ratboy

Bought a giftcard for another comrade which won't work for them unfortunately, so I thought I'd post it up here for someone. Apparently it can only be used with US Companies and is only for online, phone or mail order purchases. Message me and I'll send you a screenshot with the info, I think it should work. I'll update the post once it's claimed.

From the Lenin biography by Robert Service

I chose social (service) workers, because Social Worker is a protected title in many states in the US but there are many people who do not have their degree/licensure who engage in the same if not similar work so I wanted to capture that.

Gonna preface my ideas with the fact that I have a basic understanding of the classes so I could be off base and would love feedback/corrections if I'm not applying the terms correctly.

I think the kneejerk reaction from people when they hear that someone works in social services would be that they are petty bourgeois, but I believe that because the field is so broad, and there is so much overlap in work that it is both petty and proletarian. For example, licensed Social Workers can engage in private or group practice where they work for themselves. At the same time, they have the option of working in the public/private/nonprofit sector if they would like, doing the same type of work or different, where they sell their labor to their employer. They can also do both of these things at the same time, or do one and then the other as they choose to change jobs. There are also people who do not have these qualifications who do essentially the same work, but can ONLY sell their labor to their employer, and do not have the option of starting their own practice, therefore I would consider them specifically proletariat. Their wages are often very, very low, typically to the point of qualifying for different types of low income assistance programs.

I think this probably gets more complex, too, due to the fact that the work has been professionalized over time with the advent of the degree and the licensure requirements while non-professional workers are still widely used and exploited in tandem.

Or, would Social Workers and social service workers necessarily exist in different classes from one another due to the professionalization of one and not the other (in the eyes of the employer)?

So yeah I'd love to hear any thoughts on this

I'm trying to confirm whether or not there was an ICE arrest in my community. I think it is, but someone else online said that they had it confirmed that the agents were not from ICE, but they were unable to provide any hard evidence to corroborate that

I'm having trouble finding videos, but are they required to wear vests identifying themselves as ICE, or can they vary?

In my last post I got SO MANY awesome suggestions for exercise routines and videos to help me ease back into being active. One that was suggested is Hybrid Calisthenics, which I think is an awesome start with achievable goals to get me into a consistent routine with my ADHD ass.

It's all based on bodyweight so you can do the exercises at home, the instructor shows you really in depth modifications to make the exercises easier or harder, and he breaks it up into (imo) very doable chunks - 2 different exercises, 6 days a week. I feel like knowing that it'll be such a short amount of time will be motivating, and if I don't do anything else for the rest of the day, I still will have gotten SOMETHING in. He also gives a goal number of reps, so that once you're hitting that number with good form and you aren't dying, you know you should move on to a harder variation.

I did the first day today, and my arms are already sore after a couple hours. So, I think I'm gonna post daily updates on this post as lil updates for myself and I think it could be cool if other people want to try it out and post progress as well! Could possibly be a good motivator!

Anyway, here are links to the youtube video and website with the program:

Hybrid Calisthenics Beginners video
Hybrid Calisthenics Webpage

For the past couple of years I've been extremely sedentary and I am definitely noticing how that's taking a toll on my body. I think I had imbalances and such before but now they are glaringly obvious; one shoulder higher than the other, one hip/glute is tighter than the other, same with calves, etc etc it goes on and on. I wanna try to address this stuff, so if anyone has any pointers or resources that they find helpful for mobility/strength/flexibility that would be dope.

I hereby decree that Tuesday and Wednesday are to be renamed Beansday

There are many people who have been posting about wanting to mobilize and become more engaged in mutual aid and organizing in my local subreddit. People are starting to become more desperate and are waking up to the fact that marches and solidarity protests and voting only do so much and they want real change. But many are probably Dems/Liberals who are just coming around to this since Trump won the election. So they have hardly any political consciousness whatsoever and some may still be turned off by the words "anarchism" and "communism". Though I think more people may be sympathetic to anarchism than ML, Lenin is still bad and scary to them I'm sure. Even Marx.

The discourse has actually been kind of sympathetic to alternative politics in forms of upvotes and such, so I am compiling a list of mutual aid groups locally and nationally that are doing on the ground, tangible work besides electoralism and I want to gather very digestible reads/podcasts/etc. to put into this resource list.

I am looking for Democratic Socialism resources, Anarchism, Socialist, Communist, Trans liberation, Indigenous liberation, abolition, organizing, stories about apolitical-represented sources regarding mutual aid, analysis of how Democrats & Republics go hand in hand etc. etc. ANYTHING to push people left, regardless of how milquetoast it may be. Whatever started to de-worm your brain that's perhaps a notch left of Bernie. Extra points for resources that are more focused on examples of organizing as opposed to strictly theory based stuff.

If there are particular episodes of more radical podcasts to listen to, all the better. I think ideal texts and such would be where the author critiques their own beliefs and finds faults in them, but can argue the benefits of it as well.

A couple ideas I have as of this morning are:

• People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
• The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
• Second Thought Podcast (Haven't really listened but it seems like a decent primer. Specific episode recs welcome)
• Blowback (So dense but riddled with primary sources and relatively unbiased)
• People's Guide to Capital (by Hadas Thier, quick and more focused on labor solidarity than revolution)
• Why Marx Was Right (by Terry Eagleton. Haven't read but was what pushed Breht from RevLeft to claim himself a communist)
• Possibly Dessalines' essays on github

Fuck having remembered this song and knowing it's 15 years old is making me have an existential crisis. I am afraid of getting old

So good tho

I just really don't know how to feel or what to do or how to figure this out for myself so if anyone else has been in my shoes I'd really love some advice

[For context I'm in my 30's]

Sooooo growing up I knew that trans people existed, and I knew about androgyny which I was very fond of, but it wasn't up until my mid 20's that I had learned about genderfluidity or nonbinary identities. Once I heard it described, it just clicked with me and immediately I felt that that is what I was, nonbinary. This was around the time that gay marriage became legal in California, so really these terms were not widely used at all outside of queer communities. As a very young child most of my interests aligned with my gender assigned at birth, but even into 2nd and 3rd grade it was very obvious that I was more interested in hobbies and things typical of the opposite gender, and this has remained static. The things I liked, the ways I dressed for the most part, my choice in friends, my sexuality, the way I talk and kinda move around the world was more reflective, in my mind, of the "opposite gender". There were characteristics, however, that up until learning that I could be a third, secret gender (lol), were in alignment with my AGAB, so I never identified as anything but.

Now I have identified as nonbinary/agender/transmasc nonbinary for close to 15 years, but over the past few years I've been feeling like I am really not actually anything other than cisgender. Being misgendered by others still REALLY bothers me...But due to my experiences in the world and how I've always been perceived, I really do resonate with the experiences of my AGAB, especially when it comes to experiences of gender based violence. I feel like in my brain I slip and call myself my AGAB more now than I used to. I'm in relationships with people where it looks like a straight relationship. I don't really belong to any queer community, so I'm used to people constantly misgendering me, and it just feels like I'm always perceived as my AGAB even when gendered correctly.

I don't take hormones, I've never had any type of gender affirming surgeries, and I generally don't want to change my body. I have body dysmorphia, but that I think is more due to societal expectations of what my body is supposed to look like/chronic verbal abuse focused on my body. I have thought about hormones, I have wondered or wanted my body to align with my gender more but never to the point of feeling that I need to change it. But at this point, I feel like I should resign myself to just being cis. ADMIT to being cis....and I just feel like a fraud. I still bristle against the idea, but I just feel like I'm faking it, and have been faking it because no one else sees me as what I want to be seen as....But that's the thing, do I just WANT to be seen as someone else, or NEED to be? What's the difference? I feel like I would NEED to take hormones, or want/need surgery to really ACTUALLY be who I feel I am...Especially since I've had more and more thoughts that feel cis??? Is the only way I can describe it. I feel like my identity is not much more than a choice of pronoun, and I just feel like I'm cosplaying or something....So I don't really know what the fuck I am or how to figure it out. It's just one more thing to perseverate about and I wish I could just not think about it. But I don't know how to get there.

I wish I could figure it what's wrong with me. Am I rapid-cycling bipolar? Is it ADHD? Is it autism? I'll go days, maybe even a week or more feeling like I have barely any energy at all, it'll be hard to do much more than a quick chore or two. Fatigued, unmotivated, energy drinks don't really work. And then all if a sudden boom, awake at 7am, energy drinks kick my ass. Yesterday I was doing chores/projects from 11am to 1am. Couldn't fall asleep til around 3am, and now I'm up naturally at 8am, with energy to go. Towards the end of the night I got hyperfixated on making pretty excel spreadsheet templates so that might be why I was up so late. I'm also spending hundreds of dollars on things all at once which I normally never do... But they are all practical and I'm tired of not having things that make my life nicer/easier.

I was way more scattered than usual yesterday, bouncing around like a pinball, but my baseline is pretty forgetful/ scattered, it was just on overdrive yesterday. I wish I could harness this energy all the time for things like work, socializing, or hobbies so that I could make them a normal part of my life. I've even been able to/WANT to play video games! I can never get myself to do that even, which is relatively low effort so I feel like thats a decent marker of a shift in baseline. This nay be hypomania, but I'm not getting the confidence/inflated sense of self esteem which I need so badly.

What fucking gives?

PS here are some examples from my mood tracker of where I'm normally at, first graph from 2023 (i stopped tracking for a long time)and third is from this month(the green lines to the right are just the past couple of days that I'm talking about: