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TreadOnMe [none/use name]

@ TreadOnMe @hexbear.net

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Joined
5 yr. ago

  • New York Times interviews Roblox CEO

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  • Any truth to the "625,000 dead due to USAid being cancelled" claim?

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  • The way soft power is used is by doing good things, while simultaneously sowing discontent among the populace that these things aren't being done by the local government, who is likely either being cut off at the hamstrings by U.S. and multinational lending policy. It also serves a domestic purpose of convincing activist liberals that the system is salvageable, after all, we spend all this money doing good things, clearly all we need to do is vote the bad people out and reform or get rid of the bad elements. They don't really understand that the reason we spend so much money is that the person that we help today is tomorrow's informant or even just saying "They're not that bad, they helped get running water to 'such and such village'. Mind you, depending on geography a project like that would really cost only 6-10 thousand dollars, pennies in terms of what we spend controlling the elite levels of power and the value of the labor and resources we extract.

    Often it is less subtle than that, like just slipping a shipment of weapons through with a shipment of food. Why do you think Israel accused Hamas of wanting aid trucks to come in simply to secure weapons? Well, they do it all the time, so why wouldn't their enemy?

    So yeah, it is totally possible that removing USAID money will lead to the deaths of that many people. But at the same time, it was just the open hand with the fist in the other.

  • "Another rigged year:" Former FPS pro Shroud responds to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 getting a Game Awards GOTY nomination over Arc Raiders, says "the world is just not ready for AI in video games"

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  • GOTY is always rigged. It's like how you can have Hades 2 (this isn't a criticism of the game, I think it's pretty damn good) in the 'Best Game by an Independent Developer' category when SuperGiant Games has been a mainstay of the industry for nearly a decade now with 24 listed employees and dozens of others involved in the projects.

    That doesn't make Shroud correct though. If Arc Raiders was shooting for a GOTY, it should have released at the beginning or middle of the summer. It isn't that surprising that it isn't there, it just hasn't been around long enough and doesn't have a huge audience outside of the 'Man I love, but am sick of, Tarkov' demo, which admittedly pretty big, but also fucking starved for real content and committed to a game whose developer have openly stated that they do not actually care if the game is fun or not. No shit they are gonna go bananas for something expanding the genre, while it is gonna be a pretty lack luster response from gamers and the industry at large.

    So yes, it is rigged, but Arc Raiders not being nominated is a pretty poor example of that process.

  • Republican congress staffer is charged with staging knife attack on herself (CW: Blood)

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  • Literally some kind of Meadow Soprano-esque scheme.

  • Has extreme poverty really plunged since the 1980s?

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  • God I wonder why that is? Who would have ever written about how that is the inevitable outcome of this system?

  • The Planatir CEO is wearing a very silly shirt

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  • His hairline isn't nearly receded enough to claim 'high-testosterone' status.

  • ‘China was playing chess while the rest of us were playing checkers’: Bombshell study finds $200 billion of secret loans to U.S. businesses over 25 years

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  • Omg they let their insurance be privately owned? How has this whole thing not collapsed under the weight of it's own incompetence. It has to be sheer inertia at this point.

  • Why is it called "male loneliness epidemic"? Dont women feel lonely too? Wtf?

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  • There is absolutely a female loneliness epidemic, but it tends to come from the most silenced of the demographics, childless lower/middle income single women who are over thirty. There are few representations of these women in media, and basically none that are positive, with the most common representation of them is stories about them 'finding love', thus removing themselves from the demographic.

    However, they are, in general, not a threat to others so very few people will actually take the time or money to look into this particular phenomena.

  • Why is it called "male loneliness epidemic"? Dont women feel lonely too? Wtf?

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  • It has happened a couple of times. There was a female school shooter in Madison recently, who was pretty clearly black-pilled from the right.

    It does express itself that way for women, just not statistically as frequently, and rarely in as spectacular a fashion.

  • War, Saint Augustin, Geometry, Rodrigo Nunes, and the new grammar of politics

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  • Oh goody, overbroad generalization of ideology with nothing actually new to offer, my favorite!

    And what has actually been accomplished within this 'anti-modern' framework? Are indigenous people any closer to realizing actual sovereignty using these new anti modern frameworks? Or did we not just witness a genocide of the indigenous which none of the perpetrators will ever be brought to justice?

    More importantly, how does abandoning a modern materialist framework help indigenous cause, especially when a large degree of what modern indigenous sovereignty exists is based in the embrace and use of those materialist lens, particularly in the revolutions of the mid 20th century.

    The world hasn't fundamentally changed, the historical forces that existed in the 19th still exist in the 21st, they just have intensified and calcified to make them feel permanent, in the same way monarchy felt permanent in the 16th century.

    You are mistaking overwhelming material structural disadvantage as a problem of ideological framing. You can't just shift your way of thinking and it will suddenly go away and not be a problem.

  • War, Saint Augustin, Geometry, Rodrigo Nunes, and the new grammar of politics

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  • Respectfully, I do understand it, I am just not familiar with that particular model of metaphysical thinking, as I am only particularly familiar with Hume, Kant and Hegel's versions of metaphysics, not with whatever flavor of dichotomy modern Western thinkers have cooked up.

    I never said people who care about it are stupid. I just hold the opinion that metaphysics and metaphysical discourse is a dead letter. Proving the particular from the particular is difficult enough, proving a universal based on a series of particulars is practically speaking impossible. In terms of leftist thinking trying to approach it from a metaphysical angle is not particularly Marxist, and I have serious doubts around it's efficacy as theory.

    Like, sure, I can agree that an Augustinian framework places itself as more of a structural concern related to order, and that framing a leftist movement as bringing about order could potentially be useful, but I don't think it really means anything that different outside of purely a rhetorical shift. There are plenty of actual particular historical events and accounts that point to the need for construction among the ruthless criticism of all that exists. No need to bring in a larger metaphysical framework.

  • War, Saint Augustin, Geometry, Rodrigo Nunes, and the new grammar of politics

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  • Then it is even more worthless. The metaphysical nature of the world is enigmatic at best, incomprehensible at worst. Not sure why it bears to needless speculation outside of justifying a philosophy degree.

    Dual power isn't itself an ideology, it is a potential method of praxis that derives from revolutionary leftist ideology.

  • War, Saint Augustin, Geometry, Rodrigo Nunes, and the new grammar of politics

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  • It does.

    The article literally suggests that the problem of the organizational left is one of ideological framing, specifically as Machiean v.s. Augustian.

    I would think the next step in an Augustian methodology would be to attempt to materially construct an alternative social system, a dual power. Either that or just changing our frame of reference will provide us with better tools of liberation, it is unclear.

    I will find time to read the nunes paper, but the summary is just some hand waving that could have been done in three paragraphs.

  • War, Saint Augustin, Geometry, Rodrigo Nunes, and the new grammar of politics

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  • So just a dumber way to talk about the concept of 'dual power', or is this some fantasy where we somehow overcome the very real material reality we live in?

    Edit: I still need to read it, but this isn't a promising start.

  • John Mulaney and Neal Katyal are working together on a TV show which Katyal described as a "West Wing for the Supreme Court." [More inside]

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  • A good reminder is that Mulaney is a recovering cocaine addict. It wouldn't be out the picture if he got into this stuff while absolutely out of his mind, and now has to justify it in sobriety.

  • US Inequality Is Way Past Revolution Time

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  • Well honestly we have had two in the last two years, which is a better ratio than it has been.

  • Here we go. Megyn Kelly "There's a Big Difference Between 15 and 5"

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  • It turns out the people always thinking about pedophilia might not be doing it because they hate pedophiles so much.

  • here are my socialist views

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  • In my opinion, marxist theory, in particular historical materialism and it's actionable counterpart, marxist-leninist theory, offers a greater and more comprehensive political analysis than almost any of their predecessors, contemporaries, and so-called ideological inheritors. So yes, I'd definitely recommend getting more into Marxist theory lol.

    That said, there are a couple of resources and primary sources that I usually push towards newer people.

    The first is the ABCs of communism on Marxists.org. They can be a bit of a fractional bunch, but their intentions seem to be good and the literature is decent.

    The rest is primary source material, which may be a bit of a struggle but I promise you it is worth it.

    The second is Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Friedrich Engles, the third is The Anti-Durhing by Friedrich Engles, and the fourth is 'State and Revolution' by Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin).

    These are a combination of background information/theoretical introduction in a way that isn't just throwing Capital or like ten different letters and essays by Marx at you.

    And if you haven't thrown in the towel or decided that being an anarchist or libertarian socialist is easier (it's not imo, the reading is often even more obscure), then I would actually crack open Capital by Karl Marx, ideally with some sort of read-along primer.

    After that, then you can always read the Communist Manifesto for shits and giggles. Not that it isn't a very serious document, but there are people who treat it as if it is the entire communist canon, when more than anything it is an afterthought, an 'oh shit we are actually supposed to be clearly demanding something using the implications of all these ideas we have floating around'.

  • here are my socialist views

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  • Market socialism is only a stop-gap measure on the way towards a communized system, not a whole system in of itself.

    Even here you are looking at running both a currency and labor voucher in some kind of dual system, which is unsustainable, because those who can convert labor vouchers into currency will be able to accrue interest and gain influence over those who have to spend labor vouchers on necessities. Unless you are running some sort of complex banking and centralized market where certain items can only be exchanged for labour vouchers or currency, depending. If a value game can be run, someone will run it. Doesn't mean that it isn't worth trying, but making it more complex just makes the game easier to run. Why not just abolish currency, only use labor vouchers? It is much simpler, especially in an era of computerized inventory.

    As others have said, these kinds of systems tend to be developed ad hoc. It is utopian to pretend otherwise.

    I mean, based off of reading this, you aren't really into socialism/communism, as the goals of the movement is ultimately the emancipation of the working class and total abolition of the state (legalized violence). For example, the argument between communists and anarchists one of the required steps in that process, not over what an 'ideal government' is. That is fundamentally a liberal argument, that an adequately planned state with the correct values will become the end of history. The communist does not view it that way. We once existed in a time without states, with industrial machinery and organization, we could easily exist as that again. More importantly, if we do not seek to exist as that again, that same industrial machinery will be used to enslave us and pit us in brutal competition both martial and commerical against each other.