askchapo

Genuinely curious. I keep thinking “it can’t get much worse without some kind of mass uprising” but the ability of the general population of Western states to just soak up suffering seems endless. Do you think we will actually see mass movements in the next decade or two? Or just slowly lurch into a void of ever-shittier liberalism?

By the West I mean like. Western Europe and the Anglosphere I guess.

As the title says, is there a way to get our glorious emotes as a sticker pack for messaging apps and if so how?

So I hate airports. I got overwhelmed and didn't pack my CPAP for a vacation. Does anyone know of anywhere around LA that I can go to to rent one? I can get one shipped overnight, but I'm trying to avoid paying $90 for that if possible.

'cus, a while back there was this Thing about it being a toxic carcinogen (and what isn't, these days, amiright) and... well I happen to be in the customer service side of things and I handle a lot of receipts. Like, a lot alot. Too many. Do I... should I... wig the fuck out? Or is this one of those overstated things, like the big cups that did or did not have lead in them?

Ok so what I suppose you would call an "elder zoomer" or whatever, born in the span of '98-'02, entering my mid-20s. Get all your geriatric chomsky emotes out of your systems, it's fine. My parents were born in '71 and '72 respectively, meaning they just entered their 50s. My dad has always been a computer guy, played dnd back in the 80s, introduced me and my brother to pirating media growing up, etc. Basically, he's a nerd. He's always been a nerd. He also holds some weird contradictory views ranging from very based (like pirating and hating the US) to very chuddy but that's unrelated for now.

My point is, my dad isn't some tech-illiterate boomer who hates "the iphones and nintendos" or whatever. Despite this, he's completely, and I mean completely oblivious to any and all internet culture. Hell, my mom runs circles around him in terms of being able to understand memes and me and my brother have even gotten her to start using "copium" correctly to my uncle (which is hilarious but also resulted in me having to explain to my extended family what it means during christmas dinner). It's not like my dad didn't get on the internet when it first came around, he was a super early adopter of both cellphones and the internet. I also know that he has spent a not-insignificant amount of time on various hobby forums and so on. He still doesn't know what a "meme" is though, he sends me and my brother "funny pictures" which are all some rank-ass 2012 facebook-funny-page tier shit that always manages to be a bit problematic no matter how innocent the subject matter seems.

He's also incredibly thin-skinned online. He's tried playing online games because, well, he like playing games! He just can't though; he gets so incredibly offended over any and all toxicity (yes toxicity is bad but he's a grown-ass white cishet male he's not exactly being targeted with violent slurs) that it would probably be incredibly humorous as an outsider.

His relationship to media online is also quite interesting. He's fully aware of youtube, with the caveat that to him it's still just the site where you "go to find a grainy video of some indian with a thick accent to fix an obscure tech problem" (paraphrased from him) or where you watch uploads of live concerts or clips from TV shows. Basically any video uploaded after 2010 doesn't exist to him. Youtube is just for home-video amateurs, there's no artistic merit in it, "why would you ever watch someone else play a game? are you stupid"-type-beat, etc. I think if I showed him something like a Jacob Geller essay he would just straight up not get it.

The same goes for video games. While he plays plenty of newer games, he thinks of all games as being either competitive match-based PvP games like counter strike or single player experiences where you play from the start to the end once and then the game is done. I've tried so many times to explain to him that the reason ESO is so weird coming from skyrim is that it's an MMO, and MMOs are fundamentally different. He has no concept of roguelikes or other games that deviate from this standard form of a "cinematic" single-player experience. Just recently he started playing 7 Days to Die and it has been blowing his mind seeing this "super innovative gameplay loop", but instead of contextualizing it in terms of other survival-crafty games, he thinks it's cool because "it's just like Fallout with the scavenging"

Idk people I don't really have a big point to make here at the end. I love my dad even if our relationship is a bit strained, and the stuff I bring up here are not meant to be specific to him. My mom is the same minus the video games in many ways (not understanding that online videos are more than just charlie bit my finger etc). I'm also aware that framing it as a generational thing is a bit unhelpful and all that, but what can you do.

Do you people have similar stories with tech-literate people who are somehow completely out of touch in terms of internet culture? It's somehow fascinating to me, and I think maybe talking about it could help me communicate with my parents about it better.

Why was it removed

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4393803

We've already talked about school and how we can change it in the past. But today I want to discuss a specific topic related to school: bullying.

As a neurodivergent person, I've had my own share of bullies pick on me in the past, two of which I was lucky not to get into physical fights with. There are so, so many people who have had even worse experiences with bullying.

In school, children/adolescents pretty much have to be around each other, making it more difficult to deal with bullying.

How can socialism deal with this issue?

Everytime I here individualism brought up by someone from Hexbear or Lemmygrad, it gets talked about as if it's categorically bad and wrong. Why is that?

This goes against everything I've learned in the states, where we consider individualism a necessary part of being a responsible and moral person, whereas collectivism strips us of our humanity and turns us into subhuman insectoid creatures incapable of thought.

This is a genuine question.

(Please pardon spelling or grammar mistakes I typed in a meeting at work. A meeting on a Sunday morning. Fuck work)

I know that college students can be “annoying” but I have noticed that everyone seems to hate college students. From conservative college educated business vampires and ghouls, to college educated liberal rainbow/pink/pro-black capitalism types. Even many online progressives (not sure what that term even means anymore) as well college dropout “dirtbag leftists” (I don’t know if that term is still in use, I’m not on Twitter and I don’t even listen to Chapo anymore) say that college is stupid. . Which just so odd because while I agree there is a ton to critique about higher education and academia as a whole it just seems to dismissive and weird to dunk on students for being students.

It seems to me that most people seem to Make a caricature of the college student. Everyone who was college educated (especially liberals) seem to make their college education to be some halcyon golden age but now it’s all fallen apart. Those people seem to believe college is just young adult daycare now but was some rigorous training facility for the leaders of the world in past.

It seems to me at least this is a weird expression of the US hated of youth and youth culture but also a weirdly kinda fetishists it simultaneously. My theory is we collectively dunk on college kids because we hate ourselves and who we have become and see them using their youth to do youth stuff. Exploring and expressing themselves in a way were unable or perhaps unwilling to do in somewhat similar conditions.

But that’s just a baseless theory, I got my degree in STEM not in humanities/social sciences. Real talk venerate the humble humanities and social sciences majors. while their degrees are also used for evil like everyone else’s they at least don’t have a “start-up” they are pitching.

When I got my undergrad in 2017 at state university most of the katz I knew were working +30 hours a week and/or living with mom and dad and still in crippling debt. Now that I’m returning to get my master’s degree (part-time to be fair but I do into a campus for the night classes) also at a state university I’m still seeing the same thing. A lot of these young people are working, doing education as well as trying to become adult. It’s a lot, and honestly i empathize them. They are playing a rigged game and it sucks so many of them take it so personally, it’s a lot pressure to put on a younger person.

I don’t know why the pop-culture narrative is that everyone who goes to school is a “fail child” or some trust fund kid. I met a few in my here and there while at school my first time but was mostly just regular people of all types trying to get a degree, though maybe I was in the minority as I was (and still am) a square.

All that to say why do we hate college kids? Why do we think they are all “blue hair baristas” or whatever other current derogatory pejorative is. It just seems really stupid to me that we dunk on young people for doing what we tell them to do. The whole cultural narrative is “go to college, have fun, make friends, get a good job” but they seem to only care about the last part. It’s not like their a lot of alternative pathways for them to try, it just seems so odd to me

I know some of the basics but I'm still confused about certain rules. When does an S become a SS and when does it become a $ (and what about $$)? I also don't know how to handle words that don't have an S or a K in them.

I was hoping to translate the core BDS list, but some of them are proving challenging:

• HP (Hewlett Packard)
• Siemans
• AXA
• SodaStream
• Ahava
• Sabra
• Puma
• Israeli fruits and vegetables

I was thinking something like HeWaffen PacKKKard and SSodaSStream but I'm not sure about the rest.

Thanks.

Edit: Forgot to list Puma

Sorry for the noob question. But considering the awful way that the US is treating the protests, should people push for BDS from Amerika? Like should we advocate that people not travel to the US? Not study in the US? Not collaborate with research with the US. And not buy US products.

This plan is very half baked, so crit me as hard as you want. It just feels like the US government is hopelessly fascist and dangerous for the world.

I haven't left the country in years, but am somehow headed to Malaysia next week for a family wedding. Assuming the plane doesn't disintegrate midflight and I am not sick the whole time with some plague picked up in transit, it should be pretty cool.

Anyway, I know virtually nothing about Malaysia and would be interested in any insights, facts, suggestions, history, films, foods, etc. that people would care to share or discuss. Bonus of course if it's commie stuff.

Going to be pretty busy with wedding events most of the time, so probably won't be venturing too far from Kuala Lumpur. Hopefully there will be at least a little downtime for exploration though.

Went to a Palestinian solidarity protest/rally with some new folks who’d become radicalised against America/the West over the last six months. They aren’t socialists (yet, I’m working on it) - but they’re good people. So, seeing the genocide and its support by our governments filled them with disgust. We talked about the Nakba, the history of Zionism, and the current apartheid etc.

Now, we come to the protest.

Overall, the atmosphere was incredible. Lots of cool signs, different kinds of people, and, of course the pigs. That’s not the problem.

The problem was the fucking speakers. I swear, at least half of them had to be feds whose entire job was to turn people away from turning up at these events.

Some of them, and I mean this literally, wanted the crowd to chant “we support October 7” and “we stand with Hamas”.

I swear, the way the people I was with turned to look at me.

Not every speaker was like this - most were genuine. They talked of labor solidarity, campus organizing, personal anecdotes. But all of that made these speakers stand out all the more.

The worst part is that when it would happen, the organisers was one of them. So this entire thing was a sham from the start.

I feel so bad. I shouldn’t have just brought people to a random protest I saw and should’ve vetted it first.

Like, seriously. I can’t fucking get over this. Who organizes a protests of people from all walks of life in support of Palestine and wants them to chant we stand with Hamas and let’s do one hundred more October 7s?.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Like, of fucking course Hamas is a natural reaction to apartheid and ethnic cleansing and genocide. And of course Oct 7 is nothing compared to the 200 days that followed since (or the 75 years that preceded it). But come the fuck on.

I'm supposing it was in an effort to challenge the USA and keep them from getting a huge strategic advantage, but I don't know for sure

this is something I've been trying to understand for a while

What does it mean to "do your best"?

Are you legitimately always trying to do your best, or are you often titrating your effort based on your internal reserves?

What does "your best" mean to you?

I want to say yes but everything else tells me no

There's a cute person at the deli counter in the grocery store that I go to that gets really flustered whenever we interact. I catch them sneaking glances at me when we're not directly interacting so I think they think I'm cute, too. I think they're adorable and would like to ask them out but I've literally never done that before and have no idea how to go about it without seeming weird. I'm also ND and very socially awkward, please help

I'll start

~~Easily~~

• Fidel
• Che
• Posadas

After writing Fidel and Che it was really hard to think of anyone that would match up but I ended up choosing Posadas because I just have to know.

3 other people including you (4 total). Has to be names people would recognize (so no 'that one guy Chris from work').

I'd probably go:

Matt Walsh

Sebastian Gorka

Hillary Clinton

Please note that I only spent a minute thinking about this.

I've been doing a little research into my family through FindAGrave.com and it got me interested in a pretty serious genealogy project. I'm planning on making a binder for each one of my great grandparents, since they are the oldest living family I ever got to meet, and branching out from there.

I was wondering if there were other free resources to track down some info. I know I can do a free trial on Ancestry.com and I plan on that once I get all my ducks in a row, so I can maximize my free trial.

I'd prefer online resources. I'm well aware I can go to my library or township halls to get info. I'm looking for stuff I can find when I'm just sitting around at home.