ReadFanon

Full PDF available free here on Iskra Books

That's the legit publishing house so downloading it is legal. Support Iskra and Lauesen with a purchase if you appreciate the book, if it's within your budget, because both are really good and they deserve it.

Understandable. I think these days it's not such a big problem as long as you set it up correctly, although it's a bit of a convoluted process and it's not something that I'd recommend for people who aren't at least moderately tech savvy.

I have a handheld that runs dual-boot Bazzite and Windows, with a large shared partition between them where my games are stored. Would have been nice to not have Windows lurking ominously on the same drive, threatening to screw everything up, but it hasn't caused any problems (yet.) But I can understand why a handheld isn't gonna have two NVMe slots so I'll just keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.

I'm gonna be heretical here and advise you to consider a dual boot setup, if you have the hard drive space to spare. I like indie games and some are really buggy or poorly optimized for Linux (small teams/solo devs that are amateurs often have these problems especially if it's a recent release - I understand and I'm not complaining.) There are a couple of games I boot into Windows for, same for the very occasional application.

It's nice to have the option to boot into Windows as a last resort, at least imo. More power to anyone who has managed to divorce themselves from Microslop permanently but I often wonder if Linux loses users who go all-in and make the full switch immediately, only to eventually get sick of encountering problems with compatibility where they eventually revert back. (Sidebar to mention that whenever I do boot to Windows I am immediately reviled by it

and honestly there was nothing quite as effective as convincing me that I'm sold on Linux than when I occasionally switch back to Windows because it's a reminder that sometimes the grass really isn't greener on that particular side.)

Glad you've found something that works well for you.

First off, congratulations on getting in to see a therapist! That's always a big step.

I imagine you weren't trying to convince your therapist that you had ADHD and there's a very good chance that if they didn't think that ADHD was a possibility then they would have steered you away from an assessment so that's a good indication that they think it's worth looking into further.

I guess from here out I'd encourage you to consider what happens next - either you are going to get diagnosed with ADHD or you aren't. Either prospect is challenging in its own unique way but just remember that whatever happens you will have made progress and that's the most important thing. Here's how I see it:

You get diagnosed and it opens up a bunch of things - the grief of what could have been if you had the right sorts of support and medical interventions, actually getting the right supports and accommodations and meds, and starting on new ways to relate to yourself and to make life work better for you. Usually you get a stopover in imposter syndrome on this journey (lol) but try not to worry because there will be signs. (As an example here, a late-diagnosed friend of mine lost their ADHD meds. Couldn't find them anywhere, turned their place upside down. Eventually, days later, while they were doing yard work they found their meds sitting in a bush. They had zero idea how they got there and couldn't piece together how it could have happened.)
You don't get diagnosed and you have to confront that "But what if I don't have ADHD and there's nothing wrong with me and I'm just lazy?" fear - which is understandable but just because one psychiatrist doesn't diagnose you doesn't mean that you don't have it, it just means they didn't see symptoms of it. If there are people in your life who are pretty convinced of you having ADHD and especially if your therapist thinks it's likely then it's worth pursuing a second opinion with another psychiatrist.
You don't get diagnosed and you don't have ADHD, which means confronting the same fear above, but remember that it's still crossing something off the list. I was lowkirkenuienly worried about this when it came to my adult diagnosis of autism. I tried to look at it this way - either I'm autistic and it's going to explain a lot or I'm not autistic and I can cross that off the list of possibilities and I'll be one step closer to having the correct understanding of what I'm working with by process of elimination and this is also a really positive step because it puts me closer to what supports and interventions will be helpful for me. (Spoiler alert though, in my autism assessment the assessor basically all but says that straight off the bat they could spot the autistic traits, and that's before we even got into anything in the assessment itself. A different friend went in to get their ADHD assessment and their assessor basically pulled the same thing on them. It's more common than you might think.)

My advice for the assessment is to approach it with a strong "Yes, and..." or "No, and..." angle - being an adult you will have had to develop a lot of mechanisms to cope and to compensate, probably more than you're really consciously aware of. When you do any sort of assessment (questionnaire or formal medical assessment) try to speak about why you do or don't experience a thing. For example, I don't run late all the time because most of the time I use public transport and that requires that I arrive early. But if I drive then I'm either rushing because I'm running late or I arrive like an hour early so I don't end up running late. So in pure terms, me being late for things is rarely a problem but tardiness is the bane of my existence and I'm constantly battling against it. Another example is that I use an electronic diary on my phone so at any point I can check what I have to do and what time it's happening. I don't forget appointments and things like that because I have the calendar in front of my face all the time. But if I ever lost access to my electronic diary my life would immediately become an unmitigated disaster. So I don't have problems with remembering events and appointments but only because I have a strict system and if I ever diverge from it, I'm a wreck - if I ever forget to add an event into my electronic calendar it might as well not exist. This is the kind of thing that's really important to elaborate on in an assessment. I'm sure you'll have your own personal examples here.

Other things to try to bring into the assessment are what people close to you have said you about what they have noticed. This might be a partner reminding you to put your keys in their place so you don't lose them or it could be reminding you of important dates or noting that they tell you that you are leaving the house half an hour earlier than you need to because they know you won't be ready on time. Or what parents, bosses, friends etc. have said. If you have any friends with ADHD, there's a 99% chance they have either laughed at an ADHD trait you have displayed that they identify with or they've told you that you seriously need to consider getting a diagnosis. Also try to recall what you were like as a child and think about what happens when you are exhausted or when you haven't had enough sleep - those times where your ability to compensate is compromised and you get closer to being at your baseline when those ADHD traits appear to manifest much more strongly. Report on these things to the assessor as appropriate.

You'll be fine, just be open and honest. Give your own perspective on things and don't be afraid to elaborate on what your internal experience is. Whatever the outcome is, you're going to be one step closer and it's worth focusing on that and celebrating it regardless of the outcome, if that's a possibility for you.

Good luck and remember to report back if you want!

It needs to go further. The UK and EU need to threaten to ban the iOS and Android app stores for permitting this app in the first place.

They won't because they're spineless, except when they're dealing with peaceful grandparents who dare to protest the genocide of West Asians, but that's what they should do if they actually gave a shit about anything except neocolonialism and protecting the interests of capital.

It'd be a real shame if your shithole nation failed to demonstrate even the most basic level of respect for the sovereignty of other countries, not to mention international law, and you didn't take action to protect the national sovereignty being violated by the US (whether historical or so recent that it happened only mere days ago) and then those chickens come home to roost and you found your shithole nation being the next in the firing line of a (more) rabid dog pariah state who has come to violate your own sovereignty.

Even Kyle Kulinsky gets it

Don't let yourself get outflanked on the left by a pro-DNC shill who proudly displays an Amer*can flag on his wall.

Linux irritates me. A lot less than windows. And Microslop has to find alternative ways to spy on me and get my money. And it's much snappier and less demanding on my system resources. And I don't get in-OS advertisements. And searching for settings and applications actually works. But it's still irritating.

I get why people stick with windows. Transitioning is hard. Windows isn't on a trajectory that I like one single bit though and for me, I needed out of the sunk cost fallacy of many years that was holding me captive. I'm intermediate in what I can do in Linux and advanced in what I'd like to be able to. If you're a basic/mostly basic user of a PC then it's going to be less irritating for you than it is for me.

If you aren't married to certain workflows or particular applications that aren't supported on Linux (Adobe, anti-cheat games) then it's really a matter of picking your poison.

Have you seen the regular watch sessions that get posted here in Hexbear? Users here hang out virtually and watch all sorts of things while chatting. It might be something to consider.

If you read this message soon after I've posted it, they're actually in the middle of the watch session right now. Check out the movies comm to keep an eye on when the next screening comes up if you're interested.

I'm hard pressed to think of a country where language-policing was an effective tool in restoring democracy.

And I'm hard pressed to think of a time when a comment on Redd*t was an effective tool in restoring democracy, yet you're commenting anyway.

This is such a reductionist take. No, making rules against oppressive language isn't going to "restore democracy". Did anyone claim that it was ever going to? This betrays the lack of political development of the commenter.

I know this is nitpicking but I really hate this haughty Redd*tor posturing. They could have just said "This won't fix the problem" but instead it has to be wrapped up in all this smug wording - "Well, according to my extensive study of history it appears to me that in no case which I'm able to identify would banning me from saying the N-word would have ever advanced the interests of democracy 😏"

If banning those words doesn't matter for restoring your precious bourgeois, settler-colonial democracy then it doesn't matter if you don't use those words either.

Definitely. I know that likewise, personally, if shit was kicking off and it was being led by anarchists while the communist movements were languishing or being counterrevolutionary then I wouldn't hesitate to throw my support behind the anarchists.

I don't care about my position being vindicated or having "my team" win; stopping the rising tide of fascism and overthrowing capitalism are so much more important to me than ideological distinctions.

That's a really interesting perspective and it's a very dialectical take on something that I haven't considered before. I'm gonna need to turn this over in my mind.

Hook me up to a blood pressure monitor and then claim that MAREZ is anarchist and refer to it as "Chiapas" or "The Zapatistas" and watch those numbers climb lol. There's something about referring to a primarily indigenous political movement by their location rather than their chosen name that really gives the same vibes as a colonial era Brit on safari referring to "the natives" or some subspecies of animal; it's almost like invalidating the legitimacy of their polity by not respecting it enough to call it by its name.

I think you and I are working along similar lines here. In many respects I'd love to still be an anarchist but your political position isn't a sports team where you can just pick out the one you favor the most. This isn't intended to sound facetious but I'd genuinely love for anarchism to prove me wrong but, until that day comes, I think there are fundamental flaws in how anarchism analyzes the world, how it prioritizes its political goals, and how it functions in terms of organizing and defending itself.

MLism isn't without flaws or valid criticisms but it has an answer for big questions/problems that emerge in most anarchist models like how do you navigate working alongside people who aren't deeply political and who aren't open to being politicized to a high degree - think of your average middle aged mom and pop who love their grandkids and enjoy gardening but they just aren't ever going to engage with theory deeply enough to develop into the model anarchists capable of achieving full political self-actualization, or however you want to describe it. In terms of politics, they are going to be followers, essentially, and that's okay - a movement should be able to accommodate that without expecting them to be at every organizing meeting and to engage with hundreds of hours worth of theory reading.

In terms of the general population, all of us here (regardless of political orientation) would be in the top 1% for political engagement and that's not to flatter us but rather to point out that we can invite others to become more political and we can educate/agitate/organize to develop the political consciousness of people but it's naive to expect that everyone can and/or will reach this level. And, let's be honest with ourselves, it's hard enough to get this particular demographic to do the reading (I'm very much guilty of this myself btw so I'm not pointing the finger at others, I'm just being realistic) so I don't think it's a viable strategy to expect that the median person in terms of political development and engagement would fare better. But let's presume that it is, as a thought experiment - what so we need to do create the conditions for that median person to achieve a high degree of politicization?

Imo we would need to do away with capitalism and colonialism, we obviously would need to have a revolution to achieve that, we would need to defend the revolution, we would need to fundamentally change how work functions so that they have enough free time for their political development, and we might just need to wait until we are a couple of generations on from that person because culture changes slowly and often people get very set in their ways that makes it very hard to get them to budge.

And how do you achieve all of that in a practical sense? For me MLism has a viable, practical answer. I don't see most anarchist tendencies having one though. To oversimplify, there's a chicken-and-egg problem that MLism (or vanguardism) has a solution for.

I'm sure none of what I've written here is news to you though.

I saw younger gens claiming that millennials are as bad as boomers and there was a decent amount of agreement and replies echoing it. That was a wild take.

I don't like fuelling inter-gen conflict but, my god, a lot of boomers would be one notch below literally spitting in your face for being openly queer or in a mixed race relationship or something like that.

Idk about anyone else but I've never heard a millennial say "Oh what cute kids! It's a shame their daddy happens to be black." and I've never seen a millennial's smile literally melt right off their face when you correct them by telling them that you have a girlfriend, not a boyfriend. I've never encountered a millennial who votes to kick away the ladder with stuff like access to foodstamps and, upon being challenged with "But you literally raised me for half my childhood on foodstamps", they respond with "Yeah but it's too expensive these days and I saw a very real post on Facebook about how someone bought Mercedes by scamming SNAP and I refuse to entertain any points about how this is a falsehood."

Millennials have all sorts of problems, don't get me wrong, but damn.

There's this wonderful old Yiddish anarchist song from Russia where they sing joyfully about putting the tsar and his mother in a box [timestamped]

It wasn't just Lenin calling to kill the bastards - even the anarchists were doing it back then.

Shit, I don't say this very often but I swear that if some of today's western anarchists met a figure like Durruti or Malatesta and listened to what they advocated for, they'd denounce them for being tankies.

I always appreciate learning and people who have a commitment to accuracy, so these corrections might not seem like much but it matters to me a lot.

Oh that's interesting to know, thanks for the correction!

That's a good point. Not to come off as snarky towards anarchists but there's only a couple of anarchist projects that we can even look to as historical examples - in Ukraine, in the Spanish Civil War, in Korea with the KPAM (extremely briefly and it seems like a lot of the scholarship on it is bound up in the Korean language, if it even exists.)

Often anarchists use Rojava, aka AANES, but they really aren't anarchist (although I tend to avoid debate on this matter) and then there's the MAREZ led by the EZLN, often just referred to as "The Zapatistas" (which irritates me because it gives those western chauvinist vibes) but they explicitly reject the label of anarchism because it's from a western political and colonial paradigm. Can't say I'd have any objections to that even if I did have a say, which I don't.

Both the Malhnovshchina and Revolutionary Catalonia are really good examples of hierarchies and anarchist vanguardism of a sort, not to mention of states themselves, so it's a catch-22: I'm going to look at it and my conclusion will be that these structures are a necessity to advance and defend the revolution, at least insofar as they were able to, but I could see anarchists rejecting this and arguing that it's a quirk of history and that they aren't necessary and that it is possible to advance an anarchist revolution without it. I can imagine that some anarchists would argue that these structures are also what led to each revolution failing too, although I've never come across a good argument or any sources that seem to vindicate this position.

It's interesting how Makhno and Arshinov leaned harder into vanguardism after they fled Ukraine with the collapse of the Black Army where they developed platformism as a response to what they identified as critical flaws within the Makhnovshchina.

I wonder if Makhno wasn't so bitterly opposed to the Bolsheviks, for obvious reasons since he had such a personal stake in opposing them, if he would have taken Arshinov's path and ended up going full-Bolshevik in the end?

You're welcome. It's very much a sketch rather than being something comprehensive. I've read a fair bit about the Makhnovists although I'm no scholar. I tend to keep this stuff under wraps a lot of the time because often there's not much point sharing it - it's liable to just fuel online slapfights that produce little aside from spectacle.

I do genuinely believe that most of what the Makhnovists did in terms of establishing a state and defending it were necessary, and I try to be careful not to treat it as some gotcha like a debatebro would.

I don't disagree with what you've said here and I want to get back around to this comment to reply more thoroughly but in the meantime, in matters of the "betrayal" trope, this is the official communiqué that Makhno issued publicly upon signing a treaty with the Red Army:

...but this doesn't gel with the current narrative of the duplicitous Bolsheviks and the persecuted underdog Makhnovist victims.