askchapo

It's really frustrating, I was talking to someone about how successful China has been in de-radicalization of reactionaries. But they responded to this by saying they're only successful because, and I quote "put them all in concentration camps and killed them"

Has anyone here been successful in deprogramming people about this topic? If so any good sources I can use to dissuade them? I tried telling them that the UN report, if you read it, just says that there's concerns about abuse by internment offcials, and there's no evidence of genocide. But when I say this they just dismiss it as if the UN is controlled by the PRC. It's like a religion to liberals to believe anything bad about China and can get really frustrating.

I live in an area where taking public transport to get food adds between 2 and 3 hours to get to the nearest shops. I avoid shopping on the weekend. There's a bulk food order that goes out on Friday or Saturday night but I can't imagine what I'll feel like eating on the following Monday, let alone Wednesday. Sometimes I'll do bulk food prep and by the time I've finished preparing the food I'm so disgusted by the idea of food (especially that food) that I don't eat it, which is also the case if I've eaten the same meal multiple times in a row. I apparently will just wait out the clock (food goes off) instead of eating food I don't want to. I don't like pasta (again, the main thing motivating me to eat pasta is the threat of someone yelling at me, hunger alone isn't enough).

Uber eats and taking ubers to go shopping is expensive. The freezer is full because there's five people living entirely separate lives in the household.

idk what I'm supposed to be doing. It's hard to eat at all even if I wasn't trying to be healthy, meat reduction etc.

I recently got a full time job after about a decade of no employment, so I pretty much don't have energy on weekdays either.

Been just sitting here listening to Ode to Joy for like 2 hours now. It was really awful, and still is. This sucks, but it's taking so fucking long...so I took out my phone. I'm fucked up, I know. But I've got time to kill ama

By baiting, I mean posting deliberate dog whistles, often as crude proxies of what they fear and hate, and set off what is sometimes hours of chud barking in that area, whether it's a game's lobby chat or Discord or whatever.

Examples I've seen include old and exhausting shit like "did you just assume my gender" and "check your privilege, shitlord" 4chan greentext-tier staleness, but sometimes they can get slightly more cunning and insidious, such as portraying themselves as farcical LGBTQIA+ people then announcing an intent to do (conspiracies/crimes that chuds accuse LGBTQIA+ people of here) and keep up the whistling until every chud is barking across the site.

I do play some online games and calling out bait sometimes works, but it's still exhausting when a cooperative game shuts down because some chud starts a hate rally and effectively shuts down the game's cohesion for a while.

Contentious issue I know, but recently I’ve encountered a number of people who believe that Ohio (and sometimes Indiana and Michigan) is not truly part of the Midwest. Which to me is preposterous since I’ve always considered Ohio the most quintessentially Midwestern state. Midwest to me has always been very nearly synonymous with rust belt, but it seems there are a fair number of people who place the Midwest more in what I’d call the Great Plains, or Greater Minnesota. So I’m wondering where do you all place the Midwest.

The crew Trump has enlisted to get the Gen Z vote. This is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.

https://xcancel.com/LukeBarnett/status/1823587571886338097#m

I'm from asia and I'm relatively young (22) and it's literally fucking impossible to get a job. I've been trying everything and I don't understand why it's extremely difficult to land a no-skill minimum-wage job. It's fucking ridiculous and it's tiring me out I'm in a terrible financial situation right now. I live with my mother and we're struggling to scrape by now, I live off noodles and pasta (I've lost about 5kg just this month) so anyway to make some money would be great. So Bros, I ask you, how do I get a job, or better yet, how do I make money as a broke, skillness loser such as myself? Because I am flat-ass BROKE

Want to learn more about what has worked elsewhere in helping to organize for this community. There are so many non-profits/NGO's devoted to assisting our unhoused neighbors but so many of them seem largely uneffective/toothless (for many reasons).

Looking to see if there are any good reads out there about lifting up this community. thanks!

The past few years, I've been doing most of my music listening off my phone. I use soulseek and just download right to my music folder, but with that comes obsessively hunting for obscure bands and filling up memory fast.

I don't use headphones and just let my phone speakers play it pointed at my head out of my breast pocket. I started seeing that some companies make phone sized mp3 players with built in speakers for less than 50. Excuse the Amazon link, but it's just intended to show what im actually looking at.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=mp3+player+with+speaker+built+in&crid=20S689G6SAIXJ&sprefix=mp3+player+with+speaker%2Caps%2C108&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_2_23

So yeah, anyone use these? Do you like the one you have? Is it louder than your phone?

i cant help it man

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3237566

I posted this on lemmygrad but also posted here for discussion. I'm sure this was discussed before but I still want to ask.

If you remember a while back there was a tweet from blinken about ussr and babyn yar. If you don't remember, he asserts that "Ussr buried the atrocity and says ukraine is suffering now".

Anyway afterwards there was a deluge of discussion all around about how disgusting the tweet was but also some people were loud about how he is actually right. And also refer to some wikipedia citation.

So I will list the points I saw at the time:

• Soviets downplayed holocaust and never mentioned jews being singled out in babyn yar.
• That broadly only mentioning as soviet citizens dying in atrocities done by fascists and refusal to acknowledge roma people.
• That originally the extraordinary commision mainly downplayed babyn yar.

This brings me to the actual stuff I want to talk. Mainly there is a narrative at least that only liberalization made it possible for the victims of holocaust heard in post ussr. And that the soviets were very antisemitic and downplayed romani or other oppressed people by branding them as counter revolutionary.

What are your thoughts on this? On the narrative that liberalisation made the victims of holocaust heard and before that Ussr was only trivializing holocaust by mentioning them as soviet citizens.

Approximately what percent of post-tax income and how many Big Macs could that buy in your area? (No fair counting your union dues haha)

Been thinking about it since I suggested a techbro user tithe 10% of his earnings to a local org earlier today. Thinking about how much my org could get done if we had a couple (or even one) techbro interested in clearing their conscience with a 10% tithe.

On the other end of the spectrum one of the organizers I support asks members to donate 0.1% of their post-tax income. I think it's noteworthy because nominally it sounds like such an achievable target that most people would struggle to argue they couldn't afford.

Me: a little more than 1% of my post-tax income, spread across three orgs - mostly going to mutual aid. It would buy 9-10 Big Macs here.

My family's bathroom (bathtub shower) needs to be recaulked, the mold is bad and they've been recaulking incorrectly for years (possible water damage?). There is definitely mold behind the caulk.

Does anyone have any advice on what to do about it?

I wanted to pay a contractor to recaulk and do a minimum or temporary mold treatment, is there anything to look out for so I don't get scammed?

What experience did you have trying to recaulk or fix mold?

Is it expensive?

i hate my cushy bullshit job where i make obscene amounts of money. should i quit my job and become a teacher? here's what i'm thinking so far:

pros:

• i won't hate my job anymore
• my job is a real job where i actually contribute to society
• summer vacation sounds dope

cons:

• maybe i still hate my job
• my job would be a real job where i do work
• i won't make obscene amounts of money
• wtf grad school is expensive

alternatively, are there other jobs i should try to do instead? mind you i have no skills and would probably need to go back to school.

If you're from a majority Anglophone region, you can still reply to this, provided that the things you're mentioning are not in the English language, or are at the very least bilingual.

Anyways for Norway I'm familiar with

• tjen-folket.no (bilingual)
• tronderrod.no (regional for Trøndelag)
• revolusjon.no
• marxisme.no
• sosialistiskframtid.wordpress.com

I read Tjen Folket the most often, personally.

I've been curious about this and can't seem to find a good source on search engines, it's all wikipedia and human rights watch or some stuff like that. Tried looking for some dprk news sources (I wanted ones actually from Korea), but got only propaganda from the US or occupied korea.

be prepared to defend your answers with citations. this is a Serious Question and i want Serious Answers as is the custom of Hexbear Serious Academic Roundtable

These have been posted on the site before but the search feature on Lemmy at the moment is dogshit. Searching for ira returns everything for "piracy" and "iraq" and so on.

I would be able to find it if the search feature worked as it should but alas.

I'm specifically looking for stuff detailing organisation, practices, and overall function. But everything is fair game please.

What the title says. Im looking for fun/informative youtube vids on anything leftish. I already have some channels I enjoy like Secondthought and the deprogram gang. Im just trying to avoid libshit or reactionaries.

EDIT- Thanks to all the posters who recommended something

When trying to explain the us/israel relationship I always get hung up on this part, which is the most immediate experience people in western countries have with the conflict. Were people getting fired for voicing mild criticism of apartheid south africa at work?

What if I did it?

what's good comrades. tl;dr i didn't learn to drive until i was 27. i'm 31 now. in those 4 years, i've had two cars i bought cheap outright with cash, so i have never financed a more expensive car. these were 800 bucks each.

i only got a credit card at the beginning of 2024, i was terrified of debt my whole life so i never even wanted to get one. but i figure, i need credit to exist in amerikkka so the time has come. my score is 650 on one site and 697 on another. so let's assume it's like 670 actually.

i've applied for two auto loans but was turned down due to 'limited credit' but i see teenagers who work at wendy's driving nicer/newer cars they were able to finance, and i'm not even trying to get anything like that. i'm only looking to get a loan of like 4-6k, to buy cheap reliable used car from like 2005-2013. i see lots of options. i'm trying to avoid the dealer financing tho due to the dude telling me they typically charge like 25% interest through dealership financing.

how exactly does this work? is my only choice to get ripped off with dealer financing? i can't join a credit union, i've tried- limited credit. i don't get at all how credit works. i don't even want this shit. but currently i drive a 1995 toyota avalon that's falling apart and it's not safe to drive so i gotta figure something out

Petty clear mine would be a really hardline psychic type, just a special attack glass canon. I'd be a rest/psychic/dream eater/speed boost thing weirdo sweeper.