I get the sentiment, but no lie, I often have had health anxiety that I could actually calm down by googling symptoms. Because more often than not, the really bad stuff does not really fit into the symptoms I had, at least not properly.

Do you mean China? So, just to frontload this - I don’t think China or any Marxist-Leninist states managed to be properly communist, outside of symbolism. There’s material reasons for that, too, mostly that the cycle of capital accumulation from labour -> reinvestment into productive forces continued in an exploitative way. Both Mao and Stalin wrote things trying to justify that dynamic persisting, Mao’s most damning comment comes from a footnote on a document from 1953, which can be found as “On State Capitalism” on marxists.org. Stalin meanwhile wrote “Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR”, which has intersting stuff like “The Law of Value Under Socialism”, and was very influential in China.

But at the time of the Chinese Civil War and Mao’s faction winning out, the US simply wasn’t the powerhouse of international meddling it was, yet. Even so, western allies tried to focus their support on the Chinese Nationalists and KMT, but they proved to be too incompetent and disorganised at the time. When the US started to court the People’s Republic of China again much later, it was because of the conflict between the Soviet Union and China, as well as there being a huge market for industrial and consumer goods, as well as for investing accumulated (dead) capital beckoning.

Point being: It’s a bit of a fallacy to imagine the US as this omnipotent international imperialist, especially before the Cold War. Not that they don’t do a lot of meddling, but they aren’t able to just do anything to anyone everywhere (even though secret services, be it CIA, FSB or Mossad - they will always want you to believe in their omniscience and omnipotence).

Even just as a technicality, the 1% have not always existed, most tribal societies did not have class divisions like that. Both anthropological studies of existing tribal societies show examples of that, and the archaeological record, too, lays out it was common.

And I understand feeling like that, but it is a pretty weak argument, tbh. It is even hard to engage with, because it’s basically starting at a completely different outset of concepts and understanding. Firstly, it reduces socialism to only systems of perfect equality of power - when even Marx acknowledged that this is not only impossible but also undesirable.

Then it just packs all kinds of class arrangements into “The 1%” and “the worker class”. Was European feudalism like that? Ancient palace economies? Tribal gift economies? Pre-historic tribal arrangements? The Incan/Andean planned economy? Each with their own complexities, class relations and all showing that the basic idea - humanity evolving along it’s material capabilities and necessities - hold true.

Lastly, related to the idea that proper socialism would mean perfect equality of power - sure, corruption in some way has probably always existed. People will also always murder each other in some way. Using that as an argument to say it is impossible to establish a system that minimises murders is how your reasoning sounds to me.

And the system is always what limits or enables the way this corruption and gaming the system plays out. How much property and/or power can be concentrated? Capitalism concentrates vastly more wealth and capital than the systems before it, both for good (e.g. the development of productive forces has enabled many things) and ill. Just because perfection may not be possible, does not mean a system without exchange of value and capital accumulation is impossible (has existed before for sure, yes, even for more complex economies than a small tribe), and it does not mean it has to exist in a way that is more barbarous than the current state of affairs.

That notional aspiration to socialism is basically the ideological smokescreen. It was much more effective in the Cold War era, but it condenses down to: “Suffer through our version of (state) capitalism and exploitative labour for our capital accumulation” - be it by state institutions or even state-sponsored billionaires - “and at the end of it, we promise, there will be communism.”

But that “communism” then tends to be like nuclear fusion - always 20 years away.

Personally, I handle it like this: Killing people is never right, but it isn’t always the best decision to do “the right” thing. The right thing, morally, would have been, to collectively not create a system that has CEOs and billionaires. Just like, the ideal revolution would only depose and take the power from the ruling classes and would have no need for terror. But it’s usually impossible to follow a completely ideal situation.

I think the distinction is important, mainly because the enjoyment of revenge for revenge’s sake and violence for violence’s sake is pretty real and can become very dangerous to the success of revolutionary action. So it is good to remind yourself of the ideal situation (no killing), as to curb any excesses if at all possible. It does not mean you cannot go against those ideals - in the end, ideals are trumped by material reality and its necessities.

Nothing matters now.

Yeah, hard disagree on that. I was always against holding a false moral high ground and for using all means available to empower the working class. And that has mattered, matters, and will continue to matter. Only, the Democrats aren’t doing that. Sure, I can sympathise with Biden and I barely even know why Hunter was so targeted, I paid little attention to it. The thing remains - it is just protecting his own family, when he could do a lot more for people outside of his close circle with his last moments in office - in theory, at least, if he wasn’t just another Milquetoast Democrat.

Yeah, and this is just nepotist corruption to boot. It’s not like it is consciously leveraging the corruption within the system to put power into the hands of people that need and/or deserve it.

something fucked with your attachment style at some point in childhood

Ha, if that ain’t the truth with me - and people claim you can’t diagonse people over the internet from just their comments. Although I guess if I were to use the outdated terms, I’d definitely have both mommy and daddy issues in that case.

Wait, so if I have that same thing as a cishet guy, does it mean I have mommy issues? Or… female focused daddy issues? I always knew my sexuality was needlessly complicated

I know there have to have been even weirder ones I got over the years, but what stuck with me is when a nurse in a psych ward psychiatric clinic called me (a patient) being like a “weird, confused professor” as a genuine compliment.

Mayo + Ketchup combined, the classic “Rot-Weis”-combo in Germany.

That or, preferrably, mayo + a good chilli sauce

Oh, wow, another book for the reading list :O

Am surprised that I genuinely hadn’t heard of him, just highlights the point the article is making.

I can basically go wth any kind of jam, blackberry is really good. Something like Sriracha or a similar kind-of sweet chili sauce can also be amazing. Oh, and honey is also a really good taste experience.

Well, here I was, wondering when EverQuest had added the protagonist of Space Quest to their game at some point, taking an embarassing amount of time before realising what this is actually saying.

Satohi Kon’s “Paprika” is still my favourite movie, and there is a lot to discover and reflect on, on second and third and umpteenth watches.

I know this all too well, although for me it surfaces much less as the thought of “saving myself the pain”, but instead being a very aggressive: “I am so bad/worthless, any attempt by me could be genuinely hurtful/transgressive”.

Had a lot of work, therapy, life developments, it got better, but never truly vanished as this thing that sometimes bubbles up at the core of my self - some days more, some days less. Wishing you the best in your own struggles with thoughts and feelings like that.

Good luck! Kitties often get lost in places like basements and deep holes they can’t get out of on their own. So you should expect to search something like a basement, a dungeon, maybe some kind of other small, enclosed space.

Thank you, you made my brain go down a rabbithole.

I actually had to get rid of adnauseam because YT detected it pretty consistently, ublock origin as of this comment still works fine on YT though.

Peertube is eagerly awaiting a proper community.