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  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    2 days ago

    I have several Cuban and Chinese friends and they have such optimism about the future that I can't help but agree with them

    • Comrade_Mushroom [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 days ago

      It must be so nice to have that kind of optimism. I can only vaguely remember having a general feeling that the world would only get better when I was a single-digit age.

      • JustSo [she/her, any]
        ·
        1 day ago

        I'm no longer in my 30s and I'm starting to feel hope again. I think that Luigi fella's deed and the class divided response have given me a nice little boost of hope.

        Listen to some podcasts about how BRICS is building defenses against sanction based policy fuckery and how the belt-and-road initiative is expanding China's soft power. You might start to perk up a bit too. :)

          • JustSo [she/her, any]
            ·
            edit-2
            1 day ago

            Damn, I was worried you might ask. I can't specifically remember which ones have delved into these topics, but I usually enjoy

            • Boonta Vista (Australian perspective)
            • Trashfuture (British perspective)
            • QAA/QanonAnonymous (terminally online perspective)
            • True Anon (American San Fran-ish perspective, best when sleuthing and investigative, often not enjoyed by a subset of Hexbears)
            • The Red Line (Australian / International perspective, deep dive geopolitics)

            The bootleg / greywolf / patreon feeds for most of the above are in the jumble.top collection maintained by @jumble, the c/podcasts community can be a good place to look for discussion on particular interests, so a post asking on there for BRICS and China soft power / belt-and-road topic podcast episodes will most certainly net you some useful replies.

            Edit: you will want an RSS reader that can properly process the feeds indexed by Jumble, some readers will only link the paywalled patreon previews of the episodes, but there is an embedded media container in each feed entry that links the full episode. I use the feedbro extension on firefox, it's not especially good but it works. Again a post on the podcasts community or technology community will probably get you more useful and accurate advice.

            The only exception is The Red Line, which you can find at https://www.youtube.com/@TheRedLinePod (inb4 youtube proxy bot) and I believe they don't paywall any content, just release early on patreon. Very easy to find specific topics on their channel.

            (The host brings on extremely knowledgeable guests about topics you will almost never find elsewhere. Foreign correspondents, academics, former ambassadors etc, who've spent time in obscure parts of the world. I highly recommend this channel if you want to learn about politics-in-practice. It's basically ideologically neutral. But in doing so it stands in STARK contrast to mainstream narratives- for example there is a pretty good episode in there about why the fear mongering about China invading Taiwan is impractical nonsense, or you can learn about how countries in Central Asia like Tajikistan are structured and the various military and political variables, states of affairs etc. Shits criminally underrated.)

            Edit: FUCK. I nearly forgot:

            • The Deprogram: https://www.youtube.com/@thedeprogram9999 (international- iraqi/slav/american hosts. Fantastic podcast. Each host also has a good youtube channel you might already be familiar with.)

            Edit 3: Even the stuff you can access via the RSS feeds all has free episodes on pretty much every platform, so you don't need to worry about that roadblock to get started finding something that works for you in terms of vibe/tone/humour/level-of-optimism, but it's just nice to know that if you do find something you like, you don't need to shell out dollars to get the paid content.
            Obviously these creators deserve to be rewarded for their work but I'm scraping by on welfare. I'll pay my dues if and when I can and until then, if I can download it, it is mine. stirner-cool

            • Comrade_Mushroom [comrade/them]
              ·
              19 hours ago

              Oh I love TrueAnon, but haven't listened in like 2 years due to life changes removing the time I used to have for listening to podcasts. But if they did a video on this subject, I'll seek it out!

              • JustSo [she/her, any]
                ·
                edit-2
                16 hours ago

                Weeeellll, I pretty much just listed my fave pods that aren't CTH which I don't even particularly listen to much lately.

                Red Line and The Deprogram are your best bets for these subjects.

                The Red Line is rarely entertainment content, but if you wanna learn some shit, it's great.

                Not c/bloomer content

                Not sure if you stopped listening before they released it, but TrueAnon's investigation into Synanon, addiction treatment industry history and "troubled teen" camps is really some of their best work since Epstein didn't kill himself and Maxwell got locked up. ( "The Game" - youtube playlist link )
                Not really on-topic for the bloomer community, I'm getting a little teary remembering listening to it because it's both a deep investigation into the history and exploitation of addiction treatment and a personal journey for Brace, diving into an abusive "troubled teen" type facility he was sent to himself as a kid. So yeah it's dark as fuck and he recounts a lot of personal trauma, but ultimately seems cathartic for Brace.