off cans and bottles if it feels good and it's something that you can direct your energy towards.

If this is your first day taking the meds then I'd recommend not taking another dose tomorrow. If your doctor tells you to push through the side effects, you don't have to take their advice and you are within your rights to advocate for yourself and to say no.

Try not to worry about sleep too much right now - it will come in due time. If you're awake for 24 hours+ and you're still feeling wired then I would recommend seeking medical advice - your prescribing doctor, your pharmacist, a medical helpline etc.

If you are feeling really bad and you or the people around you are seriously concerned, seek medical advice sooner or go to the emergency department.

I would cancel any upcoming committments for the next couple of days so you can rest and recover without pushing yourself. There are very few things that cannot wait and right now the most important thing is getting you back to normal.

61
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

56
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
80
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

888? The jokes write themselves.

36
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

What the fuck does this have to do with self-improvement?

Well, I think this all kicked off because I saw one too many videos showcasing old sea monkey accessories and, for some reason, it sparked my interest and I started researching shrimp. I live in a small place and I'm on a limited budget with very limited energy so a freshwater shrimp tank feels like an ideal way to provide enrichment in my enclosure.

My intention is to have a fairly closed loop system that is self-sustaining with minimal input or intervention from me, which meets my constraints, and because I intend to only have a heater and a fan for temperature control during weather extremes plus a light (for obvious reasons) I will need to ensure that I have the right environment and especially the right plants to maintain the water quality. In the initial phase I'm expecting there to be an excess of nutrients and so I'm planning on getting a fast-growing semi-aquatic vining houseplant, Pothos, to help maintain the water quality.

Because this particular plant will have all of its water and nutrient requirements being met by the tank that it will be planted in, if things go well then really the only thing that I should need to do will be to stick some inconspicuous hooks on the wall for it to grow along.

Likewise with the tank, the inputs from me should be minimal and I expect that they will be able to be done on an ad-hoc basis rather than needing constant attention and intervention after it has been established.

It will be nice to have something that I am making for myself, for my own appreciation and to make my environment more inviting for me.

I think it will be a nice use of my knowledge too because there's some things that are less commonly done in aquarium-keeping which I plan to try out - there's this one riparian plant that is very popular as an edible vegetable, especially in East Asia, that I know how to cultivate and I suspect will be really suitable for feeding shrimp with. It's also very fast growing, high in nutritional content, and actually quite pretty (with a tiny bit of maintenance). I haven't seen any discussion about this plant as food for shrimp, or any aquatic animals tbh, but I think it's going to be a really good fit. It would be really nice to be able to rip off a little piece of leaf every now and then for shrimp food from a plant which has grown in the very same tank, removing the excess nutrients that would otherwise cause it to become inhospitable to the shrimp. Plus it will cost a couple of dollars to get a few cuttings going and then with a little luck it should be a perpetual food source.

Likewise, if I decide to scale up and make a bigger shrimp tank then I can use my gardening skills to propagate the plants that I will already have to start planting out a larger aquascape and I have already figured out a good supplementary food to give shrimp to encourage breeding and to feed baby shrimplets if I do choose to scale up. It's probably tedious to read about but for a few bucks of input I should be able to make an extremely low maintenance micro worm culture which relies upon apple cider vinegar - something you can buy fairly cheaply but if I am going to make it a fixture then I have the knowledge of how to make a simple, very low cost operation to produce apple cider vinegar from store bought apple juice because I am very comfortable with brewing and I am familiar with how to maintain cultures like mother of vinegar.

I'm sure it sounds complicated but it's really just going to be one bottle of apple juice fermenting away, a vessel of apple wine being converted into vinegar, and a couple of bottles of vinegar eels culturing away - all of which would probably require an hour of time all up which would be spread out over the course of 6 months, including the time it takes to harvest the worms for feeding the tank with.

So I bought a large vase that will be suitable as a shrimp tank the other day on semi-impulse and I'm hoping to turn it into a redoubt against the part of me that wants to give up and check out, without turning it into something that will put huge demands on me.

Maybe someday I'll be able to post a few pictures to show the progress I have made.

36
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Disclaimer: before you post anything ask yourself if you are going to dox yourself or someone else and if you are going to get anyone put on a higher priority watchlist than they're already on, yourself including. If the answer is yes, do not post it.

Some things are better talked about in an oblique way (and referencing Minecraft after the fact is about as useful in this regard as posting an image on Facebook saying that you do not consent to them using your personal information), some things are better off whispered in person, some things are better off not talked about at all. With that out the way...

What are some interesting things that you have come across?
What are you surprised about not being adopted more widely?

Shits getting real and it's worth having a discussion about what can make protests more effective. I'm talking group strategy, personal tactics, protective gear - anything really.

72
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

I hear that this has been tried before but it didn't really land because finding viable substitutes for particular terms can be difficult. I'm fascinated by language though and I wanted to take a shot at this myself.

Just a disclaimer that I'm not trying to drag anyone over using any of these terms and I'm not going to pretend that I'm some paragon of anti-ableism myself - I have work to do on this front, you probably do too and if we all work together we can make some positive change and establish better habits and a more supportive culture in our communities.

Here's a list of words that are more socially acceptable in their ableism and some suggestions for alternatives:

Crazy, Stupid, Dumb, Moronic, Idiotic

[In the sense that something is incorrect or bad]

Silly, foolish, absurd, ridiculous, laughable, nonsense/nonsensical, illogical, incomprehensible, inscrutable, irrational, contradictory, hypocritical, self-defeating, naive, ill-conceived, inane, asinine, counterproductive, unbelievable,

Crazy, Mad

[In the sense of letting loose or being enthusiastic]

Going wild, getting stuck into something, in a frenzy, on a rampage, being engrossed, head over heels, obsessed.

Psychotic, Psychopath, Psycho

[In the sense that something is cruel]

Vicious, bloodthirsty, monstrous, horrific, sadistic, heartless, brutal, ruthless, horrendous, reprehensible, despicable, depraved.

Crippled

Hamstrung, moribund, incapacitated, impaired, ineffective/ineffectual, hog-tied (lol).


What are some other ableist words that are pretty commonplace even amongst the left that you've heard?

Are there terms that I have overlooked or any ones that you use yourself that you'd like to replace?

143
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

If you ever feel hopeless, just remember that in the course of time barely longer than a few years things have gone from a situation where being critical of the system and using the term capitalism would get you derision and you'd be marked as some sort of radical communist and people would shut off to your message while hurling red scare bullshit at you.

These days everyone shits on things like capitalism and imperialism.

They even name it directly.

The best part of it is that what used to signify very specific in-group values is now so widespread that it's incredibly common to find average "I hate the system" sentiment that is framed by using terms like capitalism.

Average people do not use the term "rat race" anymore, unless they are boomers. People just call it out directly. People rarely use terms like "the 1%" unless they're turbolibs like AOC who are trying to euphemise their message to garner votes.

Out in the wild, I have trouble identifying who is genuinely based and a comrade these days because everyone is out there openly shitting on capitalism directly on the regular. It's like the irl version of queerbaiting that happens in the media except it's comradebaiting and instead of it having cynical motivations it's really, really encouraging.

This stuff is completely normalised these days. Over the course of a few short decades the mainstream discourse has gone from "Globalisation bad" to "The 1% is bad" to "Actually it's just capitalism and it plain sucks".

This isn't some ephemeral fashion trend either - this is something that has gradually gathered momentum and it's a long-standing undercurrent in society.

If this can happen with a dirty word like capitalism or socialism, where decades upon decades of red scare indoctrination can simply be swept away in a matter of years, then take heart because it means that change is possible and that it's happening in real-time. The same thing is happening with decades of post-9/11 islamaphobia - I know it's part of discourse in places like this one to use terms like inshallah, mashallah, and alhamdulillah but this is not the only pocket of the world where Arab and Muslim cultures are being embraced.

Things are changing very rapidly and there's no sign of this pace letting up.

¡Venceremos! 💪

9
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
17
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

I'm pretty partial to calling it the Model Why but I feel like name Panzer Jank is better at getting the message across verbally.

6
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

I strongly recommend following Artlust on these platforms if you're interested in art, history, and anthropology and where these intersect.

Artlust is really good on matters of gender and social analysis (think like examining and deconstructing beauty norms or gendered fashion trends). The linked video shows how they get very near to Marxian analysis and there's obviously Foucault being drawn upon too but in a very simple and relatable way.

If you're looking for a really interesting contribution to your feed, mostly through bite-sized videos, that range from just pure appreciation for art to discussions about stuff like how textile production took place in history, to the way that gender is represented in art, to trends over time in arts and crafts and what that can tell us about societies, and all sorts of other things then give them a follow.

15
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

An interesting amount of geopolitical insight, in between the apologism for the Imperialist hegemon and its running dogs. I think that a popular mainstream musician openly talking about how Israel was seeking the bomb "for defense" deserves a modicum of respect.

(Although that fell entirely flat some 5 years later when Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, the Ukrainian who held a Palestinian passport and decided that she had divine right to colonize the land of Palestine and beyond, threatened to use nukes in order to coerce the US into interceding on behalf of Israel to shift the tide of the Yom Kippur War. Remarkable that Joe Biden is to the right of Richard Nixon, of all people, on the matter of foreign policy, of all things. What zero countervailing force to the liberal hegemony does to a geopolitical MFer. May Gorby Rot In Piss for all of eternity for what he unleashed upon the world.)

Anyway Tom Lehrer is an interesting figure, being a bit of a renaissance man who was a popular musician in his era, a satirist, and a mathematician. It seems like he actually worked on the bomb himself.

And he is also credited with inventing the jello shot. If I didn't fact-check this myself there's not a chance that I would believe such a claim. Apparently the dude is still alive too.

(Wait, why am I historyposting in the Music comm..?)

19
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Obviously it came out after 9/11. It feels like it came pretty hot on the heels of it, so maybe it dropped a year or two after or even less than that (at least that's what it feels like - I'm at about 50% confidence on that detail).

There was no music video accompanying it that I am aware of.

It was very Balkans-folk inspired. I think the accordion featured pretty strongly throughout the song, although that probably describes a whooole lot of Balkans music lol.

It definitely wasn't a traditional folk song. It drew upon pop music because it was fairly upbeat and high tempo. The production values were mediocre so it was probably released on an independent or small record label. It felt like it had some light punk or folk-punk influences, I think in particular the vocals but the instrumentation was definitely Balkans folk-pop.

I cannot remember a single lyric, it was not in a language I recognise and if I name any one of the Balkan languages and I get it wrong then I risk making more enemies in the region than Bill Clinton did.

I feel like the lyrics were sorta critiquing US foreign policy broadly in somewhat vague terms (think more like "and there hasn't been a single country that hasn't seen the shadow of your bombs" rather than, idk, a System Of A Down song listing specific US war crimes by name and date) and the chorus was sorta mocking in tone saying something that had the vibe of "And now on September 11 you ask 'How could this have ever happened to me'?" Obviously that is nowhere near an accurate representation of the specific wording, it's just the vague impression that I can recall.

The title of the song was not in English as far as I remember. I feel like I'd be able to say so definitively it if it was. I could have sworn that I saw at least one of those letters that was an S with the little ˇ on top of it but idk that's probably cryptomnesia filling in the gaps more than anything substantive.

This is absolutely all I can rack my brain for details on. I wish I had something more concrete than impressions and vibes and a broad geographical region to point to. If this post has left you feeling frustrated then i have an overabundance of solidarity for you because I feel exactly the same way - this has been like a recurring ulcer in my memory and it flares up every few months and I mentally poke at it and aggravate it but it only leads to more irritation rather than it ever kicking my memory into gear and producing some solid nugget of a detail that I can use as a lead.

Me, to my memory:

Thanks!

view more: ‹ prev next ›

ReadFanon

joined 10 months ago