In an ideal hexbear world, we would be as serious and active about banning anti-vegans as we have recently (and thankfully) decided to be about banning misogynists.

I guess I’m just worried we’re falling in the same trap of painting all Israelis as bloodthirsty monsters - instead of acknowledging that some of them are just normal people that have been duped by the Zionist state into committing atrocities against their fellow humans and that black and white thinking only serves to uphold this cycle of hatred. (literal example from this very thread)

Duped into committing atrocities. Duped into committing atrocities. Those poor saps were just mislead into committing crimes against humanity, literal torture upon children. Your logic here is that we shouldn’t paint them all as bloodthirsty monsters since some of them were “duped” into being… well, bloodthirsty monsters. Regardless of how they arrived there, that still makes them bloodthirsty monsters!

You are what you do. It doesn’t matter whether or not someone was “duped” into believing the obvious lie that a Palestinian’s life isn’t worth as much as theirs, or that they were “duped” into committing (or even just supporting) atrocities. They still did those things. Those who were the victims of those atrocities are no less victims, no better off just because one or two of the perpetrators were “duped” into mercilessly murdering entire families. At this point, anyone who identifies as an Israeli but who is not actively fighting against Zionism and all who support it then they well deserve the title of bloodthirsty monster. They deserve far worse than just a label, honestly.

So no, we’re not “falling in to the same trap” of painting with too broad of a brush, we’re recognizing actual material reality. We’re recognizing the material consequences of Zionism and correctly concluding what must happen to Zionism itself. This isn’t black and white thinking, to the contrary it is recognizing the very real nuances that differentiate the colonizers from the colonized, and it is doing so without falling into the idealist trap that you have that leads down the same road as “well those Nazi concentration camp guards, hey some of them were just normal people trying to make the best of a bad situation.” As usual, the problem is not that we as communists are failing to see that these monsters are human too, it’s the liberal who fails to see that “normal humans” can and do become monsters. And whether or not one did so with giddy abandon or because their mind was already rotted to the extent that they believed (were “duped” by) propaganda telling them that they were righteous for trying to wipe out all Palestinian children, it doesn’t fucking matter. Functionally, they are monsters.

Outside of dedicated trans spaces made specifically for that sole purpose, Hexbear stands out as the most welcoming, inclusive, and protective community for trans people I’ve ever encountered online.

The only thing i’m guilty of is being rude to a dipshit

What you’re guilty of is having a political view contrary to that of the US State Dept.

You can be rude and sexualize people to your heart’s content, all day long and in every comment you make and you’ll get scores of upvotes and redditism accolades. You just have to direct it towards the -approved bad guys.

They’ll blame it on Mexico this time around.

You’re taking it too literally. It’s metaphorical. No one thinks China has AI robots doing laundry any more than they think AI is physical robots in the US using a paintbrush and physical easel to do art. Well… I’m sure some burgerbrains exist who think that, but you know what I mean. (Edit: turns out I don’t know how to spell easel).

Did Japan’s real estate bubble crash heavily during those times?

The US reined in their vassals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord

A few months ago ublock origin wasn’t working for a subset of users (that youtube was using to test features that would break ublock origin for everyone). Ublock had to do make changes to counter youtubes efforts. They did so successfully and became an even more robust ad blocker than before. If they had not, we all would have been seeing ads break through months back.

My point is that it is an arms race and so far ublock (and other ad blockers, though ublock consistently proves the best) has been able to keep ahead for the most part. I don’t know for sure if this is the moment when youtube starts to pull in front, obviously I hope not. But even if they do, that doesn’t mean ublock will be permanently broken. Even if ads got through for you today, it doesn’t necessarily mean they will tomorrow. We’ll see.

Yes, it’s really best just not to bring your phone at all but if you must, like for emergencies, or you need it beforehand and then for some reason have no place to stash it then a Faraday container can come in very handy. It’s also not 100% fool proof but if used right will prevent any signals from outside reaching your phone or any signals from your phone going out (as mentioned, you can not trust airplane mode.) There are DIY guides online for making your own.

Yes. It also has been shown that it uses Microsoft trackers making it a total lie that it’s respectful of its user’s privacy. On top of that they openly stated that they would be censoring (by deprioritization, so they say) any sites associated with “Russian disinformation.” And we all know what that means. And really it just plain sucks in terms of how well it works to serve you with results you’re looking for.

Duckduckgo is a bad search engine. There are plenty of other good options without having to return to google. Examples: Brave seems to be pretty good and uses their own engine while Searx (searxng) is awesome ime and aggregates from a bunch of other engines.

Well, ultras go back much further than the CIA does. Lenin famously wrote about the phenomenon as an infantile disorder back in 1920. But that’s not to say that the disorder hasn’t been often used by the likes of the CIA and anticommunists in general as one of the many tools in their bag to smear and discredit actual Marxist-Leninists. There are plenty of genuine ultras out there but finding the line that differentiates them from psyops is usually a fool’s errand. Honestly, I think there are some ultras whose hearts really are in the right place, they just crucially failed at the materialist part of dialectical materialism. The jackass in OP is not one of these.

I had already typed up a response to this when I noticed you went back and edited your previous comment to add shit about me “playing games.” So nevermind, not worth it. I’m tired of this obnoxious thing where you make these personal accusations like how I’m “playing games” and about “my posts” (while repeatedly editing your own!) when you don’t even know what you’re talking about wrt to me or the topic. It’s not worth trying to engage with someone who pulls that comment editing shit and attacks me personally for things they made up whole cloth. I’m not playing games here and anyone reading this who wants to learn more about the reality of Lyme and the very real long term problems it causes in many patients diagnosed with it, as well as the hype around unsupported explanations for them that are almost certainly garbage (which I never denied) are welcome to do so without me having to defend myself against your weird toxicity.

No, because that denies that it is linked to the initial Lyme infection somehow and may well have a completely different cause than the more general chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia. Again, that would be like telling people just to call long covid “chronic fatigue.”

telling people this is due to mystical nonexistent spirochetes in their blood that can only be treated with a long course of IV antibiotics.

Right, that’s exactly what I said. Just like I said Long Covid is actually the result of vaccines. Seriously, you’re telling me “my posts” (btw, what are you even referring to? Do we have a history or something?) are this thing you’ve made up in your head about me because I am pointing out the FACT that a condition exists despite many misled denialists. Chronic Lyme is as real as long covid is even though we don’t know what the underlying cause of it is.

The medical reality is the symptoms people experience

No shit! Which is because Lyme Disease is real! Fucking hell, what is your problem?

Um… stop accusing me of weird bullshit while denying reality and calling a medical reality and the experience of countless disabled people pseudoscience?

Anyway, ashiniadash, here you can see why that topic is high on the list of controversial wikipedia pages. Libs gonna lib ig.

Neither is long Covid. Just a big hoax by lazy whingers. 🙄

Case in point.^

Most people who have it know why, and it has to do with the large swathes of chuds (and libs too) who insist it isn’t real, just in your head, an excuse to be lazy, etc. etc. Almost any chronic illness that is hard to diagnose and can’t be pinned with complete unambiguous medical certainty to a single clear cause gets that sort of treatment. There are still so many people who don’t even believe Lyme disease is real.

It honestly depends on how you want to define it and under what framework. In Marxism the definition of class depends on the relationship to the means of production. Obviously using the Marxist framework is the most accurate to describe what’s actually happening and as Marxists we should use those definitions and try to inform people as best we can that proletariat and bourgeoisie are the two main and oppositional classes (primary contradiction) in capitalism. But like Mardoniush pointed out there still are other classes since the relationship to the means of production can be more complicated than just straight ownership vs labor despite the antagonism of those two classes being the primary contradiction.

Still, none of those are a “middle class” and you are completely right about how one of the big reasons that term gets heavily used is so the parts of the proletariat that are not impoverished can feel elevated above those who are. But that right there means there is a material difference between certain subsets of the proletariat that gets called “middle class” and “lower class.” There is a large subset that historically in the US was generally well off (comparatively) to the subset that lives in poverty conditions, and it is true that the former subset is shrinking while the latter subset is growing (along with the intensity of the contradictions). It is not wrong to point this out, and “middle class” is definitely not meaningless when used this way, it’s just that using the word “class” to describe this phenomenon is deliberately muddying the waters and it’s not using the term according to a Marxist framework. Don’t mistake that to mean that what the OP article is saying is untrue or isn’t happening, because it most definitely is happening! It’s just bad semantics.