Are the simple open ended questions being asked by this person/whatever really that bad even?

Maybe I'm not thinking this through, but it seems like a good way to get some fundamentals and then go on to read theory? For anyone reading the posts.

Structured reading isn't for everyone and most people are educated by memes, pop culture, etc

Kautsky blech

Changed so many minds he managed to buy himself a trillion dollar beach house with his twitch money, what a great hero of the people

Türkiye number one!!

Fine line between being cordial and a being a grifter eh

Those who support Israel’s actions in Gaza are the worst people on earth, but at least their position has some kind of integrity. They’re not contradicting themselves by pretending to oppose what they’re actually fine with. They’re not tearing themselves in half trying to straddle two completely incompatible positions while smiling for the camera and pretending it doesn’t hurt. They’re not posturing as compassionate anti-imperialists while serving the evil empire

Same sentiment as Malcolm X and many others have expressed. With the wolf, you at least know where he stands. The sneaky lib fox will tell you (and itself) what you need to hear and before you know it, it's all but eaten you alive.

This is partly why I worry that these kinds of "confirmations" of the decline is doing anti-imperialism a disfavor (and also becomes an easy way for ops to confuse, misdirect, redirect) -- the alternative is not going to magically be a shift to a socialist economy, that needs concerted effort. The "alternative" is more likely to be what you described.

Of course I still think that there is value in discussing these kinds of pieces, but often the comments will echo simplistic "lolz" type sentiments which will just be used to represent socialists and sympathisers as a brainless, directionless, destructrive force, at which point you might as well be an anarchist, "rationalist libertarian" or some other individualistic aesthetic self expression, bleh.

Fwiw I'm not against gloating/mocking humor when it's principled, informed, on point, and cuts deep like what I assume hexbear tries to do with its memes and shit (I'm not too familiar yet).

I often look at submissions like these (and there are many), gloating about the fall of the us empire, which is fair enough, but the articles/studies themselves are usually lamenting this fact (at the very least implicitly), and are essentially trying to drive support for maintaining it, like brainstorming solutions. I get confused, because it seems we are looking for direct confirmation of the decline of empire.. from channels of the empire? I think it's better to link to and discuss sympathetic material showing why and how the machine is failing and what we can build in its stead, not submissions linking to the machine's awareness of it and attempts to "correct" it from within the same narrow scope. The former will increase knowledge of theory etc, the latter is just a strange circlejerk. Seems like it might backfire. And is easily abused.

Hey, who can say what people like JRRT were up to. Trying to create some sense of history for the West to quell its barbarity, and providing fertile ground for new habits and traditions and ways of thinking to grow? Creating some NWO euro supremacy myth for people to larp to? Underpinning the West's attempt to redo the history of the world in a form that fits its conceits and aspirations of world hegemony and its self image built on other people's stolen history, or providing a platform for conscious self reflection so they can avoid just that?

I dunno.

Good? I don't think so anyway. But effective, for sure. To what end? Well, so libs can eventually use it like this, for example. Sleeper agent, heh. What's next, am I gonna hear about how 1984 is actually good, just misappropriated?

Check out The Last Ringbearer by Kirill Eskov. Since the movies, lotr has become part of the west's cringy lore and you have to deal with that shit even if you try to stay away from it. This book is a nice antidote

Edit: he he, just realized old mate was talking about the article, not lotr

Op

...right. I understand the concept, but cheers. I fail to see how it applies here. To a post criticising a socialist group for being undercover libs, the oppest of ops lol. A post you submitted mind. Come on.

Hmm. You gotta expain this one to me. Calling out these bozos (it's your post tho?) will ruin which community?

No need when they put the jackets on by themselves, knowingly or not.

People who get rhetorically close but don't cross were never going to in the first place.

Ops

I've been forced to reckon with generative LLMs lately. For me, it is easy and natural to think in abstract terms when it comes to programming, and related things like setting up and structuring a database etc, but I've always hated doing the work. It has always been something I've forced myself to do in order to build something, for work or whatever. I find it repetitive and boring.

Now I'm finding that I can use code helpers built on generative LLMs to get things done so quickly, and to do things I wouldn't even attempt before. I'll be honest, I've taken some pleasure in solving a problem more cleanly than people who are much better at coding (and who enjoy it as an intellectual challenge etc). I've been able to skip their "gatekeeping" because I can just implement the solution I want by being very specific in my instructions to the chatbot, understanding every step, but having "it" do the menials tasks of working out the internal logic and syntax etc. I feel like it's given me a chance to "prove" concepts I was previously unable to set into motion due to being unwilling/unable to work out the technical details of the components.

The linguist in me is conflicted. The formalisation of language (in combination with the massive and arguabily grossly unethical data collection) that these programs are built on does not at all reflect my views on language, what it "is" (both in and out of "context") or what a fruitful and inclusive line of inquiry for linguistics as a field would/should be. But I'll be damned if chatbots aren't like having some super eager, super knowledgeable, beyond devoted sort of socially stunted helper. For controlled use (knowing exactly what you are building, and how), I find it just irresistible at the moment.

Not sure if this is me crossing to the dark side or what.

Dreadful

Imagine if Kubrick made his Aryan papers. Instead we get the hack ass lib fantasy Schindler's list drivel. Spielberg is so awful

I guess since they're federated you can comment across with the same account no? Is it better conduct to comment in a given instance with an account from that instance? Edit: he he, just noticed your account is from lemmy.ml so

Also for subscribing to specifics subs.

But yeah, multiple accounts is definitely an option.

Another guy whow as alive until Feb 1965 said that as well. His autobiography helped wake me up. It's all on repeat until enough people break through. I'll admit I was not as quick to realize, though. Denial and self preservation. Reality is hard to swallow.

An issue with this kind of "resistance" is that it's already accounted for and baked into the system. "International ostracism" for them means they didn't get to complete their "normalization" with the Gulf compradors as quickly and smoothly as planned, thus legitimizing them, and that westoid libs struggle to loudly maintain and defend their dissonant view of the Zionist entity as a victim in the face of such plain view advertisement to the contrary. They are essentially lamenting the lack of subtelty in commiting ethnically cleansing settler colonialism. Not the underlying issues, which will never be confronted under the worldview that causes them in the first place. The German libs are especially hilarious, trying to flip the script and pin Euro anti-Jewish sentiment on the muslim migrants and supporters of Palestine while gearing up to start lebensrauming on them using the same logic as before, a record on repeat but in complete denial about both what's playing and the fact that it's the same damn track over and over. Round and around it goes, crazy tribal self deception.

Late reply, didn't see.

Something to keep in mind is that a heavily externalized idea of God is a bit simpleminded. We are not owed anything.

The theist/nontheist discussion is a dualistic one. While dialectics as a method and process is sound, the idea is ultimately to unify opposites, not pick one or define yourself in opposition to one.

It's possible to take the very valid misgivings you have and turn them into questions rather than using them as conclusions.

When you look at the history of the occident, it is built on things that weren't organically grown by its people, and the Abrahamic tradition, as well as the Greek, was adapted in a strange way to try to claim it -- The actual producing tradition is foreign to it, and so you see that even foundational, culture defining output like Dante's Divine Comedy was essentially lifted from Ibn Arabi & Co. The conceptions that informed this appropriation and further developed from it can easily color your thinking and put a veil over your eyes when you are forced to live among its proponents.

Keep in mind that Islamic Theology is not as literal minded as the western approach. Basic things like God not being an external entity as such, and certainly not a man-like one, and man is not created in God's image and so on. It's subtle, as are its interpretations, because it (and its interpreters) belongs to a long tradition. Ditto for Orthodox Christianity.