You are very right, and I feel your pain. I’m not judging you for feeling that way, at all.

I just don’t think that abstaining from voting is going to work in favor of fixing this issue. If anything we need to keep voting to keep the country as left as it can be for now, until we can shift the two parties we are forced to pick from farther to the left.

I hop off the train at the part where the top-down dictatorship comes into play. Probably a bit before the level of authoritarianism where the Joseph Stalin type starts killing people for having a dissenting opinion, and what not.

Using the state to enforce good wages and end the terribleness of the stock market/landlord culture does not need to involve a top down dictatorship and a lack of democracy.

I know about the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and all that, and in my opinion, it should involve all of the workers, not one person or a small group of people. A top down dictatorship just makes it all that easier for the party to be infiltrated and controlled by bourgeois interests. If said dictatorship is a true democracy, with each worker having an equal say, it makes it pretty hard to control the proles.

Tankies have read Marx and Engels, yes, but there are many other forms of leftism and even other forms of communism that aren’t ML. You are right about ML communists, in particular, but many other leftist movements are anti-authoritarian by their nature, so the point still stands.

Also, it’s possible to do the reading and disagree with the methods of implementation. I agree with the economics and the stated goals of communism, but I don’t believe authoritarianism is the best way to go about it.

If Project 2025 is successful, we won’t ever have another democratic election. Our election is going to work like Russia’s does after that point, and we will have a dictator of some kind that pretends to hold elections.

So, unfortunately, this is not the way.

I agree with a caveat. If you are looking up documentation for an API or something software engineer adjacent, I think its fair for the authors of the documentation to assume the reader has a background in computer science, and shouldn’t have to explain topics that are explained in computer science curriculum. Same with other documentation that is intended to be used by specialists in their respective fields.

I just read an interesting research article from NASA that shows that carbon fiber survives reentry better than our previous scientific consensus claimed.

Some carbon fiber will burn up into carbon dioxide, but a good chunk of it will surprisingly survive reentry conditions. I think you are very right that it should be a better material to use for starlink.

Ahh I get your point now, sorry I missed it. Yea, if people think that private company = employee shareholders, they are very wrong.

I completely agree. I don’t understand why there are some self-described ML types that support modern Russia. It really makes no sense, as Russia’s economics and government has nothing to do with communism/socialism, or Marx, anymore.

I wonder how many Russian bots and agents have infiltrated those communities to spread that propaganda. FWIW, I am a member of a Socialist org, and there is nothing but hate for the Russian government amongst my comrades.

The latest pictures of him look good, though. The man has definitely lost some weight.

You are most definitely right that the major shareholders aren’t the workers. The major shareholders are Gabe Newell, and some bankers in Japan.

Still, it is known that Valve employees are partially compensated with stock for working in the company, so most of the employees are still shareholders. They just aren’t the major ones.

Thats some proper parenting right there. It sounds like you are raising an upstanding citizen.

It sounds like you are a Democratic Socialist from this tidbit.

I kind of feel the same way. I think the economic theory behind communism/socialism sounds much more beneficial towards our progress as a species and towards a more sustainable existence. I just don’t agree with the authoritarian methods of implementation. I think that if socialism is going to succeed, it will need to come about in a gradual democratic way.

Thanks for pointing this out. To some people, advocates for things like socialized healthcare are ‘tankies’. Its hard to tell what people mean anymore by it, and one persons tankie might be another’s centrist at this point.

I was going to say, isn’t the Kama Sutra a Hindu text? We have a bunch of sex positions that may have been lost to time if it weren’t for the Hindu religion.

I will admit that assuming you have never faced hardship like that is not fair. Maybe you have, and maybe you handled it differently.

Still, its disrespectful to make someone feel bad for feeding their family Taco Bell. Maybe they didn’t have time or the knowledge to cook food for that cheap.

Taco Bell is as good an option as any other cheap fast food place. None of them are healthy or anything, and that’s not the point. The point is that they are cheap and quick, and sometimes that’s what people need. Nobody should feel bad about it, including yourself.

Believe it or not, some people make less money than others.

If you were in a position with only 20 dollars in your pocket and had to feed a family of 4 you would be eternally grateful for cheap food. Consider yourself lucky that you have never faced hardship like that in your life.

I think your comment is pretty ignorant and/or disrespectful.

I can’t imagine living in a town without real Mexican food. We have taco trucks and authentic fast food style Mexican spots where I’m at too.

Nothing that Taco Bell has ever made comes close to the quality of a random shady looking taco truck.

I understand that, but my point was that we aren’t carnivores at all, we are omnivores.

I am not vegan FWIW, I was just responding to the person who was saying that comparing us to sea carnivores was a bad comparison, when comparing us to land carnivores yields the same results. It seemed kind of like they missed the point of the joke which was to make fun of people who wrongly call us carnivores, especially as a response to veganism.

It was all kind of useless pedantry on my part, anyways, so I apologize.

The joke is making fun of people who call us carnivores, though. Our teeth are very different from land carnivores, as well.

I guess nobody’s gonna ask why you just happen to have a picture of the Space Jam movie poster on your hard drive?

Not that I have a problem with that. I actually have the opposite of a problem with that.