excellent comment. Anti-tankie leftists would be wise to listen to what is being said by scholars of socialism and history from outside the western liberal/libleft bubble, because many of the things they get angry at us for are simply non-controversial to almost anyone in the world who isn't in that bubble. Even if they don't agree with us on everything, everyone who fights for a better world should be broadly on the same side. (and that isn't the side of Israel, NATO, etc.)

someone told me last night that they are tempted to vote for RFK because they can't stomach voting for biden and feel RFK is good on things like being against pesticides in food, etc. They were like "I don't like that he's anti-vax buuuut"

I was like you can excuse being anti-vax? We already have one lingering deadly pandemic and it won't be the last. And that one went/continues to go real badly, even with institutions that were not, at least on paper, anti-vax, and were, at the start at least, trying to prevent harm with their limited powers and resources.

Its not like it's going to matter regardless, why vote for someone so deeply flawed?

no don't you remember that's against the (totally enforceable) contract you sign when you buy the thing

Yeah I don't go throwing it around too much because most people aren't ready for pro-china stuff let alone respect or even tolerance of DPRK. One person I know also was into r/cth and chapo/chapo adjacent people on twitter, so they know about it but don't come here, never have.

Many people don't really have strong enough political opinions to push back, and would maybe be comrades if they learned, but they are simply too depressed or overwhelmed by the state of things (even though they aren't tuned in enough to know the half of it), and refuse to dig deeper because of it. They fundamentally don't want to know and so while I can't help but share some news I try not to be too depressing.

That's basically the two types of friends I have: the "I don't have time/energy/spoons to think about all that, let alone organize" type, and the "yeah I'm totally with you, capitalism sux, when can we go protest?" type (who rarely protests and never organizes further). Not that I'm that much better. I'm better read, but only because nobody reads anything anymore, and I help orgs and protests more materially, but I'm still not like, deeply involved with any of them. Honestly some seem distrusting of me, and I don't blame them ig. I got accused of being an undercover cop/informant on the street recently so I must have the look.

If I find something I can really sink my teeth into I'll probably drag as many sympathetic friends along as I can and hopefully get some comrades along the way, but so far its just spotty mutual aid work with some very loosely "organized" local groups

"I am one of tens of thousands of people participating in one of dozens of protests around the country" isn't exactly doxxing yourself. I mean fair enough, be careful, but I think we're all capable of judging our own risk level here and not posting about anything too cool-zone

Whoever was saying we need a fem gigachad emote, slammer found it ages ago apparently:

huh. Yeah I've noticed that with my work. I can technically be flexible with my hours to some extent, but in practice I am expected to always be available during normal business hours, so its hard to justify ever really deviating from that schedule too much, I just end up working more after hours and can't really detach during 9-5.

I do have one coworker with explicit boundaries that are just like "I don't work x weekday and I'm off x morning until noon" and it seems to work well for her, but she may have explicitly negotiated that (used to be an independent contractor).

Offering this flexibility is one thing but yeah, keeping it vague and pushing people to work more by aggressive deadline and such are definitely shitty management tactics.y

At least for me, the circadian rhythm thing isn't as set in stone as I thought (not that I have total control over it but recently it shifted to where I always wake up at 6am, when I used to struggle to get up at 8 or 9)

sure looks that way

I've been living under a rock, where is this? And why do they have no drainage lol

Yeah the wording lacks nuance, it's a meme, but the general gist is right. Whether it's specifically socialism that they're experiencing isn't the point, its that they have been told to fear the mainland, and when they go visit they find it's not so different from home after all, and actually much better in some ways. They're experiencing China, which includes shenzhen, as much as it includes beijing, or the countryside.

Google is your friend, but yeah, this was probably true not long ago. From a very cursory search: the pinto sold 3 million units and killed at a bare minimum 27 people. tesla is now creeping up on 5 million total vehicles and 95 deaths from battery fires or autopilot crashes: https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-deaths

Same ballpark