Glad to hear it! If while reading you have any questions, I’m sure people at !genzhou@lemmygrad.ml or !asklemmygrad@lemmygrad.ml would be willing to help. I assume Hexbear has similar communities as well, but idk about those ones.

The full pdf is on Anna’s Archive for those who can’t buy it, I couldn’t find an epub for free though. I’m probably gonna buy the epub from Monthly Review and share it myself soon though, since it definitely seems like a worthwhile read.

i bought one of the classic tamagotchis like a year ago and these things kinda suck ass tbh. there’s only six things you can get and the “play” mechanic is just flipping a coin 5 times in a row, and if you lose the coin flip more than 3 times then fuck you, your tamagotchi’s happiness doesn’t go up. the 20th anniversary digimon was way better, there’s tons of creatures to unlock and you can raise 2 at once, plus you can battle them with others. plus the tamagotchis don’t have SRAM like the digimons do so if your battery is dying then say goodbye to your vpet. the eggshell design is a lot cuter though and also friendly to lefties so they have that going for them at least.

i wanted to get a v3 tamagotchi because i remember those ones being pretty neat when i was younger but i couldn’t find one for less than like $80 so i never got to find out if they are actually good

edit: oh shit wait a minute apparently they did a 20th anniversary tamagotchi connection? i gotta check this out

I would also be interested in more sources on this topic. The wikipedia page on Vavilov links this source on the Soviet view of genetics, but it has a very clear anti-communist bias and some obvious nonsense. I only realized this most of the way through typing my comment but apparently the author joined the USSR branch of Amnesty International in 1981, and was the chairman from 1985-1988. My favorites are claiming 10 million peasants were arrested and exiled or shot during collectivization (source: Winston Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 4) and this line:

Thus, Party leaders began doing what scientists always tried to avoid: turning scientific sessions into forums for resolving political tasks.

Anyways, the article is interesting even if I'm skeptical of it's accuracy. It seems as though there was a lot of debate around genetics in the Soviet Union at the time, which makes sense to me from a layperson's perspective at least. From what I understand, modern genetics was a relatively new science at the time, and considering the role of eugenics and Social Darwinism in Nazi ideology, I think it's reasonable that some Soviet scientists were skeptical. If I am incorrect here, I'd appreciate it if someone could correct me.

Vavilov himself certainly spoke highly of Soviet science. Here's a telegram he sent to The New York Times:

The lie about Soviet science and Soviet scientists conscientiously working for the cause of socialism has become the specialty of certain organs of the foreign press…. On many occasions I gave reports in the press and orally in many cities of the USA about Soviet science, about the exceptional possibilities granted to Soviet scientists, about the role of science in our country, and about the tremendous progress of science during the Soviet period.

From a small institution during the Tsarist period—the Bureau of Applied Botany—the Institute of Plant Industry that I am in charge of has grown during the Soviet period into a most prestigious scientific institution having few equals in scale in the world. Its staff of about 65 people during the Tsarist period at the present time has reached 1,700 when all its branches in the outlying areas are included. The institute’s budget has gone from 50 thousand rubles to 14 million rubles...

We argue, discuss existing theories in genetics and in selection [plant breeding—V.S.] methods, we summon each other to Socialist competition, and I have to tell you frankly, this is a great stimulus, which significantly increases the level of work…

I more than many other people am obliged to the government of the USSR for its great attention to the institute I head and to my personal work.

As a faithful son of the Soviet country, I consider it my duty and good fortune to work for the good of my native land and give my entire being to science in the USSR.

Sweeping aside as vile slander of dubious origin your report about me and the fabrications that in the USSR intellectual freedom allegedly does not exist, I insist on the publication of the present telegram in your newspaper.

Academician N. I. Vavilov (1936).

As for his imprisonment, it seems like he was arrested for foreign espionage and sabotage? It's pretty difficult for me to find a more concrete answer than this, as this story seems to be an anti-communist favorite and there are tons of articles propagandizing about Stalinism around it. Again if anyone has better sources, or if @GayTuckerCarlson@hexbear.net wants to link a source, I'd appreciate it. I got sucked into this and spent more time on it than I wanted to already.

reminds me of this classic

that’s pretty typical i think, i know the oot and mm pc ports are unaffiliated with the zelda reverse engineering team, and if i remember right the same was true for mario 64 but i’m not sure

I’ve been meaning to read this essay for a bit! I read a chunk of China Has Billionaires yesterday on my break. I like how clear Roderic Day’s writing is, so I’ll definitely have to make time for that next.

Link for the lazy

whose only flaw right now is supporting one wrong nation

you can't seriously believe this is true right

I am not in contact with disabled or immunocompromised people

Do you think immunocompromised people walk around with a big sign on their neck that reads “IMMUNOCOMPROMISED” or something? When you go out to the grocery store or to do whatever occasional chore, how do you know that none of the people around you are disabled or immunocompromised?

I stay inside when I’m sick, which is rarely ever.

The majority of COVID cases are asymptomatic.

Traveling across Cuba in 1959, immediately after the overthrow of the U.S.-supported right-wing Batista dictatorship, Mike Faulkner witnessed "a spectacle of almost unrelieved poverty." The rural pop­ulation lived in makeshift shacks without minimal sanitation. Malnourished children went barefoot in the dirt and suffered "the familiar plague of parasites common to the Third World." There were almost no doctors or schools. And through much of the year, families that depended solely on the seasonal sugar harvest lived close to starvation (Monthly Review, 3/96). How does that victimization­ in prerevolutionary Cuba measure against the much more widely publicized repression that came after the revolution, when Castro's communists executed a few hundred of the previous regime's police assassins and torturers, drove assorted upper-class moneybags into exile, and intimidated various other opponents of radical reforms into silence?

Today, Cuba is a different place. For all its mistakes and abuses, the Cuban Revolution brought sanitation, schools, health clinics, jobs, housing, and human services to a level not found throughout most of the Third World and in many parts of the First World. Infant mortality in Cuba has dropped from 60 per 1000 in 1960 to 9.7 per 1000 by 1991, while life expectancy rose from 55 to 75 in that same period. Smallpox, malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid, polio, and numer­ous other diseases have been wiped out by improved living standards and public health programs. Cuba has enjoyed a level of literacy higher than in the United States and a life expectancy that compares well with advanced industrial nations (NACLA Report on the Americas, September/October 1995). Other peoples besides the Cubans have benefited. As Fidel Castro tells it:

The [Cuban] revolution has sent teachers, doctors, and workers to dozens of Third World countries without charging a penny. It shed its own blood fighting colonialism, fighting apartheid, and fascism. . . . At one point we had 25,000 Third World students studying on schol­arships. We still have many scholarship students from Africa and other countries. In addition, our country has treated more children [13,000] who were victims of the Chernobyl tragedy than all other countries put together. They don't talk about that, and that's why they blockade us-the country with the most teachers per capita of all countries in the world, including developed countries. The country with the most doctors per capita of all countries [one for every 214 inhabitants]. The country with the most art instructors per capita of all countries in the world. The country with the most sports instructors in the world. That gives you an idea of the effort involved. A country where life expectancy is more than 75 years. Why are they blockading Cuba? Because no other country has done more for its people. It's the hatred of the ideas that Cuba repre­sents. (Monthly Review, 6/95).

Cuba's sin in the eyes of global capitalists is not its "lack of democ­racy." Most Third World capitalist regimes are far more repressive. Cuba's real sin is that it has tried to develop an alternative to the global capitalist system, an egalitarian socio-economic order that placed corporate property under public ownership, abolished capi­talist investors as a class entity, and put people before profits and national independence before IMF servitude.

Excerpt from Blackshirts and Reds, since Parenti and Castro himself put it better than I could.

canadian health care workers to disabled people