Major “what it feels like to enter an unfamiliar fandom as a noob” vibes from this comment haha.

“Scrobbler” can’t be a real thing 😭

Hope whatever you are doing goes well though. I still just download my youtube music playlist every once in a while and put it on my hard drive in a folder called “music” and that’s all the organisation i do lmao

I just called the warehouse. General Megathreads are on back order. Apparently there is some type of supply shortage and they don’t have enough bytes going to the factory to keep up with demand. Its hexbear’s fault because they have like 10 megathreads every week.

It’s crazy to think about the change central europe went through these past summers. We had breathable air, real rain at least twice a week.

We get lucky if it drizzles 5min twice a month, but you only smell the dust that has been lifted from the ground.

“identity politics” can mean a few different things. But overall, these are not separate things under capitalism. Capitalism creates, for example, racial categories by which to designate a particular subclass of human in a given society, one that can be hyperexploited, mistreated, and scapegoated for problems, driving a false consciousness. And that racial oppression is a real, existing thing that takes on its own life and forms, stoked or suppressed as needed for the liberal order. Saying, “stop talking about racial oppression so much” ignores an extremely important material reality of capitalist society, really an essential aspect, and the point of doing a class analysis is to explain how we can come together for mutual liberation from these oppressions. For example, the liberation of women was essential to most socialist revolutions, the oppression of women also being intrinsically tied to capitalist oppression, typically to make them marginalized unpaid workers whose role is the reproduction of labor, the creation and maintenance of the reserve army of labor and the other workers, generally designated male. This also made women more precarious overall and paid worse than men for the same job, fulfilling a similar role for hyperexpoitation as race.

A leftist who says, “it’s about class not identity” is not well-versed in basic Marxist analysis or history. They are forwarding a wrong and counterrevolutionary line. They should always say, “yes and” to describe both class antagonism and marginalizationa related to identity politics as both emerging from capitalism. Class conflict isn’t even always the primary contradiction in a nation, such as in Palestine where it is settler colonialism (and internationally, imperialism). One should always be able to recognize the real existence of marginalization and its function in the service of capital, spreading a coherent, united approach towards contradictions.

Now, there is a common and liberal form of identity politics that is mostly just a self-serving form of tokenization. Like the 3rd generation gusano that says, “how dare you tell me Castro did good things, he took my family’s slave plantation farm!” These are cynical weapons that are themselves inherently racist, sexist, transphobic, etc etc by flattening a ethnic group, gender, etc into just one experience that somehow, through the magic of liberalism, ends up justifying fascism, genocide, war, imperialism… We do have to push back against this.

They really doing the flopped BSW strategy - my euro leftist is cooked 💔

Class is the ontological driver of Identity inequality. You cannot end inequality between ethnicities, cultures, genders, sexualities, religions, etc, without first confronting Classism.

We do need to be aware of identity power dynamics within our organizations so as to not perpetuate those inequalities but we should not be investing energy battling the bourgeoisie on their chosen field.

I guess it depends on how he said it tbh. There are a lot of “marxists” that want ignore identity politics completely and put it all the way after the revolution.

Well, I am not for class reductionism, but I do think that both class and intersectional struggles are necessary.

Architecture is a core of Iranian art, dating back literally thousands of years

I wish gatekeeping what is and isn’t art were a dead horse. It’s boring & fruitless.

I liked the Serapis flag better.

Reminds me, I remember a commie once pointing out that the Star Spangled Banner song doesn’t even sound that good and I still think about it to this day. It has kind of a goofy history too: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/star-spangled-banner

Some highlights:

After the hours of bombardment and the fear that the British could overtake the fort and head to Baltimore, Key awoke to a proud display of American patriotism and a symbol that they were not going to stop fighting. That morning he wrote notes for a future poem about this event. Later that week, he finished the poem “Defence of Fort M’Henry.” On September 20, the Baltimore Patriot published “Defence of Fort M’Henry.” Francis Scott Key’s brother-in-law set the poem to music, and the combined poem and music were published under the name “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

In 1929, “House Resolution 14” was presented to Congress to name “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the official national anthem to the United States. There were many objections to this resolution.

One objection was that the tune of the “Star-Spangled Banner” was taken from the song “To Anacreon to Heaven.” This song was the theme for the Society of Anacreon, which was active between 1766-1791. The Society of Anacreon was a gentleman’s club that meet monthly to listen to music of questionable tastes and to socialize. Ralph Tomlinson wrote the lyrics and John Stafford Smith composed the melody in 1788 and 1780 respectively. The song alluded to alcohol consumption and love in the last line of the first stanza, “I’ll instruct you like me to entwine the myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s wine.” Even though only the tune was used, some members still saw it risqué that the two songs could be intertwined.

If you look it up, the Society of Anacreon, was a club in London. So a song with lyrics that are about a fight with the British, uses a tune taken from a British song lol. Classic colonizer maneuver.

Normalcy is just another way to oppress people

I like to think that we are in a time of changing material conditions. It feels like this year has been monumentous with everything that’s happening. Either that, or I’m seeing things from a far different perspective than a year ago.

I’m a recent convert too, so I thoght I’d give my thoughts on this.

I’ve long wondered about that too. For one person I know, it did make a difference; they had a sleep study done, ended up with a sleep apnea diagnosis and CPAP machine, which for them became a significant difference in alertness and ability to stay awake throughout the day (prior to that, they’d had times they felt like they had to force themself to stay awake while driving).

But the process of actually doing the test does seem like it’d be quite a bit different from how one normally sleeps. I guess for someone who has sleep apnea, for example, the disorderly sleeping behavior is consistent enough across environments that it doesn’t matter if the testing environment is weird.

My old uni laptop was a Lenovo ThinkPad running a Windows/Linux dual boot. If i were to go to university again today i would probably go with a Lenovo again but ditch Windows altogether. You don’t need Windows for university work, and especially if you are in a scientific field like i was everyone is using Linux anyway. Lenovo has pretty good price-performance ratio and generally does not force manufacturer specific software on you like many others do. I am not very familiar with the new models though, the last time i bought a laptop is over ten years ago. You would have to do some research and decide what criteria you are looking for and what your budget is.

What kind did you get? I’ve got one that’s about the size of the tablet and while I do really like it at home it is fairly cumbersome to take out with me

Thanks Cowbee. Enjoy your mini eReader. Have a great week as well.

what have you been reading on the mini ereader?