kugel7c

kugel7c , 22 days ago

While I agree largely with your conclusion that anti progressive ideas are pushed to undermine progressive spaces, I don't really agree with how you get there and with the examples you choose to arrive at that conclusion. There obviously are actual bad actors, and actual hegemony to get these bad actors into being, but there is also a lot of real people, actually still learning about the topics, or just plainly with a different perspective on some of the issues that you might be discussing.

For it to be an ideology that is self consistent leftism actually needs differences and disagreement, or said in another way: if we were to prescribe beliefs instead of trying to teach them we'd also just be trying to build our "own" authoritarian hegemony. I can invoke successes of or defend the CCP and the soviets just as I can invoke successes of the US or EU or India realizing that all states are fundamentally bad, still sometimes perhaps by accident they do good things. And that examples and mental shortcuts, as well as actual experiments that might be of a socialist nature, are just what they are argumentative tools.

I've been called a tankie just because I see the downfall or backsliding of the US as good thing and don't really accept that china would be as bad as the US has been for the last 40 years or so. Which is perfectly normal for someone who doesn't really reap the benefits of US hegemony, and sort of just ranks authoritarian institutions by size(strength)(wealth) to arrive at a measure of subjective dislike.

It's almost similar to someone calling me a tankie because I purchase Pepsi instead of coca cola on that given day, when we all know I should make my own tea or at least just buy the supermarket/local brand to begin with.

I don't know where you are and what kind of people you meet on a regular basis but to me the simple and fast ways of understanding other people almost never hold true, most of us humans just lead to complicated lives to easily subjectify us. And honestly I wish most leftists would not try to subjectify other people to begin with.

kugel7c , 22 days ago

I'm having a hard time understanding the perspective of someone who believes that lefties would benefit by having the world's largest army and nuclear arsenal under a government backsliding all the way into theocratic authoritarianism.

Well some leftists would loose a lot obviously, specifically those in or directly around the US, but fascist regimes are not very sustainable, and certainly loose the ability to ally and coerce over time.

And This loss of ability to project power (by the largest and thus likely the most destructive institution of coercive power) is what I see as a critical step towards a communist or just any different way of economic and political organization on a global scale.

I don't want a facist US regime, I would never tell any leftists to advocate for one, but I would tell them to prepare or flee nonetheless because it is still likely, or at least possible that it happens (again).

I'd much rather have a reasonably progressive US voluntarily give up power in good faith, curtail her own economic might to allow her citizens a good life and our shared world a sustainable economy and ecology but given that among many other titles, she also holds the title of the foremost petrostate, and at least one of the largest Tax heavens, in the world I unfortunately don't really see that happening, I still hope for it, but as far as I understand powerful interests aligning and climate change, the world economy... it just doesn't seem particularly likely.

I'm in Germany so not anywhere extremely tied into the US, but at the same time both are imperial core, there is a lot of cooperation, I would likely feel a lot of the secondary effects, but I also believe perhaps naively that not all of the world would , blindly follow the US in it's slow march towards fascism. And with each institution peeling of from US hegemony there is at least a chance to throw a big political lever in the rightish direction, whether it be the EU, IMF, Nato or whatever else, a movement that at the moment is blocked largely by US and perhaps wider western but also sometimes chinese or russian imperialist positions. And of course the Capital that these states (actually) represent.

Like step one is a little putsch, step two is murdering all your political opponents, then it is time to invade neighbors to steal resources. Yes, the US is already invading countries to steal resources, no, I don't think having an authoritarian cancelling voting will help reduce that any. What am I missing?

All of this is already happening anyways, murdering political opponents internally as well as outside of the US,furthering climate change, destabilizing and undermining trust etc. again sliding into fascism is not what I want, but even a fascist US would be bound by physical, organizational, and social circumstances, and thus for the wider world likely less catastrophic than you might believe it'd be if you were raised or resided in the US.

I can't claim for certain that the US is having a Weimar moment, and I cant be certain that a US fascism in the modern era would be shorter and less gruesome, I also can't say it'll be better afterwards, but I feel all of these things to not be completely outrageous predictions, because as leftists probably should, I can try to interpret the historical Weimar moment, and the current political landscape...

Just fuck it, ramp up climate change and war, get it over with, and pray socialism crawls out of the rubble?

Well again, ramp up in war and climate change are already happening, and in my world the wars are already the 20th century ideas as well as their capital, lashing out against 21st century thinking, changes in circumstances, and the very real onset of this era of climate change scarcity that we are entering.

So to some extent from my point of view yes, you don't have to keep trying to be a democracy with institutions and foundational texts as well as family hierarchies from the 18th century, that were made and changed by your political enemies, you can fight for (but hopefully mostly against) the fascism that the powers at be try to impose upon you, but without just believing the popular vote, and the systems it enables, will save you here.

If you crawl out of an actual civil war esque partial collapse as hardened syndicalists, or if you can get rid of FPTP and establish a democratic socialist party that is able to actually make international agreements in good faith, for me it mostly doesn't matter. I'd prefer the second if I look at the human cost of both options, but because the first option I'd guess could be faster in implementation, and the result would be similar from an international perspective, I don't completely hate it, very literally I could likely "live with it", precisely because I likely won't have to live under it, much more than anyone from the US could.

Essentially I don't identify with the US emotionally, I have almost no image of her institutions being good, so I can compartmentalize and write off that particular nation state much easier. For me a fascist or civil war ridden US that is short lived and likely reemerges with better bones might actually be very similar to one that transforms more amicably.

I can just say suffering is going to be inevitable, but that the suffering to change things for the better, to make them work sustainably, to make them work for the people, is the one i hope Americans actually still strive toward deep down, because I by pure circumstance don't need to suffer in that same way, I will suffer differently and for a different reason, fighting essentially the same fight sure, but from a different position with different levers to pull and different pressures to withstand.

We had fascism here openly 80 years ago, it's still here trying it's hardest to grab power and survive, but perhaps obviously it's fastest decent, its quickest downfall was almost the exact same time as it's most emancipated period, in fact they followed each other in lockstep.

kugel7c , 1 month ago

German and potentially other train stations have smoking areas indicated by a yellow line on the ground, circling the area.

They are frequently completely ignored with some people lighting their cigarette while the train they are exiting is still opening its doors.

kugel7c , 2 months ago

So I mostly fried the SSD by using it to write and rewrite ML checkpoints and logs, this in turn made the device read only and I somehow managed to migrate to a different SSD probably using clonezilla or something, but it messed up the bootloader so I installed refind in a new partition, configured it and voila it works. It's scary because you need to do everything without seeing your system even half alive anywhere along the process, but it's not actually hard, just copying data and installing/configuring a bootloader. But for a then 20year old at his more or less first job my head was on fire for the 1.5 days this took.

By far the most difficult single thing that I've ever had to fix that actually had to do with the system.

I now don't flood my SSDs with data that is constantly rewritten.

kugel7c , 4 months ago

What you're trying to describe is named public transit not robottaxi, especially the argument that driverless cars will reduce transportation costs doesn't make any sense. It adds complexity to an already incredibly inefficient mode of transport. For road train like trucking on highways maybe it makes sense, for personal transportation on arbitrary streets it just doesn't make any sense.

There is no technology to help aging gracefully, it's in the respect and help of our peers and in our interactions with them, in the structure of our communities... Entering the sterile empty self driving car isn't actually more dignified than being picked up by a real human being. And sitting down in a tram or metro isn't less dignified than being shuttled around by a driverless vehicle.

It's not fuck Progress, it's fuck Cars, just because asbestos or coal power were progress at some point doesn't mean we should embrace them forever, the same goes for cars and self driving changes nothing about that. If cars still rule the world in 100 years we'll be dying even more than we already are.

kugel7c , 4 months ago

People don't need to be able to buy cars. The vast majority can't anyways. So why should the second richest percent of Ethiopia be able to.

kugel7c , 4 months ago

The not interested doesn't work, the don't recommend me videos from this channel works perfectly, and if the first video I get recommended of a channel is so repulsive to me I actually care to do something about it, the entire channel is probably bad anyways.

kugel7c , 4 months ago

I've been playing beamNg for 4+ years and it's been in ea the entire time since 2015, possibly the best car game you can get for 20€.

Slay the spire I've also owned since early access, it's maybe the most beautiful single player card game to exist. Although it only spent 1-2 years in ea.

Don't be the first to buy ea games I guess but if the game is already fun why not.

kugel7c OP , 4 months ago

Don't you also have both ?; Escaping to an aggrandized past for dread of the future and daydreaming about an idealized future self to wash over past shortcomings.

kugel7c , 4 months ago

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kugel7c , 8 months ago

The US government is sovereign, it can very much either take ownership of the stock, or estimate its value and construct a loan that the company owners needs to pay back because they owe this tax. Or probably 100s of more clever solutions as well.

It can definitely decide to tax wealth if it wanted to, it could also break up large companies to at least spread the wealth of these institutions wider. It mostly just doesn't "want" to.

This argument is so unnecessary defeatist pretending the most militarised and police ridden country in the world has no power to enforce laws it could write.

Opposite to that notion I think if the US had any interest in fairness in taxation, especially on a more global scale, it could easily get all the common tax havens/financial secrecy jurisdictions, to fold to essentially whatever demands if has.
But again it seems like the US government strangely doesn't really want that either.

Which is still the central issue the US government is more captured by the billionaire class than a lot of people like to think they are, and it's never just the dem or just the reps, it's large portions of both parties that are essentially captured in this way, or just fall into it because preserving the status quo is easy.