askchapo

What are your go to events for shocking people into learning about US imperialism in South America?

The overthrow/killing of Salvador Allende is the strongest in my opinion. What else would you pick?

I would say Halls Of Montezuma, but it's so far back that it's easily handwaved.

I think it was during the trump presidency, but early into the trump presidency before qanon. I had a random flashback thinking about it earlier. I’m pretty sure one of the pepes was like Bain from Batman and it had text that said “the fire rises” or something cringe like that.

I love this site and like lurk it a ton but I'm always like I don't fucking know anxious my comments or posts are too stupid or no one will like them. (p sure it's social anxiety related) So if you've had posting anxiety and got over it or have general tips please post advice in here. Thank ya.

Hi! I am a member of a race education group in my school (11 to 18) and we are creating a reading list for the library. Our library isn't very diverse right now (most books are written by white people about the West) and we need books on race education (privilege, discrimination, etc.) and on the history (precolonial, colonial and postcolonial, could be on neocolonialism too) and culture of underrepresented people.

Please keep in mind that these books should be acceptable by the school and approachable by students who would be unlikely to accept or read very progressive material, so themes that strongly (just strongly) contradict Western narratives should be avoided.

For example, a book on the colonisation of Palestine that exposes the oppressive nature of Zionism is mostly fine, but a book presenting Hamas as a liberation group would not be accepted (and actually illegal in my country).

You can reply with books or other reading lists that we could then review and add. I'll finish this post with some examples of books on the reading list (keep in mind that it was for Black History Month, so all of the examples are on black people):

African Empires by Lyndon, Dan
Black Power: The Politics of Liberation In America by Carmichael, Stokely; Hamilton, Charles V
I Heard What You Said by Boakye, Jeffrey
The Assassination of Lumumba by Witte, Ludo de.
White privilege: the myth of a post-racial society by Bhopal, Kalwant

Thanks in advance!

The contradiction between my brain capacity and the genius that went into Mao's writings gave me a headache. I need an adult please.

Lets start by asking, in reference to:

"It is evident that purely external causes can only give rise to mechanical motion, that is, to changes in scale or quantity, but cannot explain why things differ qualitatively in thousands of ways and why one thing changes into another. As a matter of fact, even mechanical motion under external force occurs through the internal contradictoriness of things. Simple growth in plants and animals, their quantitative development, is likewise chiefly the result of their internal contradictions."

I kind of understand what is meant here, but isn't plant and animal growth governed by multiple different chemical reactions?

I don't have a biology degree but there aren't just two chemical reactions acting in opposition to each other, or a set of pairs of chemical reactions, right?

How can something so complex be reduced to pairs of opposites? Doesn't that impose a limitation? What if instead of a dialectic its an n-alectic where n can possibly reach the thousands or millions (since things "differ qualitatively in thousands of ways")? Is this really what Mao wanted to convey?

Obviously his ideas were "right" because they helped develop a correct understanding of reality such that Mao won wars. I just don't understand what is meant.

I think I'd apply for the position of guy who's super interested in something that's only interesting cause it's gsmeplay relevant. I'd stand by a river staring at it day and night and when the protagonist talks to me I'd say "I'd bet I could use a boat to cross this river."

Examples that come to mind:

• saying your favorite video game is Disco Elysium
• saying your favorite TV show is Star Trek DS9

The two rules are that:

1. It has to be to do with a category that is socially acceptable to talk about with most people in a casual setting. So no politics or philosophy.
2. Nothing too on the nose, ex, no "I love the music of the Red Army Choir" or something.

No need for ideological and government ops (at least not yet), just a good misdirection of ideas from an unwitting person or grifter, that were decidedly purveyed around western liberal mass media, at face value or manipulated beyond originator's intent.

I don't wanna hear shit like "1984". Those were made with the intent to be blatantly anti-communist and pro-western

An example would include the Stanford prison experiments

It turns out that the cruelty exhibited by the guards was not spontaneous. On the contrary; the guards were coached beforehand by Zimbardo. And some of the prisoners have admitted that the distress they exhibited was faked.

(Note: lemme guess, someone gonna @ on how I'm ironically use pop culture to debunk pop culture. Yes, we do live in a society...)

Nonetheless, this study was one of many that solidified "human nature is inherently evil" sort of shticks...

reading a bit about past revolutions (mostly cuba, russia, china and vietnam) It seems to me like the peasantry was at least somewhat involved in each of these movements, with sympathetic peasants providing material support to proletarian revolutionary movements. as far as I understood it, this seemed to be particularly present in the chinese new democratic revolutionary government which sought to form an alliance of the four progressive classes under the ideological leadership of the proletariat, the peasantry being one of these four classes.

another thought is, does the peasant class still exist in the imperial core? I have farmers In my family but I'm not sure if they would qualify as peasantry, as while they own the land they work (and work it themselves, not employing workers afaik), they are entirely dependent on external factors to maintain their lifestyle (having to buy seeds, pesticides, fertilizer, fuel for equipment) rather than being relatively independent from the capitalist class. maybe I misunderstand the definition of peasant, but modern farmers in the imperial core seem to more closely fit the description of petty bourgeoisie, and this seems like a key difference between them and the peasant class that existed at the time of past proletarian revolutions.

this also brings up another couple questions: first, would a proletarian revolution in the imperial core today be able to rely on such a class of farmers (weather they qualify as peasant of petty bourgeoisie) to be sympathetic or does historical precedent make it seem more likely they would a reactionary opponent to progress? second, If the proletariat cannot rely on the support of any other class, how would revolutionary strategy differ from previous revolutionary movements?

sorry in advance if these are dumb questions.

How do you write a cover letter for a job doing very basic tasks? I feel like Im either shmoozing and being way over the top, or being realistic in a way that will keep me from getting the job. For reference the job is to package coffee and make other products. I guess i just dont understand. I need a job, they need a worker. This work can be done by most people, its not some field thats relevant, its putting beans in bags and brewing coffee, how can I say "i really want to work here" when in reality any job will do, this is just the one that vibes best with my social capacity and is offered by the least offensive corporation. Like what am I gonna say, "I love brewing coffee, i spend every day constantly brewing coffee and moving my coffee beans from one bag to another, because I just like handling coffee"?

I have also been studying or doing self employed things like tutoring for the past 10 years and my cover letter skills were shit before this and have only gotten worse.

Cant I just write "job. Me need job. You have job. Me need money for survive. You need worker for labour. You give money, i work. I work good." and be done with it?

I was watching this fascinating video lecture by a neurobiology professor and the brain regions that are dimorphic and are correlated with expressions of male and female gender alignment; but the comments devolved on accusations of "trans medicalism". My assumption is that this is an accusation of boiling down transgenderism to sex-characteristics as expressed through the brain, and the possibility of "testing" that would deny transgenderness if the person doesn't have these correlating sizes previously identified in research.

Am I missing something?

So I've been trying to befriend this Chinese immigrant and he recently sent me a link to a Bilibili upload of this film. It immediately stank of anti-DPRK propaganda to me, and that stench just grew stronger and stronger the more I looked into its production and background and response. So I voiced some concerns to this new friend of mine that this film might not be a sincere or accurate depiction of North Korea. But my friend insists that it is a good and accurate documentary.

So I dunno, should I trust my friend and watch more than just the first five minutes? Or do you have any specific points that I should bring up to make my friend understand that this film is basically just mind-numbing garbage?

Edit: I watched the film just now. It's fine, it's got some of the standard trappings of anti-DPRK propaganda, but if you're aware of the tricks all you're really left with is some nice footage of the country interspersed with a few pathetic attempts to spin it as a Bad thing.

I always assumed it was like Lemmygrad and the ML stood for Marxist-Leninist but I don't leave my island and the visitors I see always have the worst takes

I keep seeing posts from this instance referring to capitalists as liberals. Since when are capitalism and liberalism related? As far as I've always known, liberalism is a social ideology, while capitalism is an economic system.

Why do y'all refer to all capitalists as liberals when at least half (probably more, at least in my experience) are conservatives?

I, for example, consider myself a liberal, but I'm most certainly not a capitalist. I'm stuck in a capitalist society in which I have to play by the rules if I want to feed my family, but that's as far as my support for the system goes. I'm pretty sure a lot of Americans feel this way.

Looking it up, the definition of liberalism specifies a belief in maximum personal freedom, especially as guaranteed by a government. Considering that 90% of governments in the world are endlessly corrupt, capitalist or not, I'd much prefer one that guarantees its citizens rights as a matter of course rather than begrudgingly grants them privileges that can be taken away without public oversight.

Do y'all really trust your governments to look after your best interests? As a U.S. American, I know I wouldn't trust my government or politicians to do anything but enrich themselves at my expense, but I don't have to; my rights are guaranteed by our constitution.

Now if we could just get them to stop funding and committing genocide...

EDIT: So many incredibly well thought-out and researched responses! I have a lot of reading and thinking to do, so thank you all for your input. I'll likely be referring back to this post for a while as I learn more about the world outside my U.S.-centric bubble. My biggest takeaways from all this after a quick perusal of the replies are that liberalism has a very different meaning outside the U.S. and has a lot more to do with private property, especially land ownership, than I'd thought.

My time is limited and there are so many responses that I likely won't be replying to (m)any any time soon, but know that I appreciate all the knowledge bombs y'all have dropped.

“You must be fun at parties.” Uh why would I want to party with Nazis?

“So edgy.” If I cared what liberals thought, I wouldn’t be a communist.

“You’re just a larper.” Larp it till you make it, am I right? Also, what have larpers ever done to you?

“Nazism and communism are the same.” Yes, Nazism is when you want to destroy Nazism forever rather than fund it the way you do.

https://twitter.com/Nash076/status/1758832421514998089

I'm tired of scrolling down for long and not seeing it in the megathread, but only in my notifications bell, even with ctrl + f

I want to see the other replies!

Do any of you know why my PC might have fried 2 power cables (not the supply itself) within a month? Second time she won't turn on last time it was just the cable, can't assume that's the cause right now but it smells like the power supply itself may be bad. I could see one faulty cable but two seems odd

The Internet has been enshittified to the point that searching for this seems obnoxious also I have to search on my phone because obviously my PC won't turn on lol

Update things are going well that's the shattered glass side of my case lol

I'm not talking about the technical rules of legal moves when your king is checked. I'm talking about when there's checkmate and the victor and the loser are set in stone. Why can't I capture the king at that point? I can understand why you can't do so with a resignation because your pieces likely aren't near the king.

I had some zero THC cbd and cbg mix like 5 years ago. No side effects and it really helped me stay away from booze and other dumb shit. I was productive without the side effects of smoking regular bud (laziness and munchies really fuck with me and THC gives me more anxiety)

Should I be going for CBD or CBG or try and do both again? Anyone have experience with this sort of thing?