Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]

Algae rock? Yeah, what about it?

What’s your plan when your preferred party nominates someone above your maximum age?

I don’t know all the details but she does seem to be involved in organizing and the IWW.

I don’t think the reason the USSR fell is because they weren’t disruptive enough in allied nations in WWII. Like, maybe it’s reflective of an attitude that affected things later on, but it’s a bit of a stretch to think, like, that was the thing that set them on the path of defeat.

I do think these things are important to discuss, especially since it started from a discussion of practical tactics in the modern day. But it’s rare enough to find someone who will listen to stuff like that at all, so I don’t want to alienate them if I can avoid it, especially since like I said it would make things awkward with others. It took me a long time to come around on certain ideas and make peace with certain truths, so I think it’s important to be patient and give people time and space to consider things. Even if they don’t end up agreeing, if they can say, “I know people like that and they’re not so bad,” its a step in the right direction.

Yeah, generally it’s like, I’ll explain and defend my position, but it’s fine if we disagree. In this case I found it upsetting and I just had to be like, “Listen, I can promise that nothing you say will ever change my mind on this.”

I guess like, if we were talking about WWI that take would be correct, because every side was just as bad. But virtually everyone would agree that the fascists were an existential threat that had to be stopped. And there’s stuff you can criticize like internment and bombing civilians targets, but strikes are directly disruptive - that’s the whole point!

I don’t want to dunk on this person too hard, but I had an argument last night with someone in DMs and I need to vent. She’s a syndicalist and trans and seems alright in practice, but it’s a case of disagreeing on events from 100 years ago. But for some reason, of all the things she could’ve criticized the USSR for, she criticized them for “Stopping workers in the US from striking to serve Russian national interests, even denouncing the strikes as ‘fascist inspired’” when I asked, “Huh? How that would serve Russian national interests?” she explained, “They had a policy of appeasing liberal governments in the 1930’s and 40’s.” WHAT?! Do you mean during WWII? When the strikes would have directly benefited the Nazis??

Let me get this straight. The Soviets are too authoritarian because, while facing an existential fascist threat that killed 27 million Soviet people, they politely asked the American Communist Party, whose members joined voluntarily and listened to the Kremlin voluntarily, not to support strikes that hindered the war effort. Of course, the workers could strike anyway without communist support, and some did! But by not actively supporting them, it’s “authoritarian!”

“Couldn’t the same logic be used to oppose strikes in the healthcare industry, since people might die from lack of care?” Well, that depends, IF THE FUCKING NAZIS ARE AT THE GATES, THEN YES!

“By the time the Western front opened up, the Nazis were already losing, it wouldn’t have hurt the war effort that much.” Every day that the war dragged on, more people were fed into the furnaces. And how can you expect them not to do everything possible to win after losing so much? And why do you put so much more importance on some factory worker working long hours than the 27 million people killed by the Nazis??

I don’t get it. If you’re going to criticize the Soviets over something like that, why not bring up the classic talking point of Kronstadt? It’s as if she went out of her way to find the worst possible example, where the so-called “elitist” centralized leadership was 100% correct.

I want to get along because A) it’s foolish to fight over old disagreements, and B) we’re in a discord group together and I don’t want things to get awkward or cause drama. This all started because I mentioned PSL and tried to explain the Leninist line on electoralism, she didn’t run away screaming when I cited Lenin or call me a redfash tankie or anything, but she messaged me later to talk about it. We ended on me saying I needed to sleep and calling it a night. I wanted to avoid an ideological argument, but I couldn’t help getting drawn in and becoming upset.

Idk, Hexbear, any tips for navigating this sort of thing?

The vibes on RedNote aren’t so bad.

I have one and I absolutely love it, but, I also understand why some people don’t. Many people who use them (especially rental ones) don’t wear a helmet and some will go up on sidewalks at full speed. You gotta be careful with them especially when you’re first getting used to them, I had a couple falls starting out (I’m klutzy). Gloves and kneepads aren’t a bad idea (in addition to a helmet, obviously), and always be careful around corners and doors and watch for potholes, especially on your first time taking a route. If you’re careful and responsible, they can be great. Very portable, affordable, and fun and easy to ride. If the streets are bad, you can get on the sidewalk, if the sidewalk’s bad you can get on the street, and if things are hazardous, you can go slow and just step off if you need to. Only bad thing is if they run out of battery, you’re kinda stuck, as opposed to an ebike where you could ride it manually.

But isn’t that the whole reason that the concept was developed in the first place? It’s not very sound to come up with a hypothesis to explain an observation and then rely on that same observation to support the hypothesis. The concept needs to be able to predict and explain new observations, or else it has no utility and is still essentially just a placeholder.

You talked about, like, “vibes-based reasons,” but is there a reason to accept the explanation of dark matter aside from vibes? If it’s just about feeling satisfied that you have an explanation for the phenomenon, that’s vibes. Like, relativity, you have to accept and account for or GPS wouldn’t work nearly as accurately as they do. But everyone could reject the hypothesis of dark matter and it wouldn’t really change anything.

Explanations for things are a dime a dozen. There’s no real value in having an explanation (other than personal satisfaction, i.e. vibes) for something unless that explanation helps you to make predictions or manipulate objective reality in some way. That’s not to say that it couldn’t, at some later date, meet those requirements, but at this point dark matter is barely anymore useful than saying a wizard did it - a hypothesis that also explains the observations perfectly well while being only slightly less congruous with the rest of our understanding of physics.

Dark matter is a case of giving a phenomenon a name and then thinking that because it has a name you’ve explained it. Dark matter isn’t really an explanation, it’s essentially just a placeholder to say, “Our equations suggest there should be matter here but there isn’t, so maybe there’s some kind of matter we can’t observe? Or something?” It’s not an answer or an explanation, it’s just a term for an unexplained phenomenon that guesses vaguely about it what might be, and until we can verify the existence of dark matter through other means and explain why it defies other observations, it’s little more than a placeholder and cannot be treated as settled science. This isn’t really out of line with the mainstream view, the mainstream view is just that there aren’t any better explanations (yet) so that’s what we’re stuck with (for now).

Frog speedrun any%

Aww! That’s so sweet 🥰

Fascinating. So if one state doesn’t recognize another, that means that it “clearly states its aim is to fully annex it.” So for example, the US doesn’t recognize the government of Afghanistan, so that means the US “clearly states” it aims to reinvade and fully annex Afghanistan, do I have that right?

Or maybe you meant to say that Russia implicitly suggested that it intended to fully annex Ukraine, according to your speculation?

they have clearly stated was fully conquering Ukraine?

Source?

The first thing to note is that Buddhism is a broad term that contains a lot of different belief systems. It is also plagued by poor translations of terms that don’t translate well into English, especially without looking meanings of the original terms.

Imo, your friend has distorted and misrepresented Buddhist teachings in order to justify not changing their behavior regarding meat-eating.

I’d challenge the use of the term “deserved” altogether, and I’d say “caused” might be a more accurate interpretation. Karma is not about an intelligent, all-powerful being passing judgement and smacking you down. It’s sometimes referred to as “the law of cause and effect.” It’s described as a function of the universe, the same way that physical laws makes objects fall to the ground when dropped. The exact way in which this works is up to interpretation. More secular-minded Buddhists might point to logical and observable consequences to explain it, while more spiritually-minded ones might argue that it’s more of an invisible, unexplainable force that carries over between lifetimes.

To use an example: a child that is fed a hamburger by their parents does not have knowledge of the animal’s suffering that was required to make it, nor do they have agency to control their diet or to prevent the animal from being harmed. But, an animal is still harmed through the process. The intent and agency of the actor are not important in the same way that it doesn’t matter if a ball on top of a slope is pushed or knocked over. It would only really matter if you’re dealing in terms of judgement.

It is not your responsibility to enforce karma on others. Karma isn’t a positive or negative force, and just because something happens that doesn’t make it good or fair or deserved. Rather, the idea is to navigate the world in such a way that you minimize undesirable consequences. Buddhist precepts are a list of guidelines that are intend to do just that, the precept about nonviolence being the first. The idea is: “Bad things seem to happen a lot when people go around killing living beings so it’s probably better to not do that, generally speaking.”

You are correct that your friend’s interpretation and worldview is a mess of contradictions that could just as easily be used to justify harm to humans, and that they’re blatantly violating the first precept. But I would argue that they’re not accurately representing Buddhist teachings, and their views shouldn’t be held as representative of the belief system, though admittedly, like I said there are a lot of different traditions and beliefs.

pennies on the dollar

Psychopathic framing. “Look how efficiently we’re killing people!”

Also great example of conflating states with people. Maybe Ukraine still wants to fight, but Ukrainians are being conscripted against their will. In the same way, wearing Russia down may serve the interests of the US government, but it certainly doesn’t benefit the American people in any way. The best thing for the Ukrainian people would be to stop the killing at any cost, even if it meant territorial concessions. They could’ve saved countless lives if they’d done this from the start, and eventually that’s what’s going to happen anyway, but unfortunately countless people have died and countless more will before the ruling class decides to stop forcing the poor into the meat grinder.

How the fuck is my life supposed to be better because of dead Russian soldiers?

NATO is seeking to take control of decision-making powers on future aid packages — normally led by the US — in an effort to limit the impact of a potential second Donald Trump presidency on the ongoing conflict.

This is wild. It’s bad enough that the US president has the power to start wars wherever he wants with no congressional approval. But now they’re trying to make it so that the only people with the authority to withdraw from a conflict are unelected NATO officials accountable to no one.

Dronies will support this, because they love endless war across the globe and want to remove any potential for popular support to achieve peace.

girls dressing like men

As a transfem in a situation where I frequently have to present as a guy: thanks?

Wow this thing’s going crazy over here