i’m not sure if this is what Maeve is talking about, but there’s definitely a kind of guy who realizes that he talks with AI the same way he talks to women and concludes that AI is sentient rather than that he objectifies women.

look, the important thing is that they are figuring it out. we are all behind the curve in one way or another.

this may 1st is looking to be a huge organizing event, with large coalitions that will certainly include whatever local communist groups that are worth joining, so if you can find one of those that may be a good place to start. and if you’d like help finding the closest PSL branch, feel free to dm me.

i don’t think this and Russia’s war in Ukraine have very many similarities.

seeing the amount of disruption after not even 3 weeks into it being closed, it being closed for 6 months may actually be an existential threat to the US.

The bourgeoisie needs hirelings who enjoy the trust of a section of the working class, whitewash and prettify the bourgeoisie with talk about the reformist path being possible, throw dust in the eyes of the people by such talk, and divert the people from revolution by giving glowing descriptions of the charms and possibilities of the reformist path.

Vladimir Lenin, The Tasks of The Third International, 1919

same as it ever was. we have to take the failures and shortcomings of these reforms to push people towards a more revolutionary perspective.

i also don’t understand why on earth are socdems attaching to him in remora-like fashion

it’s very simple: socdems consider fascism to be more acceptable than any revolutionary socialist movement. it’s a natural conclusion once you start thinking that if you reform capitalism slowly enough, the capitalists won’t realize what’s going on and you’ll be able to sneak socialism in, despite overwhelming evidence that this is not the case.

“everything i don’t like is the same”

you are making a very valid art criticism of games. some people won’t agree with it, and that’s fine. there has always been a tension between using all of the latest tech and actually making good artistic choices for a game, and a very consistent trend in the game industry is to shove whatever fancy new advertising buzzword technology into every new game regardless of whether it makes artistic sense.

probably referring to Aravindan Balakrishnan. it’s a really fucked up story, so i won’t even attempt to summarize it. i try not to think of some people as inherently evil, but this guy really tests that conviction.

Among Senate Democrats, Durbin and Virginia Senator Tim Kaine are tied for the lead in this ignominious category with eight yes votes apiece.

every time Tim Kaine comes up, i get another glimpse into how thoroughly the DNC threw the 2016 election

maybe so. i’m pretty open about being a communist, which does do a bit of filtering with who would be willing to take a book recommendation from me. i think that we are in a historical moment where there is a lot to gain from being bolder about what we believe, but it’s always good to have a variety of tactics.

for sure. the fall of the soviet union really convinced a lot of them that they would never need to worry about labor rising up in an organized fashion ever again. we must make good use of the amazing opportunity that they have provided us with.

i read those excerpts, and while the recounting of recent history and the ways that disagrees with dem’s marketing is good, i think there is too much brushing over a critical analysis of the past.

Even if they were only doing so to prevent the commies from making the US look bad, the democratic party was once the party of abundance for the white working class.

this is exactly what i’m talking about. the dems were not ever that. they were using racism as a wedge issue to break a working class movement that was an increasingly credible threat to the capitalist system. we can clearly see the institutional role of they play in the passage and congressional veto override (supported by about half of congressional democrats) of the Taft-Hartley act barely more than a decade after the NLRA.

as for my recommended starter book to move a lib toward the left, that really depends on where on that trajectory they are. if they aren’t scared by the word socialism, i’d go for Socialist Reconstruction, published by the PSL. it makes a very compelling case for abandoning the democratic party by presenting policies that would actually fix the problems in our society that the dems would never even mention, much less advocate for.

from here:

My answer was that the Democrats aren’t who we think they are. Once, perhaps, they were the wide-awake guardians of blue-collar prosperity, but today they understand themselves differently.

maybe the book itself treats this subject better, but i think it’s really important to not spread ahistorical myths about our capitalist parties. the democrats today are doing what they (and the republicans) have done for their entire history, namely to systematically destroy any actual left-wing movement, whether that’s by force or half hearted reforms that get circumvented or progressively weakened.

https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/

juche necromancy game where as you play, it becomes increasingly clear that “killing” and “resurrecting” people is you doing completely normal personnel management so that they can take a regular ass vacation or have a bit of time out of the media spotlight.

I agree. But if Democrats want to win and actually remain in office (these 4 year cycles are killing me) they need to actually campaign and implement on bold initiatives.

It was way too depressing to get a glimmer of hope in electing Biden in 2020 to only return back to Trump the following election cycle. Democrats need to show they’re aligned with the values and needs of their base.

And that will mean campaigning on the scary “sOciAliSt” initiatives that they’ve been shying away from up until now. No more catering to the center/right. No more being beholden to AIPAC. No more feckless acceptance of letting conservatives rule the fucking game. We need Democratic pit-bulls to bring people out on Election Day.

yes, the democrats could win big if they stopped being democrats, but they literally have billions of dollars of incentive to not do that.

we gotta do a better job talking to people about the DNC’s actual politics and goals.

any reasonable regulatory environment would treat that as a claim of medical efficacy that they should be required to prove with solid medical studies, but instead they can just put whatever in those bottles and no one even checks if there’s lead in there.

they’ll never do vetting. that would be anti-democratic authoritarianism.