askchapo

See title, this builds up on the previous request for reading lists, but is a bit more open ended and is supposed to be a contemporary update that I would like to post twice a year.

The texts at best are accessible without too much previous knowledge. Open for videos, and other media, as well as group formats, and activities too. You have to participate in protest training and actually cook for others to see how both those things feel.

I would be more happy with fewer thick works or only excerpts from complicated stuff, than to suggest the complete collection of Marx's works. Some popular and recent books i.e. Jakarta Method, Klein, or recent organizing books would be welcome, too.

The next time I post this question (and feel free to paste your own suggested template) will be December/January 2023.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending the current US healthcare system, it’s horrible and riddled with perverse incentives, and should be mostly (if not entirely) nationalized. I’m just not sure how to justify the idea that healthcare is a “right”.

I know that sometimes people on the left draw a comparison to the right to a public defender. I’m not sure that argument really holds up though, because you only have the right to a public defender under the specific circumstance of being prosecuted by the government for a crime. The logic there is “if the government is going to significantly interfere with your life by arresting you and trying you for a crime, then it at least has to allow you to get legal defense from a qualified attorney, even if you need the government to pay for it.” There’s not, like, a right to a publicly paid lawyer for any and all purposes.

I am not familiar with the term, "federated" or its meaning... I'm hoping to get some serious answers and perhaps even some comedic answers....

Edit: thank you to all who answered my call for enlightenment. I'm even more confused (and hopeful) than I was before!

Every time we chat, and the discussion turns towards capitalism, she’s the one who without any hesitation just says we should kill them all. Now, though, it’s gone further to torture. And she names names. In addition to people like Bezos and Musk, she includes Ben Shapiro, Andrew Tate and others.

I say we should force them to work and maybe learn the error of their ways (After the revolution of course. During it many of these fucks will die and I’ll be glad).

Her current jobs is extremely horrible. She’s being massively overworked, verbally abused and, of course, underpaid. So I get her frustration. But it’s also scary. I don’t want her to get in any trouble.

I don’t know if I should be gently turning her away from imagining a slow and painful torture of capitalists or not. Am I being a lib or is she too extreme?

Realizing I only have a very general idea about the CPC's intervention (?) in Tibet. They don't have to be pro-Communist sources if the brainworms are mostly under control.

Title, I'm a leftist but after reading some things on lemmygrad and here it seems I might have been lied to all my life. I have talked with some people from Cuba and Venezuela (expats) that support the west narrative about poverty and mismanagement. I "believe" that Russia is attacking Ukraine for selfish reasons and that China censors access to foreign information using the Great Firewall, please prove me wrong. Furthermore, it ultimately depends who do you want to believe or there are hard facts from reputable sources that are simply a hidden by the mass media?

EDIT: Thanks everyone for your very civil responses. I'll answer as many as I can!

Who would you transform into a model socialist citizen?

No one is immune to propaganda, but with that established, sometimes propaganda can miss the mark for specific recipients so much that those recipients go from indifference for something to active dislike for it.

I'll give a few examples, most of them lifted from moments where I have no choice but to see such marketing, such as in banks, offices, or waiting rooms.

I'm fairly sure I might actually enjoy some VR entertainment if I could afford it, but over a decade of "almost every piece of media portraying even the idea of VR requires some douchebag to make a :soypoint-1: face with the headset on, even just an article talking about it" has really put me off on a knee-jerk level. As silly as it sounds, I really don't want to look or act like the tools portrayed in such marketing pitches.

Carbrain is a fuck, but I'd be much more likely to be interested in a new car if it told me how much horsepower it had, how much it could carry, something like that, instead of every fucking modern car commercial being some pretentious speech about what identity you supposedly buy (or have to be to buy) when you buy the car.

Come to think of it, I hate pretentious speeches that present the product with life changing epiphanies and saccharine lifestyle modeling. I've seen it for everything from beer to prescription medications to airlines, and even local commercials for local events making a fucking craft beer expo or a wine festival sound like a religious experience. :corona: :soypoint-2:

It’s not fair :angery:

No preamble today, you all know what this is by now. As I sew a Cthulhu patch onto my vest, I just wanted to check in with my favorite comrades! This is your space to talk and vent!

A lot of you remember that show I had last week with the people who don't like me. It actually went pretty horrible for my partner, not so much for me. I walked out during the performances of the people in question, and the 3rd person just walked right past me without saying anything, and I had my best friend with me so it ended up being a fun, drunken/high evening for me, in some respects.

My partner tho...one of the performers (who I fucked things up with) had a mental break right before the last act, was screaming and crying about how they didn't wanna do it. I can't help but wonder if my presence played a part in that. Partner isn't holding the break against them, but they haven't reached out since to say anything at all about it. My partner produced and directed the show, so they won't be inviting them back. On top of that, they ended up losing money on the show that they worked hard for, and they found out that some other people in their community were trying to poach the venue, which upset them. ON TOP OF THAT - they're coming off Lexapro, so it hasn't been an easy week.

Beyond that, I've been making new friends, some of them from Hexbear, some of them from Lex. Talking with someone right now who is spitting Marx quotes at me and I'm just like....oh yeah, let's fucking do this. Had a GREAT day on Saturday doing mutual aid work and then hanging out. My partner seems to be working on us doing ENM/poly stuff in a positive way, so that's cool. Band practice tonight, rest tomorrow, and then back to distributing food on Saturday.

Hope you're all well!

I’m clearly no economist so maybe I’m missing something obvious, but I cannot wrap my head around why so many believe that the market is just some sort of fundamental, unchangeable property of the universe that is and always will be. Why do we assume that the dollar will always be valuable?

I could be incorrect, but it seems like there is no guarantee that there will be a rebound after a crash (see: 2008). It more so just seems like parts of capital crumble and become inaccessible to people who once had access, thus causing complete inaccessibility for all who come after.

So, boom and bust seems like the greatest misnomer of all time.

Our culture is diseased now but damn the post-9/11 zeitgeist was cursed as hell

I have issues with depression, general anxiety, and social anxiety. I often feel negative feelings mainly because I feel like I don't have any strong social connections. I'm hurting a lot from this, but it feels like the only places I can talk about this are semi-anonymous Internet spaces and my therapist (whom I only see for an hour a week, at most). I want to talk to some people about this, whether they can just be an ear, or if they're able to be supportive. But I'm really afraid of talking to them about this, because I don't know how they'd react. "What, you don't feel connected and included? I thought we were friends, I'm offended!" Or they could think they have to walk on eggshells around me.

So should I talk to them about this? If so, how and when?

My trusty Samsung Galaxy S7 that I bought in 2017 is bricked and now I must buy a new phone. What are the recommendations of the hexbear community for a replacement? I was satisfied with my elderly phone except that there was a lot of junk that came with the phone that I couldn't delete, and for the last couple years or so I've had to delete an app before I could add an app, so that was kind of annoying. But other than that, I was happy with it, so I don't need the newest coolest thing.

I see videos of Crowder types asking randos on the street to do it, and of course, they always stutter and stumble their way around what it is (if they're well intentioned - of course lots just say the usual man = penis and woman = vagina answer.)

Most of the people that get caught out are just well intentioned people whose philosophy on questions like this is 'who the fuck cares' (which is valid).

However, I'd rather not be caught out. Usually I try to immediately split it into sex Vs gender by just asking them to clarify - "what is a woman according to sex or what is a woman according to gender" and then I try to go from there.

What's a good line to trot out in answer to stuff like this? It would be nice if it could become almost a set phrase answer so it could catch on easily.

Unless it’s a service animal, I don’t like when dogs are in public buildings. Tired of trying to buy food at the grocery store but having to dodge dogs and avoid stepping over their leashes. This anger is mostly directed at their owners as I’m skittish around dogs I don’t know.

Okay, so background: I'm your average pro-gun fuck-the-police, fuck-trump zoomer honed by years of unsupervised internet access and I've just discovered this community and started lurking for a while. But I still hold extremely negative views on China, which I still think are justified.

"Which views?" I'll throw them out real quick: child labor! internet censorship! media censorship! anti-LGBTQ! uygher genocide? positive and pro war relations with russia! (because fuck putin)

So I get really confused anytime I see people expressing pro-China sentiments. Have I been spoonfed by the media or are some of these points actually justified?

So Mr. Bitcoin President of El Salvador has deployed a massive wave of incarcerating violent gang members to combat endemic violence in the country, but also at the cost of civil liberties and also not addressing the root causes of the gang violence in the first place.

Of course, El Salvador has been among the most violent countries in the world in terms of murder rates and violent crimes so something had to be done, but I'm not convinced that this crackdown will do anything but kick the can down the road.

Thoughts? Also, apologies for the Guardian link it was the first summary to come up when I searched it :ohnoes:

I have 2. The People's Republic of Walmart is one. Maybe I feel this way because I work in the industry and I'm a little familiar with central planning techniques... but I just thought it was all fluff with little substance. I felt like more than one chapter was just "Walmart and Amazon do central planning so it's possible" without getting into a lot of the details. Very little about the nuts and bolts of central planning. Throw in a good dose of anti-Stalinism when the man oversaw successful central planning... I just didn't get anything out of it. Might be OK if you want a real basic introduction behind the ideas of planning but honestly I bet like 95% of you already know more about it than you realize.

And I love Graeber but jeez, I couldn't even finish Bullshit Jobs. It felt like a good article that was blown out into a book. Maybe my expectations were too high but I felt like he spent way too many pages getting into minutiae about what is/isn't a bullshit job without actually making a broader point.

For me, as much as I link posts about how utterly vile :my-hero: is (and he is), if he lacked the money and political power and reach that he did, he'd just be that one creepy asshole relative that steals other people's jokes and runs them into the ground and has recently found himself no longer invited to Thanksgiving, if you know what I mean.

In a different life, :trump-anguish: would just be a bumbling disaster of a human being with no one to prop him up when he falls over. He'd be a low-rolling fascist run of :tequila-sunset:

It's going to sound petty (because it is), but Alex Kurtzman is one such vile person to me. It isn't an appearance thing (though his perpetually smug smirk looks like a fist magnet), either. Almost everything he says is so remarkably arrogant and laden with unaccountable hubris that stacks up and up but no matter how many entertainment franchises he smears himself all over, often wrecking their long-term success in the process, he keeps getting more work and keeps getting richer. He doesn't do much actually tangible damage to society, hasn't physically harmed anyone as far as I know, but the only value he's ever had to me was that he made me aware of the concept of "failing upwards" when I was an initiate leftist. :disgost:

EDIT: Ron DeSant!s easily beats Kurtzman for vileness but maybe that's too obvious an answer, especially after recently reading about his torture-viewing giggle sessions.

I only just now thought about the almost impossible to miss messaging of that children's book: "If you give anything to someone else they'll take and take and never stop demanding more."

Sure, that can apply in some contexts ( :porky-happy: ) but unless someone's take changes my mind about I think the message is fucked up.

I have noticed over the last few years that my hodge-podge of rural Midwestern accents have started getting more prominent in increased social isolation after COVID. And this is after kind of working to have a more "neutral" and professional accent for work and there being things that I say that nominally native English speakers (Brits, Californians, etc.) had a hard time understanding. Just wondering if other people here noticed similar things with themselves.

okay now that Biggs isn't here, I need your guy's help. Biggs's birthday is coming up soon and I don't know what to get for him and I need some ideas