OP should just find a better audio player or figure out how to enable loudness normalization.

Yeah I figured it was an issue with my software.

76 comments as of now. This will be good

1. Rainy, damp, cloudy, windy weather is peak weather and beats a “nice sunny day” 80% of the time.

2. Ice cream is winter food and not summer food because of how fatty it is. Popsicles are summer food and not so appealing in the winter.

3. All countries should be making a 100% effort towards eliminating all meat (except that produced by subsistence farmers and the like) in their diets for the sake of the climate. Poverty is not an excuse because vegetarian diets use many many times less resources (which is why wealthy countries eat much more meat).

4. Large wealthy countries should provide free vitamin supplements worldwide to reduce diseases.

By that logic you could argue that no one should be able to get compensated for their skills in an open marketplace.

I mean, nationalising all industries and creating minimum/maximum wages is a fairly standard left-wing policy template.

What would a music phone look like? I’m not arguing, I’m genuinely asking what features are ‘camera phones’ lacking that could be installed into a ‘music phone’ (but not in a '‘camera phone’)?

Oh, I didn’t even realize this. Thanks.

A number of proposals have been kicked around for decades. There hasniot been the will to implement.

That’s the point. A dictatorship of the bourgeoise will not implement progressive policies unless you fight hard for them. They will however, in the absence of resistance, implement increasingly reactionary policies in a heartbeat.

The overarching goal of communism is for laborers to own the means of production instead of an owning/capitalist class.

No, the overarching goal of communism is to create a stateless, classless and moneyless society.

Employee owned businesses are the realization of communism within a capitalist society.

No. At best, you could say that coops are a proto-socialist element within a capitalist society. Firstly, I am using the term “socialist” as separate from “communist” here, and secondly, a proto-socialist element is a very different thing from an enclave of socialism within a capitalist world.

The simple problem is that capital is capital. A capital is a self-reproducing social relation that competes with other capitals in a sort of evolution by natural/sexual/artificial selection on the markets. The problem is capital itself, and the solution is to destroy capital. Creating a new type of capital that is less destructive, or one that operates under less destructive modes is fine for countries where development has not reached to the point that they can directly gun towards communism. However, for advanced, and especially late-stage capitalist economies, the task is not to pursue further development of market forces, because market forces have already matured. The task is to eliminate market forces (although this may take time).

Coops may give a more equal distribution of wealth amongst the workers, but the aim of the communists is to abolish wealth, because the very meaning of wealth is that a private individual gets to command the labor of others. That is the fundamental social relation that money embodies and facilitates. The only way to remove the power to exploit other people’s labor is to remove the ability to command labor. But if you cannot command labor, then money becomes worthless and your ownership of the coop doesn’t mean anything.

Are organizations focusing on this and I just don’t know about it?

Yes. A quick google search shows examples such as the international labor organisation

If not, what obstacles are there that would hinder this approach to increasing the share labor collective ownership?

Part of the fundamental problem is just that the bourgeois class is not stupid. They want exploitable workers and profits. If you deprive them of that, prepare to face their wrath as they abandon all pretenses of human rights or fairness or the sanctity of markets.

Oscar Jenkins, 33, was convicted in a Russian-controlled court in occupied eastern Ukraine on Friday of fighting in an armed conflict as a mercenary.

Mr Jenkins, a teacher from Melbourne, was captured last December in the Luhansk region.

Prosecutors said he arrived in Ukraine in February 2024, alleging he was paid between 600,000 and 800,000 rubles (£5,504 and £7,339) a month to take part in military operations against Russian troops.

The article seems to claim that this guy is a mercenary, but someone in the comments is claiming that this guy is not a mercenary because he is a member of the UAF’s foreign legion. I don’t know if there is any additional context here that I am missing.

It sure seems to love selling American military secrets to Russia though.

And so do Americans. Like your argument that the colony controls America is that the colony does bad shit to America. But what part of America doesn’t fuck over America on the regular?

so they could pay less taxes and due to a grievance about parliamentary representation

They did primarily because they wanted to expand their settler colonies further into native lands while the British government had tried restricting settler expansion.

The “free state” was never about preventing oppression of the citizens or launching an insurrection against the state. I don’t know where this bizzare view comes from, since the constitution literally defines treason against the state to be punishable by death.

I’m not sure what your point here is. Whether or not the occupation allows American military bases, or whether or not they can get away with sinking the USS liberty is moot. Because the occupation literally is an American (and partly european) operation. Claiming that the occupied zone controls America is like claiming that south Africa controlled Britain.

why would the US care about gaza

Petrodollars, settler colonialism and imperial control. Israel and the Gulf monarchies are the linchpin of the petrodollar, aka the American government’s ability to run a massive trade deficit over decades with minimal inflation, something no other country can do. This gives the American government unlimited spending power (for its military).

There is also the geopolitical aspect of dividing the middle east, figuratively and literally, as well as having a forward base there to put pressure on Europe, Russia and China.

Finally, a huge number of “israelis” are really just American settlers. From the standpoint of the American bourgeoise, having a settler colony with a racialised underclass is very profitable, as this underclass (the Palestinians) are easily exploited workers. Furthermore, the American firms can test weapons on Gaza and their partnership with companies in the occupation yield them economic benefits.

That depends on which side of “math is an invention” or “math was discovered” you fall into.

Information is physical?

Information only exists in the world in the form of physical media, such as computer circuits, DNA or electrical/neuron pattern in your brain.

Its not euros being salty about the defeat of nazism.

This is precisely the case. I’m sick of the casual racism and love for imperialism that even the most “left-wing” europeans will just say to my face because they think I am one of them. It is so fundamentally baked into every dominant ideology in europe that it feels like there is no possible escape.

This is the consequence of having an entire continent dedicate itself to colonialism and capitalism for 400 years. Both of these things become the total norm. People in europe don’t even understand what empire is, or what empires do, even the extent of their own existing empire.

I mean, look at Macron’s comments. He literally runs an old school colonial empire (that is thankfully collapsing under his reign). And yet he lectures other countries about “imposing capitals”. I don’t think he even realises he is being hypocritical here, because European ideology has redefined European imperialism as not counting as imperialism.

Unsurprising to see the euros be salty about the defeat of nazism/fascism.

“Many compare Moscow and Brussels, I’ve heard that … But Moscow is a capital that has been imposed whereas Brussels is a capital that has been freely chosen through our treaties,” said Macron.

Oh fuck off Macron, you little colonist man who still runs an empire.

Reduce gas imports?

Please reduce gas imports more. Cripple any semblance of industry and power you have left. You will only use industrial power for killing children in Gaza and maintaining policing infrastructure either way. Better to let the gas be used by Chinese and Indian consumers (unironically).

I would have defended against agreeing to specifically target civilians, yes.

This is only something that you have assumed that other people want. Dismantling a settler colonial state is not genocide, on the contrary, it prevents future genocides. And obviously, a settler state can only be dismantled through violent forceful actions, especially against those who seek to uphold it. Any pretenses otherwise are just as delusional as the belief that Nazi Germany could have been destroyed without killing the millions of soldiers of the Wehrmacht who fanatically defended the regime to the very end.

Or in other terms, there are no wars against the leaders, the very concept is nonsensical. Leaders don’t fight wars, soldiers do.

Wouldn’t it have been better to fatwa specific Israeli leaders instead of the entire country that is full of civilians who didn’t cause this?

I hate this excuse liberals keep making, either to whitewash the actions of nations that have lost their minds, or to do cringe “I hate the government not the people” sthicks.

The government doesn’t fall from the heavens. The Israeli leaders, just like the Americans or Nazis did not come out of nowhere and cause mass hypnosis amongst the innocent populations whose only crime was to be too weak to resist hypnosis. These leaders emerged from the population. They were supported by the population before they acquired legislative/executive power (that’s how you aquire the power in the first place). Their commands mean nothing if the population doesn’t go along with it. These leaders are leaders of nations only so long as they represent the wills of their nations, and the will of their nations is to kill, to loot and to worship their capitalist masters.

No man, and I mean none at all rules alone. One comes to realise this truth when one converses directly with the supposed innocents in America, or Germany or Israel. These people by and large know that their governments are involved in genocide (at this point, who isn’t aware?), and if they aren’t actively cheering it on, at the minimum they are going along with it.