Holy shit

May want to add a CW for graphic descriptions of torture and war crimes. The atrocities inflicted by “Israel” are stomach churning, unspeakably awful.

For punishments to be just, they must be merited, consistently enforced, predictable, and proportionate.

Perhaps showing support, even accidentally, for reactionary views might merit punishment. However, this punishment is likely not consistently enforced, and the rule is not stated anywhere on the website.

Most importantly, any kind of ban for a single upbear from a user with no prior pattern of behaviour is entirely disproportionate to the wrongdoing. It blows my mind that anyone could consider it an appropriate response.

Agreed, I was more using that as an example of the kind of shift that might weaken attachment to the dollar over time. Love & solidarity

These things play out over years, decades even. I am not an expert either but looking to the long term, it seems to me that green energy has to overtake fossil fuels at some point, and China is the global leader in green tech. So eventually countries will switch to cheaper green tech coming out of China and the petrodollar will decline in relevance.

It’s ok comrade. This state of affairs doesn’t have to be permanent, and China may in the future find it beneficial to promote de-dollarisation due to a change in material circumstances. Hegemonies always fall. We are seeing the US empire crack and crumble around us right now.

This was an excellent read, thank you comrade

I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot as well and I think what’s required is something beyond simply “good propaganda”. The success of the chuds is an emotional success, not a logical one: it gives disaffected people a sense of belonging. I don’t think that people in the Imperial core can be inspired to revolution by theory or empathy alone. We have to offer them an in-group to be part of, a sense of individual validation and identity. And most of all - it needs to be fun and social. I don’t consume much content myself so I’m not sure how successful Hasan etc. are at doing this. But western brainwashing has produced generations of people who are steeped in individualism and we can’t fight that purely by admonishing them or pointing out the faults of capitalism. We need to offer and provoke internal change and the realisation that collectivism is joyful.

Face wash, toner, a serum with hyaluronic acid, and a neutral light moisturiser. SPF sun cream in the summer. I’m not really an expert but keeping your face clean, moisturised, and protected from the sun are the most important aspects, and a lot will depend on if you have dry or oily skin, what climate you live in, etc.

It’s depressing, but it’s cozy because it feels like the only place on the English-speaking internet where people aren’t exclusively lapping up and spewing out NATO and Western propaganda

Jeez, I was not aware that we were already at the “compulsory conscription of refugees” stage of collapse. Or maybe the s have been watching too much Attack on Titan??

And Italy will pay for it!

But aren’t those two reasons contradictory? It honestly just seems from the outside like “gossip” was chosen because the mods felt that tank posts about celebs were becoming frivolous rage bait, and wanted to give a dismissive label to that kind of content, didn’t foresee the misogyny issue, and are now taking the reclamation line because they refuse to admit they were wrong.

To be honest I have some sympathy for the stance that the million “Musk is stupid” posts per day were frivolous, but you need to realise that the majority of complaints are (and have been throughout this debacle) about

1. Poor communication of reasons behind decisions
2. Seemingly capricious, arbitrary, and impulsive mod actions
3. The perception that admins/mods want to impose changes to site culture based on personal preference and not the needs/wants of the user base

It’s about the way issues have been handled more than the content of the problem. The arguments about the content of the problem are easily comprehended and have been politely discussed by everyone. The continued insistence on imposing a generally unpopular decision is contributing to the impression of (3).

Having said all that I do want to say thank you to both admins in this thread for making massive improvements and an effort to communicate better. I think your most recent formulation of the intended content of the new comms works well and should be pinned somewhere more prominent than in Nth level replies.

There isn’t an elegant way of saying it but we use “people of marginalised genders” as an umbrella term. When talking about misogyny specifically I would probably say “femme people”.

Agreed (and I agree with your comment above as well), another reason why it’s just not a good name.

I have a speculative, probably bs theory that the rise of Abrahamic religions with their emphasis on patriarchy, erasure of female deities, and “man has dominion over the land and other species” is directly responsible for the way Western cultures have treated the planet and other civilisations

The mods of the dunk tank and dredge tank requested the name c/gossip. While there are some legitimate arguments being made relating to misogynistic societal perceptions of that word, the mods include women and enbies who disagree and specifically requested this name.

A few thoughts on this.

First of all, I don’t think this was intentional but using the phrase “women and enbies” in this context can come across as erasure of non-binary identity by implying that it’s akin to “woman lite” - I run a space for people of marginalised genders and this was one of the early lessons we learned, so just passing it on.

Secondly, that female and NB mods suggested a name does not absolve it of flaws or reduce the perception/propagation of misogynistic implications. The majority of people using or seeing the comm won’t know the backstory behind it, and valid concerns about how off-putting the name is shouldn’t be swept aside for these reasons.

It just doesn’t do a good job of describing the intended content of the comm. “Gossip” generally means interesting stories about celebrities’ lives, and isn’t really precise enough imo. Having a comm called “gossip” that is entirely full of dunks would probably contribute to the perception of a toxic site culture rather than detract.

Obviously there’s a lot to unpack here and it sounds like your issues go deeper than what internet discussions can fix, but I would recommend the following:

• stop making assumptions about people. Everything you’ve said suggests that you are making judgments about people’s entire world view and personality based on fleeting interactions. You don’t know shit about them.

• people are nuanced and contain multitudes of thoughts, opinions, behaviours, emotions, etc. their outward expression on any given day is dependent on a bunch of stuff like hunger, tiredness, stress level, etc.

• take a dialectical view. The whole point of leftist theory is that things, including people, can and do change. Implicit in your hatred is the assumption that negative things you observe are the natural or sole state of someone, which is contrary to leftist thought.

• actually make connections with people. Empathise with them. Think about why they are saying what they say. Think about how you would respond if you had the experiences that made up their life. And if the answer is “my life was similar but I made it out”, try to turn that into empathy and not condescension. Not everyone is as capable of throwing off the shackles they were born with by themselves.

This is incredibly sad to me.

If the reason you’re a leftist is that you want to win internet arguments, you will never actually organise or contribute to the cause. Then what is the point other than feeding your dopamine addiction?

Be useful.