About half of my YouTube recommendations now are bee keeping, composting and organic farming, because of how much I fantasize about giving it all up after being chained to my computer for sol long. At least you can eat what you make on a farm.
I know it's too late for this, and you're angry about the situation... please don't do this. Speaking as the person who's been on the other side of that table, please do not tell them to go fuck themselves. I had a candidate once who was very smart and accomplished, but exhibited signs that he was not a good fit for the team. We told him that we would not be inviting him back for the second round of interviews, and the next day my boss got an anonymous email telling him he was an old, fat prick and a douchebag who didn't appreciate the candidate's brilliance. The whole team breathed a sigh of relief that we dodged that bullet, and it reinforced our view that our instincts were right, the guy was not a good fit for our team. I still have the guy's resume in my desk, and I know if he applied for the position again (we are lucky to have been hiring a lot in the last three years) I would think twice about that candidate, despite his impressive qualifications. "This guy has threatened us in the past" is a perfectly good reason not to hire somebody.
I'm not so sure it would shake out that way. The government has consistently signaled that it will abandon local regions to their fate when times get rough. On the other hand, the Fed has said pretty much explicitly that they will be printing unlimited money for banks, hedge funds, major institutions and large corporations for the foreseeable future, inflation be damned. Instead of "collapsing in on itself" I see regions competing for attention and resources. So political fights turn into fights for survival. Not everywhere in the United States will feel the pain equally.
What's really odd to me though, is that people seem intent on moving into and staying in areas that anybody with a brain can see are going to be experiencing huge challenges in the future (Phoenix , AZ and about 90% of Florida being the obvious examples). Arizona has been locked into battle with Colorado and most of the rest of the southwest for several decades over the water issue. There's no shortage of blame to go around, so the natural tendency of Americans to find an enemy has been well-exercised.
"hand yourself in"? So their protest slogan is a pun? A PUN? A pun about submitting to authority, dick-in-hand, instead of challenging it meaningfully. Great.
This is a good thread to post The Revolutionary Catechism: https://www.marxists.org/subject/anarchism/nechayev/catechism.htm
It's pretty aggressive; the revolutionary has to give up a lot of comforts and attachments to continue the fight.
This is the only place on the internet (and in real life for that matter) that I feel comfortable and confident addressing others as "comrade".
It's convenient for them to keep around, because they don't need to obey the spirit of the ruling (abortion access) instead it actually frees them up to implement all the anti-abortion laws they want, so long as it isn't outlawed by name.
Bain capital is also the one that purposefully ruined Toys R Us to enrich their executives. They just hate kids I guess! https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/09/debt-strike-employee-owned-businesses-and-other-surprisingly-simple-tech-fixes
Contrary to the popular narrative, the company did not go under because of online retail or more savvy competitors. It went under because Bain Capital, the private equity firm started by Mitt Romney, ran it into the ground, using its credit to pay Bain executives huge bonuses while not investing in competing with other retailers. (It’s a slightly more sophisticated version of the way organized crime “busts out” businesses.) Bain did the same thing with KB Toys;
It's called Consuming Capital, also known as stripping the wires for copper, or eating your seed corn. Once the capitalist runs out of "conventional" means to make a profit, they crank up the exploitation dial until they are exploiting themselves. The last two people on earth will be a pair of capitalists trading a lump of coal between themselves.
"Torching the forest to use the ash as currency is a funny thing to base your entire economic system on..."
And not even post a link to the clip? Everyone needs to hear the man himself: https://soundcloud.com/distantdreamz/were-in-fuckin-1320-motherfucker
Kill Your Lawn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz9I2YwmV8M
Current Affairs is fun.
Joe Biden is asleep in this photo.
I need to second this. Not necessarily with reddit, but the sensation that relating genuinely to other people has been replaced with articles or posts. My friends are techies, so conversations inevitably start with "hey did you see...?" followed by a link to an article from a website or blog that my friend knows we both read, and that I definitely have already read. And since that article has a comment thread, our conversation has been presaged for us. Everything has already been said, and when this pattern repeats many times, eventually we skip the conversation and just go right to "weird" or "crazy" or "lol" or "i know, rite?". Make sure to keep an eye out for the most controversial comment (even amount of upvotes and downvotes), that is sure to be the most interesting take. The more comments the article has, the better.
I like my friends, but I feel that there are aspects of the internet (and I guess the dark cloud of capitalism, as pointed out in other comments here) that make interacting with people feel less special.
I like the red/black flag. The red part says "unite, join us" and the black part says "don't mess with us, we are not afraid to defend ourselves". I think that gets the message across.
"We have a stunted pop culture malaise that hasn’t changed much for decades of recycled nostalgia that keeps coming back again and again"
This is called Lost Future, where capitalism keeps selling us things we remember from the past, because all of the creative energy has burned out and been taken over by venture capital. Mark Fisher had a great essay on the topic (although he was more concerned about the UK music scene, his analysis applies to pop culture in general).
Here's a great video about Hauntology and Lost Futures:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSvUqhZcbVg
I found listening to Matt on Twitch and YouTube really helped. He had a bit of a "Satori Moment" that helped him piece together a bunch of things, and he's sharing it now on his livestreams. He's basically invented a kind of Transcendental Marxism, really cool stuff that puts the current moment into perspective. It has helped with the closing-in feeling that you are watching things break down even while the people in charge (who we elected to fix these problems!) are merely twiddling their thumbs because this is the best Western democracy has come up with.
The thing about alcohol that scares me is that it works. I feel better, I smile more, I sleep more soundly, I get along with others better, and there are so many delicious and interesting drinks to sample. The local liquor store was considered an essential business, and a bylaw was passed to exclude it from the (otherwise aggressive and restrictive) lockdown measures implemented here. I have not had alcohol in the house since Christmas, and while I am clear-headed and calm now, I have had many panicky and dark moments in the last few months where a soothing scotch would have made me feel much better.
The feeling of losing your mind, of powerlessness, is a side effect of the aggressive, exploitative remorseless machine called capitalism. In a society of communities, we related to other people, shared our fears and concerns with them, and could work together to build a better world. But alone in our apartments, as sentient input-output devices (or sensory response units) we are becoming absorbed into this computer-like monster.
I venture outside every four days to get food, but otherwise I am inside. I am lucky enough to be able to work from home, but also basically chained to my computer. It is my only source of human relation, entertainment, education, income and wish fulfillment. That is no way to live. The worst part is knowing that there is a better way. Humans do not have to be in competition with one another. Humans do not have to exploit one another to get the resources needed to live a meaningful life. We are cursed with the knowledge of that world, and of the knowledge that things are likely to get much worse before they get better. Even typing at a computer in a city that has not yet succumbed to climate change is a privilege.
The biggest thing I've learned is that we probably need to widen our perspective more than we are comfortable. We will be attacked. We will be left behind. But as long as we are sentient, and can send out sparks in the darkness, future generations will have a chance. "Society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit." That in itself is depressing, but it is depressing because we won't get to enjoy it. Hanging on to "enjoyment" as our goal will have us exhausted on the hedonic treadmill. The solution is having a grander vision, and being content with the existence of a few other people who still believe great things are possible.
Convert me. I got into anarchism because I wanted a critique of power structures that was more broad than something that only focused on work and government. Principles I learned from reading anarchist literature taught me to be suspect of all power structures, authorities and hierarchies, even those that may be beneficial like you might find in communism. But with that said, left unity, etc. I'd still be proud to call you a comrade.
I meant the mods available in the Twitch client. (A while back, my Curse installer, redirected me to the Twitch client, and all of my mod installs were still there, the path even still has Curse in the name.)
I would not use this graph to defend socialism. Do you know how many capitalists would kill for a 7% return in this economy? Interest rates are actually trending negative in many parts of the world and the amount of money sloshing through the economy is not slowing down.
Also, look at companies like Uber that have never (and never will) make a profit, and yet is valued at around $47B right now (although down from its peak at $60B). Profit ceased to be a motivating factor for investors a long time ago. Instead market share (i.e. the hope for more monopolies), and an increasing customer base is now what attracts capital.
There are plenty of excellent reasons to defend socialism on a purely empirical basis, rate of profit ain't it.