• 3 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • I agree with most of your analysis, when viewed through the lens of immediate consequences. However I’d like to push back on the idea that it’s just revolutionary roleplay, and I’d like to explain why I see things that way.

    I’ll agree that both parties, as in the voting base and establishment, are generally supportive of capitalist policies. However I believe that it’s far deeper than that. Not only are the folks at the top of both parties capitalists, but a vast majority of all the fundraising money they earn comes from billionaires. In a political context, money is never given without a reason. When you or I donate money, it’s because we want to see 1 or more candidates to win. When a billionaire donates money, they want political influence to direct party and government policy to benefit them and their capital. If they can’t get that influence with one party, they will happily change party allegiance because the duopoly does not provide any wiggle room for genuinely progressive policies due to financial incentive, unless there is a true working class crisis (i.e. the fallout from the great depression). It’s happened constantly throughout US history.

    I will always point out that Marx would have never been able to do his crucial work in economics and political theory had Engels not funded and co-authored the endeavors. Everyone in the ruling class has the capacity to become a class traitor and fight for workers, but not the incentive. Mark Reuben genuinely seems like a decent person to me, and I respect him stepping in with Cost Plus. However, he has an economic incentive to get influence through the democratic party to improve profits for his other ventures at the cost and exploitation of the workers at those companies. It’s nowhere near as blatant as Musk, but it’s absolutely still present. If the Democratic party puts forward a policy that is in direct opposition to his profits, that support will dry up immediately.

    Not only that, but remember how the democratic party forcibly pushed out Bernie in 2016, because he was offering genuine improvements to the working class? That pressure came from both the billionaire donors and the billionaire party establishment. The same happened in NY to AOC, to a lesser extent and primarily over her anti-genocide and anti-colonial stance towards Israel. The billionaires want to profit off of illegally seized land, and they do not care how many people they need to kill to get that profit. In my eyes, this might be a reason why Harris didn’t even try to disingenuously sell an anti-genocide stance.






  • Are you expecting someone to provide you with all the answers?

    Organize literally anything; a labor union, tenant union, alternatives to capital, a community garden, etc. Getting involved means doing whatever you have the capacity to do. Sometimes organizing is long and challenging, sometimes it’s short and sweet. The thing is, there’s different recommendations for different types of organizing. A post like this really can’t get any more specific, because organizing is actually that broad of a topic.

    Arm yourself to defend yourself and others from random acts of political violence. Use the arms to defend drag time story hour. Use the arms to protect the people you care about. Use the arms to watch cops. Get a gun, learn how to use it, and then only use it in emergency self defense. Having a substantial presence of guns at a protest against capital is already self defense, because cops know they can’t push the crowd too much. That’s why you shouldn’t wait for tanks to be rolling through before you arm yourself.

    Mutual aid is part of organizing, and will become incredibly important over the next few years. If you want more insight then I recommend reading Kropotkin’s book on the matter.

    If you’re looking for someone to follow, I recommend following yourself and your ideals. It’s very obvious that the point of the post is to take action, not to follow OP.


  • I’m able to sleep almost immediately basically wherever I lay my head, so I’ve never really had any problems sleeping. However the most important change I’ve ever made for sleep quality was how I consume caffeine. Yes, I believe you can fall asleep while totally wired, I can too. The problem is that the sleep quality will be terrible and definitely can contribute to insomnia.

    So first, the FDA nailed the appropriate amount of caffeine in a day. Don’t consume more than 400mg in a day, and keep track. Too much caffeine with overstimulate you and will contribute to any feelings of anxiety while awake or trying to sleep.

    Second, stop consuming caffeine several hours before bed. The biological half life of caffeine is between 6-8 hours, so if you have 400mg at 2pm, you’ll still have roughly 200mg in your system at 10pm. That’s where your sleep quality will get impacted. My personal rule is that I should space out my consumption over the morning, and stop having any caffeine at all in the afternoon.



  • The only mass production ethical chocolate I trust is Tony’s Chocolonely, because they’re the most transparent about how they source their chocolate, acknowledge that they can never be perfect in their goal, and actively try to improve conditions for workers that grow cocoa. I will also buy local artisan chocolate while traveling.

    Basically, I’ve decided that chocolate isn’t worth the neo-imperialism and slave labor.