askchapo

I was looking into visiting Cuba in 2024 but there seems to be a lot of conflicting information. Does anybody have good resources on how best to visit without being put onto a watch list or whatever?

Ngl, I kinda hate when people say “online is not real life.” I mean, technically that’s correct, but liberals said that to argue against Bernie’s popularity in 2016/2020 while conveniently ignoring that the reasons for his non-election stemmed from an electoral system designed to protect against the will of the people.

But am I incorrect in assuming that since the ubiquitous internet is fairly new, we don’t have enough information to determine whether normalizing bigotry and the most horrific shit imaginable under the guise of free speech, we probably shouldn’t run that risk? Obviously people don’t say this shit irl because they’d get clapped (and they do).

But what do y’all think? Is this like a super niche field of sociology? It’s fascinating to me, I’m curious if the medium changes that in any noticeable way

Like democrats shouldn’t even be complaining about the republicans withholding anything or compromising on anything if they actually believed their words.

But then I remember that the democratic voters, particularly the online types and neoliberals, are delusional and genuinely believe that their politicians are valiantly fighting republicans when in reality they’re just two pouty siblings being forced to hug each other by Mother Capital

Let's say you have two cats and you'd rather go homeless than them.

I'm not even sure it would open up my search to include anywhere I'd be able to afford.

I’m not a native German speaker obviously, but doesn’t “Das Kapital” translate to “THE Capital”?

Also, English-speakers should call it just “Capital”. Calling it “Das Kapital” is just propaganda to make the title sound more menacing than it is.

For instance, I have an aunt who is definitely MAGA, and is flirting with Q-Anon ideas. However, she has pretty good views on the environment and animal rights. For instance, after travelling to Ecuador, she donates to some Ecuadorian land trust run by locals. However, if you start talking to her about the border or gender, she goes full Orbán.

Liberals will point to how improvements in quality of life have occurred in capitalist countries in recent centuries (debatable, and certainly not true for the entire world, but let’s assume they are correct for now). What is usually implied is that it’s all thanks to capitalism that we have the quality of life that we do, thus capitalism should be allowed to continue.

The thought I had was, do most of the quality of life improvements come down mostly to how agriculture and medicine developed? Meaning, famines were a harsh reality of life for much of human history, and modern agriculture has allowed us to now be in a position where globally, we can produce more than enough food consistently for the whole planet.

Likewise in regards to medicine… in the past just getting sick could be a death sentence. People had to live with incredibly painful conditions their whole life that we now have cures for. Honestly modern medicine is the one reason why I would rather live in 2023 than any other time.

What I’m getting at is… though these advances did occur under capitalism, I don’t think I would give capitalism the “credit” for them. Obviously socialism was not possible 200 years ago. I’m not denying standard Marxist historical progression. What I am doing though, is trying to attack the liberal narrative of treating capitalism as some god who has bestowed his mercy on us - that everything good we have is from Him, and thus we must give Him our praise and continue on His economic system into eternity.

The Soviet Union and China were/are both able to be incredibly productive in agriculture and ended their historic, periodic famines. The Soviet Union (and Cuba!) were/are renowned for their advances in medicine.

I think the only things you can give capitalism “credit” for is developing the productive forces, allowing for high levels of commodity production, and increasing levels of wealth (though not equally shared).

Nitter

I need advice. Please be gentle and know that every decision I’ve made along the way to this predicament was because I wanted to help struggling urban wildlife.

I live in a two story apartment building in a fairly big city. I have a very small patio situation, which I dont really use besides for feeding birds and giving them water via a bird bath. Many birds live here year-long and visit my patio throughout the day. I see lots of migrating birds too at certain times of year. Autumn and winter especially are popular seasons, but I see plenty of baby birds during the spring too.

These past few weeks, when I open my door to restock the feeder, birds literally come greet me!

Well, squirrels come here too, and very rarely have I been able to prevent them from raiding the feeder. Often I just accept that there’s nothing to do about it, especially since there are ground feeding birds that can’t eat from my feeder. It’s gotten to the point however, that the ground feeding birds are forced to not only compete with the squirrels, but ultimately must relinquish the lion’s share to them.

But it’s worse than that—the squirrels now definitely associate me with the delicious seeds that I dispense every day. They crowd by the door and climb along the windows, looking for me. Now they’ve even located my second-story bedroom window and climb around on the window screen, loudly. It’s very loud and disturbing.

I’m distraught and I can’t even feed the birds now, because the squirrels just wait around. I feel bad for the birds, I feel bad for the squirrels.

I’ve already tried fancy squirrel-proof feeders, but the narrowness of my patio means they can jump from the neighbors’ tree and wrestle with the feeder until it dumps even just one seed on the ground, which is also a noisy and disruptive struggle. Plus it's not like I don't want the squirrels to eat.

I feel terrible, all I wanted was to help wildlife out. I'm afraid to just abruptly stop, because then what would happen to them all?

I know I've made mistakes - but what do I do now??

To me, it seems quite violent, distressing, and humiliating as a public trial, even when presented in the first 3 episodes of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution podcast...

As opposed to simple "criticism secessions"...

Serious question

I'm into a co-worker. Nothing indicates he's interested or even into guys, but I'm bad at reading social cues. He knows I'm not straight and we talk regularly at work.

It feels like it's obvious I like him, but again, social cues. I was thinking about saying something direct and just being honest, but I don't want to stress him out. I don't expect him to like me back, but that would be great.

I guess I'm asking how uncool is it to communicate that to someone at work?

Edit - I just wanted to say thanks and I hear what a lot of you are saying. I was under the assumption that being around someone you like and not telling them you like them is dishonest and unfair. It turns out I need to reevaluate some things about myself.

I need to be careful and I don't want to risk making work worse for me/alienate another person who's trying to work in peace.

I'm just glad I got to talk about the feeling somewhere shit once. Thanks again!

They seem to love the cookie cutter houses chain restaurants and expensive unsustainable living that typifies the American suburb.

I posted a cookie cutter suburban house one time saying it looks like dog shit and bunch of chuds were like "What a beautiful house".

Spoiled upper middle class women and chuds just seem to venerate suburban sprawl.

Why?

I'm part of a student body and have the task of drafting up a statement that condemns antisemitism and anti-muslim racism on campus and makes clear that both jews and Palestinians/Muslims should feel safe there. Has anyone across a statement in that vain that was any good? Or statements on Israel-Palestine in general that would both be adequate but also don't scare away people who think anti-zionism is antisemitism (I could of course change some parts)

Bonus points: which one is most likely to be the fed assigned to the local?

The types of things that would help them climb the existing social order?

I think we've talked about how Chuds constantly complain about having "ugly people" in media (along with black people and intelligent women) even when the chuds themselves are not particularly attractive.

They worship traditonal hierarchies because they believe they will someday be at the top 'where I belong' no?

I've seen chuds straight up just say convenionally attractive people are better and belong at the top, meanwhile said chud is unkempt and not at all conventionally attractive.

When they usually aren't all that classically attractive themselves.

So stupid. And it makes it seem like they worship attractive people.

Bella ramsey would be an example in which a bunch of chud nerds call her ugly constantly meanwhile they're not exactly lookers themselves.

I love it when libs think living in places like China or Cuba is like living in a wasteland. The way some people talk about these countries you'd think these places looked like something out of Mad Max instead of thriving, prosperous nations. I'd like to write up some agit prop as a go-to resource on these countries. Examples of info I'd like to have handy:

Life expectancy

Cost of Healthcare

How much does it cost to ride an ambulance?

How much does childbirth cost?

What if I'm diabetic? What if I need therapy for mental health issues?

Crime rates, ex: number of thefts / 10000 people

Rates of people suffering from depression

Suicide rates

Etc.

I believe the average person living in China has a higher quality of life than I do in burgerland, but I don't have hard figures to prove it. Help plz?

He farted on his hand and then put it in my face so I went and told on him

So I would say I want to have kids, but it's very dependent on being able to have certain standards adhered to- aka I wouldn't just have kids no matter what if the biological clock was ticking etc. So with that said, I have question(s)/thoughts about those who have kids or plan on having them:

As someone who does value things like urbanism/strong social safety nets /all the things that I assume people on the actual left care about, it seems like it's virtually impossible in the US at least to raise a family in an actual urban area, where you at most own a car but it's not used on a regular basis, and still have good public education available that isn't obsenely expensive. To use an example, Chicago is one of the few cities that isn't craaazy expensive and you don't need a car depending on what neighborhood you live in, but it's well known that unless you go private school or a child tests into/wins a lottery to go to one of the amazing public schools, the general "school you go to because that's based on your address" are all objectively bad/somewhat dangerous. Obviously there are histories of corruption/racism and the like that has caused this issue in Chicago, but I don't think I'm wrong that I'd want to send my kid to a bad school just to prove a point. But on the other hand,, I do feel like it's just wrong to endorse the continued brokenness of needing to go private or get lucky to get a good education.

So basically, I wonder what is everyone's plan? My partner is currently in the process of getting EU citizenship, but that's most likely years away to being finalized. Is there any hope in the US to not have to make huge concessions when it comes to having children? Sometimes I wonder if even having two children is too much in terms of $$, but my partner is an only child and we both agree that if possible two would be best, as they were very affected negatively by being an only child, to the extent if I was ever single again I might legitimately hesitate to date an only child again. I guess I just would want to have somewhat of a plan/goal to be at so my partner and I could figure out when would be the time to have kids.

It just sometimes seems hopeless at least in the near future to raise kids in the US, and I'm hoping that's not the case, and if it is I'd love to be able to try to work towards whatever steps needed (whether moving to X country or X state etc) in order to make that a reality.

I know electoralism is tired, anyhow I'd like to hear your opinion on this guy. Is he sincere?

Yesterday I made the mistake of watching random comedians on youtube. One guy I saw had an audience of thousands of people in Australia, and he told nothing except painfully racist anti-China jokes. (Yes, it might have been the algorithm being like: "You like China? Well, howabout a comedian advocating genocide on China?") Everyone on hexbear knows that this is typical for comedians because the audiences at comedy shows tend to be drunk bourgeois scum, etc., etc.

But it's not just comedy. How many movies have you seen or books have you read where any of the characters, at any point, says something incredibly basic like: "capitalism bad, communism good." I'm not even sure Soviet or Chinese movies go that far (with the notable exception of Eisenstein's films...which were made before 1945). Plenty of works of art might imply that there is something corrupt about the military, police, or the powers-that-be, but they will never say that the system is the problem and that a better system exists. One very rare exception I can think of is The Battle of Algiers.

Also think about the dogshit novels Americans have to read in school: Animal Farm or To Kill A Mockingbird. The moral of both stories is basically: "Opposing the system is futile. Accept the system." Nabokov is hailed as the greatest novelist of the latter half of the 20th century, but he's basically a highbrow version of Ayn Rand, and repeatedly condemns communism by name in his books. We also know that the CIA had (and has) its fingers in every pie, and that the PMC also knows that it's not allowed to "get political," i.e., provide context. Even when it comes to classical Russian literature, Dostoevsky is probably the most popular in the USA, and the guy is a reactionary Christian monarchist who recycles the openings to his novels and is apparently nowhere near as popular in Russia.

I've just also been thinking about the greatest works of Statesian literature, how they are few and far between, how they were all written before 1945, and how they rarely were recognized for their greatness until long after their authors were dead. Steinbeck is one exception. The Grapes of Wrath is great (it was also written before 1945), but doesn't advocate for a better system. Poe and Melville are as good as the best writers from any other country, and Melville specifically inveighs against colonialism in his earlier novels, but both of these dudes were dead before they were recognized as titans. (Melville enjoyed some early success but then faded into obscurity long before he finished Moby Dick.) Are any post-1945 Statesian writers as good as Poe or Melville? Maybe just Octavia Butler, who was dead before she was a household name AFAIK. She advocates for communism in Parable of the Sower, but has to hide it behind mystical language ("God is change"). Sorry To Bother You is one possible cinematic exception, but it never goes beyond saying that the system sucks.

I'm wrapping up a trilogy of novels at the moment, and they are blatantly pro-communist, and I'm just preparing myself for the fact that they are almost certainly not going to be a success, not just because of the numbers involved (millions of books published every year), but because of the passionate anti-communism in western countries. These books don't have people saying "capitalism bad, communism good." But they do have workers and peasants forming Soviets (even though they aren't called Soviets), and I know from experience that even if as a writer you never turn to the camera and say "capitalism bad, communism good," readers will still pick up on the fact that something is wrong, from a capitalist perspective—that workers aren't capable of doing anything on our own, we need guidance from our enlightened masters, "human nature" is futile to oppose. I think there's just a dialectical materialist style of writing that liberals and fascists pick up on without necessarily knowing that they're picking up on it (because they spend their entire lives asleep).

Also I thought about this because I just saw and liked Trumbo, even though I was like: the blacklist never ended lol, where is my biopic about Paul Robeson, a Black colossus who never backed down from praising Stalin? Even if your job is dog shit picker upper (which I have done), you’ll lose that job if you praise Stalin.

And yes, this is a Arby's.