Yeah, this one really hits the spot:

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This year I asked my relatives to give the money they would use for my gifts to mutual aid. I posted some links for them and some theory on mutual aid. I spesifically asked them to do this and not buy me stuff because I need nothing.

At first they started to ask for receipts of the mutual aid posts like "so do you know this person?". I said I know them from online and know they need support.

In the end they have bought me gifts and dismissed my wish. I don't know how to feel about it exactly. Like the money they spend is spent anyway. Makes me suspect that gift giving isn't really about giving, but consuming instead.

Here are a few I remember from the top of my head, but I have read a lot of books more than once.

Almost all Discworld books. I've read them as books at least once and for the last five years been listening to them for sleep every single night (audhd).

The reason is that the stories are removed from reality enough to not give me bad vibes, they are relatively light hearted but still adventurous. Some I don't listen to again because the body shaming (towards women especially) and other brainworms of the author bother me too much.

The Culture series. I just loved it from first read.

The Lord of the Rings. I read it the first time when I was in high school (before the movies) and going through a really hard time with mental health, my parents alcohol problems and loneliness. The sense of adventure abd especially the depiction of comradery and friendship in the books kept me going. Always loved the fellowship the most.

Several Steinbeck books, but Grapes of Wrath has changed in my mind the most after I have become more deprogrammed.

Hitchikers quide to the galaxy, just because it's fun.

Also some local literature that nobody here would probably know. One of these has been translated to English and is called The Memory of Water. It's a short dystopian novel that has the most beautiful use of our local language, it'd like the books sings. The story is secondary to the language in this one.

Blackshirts and Reds.

Edit. And The Dark Tower by Stephen King, also Shining, Pet Sematary and a few others. I was a huge Stephen King fan as a kid, shame he is such a lib.

Asimovs Foundation, I've read the series at least twice but some books three times.

Old man and the sea by Hemingway.

Those stories were always very ruthless and mean, they have a fully different vibe to them. There is a separate comic book series that is published here that is mostly these Italian writers work. The only story type I ever sort of enjoyed in them was Donald as the superhero, because that felt like a redemption arch for him. The way his failures and person tends to be portrayed is very demeaning. I think he is one of the few actual prole characters of Duckburg. Closest thing I can think of to compare them to is modern AmeriKKKan comedy where individualism and meanness is often the point.

My favourite Donald Duck story writer was a Chilean guy called Vicar whose Donald stories were more about him working in the margarine factory and stumbling in his various side hustles that always seemed very neurodiversity coded so I related to them. They were still very brainwormy but often more empathetic to the failures of Donald Duck.

My (young) adult kid asking me to come hang out with him, for no particular reason. And it makes me so happy.

Yeah lol. The someone just walked into a dark cellar, screamed and never returned, so the character follows them-plot.

This book was a big part of my radicalization. I already knew from my local context how the biggest bourge newspaper (owned by one of the og capitalist families) here brought Donald Duck into the country and started publishing it to "help kids learn to read" and I always thought it was sus.

The comic soon became the go-to kids comic here that was also loved by adults, it was never questioned on anything other than a dumb moral panic about the ducks not wearing pants. The first baby picture ever taken of me was with this comic to show how small I was. My dads side was Whites and they had collections of these comics that ended up being the only comic I ever really was exposed to as a kid. This and the far worse Italian Donald Duck stories that I felt were vile even as a kid reading them.

I have thrown away my pretty large collection of these since. I cannot read them anymore and not see it. I always hated the misogyny in them even as a girl reading them, but these days I cannot overlook any of the settlerism, colonialism, racism... Disney is such a tool for US imperialism.

So the Borgs are anti-soviet/anti-collectivism brainworms aren't they?

Rewatching the next generation right now.

It can happen. But those are times when it doesn't much show.

Also if the status of the belly is what this picture present, the test is what tips them off? Until then it's just been what? Terrible bloat?

Oh this reminds me. There is a 100% Hasanabi look-a-like bus driver in my city. The first time I saw him I kept accidentally staring at him because it was so uncanny. Didn't dare mention it though, because pretty sure he would have had no idea who I'm even talking about.

An assumption of needing hard and fast rules because deficient parsing of tone and flow is peak NTness.

And honestly communication does come with pretty stern (unwritten) rules, the people doing them just don't necessarily notice them, because they are very automatic and given. The NT rules have a lot of aspects like face-saving that can be entirely foreign to ND people. And on the other hand the upfrontness of ND people can be very umcomfy to NT people.

The rules are only noticed when someone does not follow them and this is where people with different communication styles get into trouble.

Afaik the Western capitalist have already partially solved this by replacing a lot of the cocoa with sugar. Not sure how easy it is to trace, but would be interesting to compare ingredients lists of the most common treats from a few years ago and now, not to mention in the future.

Our local chocolate capitalist has announced they will not do this sugar replacing and are testing cocoa substitutes like malted rye as well, but this isn't going all that well.

Edit. One more nugget of chocolate info. The reason behind all the different flavoured choholare bars and chocolate bars with bits in them is that by doing this the capitalists can use less cocoa for the products and keep the prices the same.

So that Oreo chocolate bar or a bar with your favourite gingerbreads in it is a part of this grift of elevating cocoa prices affecting the industry. At least where I live the manufacturers now roll out a new flavour bar of a chocolate that used to be just chocolate once every few months.

I get that.Sorry if I came on a bit hard with my ND activism.

Not NT, but going to just say that this is one of the ways NT and ND communication differs.

It's pretty common that Actually Autistic, ADHD and some other neurodivergent brains share relatable stories as a way to connect and empathize.

While all parties can in these situations work to better accomodate the other, ND folks are a minority and more vulnerable in their position. A NT person can ask us to not share stories and explain they just need to vent, but them getting angry at us for our relatable story sharing is not ok and is a problem that forces masking and dismisses our completely valid communication style.

Some mintpress news.

Congress has just passed a new bill that will see the U.S. spend huge sums of money redesigning much of the public school system around the ideology of anti-communism.

What I found most absurd in the article is this new update on the famous 100 million victims of communism list:

"The principal organization promoting the 100 million figure today is the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which has shown a similar level of both anti-communist devotion and methodological rigor. The group, set up by the U.S. government in 1993, added all worldwide COVID-19 deaths to the victims of communism list, arguing that the coronavirus was a communist disease because it originated in China."

This is just so deeply unserious. I have a really hard time understanding how people fall for this so easily.

Yeah this was such a lib moment for her, it was also of course immediately reported on by the establisment rags.

Disappointed, but she is still on the journey, going to give it a few more years. She has still consistently moved lefter from within a socdem civility both sides background and definitely has ended up more based than I ever hoped for as someone from a similar country. There is no left voices to hear at all so all the development has taken some actual engagement. Need to send her a pdf of Blackshirts and Reds or something.