barrbaric [he/him]

Some of us never stopped

1. lemmy's two main developers are marxist-leninists
2. the largest and most active instance prior to the reddit exodus was hexbear, which is a "big tent" of revolutionary leftism, featuring mostly communists and some anarchists
3. lemmygrad, an explicitly marxist-leninist instance, is also relatively large

We have nothing to lose but our chains.

Honestly it sounds about right. Prior to federation our news megathreads occasionally broke 1k comments over a week, and that's only a small subset of the userbase. Hexbear users have cultivated a culture that encourages being more online, and we were already extremely online. No downvotes, for instance, means that if you disagree with someone you have to comment, and we obviously disagree with the political opinions held by the majority of people so there's quite a bit there. Also worth noting that if an admin/mod expressly calls for us not to comment on a post, as was the case on the second defederation discussion post on blahaj, we won't.

Corporations gradually making something worse so they can sustain profits?

🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

For what it's worth hexbear wouldn't have federated with them anyway because the site is staunchly against hosting NSFW content.

Multiple times she made videos that were just word-for-word reading out the transcript of a documentary, even going so far as using the documentary footage as background imagery, without crediting the original at all. She also avoided youtube copyright detection by putting filters over such footage. Honestly I'm less upset about the plagiarism (which is bad, no doubt) and more just at the outright clownishness of literally copy-pasting somebody else's work.

Huh, the game isn't even out yet. 🏴‍☠️ stay winning, I guess.

The fediverse isn't a political organization that's going to enact change in the real world, so those concerns largely aren't relevant. Admins (and devs) generally speaking do hold a monopoly of power but that's the standard for the internet.

If Counter-Strike 2 is so good, why is there no Counter-Strike 2 2?

Early in the history of the site, some bigots were finding trans users and then downvoting all of their posts and comments. The admins confirmed this, and went through and banned the offending accounts, but they just made alts, so the permanent solution was to eliminate the downvotes. Our moderation is so strict that bad faith arguing is banned on sight.

Also we're not as scary as all the libs would have you think. We're just, again, extremely online, generally confrontational, and have political views outside the norm. All this adds together to make us abrasive when we have to explain something that's taken for granted on our instance for the 50th time.

::: spoiler Also we have more emojis than anyone can remember, some of which render as giant on every other instance. Spoilered is a picture of a cartoon pig pooping which I'm using as a demonstration because I know it's one of the giant ones, and also one other emoji as a treat :::

America isn't actually a democracy. The views of the average person have no influence on what the state actually does. The senate is anti-democratic by design (see James Madison: “[The Senate] ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.”), and all of the founding documents were created by a bunch of slave-owning rich assholes to be as favorable as possible to themselves (reminder that slavery is still legal under the 13th amendment). The elected "representatives" do not accurately represent their constituents; compare the median wealth of a US congressperson (over $1 million) vs the median wealth of a US citizen family (~$121k).

The people who actually hold power in America (and indeed all capitalist nations) are the ultra-wealthy capitalist class, which is to say those who own the means of production (the factories, tools, raw resources, etc that a business needs to produce a product or service). In "bad countries" (Russia etc), they would be called oligarchs. Since its founding, the US state's primary purpose has been to perpetuate and grow the wealth of this capitalist class above all else. The interests of this capitalist class run counter to the interests of the working class, the common citizen. The capitalist wants their employees to work for as long as possible for as low a wage as possible, while the working class wants to work for as short a period as possible for as high a wage as possible. With this in mind, let's now go through policies you listed.

Changing the second amendment. The capitalists generally aren't effected by this, as they live in a safe and secure world separate from the general populace. However, this (and many other things, such as abortion rights and LGBT+ rights) serve as ways to divide the common people against each other, distracting them from the fact that their true enemies are the capitalist class. Between them, the state and the capitalists control almost all of the media in the country, so they are able to push the issues to the forefront. To be clear: I am not minimizing these policies. Things like gun rights reform, abortion rights, and LGBT+ rights are incredibly important; they just don't matter to the capitalists.

The college tuition scam. This one is simple: the financial capitalists make loads of money by giving out predatory loans. They want that money, so the policy will continue.

Free healthcare. As above, the capitalists are making money hand over fist, and do not want to stop. Consider also that "Obamacare" and other policies primarily ease the burden on the common citizen NOT by regulating the healthcare sector to charge lower prices, but rather by simply handing tax-payer funds to the capitalists directly through subsidies.

In general, when looking at the policies pursued by a capitalist state, one should always ask "how does this benefit the capitalists?" America's foreign policy, for instance, largely revolves around keeping the "developing nations" of the world poor and their markets open to "free trade" such that their wealth can be extracted by American (and allied) capitalists at a lower price. Similarly, the US refuses to address climate change because the fossil fuel capitalists would stand to lose money.

The only way to achieve a better future is through the abolition of the capitalist class, which can itself only be achieved through a revolution.

Beans is one thing, but cold beans??? That's a step too far, I now uncritically support Xi.

Under the policies of the greater evil, billions will die due to climate change because corporate profits are more important than human lives to them. Under the policies of the lesser evil, billions will die due to climate change because corporate profits are more important than human lives to them.

It makes no difference, both parties should be opposed and true change can only come through revolution and the abolition of the capitalist class.

IIRC there's some evidence that cold temperatures weaken the immune system. Assuming it's valid, that does mean that cold could be the deciding factor between contracting a cold or fighting if off.

Now obviously germ theory is correct and it takes external infection to catch a cold, but it's a pretty safe bet you're being more or less constantly exposed to COVID and the flu whenever you're in an indoor public space.

It was a thing last... summer? Where reddit announced they were going to start charging for every call a third party program made using the API. This was done with the intent of shutting down 3rd party reddit apps and to get users on the official one so reddit could make more money. However, it also destroyed a bunch of 3rd party tools that mods more or less needed, and which reddit had been promising to implement themselves for years with no progress. There was a brief protest where mods of many subs shut them down (mostly for less than a week, though some are still down IIRC). A bunch of users and moderators left reddit and went to other sites.

Roe V Wade was repealed under Biden. The concentration camps at the border are still open. In response to the mass murder of black people by cops, Biden gave more money to the cops. The extermination of trans people is continuing apace at the state level and the dems are doing nothing to stop it. This is all to say nothing about foreign policy, where the US is still complicit with killing thousands if not millions since 2020 through sanctions and facilitating genocide in Yemen. Or lifting all COVID restrictions despite the massive danger still posed.

There is a rhetorical difference between the two parties, but there isn't much evidence of a material difference.

I desire the end of America and indeed all capitalist states, ideally before they slide even further into fascism in the near future. Death to the Israeli state, and death to any states that support it.

Between COVID, climate change, and my own worsening health, pretty much constantly.

What word did I say that made you think I'm happy with the Democrats?

I never said you were. I was addressing the claim that they're a lesser evil, which I'm not convinced by.

It's all fucked.

Agreed!

And the Supreme Court was stacked by the last administration

Largely irrelevant. Biden could stack the court, or just tell them to fuck off since they have no real power, or codified Roe into law when the dems controlled congress. There are excuses for why they couldn't do any of those things, sure (not least of which that Biden opposes abortion rights himself because he's a fucking monster). But all of them show that they're fundamentally unserious in fighting back against the fascists. I'm not going to vote for von Hindenburg 2.

Mine are super inconsistent now. Obviously I have uBO, but I can typically watch like 10-ish videos a day before the popups start, at which point I just turn on libredirect.

You can always just pirate and have a copy of it stored locally.

You're thinking of wage theft. "Time theft" is when you slack off on the job.

In short, the working class need to be better organized, class-conscious (IE aware that they are members of the working class and opposed to the capitalist class), and militant, and the repressive organs of the state need to be much weaker. Organization is trending up with things like increased unionization rates (though many of those unions are collaborationist and not revolutionary) and increased membership in revolutionary orgs like the PSL or even reformists like the DSA. Class consciousness is increasing naturally as the social contract that bought off the working class of the USA (and the rest of the imperial core) is torn up and people begin to look outside the status quo for alternatives. Likewise, militancy will come once people have nothing to lose, and as you say, the younger generations are well down the path, but the key element missing is the aforementioned organization.

Unfortunately, it's not all good news. This mass radicalization will be slowed, and worse, redirected towards fascism, by that omni-present multi-billion dollar propaganda network controlled by the capitalists. Further, any increases in worker organization will be met with increasingly brutal crackdowns by the cops, FBI, and other alphabet agencies. Ultimately I find it far more likely the US will descend into fascism; it would not be unreasonable to argue that it's already there. That said, we must still fight for the better tomorrow we know is possible.

The Foundation TV series. No, it's not a movie, but it's so bad I feel it should count anyway.

I just pirate everything because it's easier.

/tg/ maintains the best pirated TTRPG repositories as far as I'm aware, so there are at least two good things.

I don't subscribe to anything because they're all scams.

What's up with Linke? Anything particularly spicy?

I did this at my work and got a little dongle that displays a string of numbers I have to enter when prompted.

Blowback, The Dollop, and occasionally Citations Needed but I've let that one accrue a huge backlog I may never get through.

Can confirm it's happening to me even on Chrome (they won't let me remove it at work )

July 26th 2020, a day that will live on in infamy as the first day of Hexbear.

::: spoiler possibly giant emoji :::

I knew they were supposedly the successor party to the ruling party of the GDR so of course they were beaten down and became moderates.

to news weirdos.

The action that leads to security and a better life for yourself and those around you is to organize your community along whatever lines are possible. Unionize with your coworkers, form a tenant's union with your neighbors, physically get out in the street and provide security for LGBT+ events and spaces. Build up parallel structures so that when the government fails, you and those you care about will still have access to food and water, a place to live, and security. Join a political organization that's active and actually does things in your area (one of the communist parties, DSA, or even just Food not Bombs) and do all you can to prepare for a revolution that might never come.

I'll close this by saying that I've been harsh on voting and the electoral system in general during this conversation, and probably too hostile in tone towards you. I apologize for that, because it's sometimes hard to tell when someone is actually acting in good faith, this being the internet and all. Voting isn't something I think is particularly useful, but if you vote for the democrats because they're less openly fascistic, that's up to you. The key is to not let your political activity start and end at voting, because direct action in the real world is by far the best way to achieve positive change. I wish you and yours the best in surviving the collapsing fascist hellhole we find ourselves in.

::: spoiler spoilered giant emoji :::

Doesn't it have something like a two-hour battery life? Feel like that excludes it from being something you carry around with you like a phone.

I use UBO and have definitely noticed videos stuttering in the last week or two.