I don’t know how it would apply to painting minies. but there is definitely starter gear, which is better than ‘pro’ stuff - just by being friendly.

i climb and now that i am a bit better i use shoes about 2 sizes too small and have a pretty aggressive arch. bouldering in them is comfortable and i like them. but if i had them as my beginner shoes - i would have quit because that just hurts if you are not used to it. so i do see a benefit in beginner gear, even if you will eventually outgrow it.

point 1:

representatives did not get elected for a certain (maximum) timeframe and could always be voted out again.

point 2:

(possibly rightfully arguing that the burgeoise could not accurately represent the workers)

You are asking him to have stopped before completing the beginning of the revolution, {…}

i am not asking to stop in the middle, i am asking to do their homework. if you have a vote, are unhappy with the results, force your way… that means either you don’t have the support from the general population or did not properly prepare for the system you had a vote in.

point 3:

While I will not say it was a good thing to match it with violence, {…}

well hopefully so!

{…} it is difficult to side with the Sailors against the forming Socialist Republic.

never mind…

if open opposition, demonstrations, strikes, etc. are not allowed, even faced with violence - democracy has failed. in theory you could vote representatives out, but if you know those with the power are not shy to imprison and kill you it is not dêmos krátos anymore, just krátos.

point 4:*

I have, and it does work, {…}

really? which communist small government are you part of? i am really interested in finding out about modern attempts in communism.

{…} ignored the idea of the Mass Line {…}

i did. additionally i had to simplify, summarise and choose context a lot. afterall this is neither a history nor politics class, but a lemmy comment below a comic strip.

i give you that: soviet democracy looks pretty neat on paper. lets look at its implementation.

people gather and elect representatives. these representatives in turn elect representatives again as needed. as the system grows, this will gradually form a hierarchical governmental body. in contrast to most democracies, representatives did not get elected for a certain (maximum) timeframe and could always be voted out again. additionally there wiuld not be a desperation of power: they where legislative, executive and judiciary all the same.

1905 the lenin and the bolschevikes introduced such a system. shortly after they only got a minority in the votes. lenin forcefully disbanded the opposition, (possibly rightfully arguing that the burgeoise could not accurately represent the workers) and explicitly excluding the burgeoise from the democratic rights.

Some people say that the end of soviet democracy was in 1918. Lets go with 1921: Martial law was in action, many people where discontent with the bolshevik government, mainly workers and sailors where protesting (kronstadt). this act of rebellion was swiftly crushed by the red army and many people lost their lives. at the same time lenin was still assuring democracy is working as intended.

conclusion: the democracy lasted for about 16 years. in multiple occasions people where forcefully pushed away. this is possible, because a pyramid structure is created by the system. later this form of government was described as “extremely democratic dictatorship of the proletariat”. dictatorship does not have to be bad for the people, but it has the tendency to do so.

overall i encourage you to explore socialist systems from the bottom up. start on paper, if it works try it out in the real world. gradually increase the size and dont be afraid to learn and adjust - now failing is still cheap and easy. the soviet democracy might have worked on a smaller scale. but applied to a country the size of udssr it was too much power focussed on too little people.

We are talking about communism, agreed. That means we are also talking about communes: small(ish) groups of people who want to live together in a communist system. I come from a practical approach: if you want to do something, it needs to work under sterile laboratory conditions first (communism does this). then you can take it to smaller experiments (communes which survived for long, usually have a low hierarchy). after gathering real world experience, you can slowly increase the size of these experiments. so far none of the countries, which had a socialist government still have a (valid) socialist system.

{…} Communism, with central planning and whatnot.

seems like you are suggesting a more centralised form of government and stronger hierarchical structures than any of the communes i personally know. what is your suggested path to avoid the pitfalls of the past communist governments? what safeguards do you suggest to prevent a (group of) person(s) accumulating power and perverting the government into a dictatorship?

As you said: socialism is an idealistic system. however, humans are far from ideal beings. even if you find the ideal group that agrees on their flavour of socialism and manages to actually do it - there is no guarantee, that this will stay as it is. as you mentioned yourself: humans change - sadly not always for the better.

don’t take my word for it. watch a documentary about a bigger commune (small village, houses scattered through a forest and such), or even better: visit one. They all will tell you that heavy moderation is needed. not everyone is allowed to join, sometimes old members even have to go. if you try to scale up these systems to the size of even a small country, they will fail.

communism has not worked and won’t work at a great scale (not talking about small communes). as history has shown, it will fail at the human factor.

unchecked capitalism won’t work either, we would end up in [insert cyberpunk dystopia]. that is why we need the state to do a socialist job in a capitalist system (redistribution of wealth, healthcare, taking care of handicapped, …).

in my opinion, that is where the usa failed majorly. coincidentally, that is where i hear most communism support from. i have too little data points to make a conclusion. but it would be really interesting to see demographics of these statements made in the comic.

M’aiq is tired now. Go bother somebody else.

that mentality is probably what most ppl started with. however, youtube burnt quite a lot of bridges. i would assume, that many ppl, just like me, wont do the 3 clicks to disable adblock for youtube.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.

I know many of us don’t really like AI stuff. But it is just a door opener - and Mozilla needs funding like any company.

The product we sell at our company also has AI features. So far AI got us to talk to many more customers. So far none of them bought the AI stuff - even if in my opinion it would provide productivity increases. For us AI is a net positive: it cost us 2 weeks of writing gluecode, didnt sell at all, opened many doors for selling the main product.

USA belongs to GB, Vietnam belongs to France… 🤷‍♂️

not technically a fronted. however, if you use it mainly for downloading YT content, it will run into the same problem as many frontends.

1984

no need to apologise. still a better response time, than some of the professionals I work with ;-)

150 - 200 m should not be a big problem for an average soldier with an AR and iron sights. Surely they would not aim for the head - which makes it easier too.

My guess is that most ppl who put bread in the fridge buy that sliced rectangular stuff in a plastic bag (at least my flatmate did that). Bread from a bakery, which has a crunchy crust should not be put in the fridge, as others have pointed out.

duckduckgo has an array of LLMs, which they take care of anonymity

do you need GPT4 specifically? If not, mistral has their large model for free available: https://chat.mistral.ai/chat

Yes, I told someone to inform themselves before making assumptions. Which, I think, is a reasonable expectation.

The rest of the comment was pointing out how archive.org acts like any other public library and therefore should not be treated differently. This does not carry hostility against the person I am replying to.

Please inform yourself. In these comments and on their website, it is covered that they do not provide books freely. Just like any other library books can be borrowed exactly as many times as they own a copy.

Just like any other library they sometimes provide a download for Adobe Digital Edition, which manages your lends on books. But as your friend with DRM stripping tools for sure can confirm: DRM is just an annoyance for legitimate customers, it forces legitimate users to use specific applications, while pirates get the freedom to choose how they interact with the not any more protected media. But this is a discussion for another thread as archive.org treats copyrighted books just like any other library.

Please go to archive.org > Books > Books to Borrow

Select any book which strikes your fancy. You will see a reading excerpt, like flicking through pages in a library. if you have a free account, you can lend it for 1h at a time.

Or look at this video https://dn720701.ca.archive.org/0/items/openlibrary-tour-2020/openlibrary.mp4