The anti-China stuff is getting really out of wack/completely unconnected to reality over on reddit. Like, people think China wants to nuke the world and everyone thinks China is about to invade Taiwan any second (some article noted that Taiwan had a 30 plane incursion recently or something like that, but Taiwan claims some of mainland China in its aircraft identification zone including some of the busiest airports in the world). They're really pushing Uygur genocide even while the posters on worldnews or subs like that push back. It's hard to tell what's legitimate and what's part of an astroturfing campaign.

And then there's just the complete delusion, like who thinks Vietnam is going to be part of an anti-China axis along with Occupied Korea and Japan? How the fuck do you think Australia is going to be part of an anti-China axis with India - Australia is pretty dependent on China and I don't think India has the capacity to sail the Indian Ocean and help Australia in some defensive pact. It literally doesn't make sense. Or people think Biden is going to do a US version of BRI that somehow won't just be debt-trap diplomacy, while China is still offering favorable terms for infrastructure and also forgiving debt during the pandemic.

This is China's decade, the bourgeois of the US and west wasted their time and effort on the middle east, austerity and foreign adventurism instead of focusing on infrastructure/logistics and reduction of poverty. China and the US sowed for the 2020s since the 90s and now it's time to reap - China's about to have a proverbial bumper crop while the US is about to have a proverbial dustbowl and blight. Even if Biden or western leaders want to start competing with China's growth for real, they have huge amounts of infrastructure debt and will be lagging this entire decade just trying to undo the damage that has been done. To actually surpass will require central planning and political will heretofore unforeseen in the west since the war effort in the 1940s.

Hi my day fucking sucked, family members in the hospital, talks with nursing homes, can I get some ♥ in the chat

police attacked an empty house because they thought there was someone inside who was ignoring them, lmao. full SWAT team and everything. https://kion546.com/news/2021/03/25/seaside-standoff-ends-with-nobody-found-in-house-on-luzon-road/

@Cuttlefish is gone :sadness:

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this ever given boat is such a comrade

Doing more to dismantle capitalism than any of u libs :grill-broke:

Been trying a nuzlock challenge for fire red. Lost my mankey named monke to poison :sadness: need to carry antidotes with me.

Reddit, capitalist, is having server issues. Hexbear, socialist, is still working. Was Marx correct?

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Feeling especially transgender today

when you really think about it, maybe the “online left” has formed a novel, networked superego - an ethereal collection of posters that delight in making impossible demands and observing your failures

My 100th post is coming up soon and I know what to post. It's gonna take some work but will try my best. Still have to do 99th post first and don't just want it to be filler so have another idea.

Gonna sleep now and finish some stuff when I wake tomorrow. Take care everyone and hope y'all have sweet dreams.

:trans-heart: :heart-sickle: :ace-heart: :af-heart: :ancom-heart: :anarchy-heart: :an-eco-heart:

This was something I posted just before the last megathread got unpinned, and I wanted to consider it a bit further:

In many parts of the internet, I often see “wholesome” posts and memes that say something vague and positive like “You are amazing!” or “You’re beautiful!” or “You’re valid!” My personal reaction to these posts is generally skepticism, partly because whoever posted it almost certainly didn’t have me in mind, and it’s a bit like if someone I’ve never met came up to me in real life and started praising and complimenting me – my first thought would be, “This person is being insincere and they probably want something from me” (which may be true in a sense, e.g. the person might want likes and comments on their post).

But I get the sense that this isn’t how most people feel about such posts. Which means that there’s something that everyone else gets out of such posts that I don’t, and there’s something about everyone else that I don’t understand. So, I ask with sincerity and the intention to understand, can anyone describe the value they get out of these general vaguely positive posts of affirmation?

The responses I got emphasized the importance of sincerity in the person expressing love for the audience of the message -- which, if the message is on the internet where everyone can see it, is potentially everyone in the world. Wanting the best for everyone in the world is a tall order.

And yeah, I guess that is a bit of a sticking point for me. It's easy to say "I love and wish the best for all people everywhere", but it's very difficult to practice it. So many people claim to love all living things in the universe one moment, and then go on the internet and tell people they don't like to kill themselves the next moment. If you say you "love" everyone, then in what sense do you "love" Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Vaush, Kamala Harris, J.K. Rowling, Jeff Bezos, Pete Buttigieg, Jeffrey Epstein, Mike Cernovich, Andy Ngo, Ben Shapiro, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the woman who made the Giggle app, and everyone else whose existence makes you angry? I'm not saying it's impossible, but I do think it means you have to have have a deep answer to the question "What is love?" (an answer which goes beyond "Baby, don't hurt me").

There are few people I can think of who I think really have that kind of love for humanity, a love that's even capable of including the people listed above. As much of a cliche as it is, the first person who comes to mind is Mister Rogers, but I would also include certain activists such as Martin Luther King Jr or Leslie Feinberg. Like, if MLK said that he loves even the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world and wants to liberate them from the hatred they carry in their hearts, I'd believe him. But that's not just because of his words -- it's because his words were backed up by his actions.

I do think it's good to try to cultivate some kind of universal love for all humanity and all living things, but I wish people would be honest and acknowledge how difficult it is, and how often we fail at it. I'm an atheist, but this is one thing I've always found interesting about Christianity and the Christian individuals I respect most -- this idea of aiming to love everyone as Jesus did, but also acknowledging that we are all sinners who will fall short of godly perfection, and understanding that to practice this love is a lifelong challenge and not just something you can make a wholesome meme about and be done with it.

I'm not sure if I have a point. Maybe I'm just being way too solemn about the word "love", and maybe I'm taking internet posts too seriously for my own good.

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I got a vaccine appointment after refreshing 6 different web pages basically continuously for ten hours straight before i could find a cancellation and register for it before someone else beat me to it/a script picked it up. That getting a vaccination is a matter of such competition feels extremely american.