SpaceDogs

And I’m genuinely hurt by this.

Someone in a tiktok comment section was talking about anarchists hiding cultural-conservatives but because tiktok comments are limited I didn’t really understand what they were talking about so I asked if there was a book or article I could read to learn more about this particular event. They then stated “do anarchist sock puppets read books now?” And I feel like shit. I don’t know what I said to provoke this hostility.

I know I’m overly sensitive but I actually am tearing up because of this. I hate the thought of being perceived as an enemy. I don’t know what to say to let them know I’m not a sock puppet…

Their comments mentioned something about the Chinese communists and the IWW.

A tiktok came up about anarchism and a bunch of the comments were telling people to read Cindy Milstein’s work. I’ve seen posts on here about anarchism and the literature but I haven’t seen any about Cindy Milstein and was hoping to learn more.

Here is the tiktok for reference. I don’t follow this person but I have seen and liked their videos about “leftists vs liberals.” There were other authors mentioned but Milstein seemed to come up the most. If you have any information on her or even the anarchism talked about in the video please share.

As the title says; I watched both Oppenheimer and Barbie back to back with my friends today, so if you’re interested in what the experience was like or what happened in each movie or any questions really please ask away!

I don’t think it’s unique but I’ve had it for a while and figured it’d be good to share.

I’ve been thinking about the Bolshevik revolution and the subsequent communist revolutions that followed and it baffled me how demonized they are. Yes, I know it’s due to rampant anticommunism but taking away that aspect it feels no different from the French Revolution that is way less hated.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a weird small uptick in people defending the French monarchy, Marie Antoinette specifically, but for the most part people seem way less opposed to the French lobbing off heads with a guillotine versus the Bolsheviks gunning down the Romanovs. Is it because there were children killed? But children were killed by the French revolutionaries too, so what gives? Not for nothing but getting shot to death seems a little less brutal than getting your head cut off. I’m not judging the French for this decision either, I understand why it needed to happen and so does history, at least the history I learned in school.

Is this hypocrisy because the Bolshevik revolution happened in more recent history? Again, I know anticommunism is the major factor it’s just hard to rationalize the hatred outside of red scare propaganda.

It’s just so wild to me that nobody really cares about the French monarchy dying via guillotine but weep real tears for the Tsar. I mean, my mom watches history shows (those dramatized ones, mostly) and she came to me about how sad their deaths were and how good of a dad Nicholas II was, how he seemed like such a nice man. It was, and still is, jarring as hell but I didn’t know what to say at the time considering I was less educated and a high schooler. I know that damn Anastasia movie did major damage as well. Sucks that the songs are bangers.

Anyway I think that’s my whole thought on this subject. Please share any insights any of you have on this as I’d love to hear it and perhaps learn more!

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1103408

Kept seeing this clip of Barry Sternlicht laughing about a “nice little recession” so I thought I’d share.

For what it’s worth, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard someone hoping for a recession. My stepdad told me this and I don’t understand why he’d want that.

According to him the only way to combat inflation is for us to go into a recession. But wouldn’t that cause a different form of chaos?

I’m uneducated on inflation vs recession but I know for a fact through lived experience that inflation sucks, and I’ve heard recession is also shit so why ask for one?

Anyway if this doesn’t belong here please let me know so I can post it somewhere else, I’m still getting used to what posts belong in what communities.

Today I learned that my stepfather is planning on becoming a landlord. I’m absolutely devastated.

My mom visited me today and as we were talking I told her how I planned to move out of the province I live in, as at this point it’s a lost cause. She agreed with me and told me she planned to move back to the Azores with my stepdad, of course. She then mentioned how they’d be financially well off due to my stepfather wanting to set up businesses. I didn’t know what this business was until she told me how they wanted to make money off of renting properties out.

She told me this in relation to how when she and him are gone (dead) their house and the one I live in will be mine to do with as I please. Because the house I live in is a property they own she made reference to other properties they would invest in in the future.

I don’t think my mom really understands this whole ordeal but my stepfather definitely does and it breaks my heart that he would resort to doing something so evil. I’m incredibly lucky that my parents were more than willing to help me move out of a horrible living situation by paying the down payment for a home while I pay the mortgage. Most people can afford mortgages, it’s the down payment that stops anyone from being able to afford to buy. So I’m lucky and incredibly privileged. I feel like I don’t have the right to be angry at them since they’ve done so much for me but at the same time it hurts to know they want to exploit people for profit.

I didn’t know what to say to her. Was I supposed to lecture her on the nature of landlording? I don’t think she deserves that since she’s never been savvy with this stuff. Do I lecture my stepfather? Maybe, but he’d fight me hard on that and it might screw me over. My stepdad has always been a hyper individualist and has little to no hope in the world improving, anytime I’ve talking about dense housing and better public transit he treats it like a childish daydream. He also hates unions so there’s that. It makes sense why he’d want to be a landlord but I don’t want to be tied to such a deplorable act.

But I look over this whole thing and ask: Does it make me a hypocrite?

As a communist, but I’m living in a house bought by my parents. I’ll have landlords as parents too. What then? Am I disqualified? I’m in genuine distress over this whole thing. I’m scared and confused and I don’t know what to do but cry.

Does anyone have any advice? Anything at all? I feel so alone…

Their deaths haven’t been confirmed yet. And if they are, the bodies are still warm!

Tuesday was my last day of Political Science, the final is next week. I didn’t write a post about day 10, and I have no real excuse except that I forgot and was doing a statistics assignment (that’s my worst class but I’m surprisingly doing better than I expected!). So I’ll write about both Day 10 and Day 11.

Day 10 was about international relations; bilateral, multilateral, non-state actors (IGOs, terrorist groups, etc.), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), social movements, all that good stuff. My professor asked the class about any current events related to international relations and one guy said Putin’s arrest. My professor than proceeded to explain that Putin, at this moment in time, has to be very careful about where he travels as going to an “unsafe” country could get him detained. He then states that or tries like China and North Korea are safe for Putin as they are not part of the ICC. We then did a small pivot to discussions about Canada’s ties to the monarchy, he believes Canada should get rid of the monarchy all together which I agree with. A few students were a bit opposed to it as they believe the monarchy doesn’t do anything so there is no point in going through the effort of leaving. Which seems to be a somewhat common sentiment among Canadians, we are a complacent bunch unfortunately. But whenever they visit we pay a hefty sum which is stupid, as my professor has said “we’ve outgrown the monarchy” I think its about time we became our on thing. But whatever, we then moved on to Realism vs Liberalism:

Realists • Wold is Anarchical • States pursue their own self interests • “America First” sentiment • Zero-sum-game • Human nature is inherently evil • Pessimistic view • Maximize power

Liberals • Believe in norms, rules, international laws • Pursue common interests among states

He then stated that Putin is a realist invading another country, while Liberals promote peace and a gentle bunch. When he asked what the students felt was more accurate in describing the world students believed that a mixture of realism and liberalism is needed. Trudeau is more focused on global affairs an does not pursue Canadian interests. He does not prioritize Canada. He looks out for China’s interests… Trudeau did not take advantage of Germany’s need for natural gas which would’ve done great things for Canadians (I guess???), he’s big on climate change apparently. These are my professor’s words, not mine. Trudeau, to me, has only done surface level changes to combat the climate crisis. He does not attack the main contributors. Anyway, next we talked about diplomacy and diplomacy, which is actually something I’m interested in looking into. We went over these terms:

•	High commission - compound in commonwealth
•	Embassy - compound in non-commonwealth nations
•	Consulates - promote trade and culture
•	Papal Nuncio
•	Diplomatic immunity - persona grata

According to my professor and other students Kim Jung-Un poisoned his brother and will suffer no consequences due to diplomatic immunity. A Libyan diplomat shot and killed a police woman, and a Russian diplomat killed a Canadian in a drunk driving incident. I haven’t looked into these cases yet so if you know anything more let me know! We then learned about thee diplomatic bag and how its protected from inspection. A Nigerian diplomat used this to his advantage by putting a corrupt politician in the bag (obviously unconscious) to bring him back to Nigeria to be tried for his crimes (I think that’s what happened).

More terms we went over:

•	Agrément
•	Communique
•	Démarche

He then talked about China promoting peace in Ukraine, which was the one nice thing I’ve ever heard my professor say about China. He used it as an example of cooperation between states. Did anyone know that diplomats also act as spies and do espionage?! I was shocked to hear this. Moving on, here are the forms of diplomacy we learned:

•	Bilateral diplomacy
•	Multilateral diplomacy
•	Secret diplomacy
•	Open diplomacy
•	Summit diplomacy
•	Paradiplomacy 

This is the juicy part; my professor finally brought up the WEF, stating that they are globalists - NGO - with the aim to “solve global problems”. DAVOS, progressives love it, while right-wingers hate it believing that it is a conspiracy for elites. Which is weird because wouldn’t the right be considered part of the elites? Anyway, the UN supposedly supports peace and cooperation but I think they’re doing a pretty shit job at it. He then mentioned Putin vetoing Ukraine condemnation from the UN. When we were talking about the security council it led to a discussion about states that want to be a permanent member: Brazil, Japan, Germany, and India. When asked which country would veto any of these from becoming permanent we all agreed that China would veto Japan, which is understandable because I don’t believe they’ve apologized for any of the crimes committed against the Chinese, let alone very other nation that suffered. One guy said that China would veto India with no real reason as to why they would. Aren’t they in BRICS together? Why would China veto India? It doesn’t really matter but at the end of class my professor said he believes there is too much bureaucracy in the UN, that’s why they haven’t made progress in many areas.

Now on to Tuesday’s class, Day 11, the final frontier. There wasn’t as long of a lecture since it was our last day but we did go over Global Politics and watched a video. So we started off with the terms Global South and Global North, and what the differences between them are. The Global South is “under developed” and this under development has led to theories as to why that is:

•	Modernization Theory - Global South countries are too traditional and therefore modernization is difficult for them. Moving on to a Liberal democracy and industrialization is much too big a feet right now. This theory is obviously incredibly wester-centric and, in my opinion, xenophobic as shit.

•	Dependence Theory - Developed by those in the Global South that describes capitalism as the reason why the South is the way it is. Capitalism promotes development in the North and underdevelopment in the South. Colonialism and Imperialism have decimated the South and makes them dependant in the North.

My fellow students claimed that the underdevelopment in the Global South is due to a combination of factors, and to that I say BULLSHIT. One theory is rooted in white supremacy and the other is about historical facts. How is it a combination? If you want to blame traditional culture maybe think about why certain “traditional” leaders make the decisions they do. Anyway, we then moved on to certain measures taken by the international community to help develop “third world” countries:

•	Basic Needs Approach by the World Bank - Effort to reduce poverty in third world countries. It didn’t work.

•	Neo-Liberalism (gross) by the IMF - Promote deregulation, free-markets, privatization, remove government subsidies, and something about Washington Consensus. This also didn’t work.

•	Neo-Statist by I don’t know (I didn’t write it down in my notes) - Strong developmental state, market is controlled by the state, similar to how South Korea and Japan run things. Hyper-capitalist nightmare.

•	State Capitalism (China) - Heavy state involvement, state intervention and direct control. Communism with Chinese characteristics, as my professor says. A girl in my class piped up claiming that China is a dictatorship, my professor then “corrected” her by calling China an authoritarian regime. According to my professor a guy who ran Alibaba criticized the CPC and the government cracked down on him hard. I don’t know anything about this situation but I’m going to assume they had a good reason for it.

•	Human Development by the UN - Fairly self explanatory, it focuses on promoting the human being.

•	Sustainable Development - we didn’t go too much not this one but it seems simple. I’ll be reading the textbook so its fine.

We finished our final lecture there, my professor ended the class with a video about global politics called Commanding Heights: Battle for the World Economy (2002). We watched the episode titled “The Battle of Ideas” which began with. Discussing the differences between Hayek and Keynes. I’m just going to write down my notes verbatim because I don’t think I can remember all of the little details from the video:

•	WW1 people were dissolutioned. Socialism and Communism Promised fixes. Then the Russian Revolution happened. Sought to destroy capitalism, as she should ~slay~. The part about the revolution seemed like it was fear-mongering due to the music and language used.
•	Communists winning hearts and minds.
•	Hayek claims he was a “mild-socialist” press X to doubt.
•	Ludwig Von Mises, fucking libertarian. Hated Soviets.
•	Video claims Von Mises was right about the Soviets.
•	New economic policy by Lenin. They zoomed in on Lenin’s face with scary music.
•	Joseph Stalin central planning.
•	Communism forging ahead, Capitalism seemed doomed.
•	This video is a heard watch, just very annoying and boring…
•	Hyperinflation led to Hitler.
•	Roaring 20s -> Market Collapse -> Shitty 30s. (In reference to the market collapse) how the fuck does that happen? Why did the bubble burst?
•	American breadlines - why do reactionaries claim Socialism causes breadlines?
•	Keynes invented macro-economics.
•	FDR New Deal - regulating capitalism. Set prices, plane routes, etc.
•	Keynes and US government had to be okay with a little bit of inflation..
•	Keynesianism became government policy.
•	Economy bounced back during war time.
•	Keynes “what worked in war will work in peace” or something like that.
•	Hayek “The Road to Serfdom”. Asshole.
•	Video claims Keynes was right. Compares Stalin to Hitler, how dare you?!
•	Keynes died and was raised to sainthood. 
•	The Winston Churchill statue looks stupid. Churchill was a dick.
•	Labour Party won against Churchill. Clement Attlee landslide victory. Mixed economy, rebuilt from bottom up.
•	Welfare state.
•	Lenin and Stalin defeated fascism! I added a bunch of love hearts.
•	Cold War…..
•	Hayek fucking sucks, believed planned economy was an affront to “freedom”, what the fuck does he mean by that?
•	“Iron Curtain” “Russian Threat” wow……
•	My eyes hurt from rolling.
•	Hayek claims socialists had the courage to be idealistic, seems patronizing.
•	Claims Russians occupied East Germany waiting for the rest of Europe to fall in their lap.” Why do they talk like this? Bunch of fear-mongering schmucks…

Can you guess which comments were my own and which were from the video? I think it’s obvious. But that concludes my Introductory Political Science class. Now I continue on in the next semester in the fall, I’m taking the spring and summer off because I’m going to be very busy.

After class I booked an “appointment” with my professor as I needed him to translate the notes he left for me on my research paper since I couldn’t read his handwriting. But I’ll write about that ordeal in another post. It was actually really nice and I hop I get more classes with him. My next Political Science class I might have a different instructor, currently there is only “Staff” listed as who will be teaching….

Just finished my first day. I only had one class and it didn’t even go the full length as we only went over what to expect in the class, typical first day stuff.

I’m writing this because even though I only had one class I was still scared shitless. I was shaking like mad walking through the different buildings looking for my class. I almost fell down the stairs in my panic. Battling the constant negative thoughts with some semblance of neutrality and logic was taxing as hell.

I was so embarrassed just walking down the halls. Everyone looked so fashionable and sure of themselves, I felt like a loser to be honest. My fit was definitely a bit weird and I just caved in on myself, to the point I was too scared to properly stomp the snow off my boots.

I waited outside the class door until it was the scheduled time, but when I went in the auditorium was almost full. I was confused if I was interrupting the previous class. But since this is day one of the year the classes ended way earlier, letting the next class enter early as well. Doesn’t seem like a big deal but all these little bumps felt like an earthquake to me. I even made sure to take my meds but I was still anxious as hell.

I was just filled with self doubt: my hair looks awful, my clothes are stupid, I’m tracking in wet snow, I shouldn’t keep my coat on, is my typing too loud? Does my screen saver look stupid? What app is everyone else using? And many more.

Although, I’m still excited and determined. It seems impossible that I’d feel that way but I know this is my first step in my long term plans. Get your honours undergrad, work towards your PhD, graduate with a PhD, and get to work changing the world.

My professors seem really nice and chill, even giving study tips to help us not get overwhelmed. I’m looking forward to the start of my other courses and hopefully this anxiety will lessen.

Definitely a day to tell my therapist lol

So I’m housesitting/dogsitting and the first channel on the TV when I turned it on is a channel that streams old anime, I guess. I never bothered to change it since I always just airplay videos from my phone, but today I left it playing normally for background noise. The current anime playing is City Hunter and I noticed the main character is a HUGE pervert. In the beginning of an episode he literally steals and revels in a pile of girls bras and underwear.

I’ve grown up seeing these types of characters in every anime I’ve watched but I guess I’m a little put off by the fact that it goes farther back than my era. Pervert characters have always bothered me, even when I was younger and less aware, and I know they’re supposed to be comedic relief but I have a hard time finding the comedy in sexual harassment. Some even go as far as sexual assault. They are so common and also happen to be part of the main cast which, for me, makes it so much worse. One Piece is a show I had to stop watching because of Sanji, I had other issues too but he was a big contributor.

Does anyone know why these characters are so prevalent?

Massive trigger warning, nothing visual as it’s an incel being questioned by police, but for the absolute sewage that spews out of this man’s mouth.

He basically open only admits to chasing after a woman and thinking it’s okay because of what he’s seen in BDSM porn. His logic being that women have rape fantasies so they like being stalked.

Apparently the woman’s father threatened to hurt Mr. Incel and now he wants the police to do something about it. Thankfully the cops are having none of it.

I know this specific photo is shopped lmao but I saw the original was a kid wearing said costume. Did Stalin wear this as a kid? If not, why is he associated with it? Seems like a silly meme to me but if there’s more to it I’d love to know!