askchapo

:sheep:

they own the hills and valleys, this is their kingdom

I keep seeing "fuck tankies" everywhere, and seem to see people getting called "tankie" for any number of things--I used to feel like I knew what it meant (the formal definition, which I thought was the only application) but that's clearly not the case anymore. Saw someone get called one because they... Liked the idea of universal basic income and wanted walkable cities? And now the same sentiment is on a large number of Lemmy communities, lol.

I feel like I've been living under a rock.

Edit: Wow, I guess it's just as meaningless of a term now as it seemed. At least it's a nice, bright flag for ghouls not worth engaging with meaningfully, lol. I saw "fuck tankies" on a genderqueer community and got pretty confused on how the two ideas correlated in the slightest, so I guess that was the tipping point on me finally asking about it.

Or just feel free to talk about it.

My profile picture is the Magician enemy from the game Persona 3, based on the major arcana.

I kept the picture because it reminds me of when it's rounded.

What about you?

I was gonna guess that it's 'Get Out', which is a fantastic movie that we should totally watch on hextube sometime

Attempting to read about Bahá'í views on politics and economy, there seems to be a bit of a history of the Guardians having really lib takes, up to and including labeling communism as a "false god". Bahá'ís tend to be pretty deferent to the state authorities they live under, and also refuse to engage in party politics, which to me feels sort of yehhhh but also ehhhh. These Bahá'í policies feel like they probably have origins as survival strategies, when Bahá'ís have this history of persecution.

There are Bahá'ís who self-describe as Marxist, but these are few in number and are apparently ridiculed as oxymoronic; as a whole Bahá'ís seem to actively reject materialism as "satanic" and antithetical to their spirituality, and the notion of class warfare is seen by many Bahá'ís as a "divisive" view of humanity, and hence goes against the faith's teachings.

Simultaneously, Bahá'ís do seem to have some respect for Marxism, acknowledging parallels in the histories of Bahá'í Faith and Marxism, as well as recognizing the similarities of values held by Marxists and Bahá'ís, such as universal brotherhood; some Bahá'ís do acknowledge that their views of Marxism are colored by living in a liberal society, and are therefore more willing to actually engage with Marxist theory, to learn from it without embracing it wholeheartedly; and some of the common Bahá'í takes on politics are pretty decent in an apparently "stopped clock" kind of way.

So basically, I want to know: does anyone here have experiences with teaching Bahá'ís about Marxist ideas? Are there any organizations for Bahá'í Marxists? Have any of you met or interacted with any Marxist Bahá'ís? How do we feel about Bahá'ís in general, reconciling the Bahá'í Faith with Marxism in the same way as there are Marxists of other religions? Is this reconciliation possible? Is it worthwhile?

Was thinking about this last night. I have friends who I really don’t know anything about on an emotional level because I’ve drilled into my head it’s a conversation meant to be shared in therapy. But there’s also a part of me that sees the value in getting to know people as humans and not just their 9-5 selves. I have fem-presenting friends who seem to be more open to these types of conversations, but I genuinely want to find the line between sharing and over sharing. As a man, It’s pretty depressing to think about tbh, knowing other men for decades but not really knowing anything about them besides their favorite teams or beer.

Is this a thing that’s exclusive to males? Also, if you have any good literature recommendations for this topic please drop below 😅

I've seen the show before, so I'd pass em up, otherwise we got a global communism but The Shadow had us by the ass

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

So I've had a pretty good run, career-wise. I did the follow-my-passions thing (for computer touching) and it worked out. The problem is that there are very few jobs of any social utility whatsoever to be had as a programmer in the US.

The thing I'm encountering is everyone in my social class (unless they're only driven by money) seems to want that same thing: a prestigious, engaging & creative job that pays well, allows one to cultivate & showcase their individual talent, and has positive social utility. Unfortunately I haven't ever actually come across one of these jobs. The closest is just people lying to themselves that their app does anything other than speedrun exploitation of marginal workers while making people in their own social class more comfortable.

When I think about social utility it makes sense to consider what things I require to live my day-to-day life, and think about what jobs are required to provide those things. Unfortunately here I run into what I think is a bourgeois mindset ingrained from birth: none of those jobs are good enough. Think about a shopkeeper, or someone sitting at the help desk at the subway station, or a picker at an Amazon warehouse. If I took one of these jobs my parents and social circle would all believe that I had literally gone insane. Objectively, every one of these jobs is necessary for contemporary society to function and the people filling them have easily contributed more social utility than my entire programming career. And yet the idea I could actually take one of those jobs runs into gigantic barriers that exist in my mind. A local political org is working to salt Amazon warehouses and this seems like a pretty easy way for me to get in. But I just can't do it. Every time I try to articulate the idea I could work in an Amazon warehouse to one of my friends it starts to sound like a joke.

To me this indicates I have a fundamentally non-proletarian and thus anti-marxist mindset. I've worked jobs like this before graduating university and I know they suck. They are boring, the pay is bad, and worst of all - you get absolutely no respect. The lack of respect is what really sticks with me in my memories of those jobs, and still makes me burn with anger over a decade later.

Anyway I'm rambling but I guess my question is - does anybody relate to holding this attitude toward employment either now or at some point, and more importantly how does one overcome it?

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).

Experiencing it now? Experienced it previously? Lived with and known intimately someone who has?

I was gonna post this in /c/womenby, but it's not very active, and I'm not solely interested in first-person perspectives anyway. Long-term partners or roommates, close friends, adult children - your experience is also valuable.

What do you know? What was it like? What resources are/were helpful? What did you/they do differently?

My period started getting weird a few months ago, and just on a hunch I looked up symptoms of perimenopause and was shocked. Why didn't anyone tell me all this weird shit was going to happen?!

I'm going into day 9 of a period that has steadily escalated in flow the whole time and wondering at what point I need to seek medical attention. I've definitely bled heavier than this in periods past, so maybe not yet??? But also, I haven't bled this many consecutive days since that whackadoo post-birth period, so I am kinda starting to wonder if this is getting sketchy?? But I found threads on Reddit and Quora of people talking about bleeding to some degree Every Fucking Day for Years.

What the actual fuck?

It seems like it's a total crapshoot whether an OB-GYN has much depth of knowledge about any particular issue, as it is with every specialty, and it's super common to have serious symptoms dismissed because Time is Money and Women Stay Whining or whatever. Also, in keeping with the traditions of my AuDHD people, I don't feel great about going into a medical appointment without a Stack of Evidence.

So! Obviously I've been searching and digging around, but I'm super interested in your information, stories, and perspectives. What is/was it like for you or your loved one? What changed? (or "What didn't change?" if that's a shorter list 😂) What did you/they do about any/all of it?

Jfc. I was about to be like, "And why the fuck doesn't anyone tell us?!?!" and then I remembered how terrible most women's health stuff is and yeah, of course there is no support system for this, let alone proactive education. And why would the older women around me want to ruin my good time? "Oh, it's all fun and boobs now, but someday you'll somehow be simultaneously bloody and dry, your skin will be horrific, your body temperature will never make sense or be homogeneous ever again, and you will be allergic to everything."

I saw some comments saying they made it through 1-8 years of this and have become their No Fucks Crone Life Best Self, and so I'm holding out hope for that. Any delightful little feathers you want to put on that end of the scale will be celebrated, but I will also be very grateful for your thorny, muddy truths. Lay it on me. Please. ❤️

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??

I was initially going to call my hypothetical gay bar "The Man Hole" but I guess that's already a thing. Would "The Cocktagon" be too direct? What would you pick?

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!