askchapo

22923 readers
301 users here now

Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.

Rules:

  1. Posts must ask a question.

  2. If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.

  3. Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.

  4. Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
1176
1177
 
 

So after doing a bit of searching I found this article: https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/3-ways-increase-estrogen-naturally

This seems like a bit more of a realistic plan for designing foods/drinks that help boost estrogen levels. Not a substitute for HRT by any means, but rather something that could supplement/enhance it that is also relatively safe to consume regularly.

1178
 
 

I've been told that he does.

1179
 
 

Or do we vote for our first black woman for president, or still vote 3rd party? Is she still too far right to push left? Do we think as registered Dems we could get concessions? Very bottom-speak coded but I'd rather have more time to go anti-shinra-action ecoterrorism an-tifa adventure-time in all honesty. Harm reduction yada yada. But I'd rather not have an escalation of violence, whether explicit or implicit from the right. We could also try to challenge incumbent Dems and get more new blood into the system and see if that can shake things up for the better. Maybe she's hiding her power level and will go all black-knight-zero Hey, at least we've gotten the old stubborn man to listen, Jack!

1180
 
 

I'm old and out of touch.🤷

1181
 
 

I can't help it

1182
 
 
  1. Trump’s head is fully exposed to hundreds of people with elevation advantage (lol at that one agent shielding Trump’s fat head with his hand)
  2. Secret service detail is entirely focused on moving the large son, they seem to have complete tunnel vision. Someone could’ve jumped out the stand and get a few stabs in even if they were immediately shot
  3. The only SWAT guy is also point man and he seems to be doing cursory checks in his path (like there’s no way he can spot a threat in the crowds on each side of him).
  4. The camera pans to the exit, and there’s still like 50 attendees around the area, a couple of local cops without weapons drawn just standing around like they’re waiting for a burger, and Trump’s detail is all focused on pushing his ass into the limo without really monitoring the surroundings

I know they have snipers at the event, but how many? Surely not enough to monitor the entire crowd of thousands while a dozen or so people are entirely focused on a narrow path. I know bodyguards’ are primarily task with moving the VIP to safety, but why is no one telling anyone to move back or have more people guarding the path? In this video and others, you can see random photographers running right up to the security’s pathway to snap photos. Surely this is a potential threat during an assassination attempt

1183
 
 

I was thinking to myself that it's cool how YouTube poops are making a mini comeback, which got me thinking of other memes I wish would make a comeback.

I have a soft spot for the "I heard you like X so we put X in your X" meme, but I dunno if people remember Pimp my Ride lol.

1184
 
 

Seriously.

1185
 
 

So I got homework from my therapist for the week, she really wants me to connect with other queer people on a wider level, like going to pride or something like that. She also told me I should ask here, she thinks Hexbear is really cool. As someone who was raised as a christian in a heavy red state, I've never been socialized with other queer people. I have no idea where to go to meet more queer people. I feel like this is my entry stage into organizing. What do y'all do?

1186
 
 

Well?

1187
 
 

Serioid question here.... I've been so attached to consoles growing up though it will be a bit of a big change.

1188
38
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by LeylaLove@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net
 
 

As I've said in many posts, I got put on antidepressants recently and it's been pretty life-changing. It has pretty much entirely stopped my extreme lifelong habit of nail-biting overnight. I was such an extreme nail biter that when I ran out of nail I'd move to the cuticles, I was almost always bleeding from my fingers, and one of them was always liable to be infected. This is a good thing, however my nails are now longer than they've ever been, and because I've been nail-biting for so long I never had to worry about it. I have no fucking clue how to get shit out from under my nails without hurting myself, and as a heavy smoker that's absolutely horrible and disgusting. How do you guys clean your nails?

1189
 
 

I was raised reform Jewish and am half Jewish by family history. I have ancestors who were victims of the pogroms in the Russian pale of settlement – specifically, all four of my great-grandparents on my father’s side, along with their parents (my great-great-grandparents). When they were children their families fled and eventually resettled in the USA.

There is another place that they could have gone instead: Palestine. At that time it was still part of the Ottoman Empire, and some of the displaced Jews of that time did elect to go to Palestine. As it happens, my ancestors chose the US, but they could have gone to Palestine if they’d wanted to.

The fashionable posture on the left to take towards Israeli Jews recently has basically been a combination of glibness and vitriolic hatred, often reaching the point of wishing death upon them (examples: 1 2). I don’t know… I just can’t really feel good about stuff like that. The fact that my family ended up in the US and not Palestine is really just a quirk of fate. I don’t think that my ancestors were, like, morally better people for choosing the US over Ottoman-era Palestine. (And given the recent uptick in “Turtle Island” discourse, it seems like a fair number of leftists believe my ancestors shouldn’t have been allowed to resettle in the US either.)

I think that Zionism (with the possible exception of cultural Zionism) has generally been a noxious idea throughout its history. I don’t think the state of Israel should continue to exist as it is currently constituted, and I think the near-ubiquitous racism among Israelis is shameful. But I also don't think that every Jewish person who moved to Palestine in the last 150 years was a bad person for doing that, and I’m not prepared to circle-jerk over the deaths of people that I have a fair amount in common with historically.

Am I missing something? Have I been hoodwinked by Zionist propaganda?

1190
1191
 
 

I think a reasonable reading of the texts is that an armed proletarian militia is fundamental to Marxism-Leninism.

Marx's Demands of the Communist Party of Germany

Universal arming of the people. In future armies shall at the same time be workers’ armies so that the armed forces will not only consume, as in the past, but produce even more than it costs to maintain them.

Marx in his work on the Paris Commune

The Commune made that catchword of bourgeois revolutions – cheap government – a reality by destroying the two greatest sources of expenditure: the standing army and state functionarism" and "in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia

Lenin in *The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution *

Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

In this text, Lenin reäffirms the traditional Marxist call for a proletarian militia against some Eurocommunists who call for disarmament instead of a militia. Lenin argues that, "Socialists cannot, without ceasing to be socialists, be opposed to all war. Firstly, socialists have never been, nor can they ever be, opposed to revolutionary wars."

He points out that the police and armed forces in capitalist countries are the teeth with which the bourgeoisie bite the proles. This is shown in the use of armed forces against strikes. Lenin argues the correct response is a proletarian armed force (against the bourgeoisie) not disarmament. To disagree with this "is tantamount of complete abandonment of the class-struggle point of view, to renunciation of all thought of revolution".

"Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie."

"On the question of a militia, we should say: We are not in favor of a bourgeois militia; we are in favor only of a proletarian militia."

Lenin in A Proletarian Militia

He argues that the capitalists are mostly concerned to "safeguard the old instruments of oppression: the police, the bureaucracy, the standing army"

"Yet now of all times, at the present revolutionary moment, it is most urgent and essential that there be a universal arming of the people. To assert that, while we have a revolutionary army, there is no need to arm the proletariat, or that there would “not be enough” arms to go round, is mere deception and trickery. The thing is to begin organising a universal militia straight away, so that everyone should learn the use of arms even if there is “not enough” to go round, for it is not at all necessary that the people have enough weapons to arm everybody."

"This ideal has not only become a part of our programme, it has not only won a place in the history of the labour movement in the West, namely, in the experience of the Paris Commune; it has not only been evaluated, stressed, explained and recommended by Marx, but it was actually put into practice by the Russian workers in the years 1905 and 1917." (this really drives home how inseparable the idea of the people's militia was to Marxism)


Lenin in Concerning a Proletarian Militia

Comrade Lenin states that "we will not be able to maintain power unless we counter the magnificent organisation of the entire Russian bourgeoisie and the entire bourgeois intelligentsia with an equally magnificent organisation of the proletariat"

He says that "Organisation is the slogan of the moment" but that doesn't mean politely organising within the limits set by capitalist laws. It means the kind of organising that scares the bourgeoisie.

"We need revolutionary government, we need (for a certain transitional period) a state. This is what distinguishes us from the anarchists. The difference between the revolutionary Marxists and the anarchists is not only that the former stand for centralised, large-scale communist production, while the latter stand for disconnected small production. The difference between us precisely on the question of government, of the state, is that we are for, and the anarchists against, utilising revolutionary forms of the state in a revolutionary way for the struggle for socialism."

A people's militia is contrasts with armed police and army (bourgeois institutions): "We need a state, but not the kind the bourgeoisie needs, with organs of government in the shape of a police force, an army and a bureaucracy (officialdom) separate from and opposed to the people. All bourgeois revolutions merely perfected this state machine, merely transferred it from the hands of one party to those of another."

Lenin, following Marx, advocates "merging the police force, the army and the bureaucracy with the entire armed people. Following the path indicated by the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Russian Revolution of 1905, the proletariat, must organise and arm all the poor, exploited sections of the population in order that they themselves should take the organs of state power directly into their own hands, in order that they themselves should constitute these organs of state power."

Lenin saying All Coppers Are Bastards: "Prevent restoration of the police force! Do not let the local government bodies slip out of your hands! Set up a militia that will really embrace the entire people, be really universal, and be led by the proletariat!"

And some gender equality stuff in case that wasn't obvious: "What kind of militia do we need, the proletariat, all the toiling people? A genuine people’s militia, i.e., one that, first, consists of the entire population, of all adult citizens of both sexes; and, second, one that combines the functions of a people’s army with police functions, with the functions of the chief and fundamental organ of public order and public administration... St. Petersburg has a population of about two million. Of these, more than half are between the ages of 15 and 65. Take half—one million. Let us even subtract an entire fourth as physically unfit, etc., taking no part in public service at the present moment for justifiable reasons. There remain 750,000 who, serving in the militia, say one day in fifteen (and receiving their pay for this time from their employers), would form an army of 50,000. That’s the type of “state” we need!" (These numbers are, as Comrade Lenin notes, just to give a general idea.)

Arm the people with Glock 19s, a more gender-neutral gun than Glock 17s


Lenin: The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution

Stressing again the militia as the anti-police, the democratic antidote to policing: "The substitution of a people’s militia for the police is a reform that follows from the entire course of the revolution and that is now being introduced in most parts of Russia. We must explain to the people that in most of the bourgeois revolutions of the usual type, this reform was always extremely short-lived, and that the bourgeoisie—even the most democratic and republican—restored the police of the old, tsarist type, a police divorced from the people, commanded by the bourgeoisie and capable of oppressing the people in every way."

The cop point again, and some rough numbers again: "There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, and that is to create a people’s militia and to fuse it with the army (the standing army to be replaced by the arming of the entire people). Service in this militia should extend to all citizens of both sexes between the ages of fifteen and sixty-five without exception, if these tentatively suggested age limits may be taken as indicating the participation of adolescents and old people. Capitalists must pay their workers, servants, etc., for days devoted to public service in the militia. Unless women are brought to take an independent part not only in political life generally, but also in daily and universal public service, it is no use talking about full and stable democracy, let alone socialism. And such “police” functions as care of the sick and of homeless children, food inspection, etc., will never be satisfactorily discharged until women are on an equal footing with men, not merely nominally but in reality."

1192
 
 

Excuse the mess.... where do you guys honestly think?

1193
 
 

And have you ever had the kratom "wobbles" before?

1194
 
 

Dirt owl repeatedly pecked me and bit me

1195
1196
 
 

I see this term thrown around. I swear to God, with my limited knowledge of the world, this makes no literal sense to me. I'm not trying to be snarky, but it sounds like China has too many friends and this is imperialism, but obviously this isn't the meaning.

1197
 
 

So through a variety of work-related drama that really doesn't matter, my direct manager's position has opened up. I've essentially been doing the job but without the title for a fair bit of time so I decided I might as well try to get the position officially. I later found out that the position I applied for isn't actually a union position and it's kinda made me start rethinking things, as far as I'm aware it shouldn't actually affect the benefits or hours, just a non-union unit manager position.

1198
 
 

Doesn't need to be vegan but it can be

1199
1200
 
 

Thought I'd check out PeerTube and see how it's going over there. Thoughts?

view more: ‹ prev next ›