Learning and critique are the same thing. If you look at China and go “this is perfect in every way and we should copy it,” then you aren’t actually learning anything at all. In my experience MLs don’t get angry with anarchists and others critical of China because they don’t learn from Chinese socialism, but because they don’t like the conclusions they’ve made.

Modern urban grimdark fantasy is a reflection of our modern urban grimdark reality. Writing hopeful fiction in a modern setting requires a much more vivid imagination.

I’ve only seen Andor so I don’t know if the lore was stated or implied in the original trilogy, but aren’t the rebellion an alliance of multiple revolutionary groups with different ideas for what comes after, but more broadly want to restore the Republic?

The warehouse fire thing is just a case of Apophenia. The one toilet paper warehouse arson caused people to go looking for local news reports of warehouse fires and - because they happen all the time - they found them. That doesn’t mean they’re connected or that there’s a wave of arsons vis à vis resistance against corporations. There has been no actual uptick in warehouse fires.

I didn’t say they weren’t, I just said their prefigurative politics were more prominent. I’m of the opinion that what someone does is more important than what they say, and if they hadn’t been undermined by COINTELPRO who knows where their thinking and organizational structure would have gone. I just think there was something truly transformative about the BPP that could have grown into something beautiful if they’d had the opportunity.

The problem people had with his reddit account was that he was a raging communist lol. I believe that he was naive enough during his deployment to get a Nazi tattoo without knowing, I’m personally more concerned by the fact that after his 4th deployment he returned to the middle east as a Blackrock mercenary guarding Abu Ghraib prison, the one infamous for torture.

In spite of this though, it’s better that he wins than Janet Mills or Susan Collins.

The Black Panthers get a pass; they didn’t live long enough to become the villains, and there’s no guarantee that they would have. The BPP was far more prefigurative than vangaurdist, and it was the combination of these things that made them seem so threatening to the powers that be.

It’s about what you managed to convince yourself. The reason you can’t find that speech from Schumer endorsing Mamdani is because it doesn’t exist. You hallucinated it to preserve your ego after Mamdani’s victory shook your worldview.

It’s wild how revisionist you centrist types get whenever you’re proven wrong.

Just keep supporting every liberatory movement only after it succeeds and expect everyone to forget you were against it when it could’ve actually benefitted from your support. You must also be gaslighting yourselves, because otherwise you’d have enough shame to admit you were wrong.

Well, there are no unsolvable logistical problems with public clothing ownership. A clothing library could easily be a thing, and probably does exist somewhere.

They’re in the wrong program then, that skill is more useful for business majors.

The person asking the McDonald’s AI how to reverse a linked list in Python is almost certainly an undergrad in a programming 101 course, so this was definitely quicker for them (although they didn’t learn anything).

Alcohol has also just been more prevalent in human cultures dating back to prehistory. Some of the earliest evidence we have of permanent human settlements were breweries, theorized to have been built by people who still lived semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles. That would mean that humans first started making permanent settlements and doing large-scale agriculture only to produce alcohol, and still mainly relied on hunting and gathering for their caloric needs. Other drugs / intoxicants have been used by humans for at least as long, but none have been so central to the development of civilization and culture than alcohol.

Plenty of species self-destruct. The difference with humans is that we’re aware of our own self-destruction and are continuing it anyway.

This video by More Perfect Union talks about them at length. If I remember right, it is literally required by law to be cheaper overall (25% savings across the board) with a default pricing of cost plus 1% and a variable pricing model where common staples like eggs and milk are sold at a loss and it’s made up for on more niche items. They’re tax-subsidized through the military, and it’s an incredibly tiny portion of the budget. Some locations operate at a loss but they’re not allowed to close any stores so that’s why they need the subsidies.

So in short, yes, government run shops are cheaper because they’re tax-subsidized, and are not required to profit or even break even. Personally I don’t see any problem with government operating grocery stores at a loss to provide the working class with affordable groceries and having the rich foot the bill. In fact, I’d say that’s the whole point.

If you’re thinking that means government run grocery stores are unrealistic keep in mind that they already exist for the military. They’re called commissaries and they sell groceries for significantly cheaper prices than private grocery stores, but they are open only to service-members and their families. We are perfectly capable of providing robust social services, but the state wants to keep it exclusive so they have an incentive for people living in poverty to join the military.

It’s what the kids these days are calling “friend-slop,” which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s just that most of the value comes from creating zany situations for your coop pals to get into and let hilarity ensue. It’s a bit like a lot of card games in that way, it’s simple because it mostly just has to get out of the players’ way and allow social interaction to happen.

Asking an LLM to cite its sources is like asking a street-drug dealer where the drugs are grown/manufactured. They don’t know, and if they did they wouldn’t tell you.

dont know how web designer as a industry is doing now.

Bereft with AI slop following sweeping layoffs, so not well.

Modern states suspend the rights of individuals to lifer or liberty as a punishment for breaking a rule. Rules like “don’t rape people”.

They also do it for rules like “wrong skin color,” “wrong country of origin,” “wrong sexuality or gender identity,” “born into poverty and stole food,” “suffering from drug addiction,” or even “possessed a completely harmless drug like weed.” And the punishment is often the total depravation of rights and forced labor tantamount to slavery.

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and poor alike from stealing loaves of bread.”

At least in theory, you can move to another nation or campaign for better treatment in essentially all modern states, exempting a small group of pariah states that still mostly don’t rape people as punishment.

This wasn’t a good argument in feudal society when peasants could leave and find another Lord or live on their own, and it’s not a good argument now. Choice is pointless when all your choices share the same constraints.

Not a single person I’ve seen has so much as suggested any mechanism whatsoever that would keep “self organizing collectives” from becoming fetit pools of bigotry and violence. We know that will happen because such groups arise in every nation already, but their impact is curbed specifically by the power of the state.

What mechanism prevents states from becoming fetid pools of bigotry and violence, and how has it been working so far? The power of the state does not curb this behavior, it curbs its rivals while engaging in that very behavior themselves by maintaining a monopoly on violence.

“Get rid of the government and we’ll all do the right thing” is libertarian bullshit to cover their glee at taking things away from others. If you aren’t a pro-rape libertarian, figure out how your proposed system would protect the vulnerable at least as well as modern states do.

Anarchy is not the lack of government, it’s horizontal governance. Hierarchy is not necessary for community policing or restorative justice. I’m not an American Libertarian which is an irrational ideology, as it wants capitalism without the state, which is impossible because capitalism is enforced by the state. Without the state protecting private property there can be no capitalism.