Sad

Since my brother, sister and me got to choose whichever pet we want, I figured it's best to ask first, we can choose 3. We had a cat few years ago and figured that they are not best for house, we have a nice doggo in village but it works since he's always in yard and has plenty of space to run around, it's different from living in outskirts of a city, but even here we have huge forest so it wouldn't be a problem walking him, besides, he's nice and the cat was a total dick for some reason.

Now, we all decided that we will be having 3 of these, but we can't decide which are the best.

Also, one more thing, since our cousins in village have ostriches, yes, they have 2 huge grown ass ostriches in their yard, we want to take something similar for our own and would this nice bird be a good choice?

!

Third post tonight but I'm posting anyway.

Personally, I don't see how the Palestinian resistance has any chance of winning this conflict unless Hezbollah and/or a foreign nation like Lebanon, Syria, or Egypt for instance joins in.

Hey comrades. I've been thinking of going back to school for a while now, and one of the things that just hit me is checking out the feasibility of going to a Chinese university. It's a lot closer to my home as well. If anyone has any suggestions on where to look for English language masters programs, Id be thankful. Just exploratory for now but if there is a real opportunity in a field I like I would jump at it.

From what I read, and forgive me if I am wrong, Sister Souljah may not have been an explicit communist as someone like Angela Davis, but I came across this video today and found she was very on point. Solidarity to all of my black comrades. <3

TLDR - My friends think r/combatfootage is totally fine and are offended when I point out it’s kind of fucked up. This isn’t an AITA post. I am the asshole, but at least I’m NOT a fascist.

I’ll be clear about what I think about the proliferation of combat footage forums like r/combatfootage and the myriad of duplicate communities on various fediverse instances. I find it abhorrent because of what it has done to my friends.

I have a very close group of friends who for the most part are fairly compassionate people. I love them with all my heart. We’ve helped each other for a lot, and they even helped me on my journey from being a rightwing libertarian to a democrat. While I continued to be radicalized by other events and communities online, they’ve stayed relatively the same, left leaning liberals. You know the type. They hate the republicans and will vote blue no matter who. They support the LGBTQ+ community, abortion rights, the recent rise in labor action in the US, and the Palestinian people. All good things to support. But they’re also armchair “socialists” who don’t know the difference between a socdem and a communist.

Which is fine. Not everyone is going to interested in theory, especially in their comfortable, white, micro-borgeious (three attempts is enough, I’m not looking up how to spell it again) slice of American life. They don’t know what they haven’t learned. And I’m not going to info dump our group chat with theory. I’m good with just sprinkling in class conscious takes into our conversations.

Last night I learned of this Reddit post from the mods of r/combatfootage. It amounts to a feckless update of their rules, to disallow footage from terrorist groups (ie Hamas). You and I know what that really means though, no Palestinian footage. I bring this up in our group chat. This is an exchange between me and one of my friends who is in the US military. (Please note that I use terms that are very general in nature, like “right wing” instead a more accurate term like “reactionary.” My friends are liberals. Their vocab is small.”

Me, “So you know how r/combatfootage is a right wing hate farm like r/politicalcompassmemes? Apparently Reddit is putting their foot down about them… by banning all videos from Palestinian perspectives. Really cool and good, right? (Link to post)”

Friend, “Are we talking about a group called combat footage or actual combat footage?”

Me, “R/combatfootage is a subreddit for sharing footage of actual combats and armed fighting. It’s pretty gruesome. Lots of really gross memes of Russians soldiers being droned. I’ve never been a fan of watching shit like that let alone making fun of a Russian teenager freezing his nuts off in a Ukrainian corn field getting killed by a grenade dropping on his head.”

Friend, “How is that right wing?”

Me, “Dehumanization is kinda step one for a lot of right wing radicalization. Plus equating people to a enemy figurehead. Stuff like, ‘All Russian soldiers are mindless orcs and just as sadistic as their leader Putin.’ Or, ‘All trans people are degenerate child molesters who want to brainwash your children like their leader Joe Biden.’ You know, bullshit like that.”

Friend, “The trans stuff and combat stuff aren’t really the same thing. How does that relate to combat footage? It’s kind of a stretch. Don’t get me wrong, trans bashing is real right wing but combat footage is pretty different. Maybe I’m not reading the comments but I do watch that stuff. If I go into combat I really want to be aware of a drone dropping a grenade on me when I’m taking a nap.”

Me, “The footage itself isn’t the problem, I guess. It’s the discourse and comments around the footage, and the presentation of it. What I’m saying is that the discussions around combat footage on Reddit are in a lot of ways similar to how bigots talk about queer activists in those ‘Ben Shapiro Owns Leftist Morons!’ videos.”

Friend, “Aren’t all comments sections full of monsters?”

Me, “Well yeah lol. But that doesn’t change how a lot of the videos on r/combatfootage are titled things like ‘10 Israelis killed tragically by HAMAS’ vs ‘100 rebels dead after IDF scrimmage’. So it’s not always comments. The posters are making a conscious choice of words in their titles. And a lot of them are fucked up.”

Friend, “This seems like a lot of spider webs and not super strong arguments. I think you might be right for maybe some people but are making too many over arching generalizations. Some of us can see both sides of the combat. Soldiers are Soldiers. They are enemies until they pass and then they are fellow fallen soldiers. Dehumanization is a part of war. There are a lot of papers about it. ‘How do I kill the person next to me? They are [racist term], Nazis, Antifa, MAGA assholes, etc.’”

Me, “That’s valid…from a soldier’s perspective I guess. You’re able to compartmentalize an enemy combatant from the person they are. Especially when not you yourself aren’t actually engaged in the conflict, right? But let’s be honest here, there’s not a whole lot of ethically minded soldiers on Reddit forums giving enemy combatants the same amount of respect. The most popular stuff I’ve seen is pretty tasteless. One video in particular stands out to me was shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It showed a group of Russian soldiers running and trying to find cover. And the footage was sped up slightly and Yakkity Sax was played over it as they all got picked off. And the comments were filled with “Putins dogs” and other dehumanizing language. If you laugh at that you’re being radicalized.”

The academic center in São Carlos has voted to enter a strike tomorrow.

Like I want to mute all posts from lemmy.ml lemmy.world etc. Comments are ok but I can't bear the Western chauvinism. These sites are probably the most propagandised platforms that I ever see on the internet.

The title. I messaged the Chinese government. I don't care if I'm silly, but a commune for immigrant communists which would help with language learning and possibly even fully independent life in said society if language gets mastered adequately is a legitimate need I feel overlooked in really dehumanizing ways. Just because someone didn't have the privilege to get a sought-after dyploma doesn't mean they have to die funding fascism with their labour. Not having such a sought-after dyploma doesn't mean you will be a drag upon the society. It's a really dehumanizing narrative. Besides, you can even get further education once you move and become a super productive member of a socialist country.

I'm gonna look into contact to Cuban gov and NK govs. Not sure if reaching out to the Vietnamese gov makes sense, based on the comments I saw saying the population itself wasn't communist, but maybe I've misread or fell for misinformation.

Perhaps it will all amount to nothing, which is what I expect, but the least I can do in life is try. Maybe the stars align and I can help comrades escape fascism.

1. No longer able to view removed posts
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It's only been a handful of days, and the Western "left" has once again shown that the only thing they serve is NATO and Western imperialism.

On the first day of the conflict, I didn't see a single Western "leftist" talking about anything related to the conflict. One of the spaces I check was too busy comparing doggos to give a shit that Palestine was liberating itself.

Then I saw MSM decrying that Palestinians were terrorists, and using the terms "Savages" or "living beasts". To which I haven't seen the Western left even shutter at. MSM is using slurs and colonialist language, and these pasty preditors couldn't give less of a shit.

And now that I see that they're talking about it, they're either making "both sides bad" statements, coming into full support of Israel, or using "we'll wait to see" arguments to excuse withholding support.

The only thing the Western left does is disrupt actual leftist movements in their home countries, while amplifying imperialist projects abroad. You'd think after years of posting pro-Palestine things on their Twitter and their Instagrams that they'd have the consistency to actually support Palestine when it mattered. But, no, they're really just white people who wanted to feel more important than their Democratic-voting parents.

Socialism to the Western leftist isn't the liberation of the human race, it's a sticker to put onto their hydroflask and a $10 donation to UNICEF. It's selling shirts with hammers and sickles on them, then hating the ideology that the symbol originated with. It's voting for Hilary when Bernie pulled out, then demanding that anyone who didn't vote for Biden is the same as Trump. Just a bunch of performative liberal bullshit.

It's called r/poldersocialisme and I feel like even the slightest anti-imperialism or ML thought gets scrutinized there. Today with the war in Palestine, every single pro Palestine comment or post got downvoted. This wouldn't have happened a year ago I feel like. Slowly the subreddit got run over by more social democrats and even right wingers. The mods don't do anything to stop it. They are actually making it worse. I once got a tempban for 'denying the Uyghur genocide'. They have a flair for right wingers as well, like theyre inviting them. What's the point of a Dutch socialist subreddit when the viewpoints are the exact same as the ones that are already established throughout the whole Dutch media landscape?

Sorry for my niche rant, but as a Dutch ML I feel more alone in my viewpoints every day, and I'm losing hope in the Dutch left but hope I can do something to revitalize it.

So I've found myself really having a lot of resentment building up recently against my fellow USian citizens. It's a very weird combination of genuine care + love for my working class future comrades, and serious anger with the way they think and behave.

I really want to avoid being the elitist intellectual asshole, but at the same time it is just so disgusting watching people not care about real issues, dismiss things, and just lack understanding or the effort to try. Just today I had a friend ask me sarcastically "so what's the news today, comrade?" and I responded with the Joe Biden story about how he's funding the fucking southern border wall. They acknowledged that it was bad for like 3 seconds and then said something along the lines of "Biden's going to do what he's gonna do, but I still get to go home and do X enjoyable thing tonight. We all woke up this morning. That's good news!" He then turned to my other friend and started talking about rep clothes they buy, like it didn't even phase him. Like he needed some distraction.

While I appreciate the sentiment as I've obviously been having a rough few months and he's trying to keep things positive, he has a long history of this even before my struggles. Constant disengagement with serious topics and overall apathy for making positive change. They all make fun of me for being educated on what's going on in the world and being a communist, as if either of those are bad things. They're frankly pretty ignorant when it comes to real world things. I'll reveal my age here (I probably already have anyways) but these are legal adults, granted some just turned 18 this year, doing this shit. And I don't know how to feel about it.

I should make a distinction here. I completely understand that many people's material reality prevents them from being educated on the matter or are simply too tired from being worked like a dog to develop critical thoughts + be exposed to good ideas about the system. But this is not the case with these idiots and most of my city at the moment. We are a relatively well off community with plenty of free time and are university-age. I constantly bring up absolutely abhorrent things that happen in society and they are just unaffected. They bathe in their relative privilege and can't understand that not everyone gets to just go home and play Minecraft under this system. They can't seem to demonstrate an understanding that things have real impacts on people's lives, because to them, status quo has been just fine under either/both party's rule.

The other day he talked about "I can't believe people have REAL BEEF over politics bro that's so crazy." I looked at him like he had 3 eyes while my blood boiled. This is how these people think. Like politics is some separate entity or a video game. I tried to explain that I'm not going to associate with someone who's blatantly racist or anti-LGBTQ+ and supports a party/system that has those mindsets.

Basically this ranty post is just asking what the fuck Americans who aren't politically aware think about, and how they do it? How do these people know the planet is being blown up for the sake of profit and do fuck all? Know that the global south is in unfathomable poverty because of us and not care? Know people IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY are in unfathomable poverty and go back to consumerist bullshit? Are they stupid? What the fuck are they thinking?

This is where you come in if you made it this far. Calm me down and let me know if I'm being elitist. Validate me in some way if I'm right in any way. I feel so surrounded by lunacy. Lunacy I tell you.

Sorry for typing so much lmao

Hey all I've just decided to become more active on Lemmygrad again because I miss you all and am a little more stable. Had a drug overdose in August and spent the last two months working through that, but we're in a little better spot now. I'm trying to get back into meeting with party members again to get involved, I want to help and it would probably help me as well.

I've missed you comrades

What's something low profile comrades say that communicate immediately that they know which side they fight for in the class struggle?

Example: if anyone in the wild speaks "material conditions", or "bourgeois state", out loud, I'm listening.

In the last few weeks, students from the University of São Paulo, one of the 100 best universities in the world (according to some ranking last year), started a strike. The strike started in the São Paulo campus, but has now spread to the Lorena campus and a few parts of the Ribeirão Preto campus.

The students on strike are demanding a few things, including the hiring of 1400 new professors (to reach the same student/professor ratio as it was in 2014), more financial assistance for low-income students, and a quota for trans students.

The university leadership (I forgot what "Reitoria" means in english, lol) said they will hire 800 new professors, but students think it is not enough, since there are people who are close to graduatinng without having some mandatory classes because of lack of professors.

Also, about the quota for trans students, there are already quotas for students from public high schools (I'm one of them) and for black/mixed race students, so this wouldn't be really without precedents.

My campus (São Carlos) will vote about whether to go on strike next tuesday. There is some resistance to the idea, but it seems like we'll end up going on strike too.

Here, we have two main areas on campus. One of them was the first one to be built, and is on the center of the city. It is where most of the courses happen. My course is on the second area, which is quite far away fron the city center. We always take an university bus from Area 1 to Area 2, which was privatized (it is not operated by the university anymore, but is still free at least). There is literally nothing to eat here other than the subsidized R$2,00 lunch (also privatized) which we can only eat at lunchtime. As such, improving the bus and placing some cafés here on Area 2 will probably become one of the demands of the strike on São Carlos.

So, what do you guys think about this?

What was the deal with him? He is being martyred as a hero journalist since his assassination by Saudi Arabia.

The problem I have is that his father, Adnan Khashoggi, was an arms dealer that worked closely with the CIA. So my assumption is that he must have something going on with him as well. I don't know what though.

What are the general trends, public's opinion on latest events, local, global, Ukraine. Is there something of note happening in your country, both good and bad?

I'll be in Berlin for a couple days soon and I'd like to see some DDR stuff while I'm there.

The DDR Museum looks interesting, even if it's just to look at the visual representations of everyday life while ignoring the lib remarks on Stasi oppression and whatnot.

Also happy DDR annexation celebration day. /s

I tried to get onto c/shitultrassay, but the comm doesn't show up and I can't see any posts

When I grew up, the narrative was always light hair/eyes features = good, dark hair&eyes = ugly/boring, or even outright bad. It was so bad, as a small child I was looking into the progress of the surgery which lightens your eye color and was obsessing over dyeing my hair. The trend during my teenage years which had practically all successful "e-celebs" wearing contacts to hide their dark eyes was a symptom and certainly didn't help. I recently saw the narrative being propagated online by people from many different countries, so I know it's not specific to where I was.

I still battle the sense of inadequacy based on my inborn features. Logically, I don't, but I keep having intrusive thoughts about my hair and eye color.

There was a boy in my middleschool bullied PROFOUNDLY for having dark hair and eyes and darker skin. I was always treated like my "redeeming" quality is my pale skin, but it's a result of me being sickly and not an inherited trait.

I was also lead to believe something was wrong with me, because my biological father has black hair and very light eyes, which are seen as attractive, and my biological mother religiously dyes her hair ensuring they're never brown, so as a child with the narrative of dark hair&eyes being wrong and seeing neither of my biological parents displayed that, I thought I was faulty.

I feel like it recently resurfaced, because I had my entire DNA analyzed for medical purposes, but I also saw unexpressed albinism gene in there. I know albinism is a complicated issue, but the life-long prejudice I experienced against my inborn traits is not something I can logically get rid of, because it's not logical.

Are there any resources on this, especially on dealing with this? I'm realizing it's been affecting my self esteem, even when I wasn't aware of it.

As a disclaimer, I'm not from nor in Northern America so USA-centric stuff won't help me. I also don't judge anyone by this, it's just hatred I internalized and is affecting my own self perception and therefore my life.

I've been developing arthritis in my fingers. My mom said she had the same issue in her 20s, and to drink 1 tbsp raw unprocessed apple cider vinegar, 1 tbsp raw unprocessed honey, mixed with some orange juice (to cut the taste) (I doubled everything because I'ma big guy). And voila! She said she had to do it for a year straight before it helped, but I've been doing it barely a week and I already feel ~15% better!

Do you all have any stories of unconventional home remedies / alternative medicine?

Wish me luck

Edit: Oh shit Fine Bros are here. They are gonna break down my door.

“What are the positives and negatives of using ChatGPT (and other AI) in post-secondary?”

This is a question I need to answer for an essay competition thing, and while I do have ideas myself and from my professor when I asked for his opinions, I was hoping if anyone here had some insights to add.

Is it ethical that I ask for your aid? I don’t want to overstep. I would not use anyone’s name/usernames at all in this essay, at most I will cite sources on the matter.

While I think my current ideas about the pros and cons are good (more cons than pros in my opinion) but I want to know if I missed anything.

If needed, I will add what ideas I’ve come up with so far but for now I’ll leave that out.

Edit: I was tempted to post this in the “Ask Lemmygrad” community but I think thats a more educational community about communism specifically so I’ll stick to asking here.

I had some pretty brutal discussions with my dad who is a hardcore liberal of the "the answer lies somewhere between the middle of left and right" type. He agrees with a lot of socialist stances and class war but refuses to acknowledge that a revolution is needed to achieve socialism, that killing people wouldn't make us better than the owning class and that violence is bad and that we should try to change the system by voting that voting will bring lasting change and not a revolution....all this kind of crap. He thinks that i got too "radicalized" and that im stuck in a bubble of propaganda and now he wants to have more control of the media i consume and that when he sees me watching or reading an article that i show him the sources of these articles. He really wants me to "keep an open-mind" which to him literally just means returning to being a liberal. The more of these discussions i have with my father the more i feel a distance between us and i would love if we just ignored our political opinions and kept living our lives how we always did but he insists that i am being groomed by some megalomaniac organization or a goofy ah evil person to join some kind of leftist jihad: "Yes you are entitled to have your opinion but you should also keep an open mind but the problem is that your opinion is not correct" that all i hear from him.

As a kid my Dad really warped my perspective on Hippies. He was born in the 60s and loved the music of the 60s and 70s and he’s very Liberal. At first I used to think Hippies were the best people that humanity could ever bring forth: Peace-loving folks who love everyone and believe in preserving nature. And I still appreciate a lot of that sentiment, especially protesting the Vietnam War, but as I became a Marxist I became sorta disillusioned with the Hippie’s dedication to non-violence and how their “free love” was often used as an excuse to be a sex-pest drug-addled parasite who refuses to work. I don’t like Forrest Gump’s portrayal of Hippies exactly, it was written by a right winger, they aren’t all assholes and they usually don’t beat women for sure. Nowadays I can respect their anti-war sentiments and their pro-nature stances but so much of being a hippy seems to be a misunderstanding of what gets shit done. Also some Hippie music is great but FUCK jam bands, nobody’s trying to hear a song that’s as long as a full album and just repeats over and over again with slight variations. That’s all I have to say about Hippies, what are your thoughts?

A digital footprint – sometimes called a digital shadow or an electronic footprint – refers to the trail of data you leave when using the internet. It includes websites you visit, emails you send, and information you submit online. A digital footprint can be used to track a person's online activities and devices.

Example: memes, videos, tweets...etc, too trackable, some struggle getting hired because of it, more will for less.

After all this, are capitalists these lazy at naming? It uses the same name as carbon footprint which also directs blame on the individual and makes a person get shamed by peers for not their fault.

I never really used twitter, but since mastodon is the FOSS version that people seem to like, I've been trying it. But it's kind of hard if you don't know anyone to follow ¯\\\(ツ)\/¯ .

Anyway, any suggestions? It doesn't have to be necessarily about leftism, just people you find worthwhile to follow.

Im 15 so my parents were concerned about me going to the capital city of my country alone to ""watch a protest"" as i told them but i reassured them and went on. I am so glad i finally got to meet up with comrades from the communist party! It was a protest concerning the rising housing prices and the communist party and various other parties like the democratic socialists etc. marched along the streets chanting "bella ciao" and other things. I even made a board on which i wrote "housing is a human right". I talked to many people, mostly demsocs and communists. Im just so happy to finally have done something real and not just read theory and talk online. I know it isnt much this littly protest and the communist party was the smallest faction of the movements who were present there....but its something.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/655042

> JT will be returning once again for his second AMA with us on Thursday September 28th @ 4pm EST > > For those unfamiliar with him, JT's work includes Second Thought on youtube and The Deprogram podcast which they share with co-hosts Hakim and Yugopnik. > > Come by Thursday and he'll be answering your questions about anything you throw at him. (site rules apply) :volcel-judge: > > *** > > The Deprogram | Second Thought | The Deprogram on Twitter | JT on Twitter > > The Deprogram subreddit

Has anyone here ever successfully deprogrammed anyone from believing in the myth of welfare fraud, that the dems are giving handouts left and right, etc.? Asking because I've been talking to my mom and...look, I'm sorry, but the elevator just doesn't go to the top floor.

I graduated from college in May, and my parents have parent PLUS loans, and the monthly payment is $473. They're both complaining about the payment but boast about voting for Trump. Obviously, no, electoralism won't save anyone, but it's like talking to a brick wall when I explain to my mom that if she wants any chance of debt relief (or cares at all about the future of her disabled lesbian daughter), she can't vote Republican. But everything I say gets countered with "I don't think people should get handouts." When I ask what handouts Biden has given, eh can't come up with anything. Ironically, she frequently gripes about how her unemployment checks are usually late.

It's infuriating and honestly it's looking like our relationship will soon become a birthday and christmas only type of thing unless she shapes up. I'm sick of having family who actively support politics that harm me. I suppose it shouldn't be surprising when they both emotionally abused me for the better part of a quarter of a century. Having an actual support system irl seems so hopeless that I've been in a severe depressive episode for the past day.

Still, anyone had any luck with this? I keep explaining how the dems aren't a left wing party, neither party is for an abundance of benefits, etc. But it's like talking to a brick wall. I apologize if this post should've gone elsewhere.