Welcome again to everybody. Take a seat make yourself at home, we are out of tea though. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
• Matrix homeserver and space
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Keep your heads held high. Stay the course. Some things you have real control over are your own habits, decisions, and choices on a day to day basis. Be your favorite version of yourself.
As always, communism will win.
🫵 You WILL have hope, comrade.
The Russian oil tanker reaching Cuba was a good hope boost.
Ugh fine 🙄
Autism Acceptance month. Please make sure you are accepted by a person with autism or suffer the consequences.
Am I allowed to accept myself?
That’s even more important
If I disappear for a time, it’s probably me trying to take a break from following things closely. Sometime today after reading the news about satanrael passing a death penalty law for Palestinian prisoners, I had what I could only describe as an emotional breakdown. I was getting uncharacteristically angry about random things (not at anyone, just in my own time) and then eventually broke down crying and realized that’s what was eating at me more than anything else.
I don’t really want to stop following things, I want to be informed and not look away, but I may have to force myself to for a bit so I can cope. I think the pain of it has been building up in me for a while.
As someone that updates the News thread regularly, always take breaks. Take a walk and, if possible, socialize with people that you hold dear.
Also, never forget that this pain, this sadness, and anger is not yours to keep. It is fuel to be used for our agitation. It is fuel to push us to organize and to make others join us to form a movement such as the solidarity rallies.
Our power is in the masses. When enough people of the masses feel and desire a better world, that’s when the movement turns into action capable of changing reality.
Thanks. I agree with everything you said, though sometimes it’s hard to think of it that way, emotionally. I’ve been doing a daily thing for more than two years now where I write down what I’m feeling here and there, throughout the day, but it seems I still have trouble with letting stuff bottle up. I am probably not letting myself feel things enough in the moment, so that I can process them then. Though part of it, I know, is just a matter of channeling it into appropriate action, rather than treating it like something to process and let pass (the latter could end up more like pacifism if taken to the extreme).
Incredible 4-d chess play by Maduro to get captured by Trump so Trump got over confident and attacked Iran (/s)
I was thinking next time someone says “trump is playing 4 d chess” I’m gonna say something about how playing 4d chess on a 2d chess board is dumb. Like a guy playing 2d tug of war thinking that pulling on an angle is some genius move.
Moving back to The Netherlands with years of communist organising experience I gained in Belgium will be interesting. I’ll return to a typical Dutch working class environment. An environment in dire need of a proper communist movement. Staying at my parents house and they are watching the most shite tv programs on channels like SBS. Absolute brainrot, BUT that’s what the working class watches here. I feel like there will be lots of opportunities to seize when I settle down here. Hopefully I can start something meaningful.
Sometimes I wish I had enough energy to join a communist movement, although where I live it’s very difficult to find any local communist organization. I’m very excited to hear your experience in communist organizing.
I have decided that after my pilgrimage I will return to The Netherlands to work and study. Unfortunately my hometown has no active commie party so I hope I can at least find a regional party to join, if any.
What made you decide to leave Antwerp?
Quitting my job made me realize I have been out of place here for a while. The big city life with constantly being surrounded by people and concrete and cars and whatnot is becoming a bit much. And then I found the BBL system in The Netherlands in which I can work for four days in my study field and go to school for one day and I figured it would be best to go back for now. Gonna study to become a gardener.
Its Nijmegen time let’s gooooo
It do be on my list
As a white man in the netherlands, it feels weird knowing that me feeling worse means that the resistance is doing well and the world is getting closer to being better.
I am especially worried because i simply don’t know how to prepare my GF and I for an economic crisis like this and i also don’t have the necessary analytical skills to not feel completely in the dark about the developments of geopolitics without relying on the analysis of the people posting on here.
A really weird mixture of hope towards someone sawing off the rotten branch that i am sitting on, while also not sure how to fall correctly so that i don’t hurt too much. Especially considering that i have exactly zero community here (my anhedonia makes it hard to make efforts towards friendships) and no one seems to have understood yet that there even is a crisis coming.
The future might be uncertain comrade, but that means potential for change aswell. We’ll probably never see a Red Western Europe as long as our continent is built on the exploitation of other peoples. But through their emancipation we can eventually build a brighter future for proletarians in our part of the world too!
Yeah, just hard to imagine me being part of that world while being incapable of actually caring about and celebrating progress due to my anhedonic issues. The world getting better will not make me feel better. This completely eliminates motivation from my equation and leaves me with cold hard logic, discipline and grit. Those things will only carry me so far and without my GF, i likely genuinely would not care about anything in this world and would have perished already.
not sure how to fall correctly so that i don’t hurt too much.
Stockpile some dry foodstuffs. I wish I was joking but there’s a real potential for great depression type of food scarcity. 20% of the worlds fertilizer backed up in the strait and europe’s sanctions on Russia could make it a really rough situation in the near future.
A 25lb bag of dried beans and a roughly same sized bag of rice or quinoa will meet the protein needs of the average person for like 2 months if you use them right.
I’ve stopped posting pictures of my face on my public social media, because I don’t want my face to be used for AI training data. Anybody else who’s feeling the same way?
Burqas might be the play in public sooner rather than later
Lucky ladies get the whole covering while us guys have to make do with a medical mask and sunglasses.
Just don a Keffiyeh wrapped in front of your face, problem solved. This works for all genders too.
The idea is to hide your identity so you don’t get arrested. A keffiyeh is a target not a disguise.
Sadly with the state of the west at the moment a burka would do the same. Honestly so would most things that isn’t just random cishet white person following societal norms.
Anyways… I still prefer a keffiyeh, but if I actually want to not stand out I will wear subtle makeup, and dress as straight as I can. Blend in with the masses and all. Anything that doesn’t is going to always be a potential target of something.
My lifelong paranoia about posting photos online has finally paid off
I’ve been journaling semi-regulary since 2018. Used to do it daily, but now I only do it when I have something to actually write about (I just do free writing about anything that is on my mind). Anyone else journaling?
I do but not enough because I’m a lefty and hold my pen way too tightly so it hurts to write for long.
I hope you all have a nice week :D
You too Oppo!
You too oppp, I fear your magic powers now
You have a great week comrade!
Have a nice week, comrade! (՞•Ꙫ•՞)
Why do I see so many Polish 🇵🇱 neonazis online? I guess that’s what almost 4 decades of no socialism does to people 🤷♂️
The one thing that I miss about Windows is how much easier it was to install and try computer games. Recently I purchased The Settlers® 2: Gold Edition through Good Old Games, and after installing it through Minigalaxy I tried to play it but DOSBox stalled on me until I forced it to crash. WINE gave me an error message, too, and I ran into similar difficulties when I tried to replay Majesty Gold HD. I don’t know how to fix my problems (yet) but the repeated complications almost make me miss Windows. Almost.
You aren’t missing much. I played the first few maps a while ago and it was really rough. You cant disable the music. The UI is trash. Its worse than Warcraft 1 in nearly every respect.
Hello nerds
hope you all have a good next week
You too comrade!
I am genuinely convinced that tertiary education is a scam for most jobs.
Fuck do I need a Bachelor’s Degree for a glorified customer service role? Why do I have to go to college for three years just to be a supervisor? Like, what is this nonsense? These aren’t complicated roles but they want me to have a degree in order to do something as basic as tracking truck routes.
This is just financial gatekeeping to keep poor people out of these roles and I don’t understand why. What’s the end game here? How do the bourgeoisie benefit from artificially limiting their recruitment pool like this?
I am genuinely convinced that tertiary education is a scam for most jobs.
it is, it only started being a thing like 25-30 years ago when tertiary education was opened up
This is just financial gatekeeping to keep poor people out of these roles
bingo. Its a hazing ritual. The wealthy can get through easily because they dont have to worry about anything other than going through school. The poor people who can complete the process of getting higher education are then forced to stay poor to pay off student loans. They have had to work so hard to pay for their subsistence while also doing the work of studying that they are stripped of any time for politics.
If you put an application out for a basic role, you’ll get hundreds of applicants. To save on processing costs, they’ll put bullshit requirements to limit the number of applications.
Having been through university proves you respect deadlines and can follow orders competently, especially if they’re complicated, poorly expressed, or totally arbitrary. Degrees are super common nowadays so if you’re an employer, you’re gonna want the candidate that has proof of being at least somewhat intelligent and obedient over a candidate that doesn’t, all else equal.
