I'm confident that even two decades after leaving college I can write an essay on any literary, historical, or philosophical text in a single draft without more than half an hour of reading and turn it in for an above-average grade.
Very good, how long is the turnaround time for the essay production after that 0.5 hours to read it?
Twenty minutes per twelve-point-double-spaced page, give or take, I'm not a fast typist.
for what kind of assignment, are we talking undergrad or grad school papers?
Undergrad, non-research papers. Textual analysis, that sort of thing.
thanks, I don't know why it was worth clarifying that, but it was a kind of impulse for me to do so anyway, lol - sorry about that, but also thank you 🫶
Guessing the price of a laptop based on date of purchase, stickers and physical aspect
what is the relationship(s) between all of them
Shiny holographic sticker = ++$$
Arent stickers sort of indicia its lower quality or appealing to not-computer people?
You'd think so, but I just bought a new CPU and it came with a sticker, so you can put the sticker on your custom PC. 🤓
I can usually know somewhat closely the Intel processor generation based on the look of it (7th through 10th/11th straight up tell you), and you do know whether it’s an i5 7… etc with teh sticker. Additional stickers may indicate dedicated graphics. Seeing the display and form factor gives other indications to what segment the product belongs and what price class it targets. Finally the date of purchase tells me roughly if it is new, or a model that is getting discontinued soon and that should be discounted.
I feel like stickers are a big turn off for me but Im not sure why. If I had them i would want to peel them off like an old scab or something to make it smooth
You’d be surprised at how many people keep them. Not having stickers naturally increases uncertainty, but by chassis, display and date of purchase alone, I can still get a broad estimate of cost
Not that i judge or look down on, its just a cue for me that they might not e super savvy or Im probably not the market segment targeted by it
That people are extreamly easy to control and influence by governments and big tech companies.
Humanity is literally living inside their phones now and their minds are influenced daily by what they are shown, by algorithms.
I would not have children in this future.
My fire eating and fire safety expertise. I have a lot of creds and am happy to share it with others.
That’s awesome! Any chance you would post a video of eating fire? What are the safety guidelines you’re following? Either way thanks for sharing that interesting information.
Not the best photo because it's outdoors, but I love it because of the backdrop. I used to be part of a historic cast at a landmark building until Trump forced me to flee the country, but I have big plans for the future.
Safety and tech is a huge topic that I can't summarize in a post, and that's without even getting into fire eating which is its own monster.
That’s so kick ass!!! So sorry to hear you were forced to flee to leave the country and what it seems a really great place that you worked at as well… I’ve definitely eyeing the same plan as you but just don’t know what country I’d go to. Any suggestions? Also, how long have you been doing the fire eating for? I’m sure you take plenary of caution and lots of training that’s got to be fun to pull out at like a party 🎉 😄
About 10 years. I do lots of other sideshow stuff too so I have a lot of party tricks.
I went to Canada and have been absolutely loving it here. Canada does have its issues, but has overall been a net positive. The overall quality of life and baseline happiness are both much higher than the US. My partner and I have only felt welcomed since we arrived.
While not 100% certain, I am confident that in the future the working class will successfully bring about global socialism, hopefully even reaching a better, communist future, where production is run to satisfy the needs of society as best as possible rather than for profit.
That I'm a good person. Really didn't believe that for a lot of my life but therapy helped - not just in how I see myself but in how I BE myself too. I'm still really a degenerate at heart but one with self control and the ability to communicate what I'm feeling. What I want, and to clarify how other people feel.
I'm confident in my ability to communicate, to handle awkward social situations, in my hobbies.
I am confident about my ability to get back into shape. I've let myself go over the part couple years. It happens. But I'm back on track.
Would you expand on how the scientific method is fundamentally flawed and any alternatives or improvements that you have in mind?
what is the difference between "people's democracy" and liberal democracy? probably for most people in the West, democracy only means liberal democracy...
Liberal democracy normally focuses on multiparty competition, and is heavily embedded in capitalism. Socialist democracy is usually more unitary, where policy and candidates are decided within a cooperative, unified framework.
I am familiar with socialist democracy, I just couldn't tell if that's what was meant by "people's democracy"
That's a common term for it, especially in China, where they call it "Whole-Process People's Democracy."
ah, that explains the other comment that mentions the ideal solution is instead of having a choice between two candidates is to not have a choice between candidates but instead only a single candidate that you vote for or not ... this reminds me of Maoist democratic centralism, and I guess that's exactly what is getting expressed?
I know I never responded to your prior comment to me (I really appreciated that you spent the time challenging me in such a productive and helpful manner, thank you so much), but I suspect this is going to the same place - in the end, I need somewhere to start to better understand Marxist-Leninism as you see it ...
Maybe it would be helpful for me to list the influences on me and what I have read:
Being raised as a centrist liberal in the U.S. set me up to have certain biases and misinformation, I was basically taught communism was just like fascism - both being equated with mass murder. Very horseshoe theory.
I guess as an adult I went through a radicalization process that started by reading history & politics, and I learned liberalism is basically capitalism and I realized all the values that I felt were "liberal" were in conflict with capital ... I landed with sympathy for libertarian forms of socialism - Kropotkin, Proudhon, Bookchin, etc. but this was more as an articulation of the ideal state of society, which I also learned overlaps with Marx's concept of communism - the anarchists and communists are aligned on what the ideal state of things are (or at least theoretically, sometimes I talk to self-described Marxists who believe communism will be an authoritarian utopia where there is a unified state, so in practice I find it hard to know what a "communist" believes without some questioning).
Reading China Miéville helped me understand that at least at the time of the Russian Revolution, Lenin & the Bolsheviks represented a populist, working-class position to the left of the more status quo defending stageist mensheviks ... Obviously I find Lenin's attack of left communism disturbing, but I also suspend judgement to some extent since discussions on how pragmatic and what is genuinely pragmatic in politics to be something difficult for me to ascertain even now (you see this every election cycle with people begging you to vote for the lesser evil, and the Democrats insisting on being pragmatic by capitulating to positions further and further right; it's interesting at least that political pragmatism always seems to be justifying suspension of principles and values in favor of authoritarian or right-wing measures, but I also see sometimes it really works that way. To come full circle, democratic centralism was Lenin's way to generate unity so as to maintain power.
The arguments I see generally go that capitalist / imperialist nations are trying to undermine communism (obviously true), so the socialist states must take extreme authoritarian measures to ensure the survival of the state and the revolution (plausible), and communism won't come around until the imperialist states have been defeated and conditions permit the withering of the state. This feels a bit too much like a soteriological framework, communism becomes like waiting on Christ's return - I would prefer my politics to be invested in direct outcomes more than having faith for a future utopia that will likely never come. I don't have well formed ideas on solutions to these contradictions, but it seems obvious centralizing power and authority comes with huge risks of corruption and abuse of that power, and works against the goals and the populist, democratic spirit of Marxism and communism. As Terry Eagleton put it "State socialism for Marx would have been a contradiction in terms. Socialism was democratic or it was nothing ... Marx disagreed with parliamentary democracy because it wasn't democratic enough. It did not extend in a popular grassroots decentralized way into society as a whole and it certainly didn't extend into the economy. He was not a utopian thinker ... and he spent much time criticizing that whole vein of political thought."
All this to say, I hope by exposing my influences you could direct me to a reasonable place to continue my education, if you feel inclined.
Regarding socialist democracy, there are different kinds in different places, from approval voting (similar to what you describe here) to direct competition, but the jist of it is that competition in politics sows division, while cooperation tends to be far more successful. This doesn't inherently have anything to do with democratic centralism, nor does it have to do with Maoism, inherently.
Overall, most of what you've read is good! I support the majority of that list, but outside of Peter Singer, I take most issue with Orwell and Chomsky. Orwell hated the working class, even some of his comrades in Catalonia joked that he belonged on the other side. He was a British fed, and kept lists of suspected Jews, homosexuals, and communists, that he used to narc on people. Chomsky on the other hand is an insufferable sycophant for the US Empire, and fundamentally hasn't made an actual attempt to understand Marxism. Chomsky has some decent contributions like Manufacturing Consent and his work with Ilan Pappé on Palestine, but is a massive anticommunist.
I recommend, if you have the time, reading On Orwell, A Critical Read of Animal Farm, Isaac Asimov on 1984, and On Chomsky if you want to better understand what I'm talking about, here. These are more for providing a counter to them and their work than they are for understanding Marxism-Leninism and actually existing socialism (AES), though, so feel free to skip these.
More importantly, and what you've very helpfully identified (I mean this with no ill-will or superiority, this is a complicated subject and you've read more than most), is the core of your misunderstanding of Marxism (not Marxism-Leninism yet, that's something to discuss later), and how it answers the same questions anarchism tries to in different ways:
Anarchism is primarily about communalization of production. Marxism is primary about collectivization of production.
When I say "communalization," I mean anarchists propose horizontalist, decentralized cells, similar to early humanity's cooperative production but with more interconnection and modern tech. When I say collectivization, I mean the unification of all of humanity into one system, where production and distribution is planned collectively to satisfy the needs of everyone as best as possible.
For anarchists, collectivized society still seems to retain the state, as some anarchists conflate administration with the state as it represents a hierarchy. For Marxists, this focus on communalism creates inter-cell class distinctions, as each cell only truly owns their own means of production, giving rise to class distinctions and thus states in the future.
For Marxists, socialism must have a state, a state can only wither with respect to how far along it has come in collectivizing production and therefore eliminating class. All states are authoritarian, but we cannot get rid of the state without erasing the foundations of the state: class society, and to do so we must collectivize production and distribution globally. Socialist states, where the working class wields its authority against capitalists and fascists, are the means by which this collectivization can actually happen, and are fully in-line with Marx's beliefs.
Democratic Centralism, ie diversity in thought, unity in action, is really the expression of democracy in unified, proletarian form. It goes against individualism and towards collectivism, the biggest strength of the working class is its ability to organize.
Moving onto Lenin, I think you misunderstand the issues Marxists have with "ultraleftism." It isn't the leftism we take issue with, it's the idealism, moving into utopianism and trying to achieve higher stages of socialism when the productive forces aren't suited to it. It would be like attempting capitalism before the steam engine, or feudalism before farming was a thing. Can you imagine being a landlord over a hunter-gatherer society? How can that work? It's the same with ultraleftists, who in Lenin's time rejected working with the unions, rejected the revolutionary role of the peasantry (only seeing the proletariat as genuinely revolutionary), etc.
All of that is leading to this: I highly recommend giving my intro Marxist-Leninist reading guide a look, especially section 0a. 0a describes why we need a collectivized economy, why Marxism-Leninism in particular is crucial, and finishes with my favorite works on dispelling Red Scare mythology and contextualizing AES, particularly the USSR (especially with dispelling horsehoe theory as the nonsense it is). The whole guide is meant to be as highly focused on providing utility to the reader as possible, but that initial section is intended to help anyone come to at least come to an understanding of Marxism and Marxism-Leninism on Marxist terms.
Hope that answers your question!
Genuine question re Democratic Centralism, what is the alternative? In any kind of org (surely even non-political), you vote on something and then... don't follow the result of the vote?
Sometimes yes, or you have to follow it but can slander the decision outside of the party, ie publicly undermine it. Some democratic organs have resolutions on party stance, but don't make them binding, etc. The strict adherance to party discipline and unity in action is what separates democratic centralism from standard binding forms of democracy, and is more informed by historic experience of what has worked in the past most effectively.
Do you mean what is the alternative to democratic centralism as a method of democracy, or do you mean how, under democratic centralism, does decision making work when the vote doesn't back the single candidate / option?
EDIT: you might be interested in some of the decision making systems used in anarchist and left libertarian contexts, e.g. occupy movement hand signals and Loomio which came out of the Occupy movement. The Zapatistas movement also has some decision making process that is worth looking into - the way delegates from the movement would return to rural areas to discuss in town halls. Bookchin's idea of libertarian munincipalism and using limited-sized town halls as a method for communal decision making through discussion and establishing consensus also seems related.
There is an idea that with voluntary, cooperative decision-making, discussion and consensus precedes a vote, so that by the time the vote happens it is merely a formal confirmation of the consensus that was previously formed through discussion. If it gets to a vote and fails, it's an indication that the cooperative consensus-forming process that should precede the vote did not happen, or something crucial has changed since consensus was informally established.
Democratic Centralism doesn't put forth a single option and hopes everyone agrees on it, it requires that the results of voting are followed through even if you individually disagree with the majority. I think reading this article may help you better understand it, but here's an excerpt:
In party meetings, a motion (new policy or amendment, goal, plan or any other kind of political question) is proposed. After a period of debate, a vote is taken. If the decision passes, all party members are expected to follow that decision, and not continue propagandizing or otherwise working against it, even if they disagree with it. In the development of socialism in the Soviet Union and China, democratic centralism was largely taken up in response to instability following their respective revolutions which required faster mechanisms of decision-making.
The decision can always be recalled if there is grounds for it, but until it is cancelled, all members of the party are expected to uphold it as if they agreed with it.
Consensus is generally sought over pure results, and there is often a lengthy period of debates before a decision is put to the vote. The debate period is used to refine the proposal that will be voted on until all (or most) members agree to it.
What is the alternative, as Cowbee answered.
sorry, this doesn't clarify anything - I don't know what you mean.
It's ok, I was asking Cowbee.
But thanks for the links and stuff.
The difference is how leaders are voted in and by extension, how they rule.
People's democracies and liberal democracies basically have two main different ways of doing that.
For a liberal democracy you have:
The problem for these "democracies" is systemic campaign fraud that puts oligarchs in power and, in practice, for all-countries-but-one this means foreign oligarchs only and this in turn turns into a one-nation-rules-all empire, where all other national leaders are simply vassals to the oligarchs of the dominant nation.
The most blatant example of this are the concept of interim presidents, but only for non-compliant nations to the liberal democratic dominant nation of course.
I mean, do you really think you would accept an interim president of a national from your country that fled to the country choosing the interim president, let's say a US socialist that fled to Venezuela or Edward Snowden coming back from Russia?
For a people's democracy you have:
While it should be obvious that a capillary democracy is superior in getting people their voices met,
even a vanguard democracy solves the giant issue of systemic campaign fraud benefiting the oligarchs.
"Vanguard" and "Capillary" are not two different systems, no? The Soviet Union had soviets, a capillary system, with chosen candidates. At least I think so, my knowledge isn't that comprehensive.
Yea, these aren't incompatible. Most socialist systems with vanguards have capillary democracy as well.
Couldn't ranked choice voting go a long way to fixing point #1 at the top? Just because this is what we have now, does not mean that first past the post is the only way it can work.
Ranked Choice is usually not as good as approval voting.
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