[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

We can't show you any evidence, but here is why you shouldn't stop investing in us and by the way all these graphic cards are totally necessary after all and whoever claims they don't need them obviously stole from us (still can't show any evidence).

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

You're out of touch with reality with this idealist conception of wages as a result of knowledge. The value of labor is the cost of its reproduction. Capitalists pay workers exactly as much as they need to for them to turn up again the next morning. Knowledge does not directly factor into their calculation. Don't expect to be rewarded for the work you put into your education - the system isn't fair and doesn't work like that.

Instead, wages are the result of a collective power struggle between labor and capital. High wages occur either when labor is strong and capital weak or when you betray other workers and aid capital in their exploitation.

Now expert knowledge is one of many things that might help by increasing bargaining power in the struggle with capital, but it's neither necessary nor sufficient. For example an automotive engineer might have just as much knowledge as a chemical engineer, but where I live, chemistry earns you about 50% more, because the chemistry union is stronger.

So union power, strikes and social movements are a big factor. Others are location, the average rent, international competition, the reserve army of labor. At any specific time, the boom and bust cycle of periodic crisis strongly effects wages.

The organic composition of capital plays an indirect role: If the degree of automation suddenly rises, this will lower workers bargaining power short term and lower profits long term which increases pressure on wages.

So if you want a career with stable, high wages but don't want to help exploit others, look for sectors with a long-term chance of a strong bargaining position for labor.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 9 points 2 months ago

So much self-reflection, that's impressive! I'm not a parent, but I feel like I get a lot of this, because it's articulated so well. Also sounds, like you really intend to do your best!

The goal when communicating is to remove "you" from the message. As a small example, "You need to clean up your plate and fork!" could become "I see a plate and fork still in the table!"

That's like classic non-violent communication by Marshall Rosenberg. There is more to it and it helps with adults too, not just with children.

So yeah. Its a struggle. It's exhausting. Being exhausted makes everything harder.

Maybe forgiveness might help with the exhaustion. For the mistakes of your own caretakers, for yourself, for your children. Most importantly for yourself. You can more easily try your best every day, if blame for not getting it perfect all the time doesn't become so strong, that it gets in the way. Not sure, if this applies at all to your case.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

This article is just the tip of an iceberg of very publicly available facts. US people have been indoctrinated to believe in nuclear power because of nuclear weapons and centralized energy corporations high on government funds. Elsewhere it's long between accepted as a scientific and economic fact that it can never be the solution. It's never been economically viable. It's ecologically destructive. It's technologically outdated. Other countries only need it to support or deter the imperial hegemon. US leftists need to finally rise above almost a century of propaganda and face the truth: in a peaceful communist world, no one would ever even think about building something as ineffective (in cost per kWh) and dangerous as a nuclear power plant.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 10 points 3 months ago

Yes and this also means it can happen given an economic crisis or crisis of legitimacy, proper organizing and the right balance of power between classes.

it isn't a spontaneous thing that occurs once a certain threshold of suffering is reached.

Absolutely! It's weird how often this simplistic "threshold of suffering" view of revolutions is just assumed without any theoretical basis. It explicitly goes against Lenin who rejected spontaneity and insisted on organizing.

A historic materialist analysis of revolutions does not rely on anything as subjective as suffering. It is concerned with objective contradictions inherent in the mode of production, class analysis, class consciousness and organizing. And no, suffering alone does not suffice to create class consciousness. Without organizing it can lead to despair, passivity or fragmented resistance.

In a successful revolution, seeds of class consciousness lead to political action which leads to more class consciousness which leads to more action and so on.

And those seeds are planted right now in the boring everyday struggle. In every strike, protest and action. And organizing them builds structures and alliances from which a revolutionary potential might someday emerge.

Capitalism is not sustainable and keeps producing crisis and moments that can be captured. History is full of those moments when the ruling class seemed invincible - right up until they were overthrown.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 6 points 3 months ago

It sounds similar to [citation needed], which is often used on Wikipedia.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Because they are old. Ghosts are just the anthropomorphic manifestation of people's fear of growing old. Religious framings are just an add on.

Trauma and grief can't run their course if your mind is so senile and your short term memory so feeble, that you're basically forced to live in the past. Forever repeating old arguments, reliving past trauma and never overcoming old fears. With your mind so set in it's tracks, that you can't even imagine leaving the place where you lived all your live — your "old haunt" so to speak. How could you live in the present, if you can't even recognize your own children half of the time? But the long term memory often still works. Ghosts are real and if you're lucky enough to live that long you might well become one. Of course aging isn't always like this, it can be graceful and dignified but when it isn't, that's what people are afraid of.

People are scared, when they see older relatives acting stranger every day, especially in times before any way to diagnose Alzheimer's and other forms of neural degradation. They might seem like they are not quite here anymore, like the person they were had long since died and yet, something lingers. Ghost stories are a socially acceptable way to express those fears.

Just observe the effects ghosts have on their victims: first, they are reminded of their own mortality. Then their hair suddenly turns white or gray or falls out, they lose sleep, wake up tired or grow old over night. They might lose their mind or die themselves. That's all just normal aging.

Here is a handy key to select monsters and their meaning:

  • ghosts 👻: aging, death, old people
  • vampires(folk believe): plague, infection
  • vampires(literature): landlords, feudalism
  • zombies(modern): alienation, capitalism
  • witches: women who stand up to patriarchy
  • Frankenstein's monster: the proletariat gaining class consciousness (no seriously)

I recommend the podcast "the horror vanguard" for details.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

And just to come full circle:

Baalbek, named after Baal, is an ancient city in the Beqaa plane in Lebanon. It was known as the bread basket of the Roman empire. The Romans build the largest temples outside of Rome there and allowed worship of Baal to continue in the large entrance building in front of the Jupiter temple. The temples stood in good condition for centuries and are now under threat by IDF bombing, which has already come as close as 500 meters, while every building in the city has been declared a target and it's people ordered to evacuate.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 9 points 5 months ago

Wow, I hadn't realized it's gotten so bad. I use duckduckgo and just tried it. I also got some of these. A little fewer though.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 8 points 5 months ago

I got fascist undertones from My Hero Academia and stopped reading long ago. Was I wrong?

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 6 points 5 months ago

I get it, but code isn't usually included in publications. Unless it was put on GitHub.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 10 points 7 months ago

Totally agree on dialectical materialism, though there is no such thing as a universally accepted scientific method. I say this as a scientist working in a technical field: science in capitalism is ripe with contradiction.

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woodenghost

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