I’m a communist 😈

they/them

  • 26 Posts
  • 474 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: March 23rd, 2022

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  • Here’s one way it could happen

    1. Facebook joins the Fediverse, becoming the largest instance
    2. Majority of Fediverse embraces this
    3. Facebook decides to deviate slightly from ActivityPub
    4. Not wanting to be disconnected, majority of Fediverse follows them
    5. The real, ActivityPub-based Fediverse is dead (or as small as it was when it started) and now Facebook controls its (former) instances

  • No, projects like the Fediverse require initial protectionism. If you let megacorporations into your project, they will dominate and gain control over how the protocol develops in the future. Google Chrome’s huge share of users has enabled it to get dangerously close to locking other browsers out of most of the Internet (the Web Integrity API shenanigans are just the start). Chrome also removed support for JPEG XL, killing that attempt at a standard and enshrining its own WebP. It’s called “Embrace, extend, and extinguish”.

    If the Fediverse actually wants to grow, it must unite against this. Otherwise we will end up with a couple hundred thousand Fedipact hardliners and millions on Facebook 2. No progress will have been made.




  • Ugh I swear China train reporting is of the lowest quality… What does “full-size superconducting test run” as mentioend in the CGTN article found in the linked video description mean? The video shows a train car the size of an automobile. Is that what they mean? But how is it the “first” test run when SCMaglev in Shanghai uses superconductors and has been operating for two decades? How long is the test track? How does it compare to startups in the rest of the world? Is this “full-size superconducting test run” also a low-vacuum test? What speeds is this “full-size superconducting test run” going to achieve? Because 99% of reporting on vactrains cover test runs that do not achieve the advertised speeds. What is the name of this research team? Is it the World Artery that this article mentions, or are they unrelated? What is their relation to rail companies and government organizations? Basically, is this being taken seriously or is it just hype like in America? Also, “The new project experimental”?? “The new train is specter to be”?? Does Travel Tomorrow force their journalists to write an article in 20 minutes or something?? Bottom of the barrel reporting, guys!!

    edit: holy smokes everyone I am just as bad as these guys - I got the Japanese SCMaglev and the German-Chinese Shanghai Transrapid confused. SCMaglev users superconductors in their electrodynamic suspension system. I don’t think the Transrapid uses them in their electromagnetic suspension system.








  • Fire on the Mountain (1988) by Terry Bison is an alternate history novel that takes place in an African American socialist republic a century after Harriet Tubman’s and John Brown’s successful raid on Harper’s Ferry. I’ve read some of it and have been meaning to finish it. I suppose it’s quite explicit in its socialism, however.

    2312 (2012) by Kim Stanley Robinson is a science fiction novel that takes place across a colonized solar system with multiple POVs. I quite like it, but if you much prefer narrative over worldbuilding then you may not. However, it does fit your criteria better. Socialism appears to be the predominant mode of production, with references to widespread worker co-ops (the author is obsessed with Mondragon), solar-system-wide economic planning, and I don’t think money comes up at all… Earth seems to be kind of fucked up though, so I guess you could say it has FALGSC but not FALGEC. Finally, I should note that Kim Stanley Robinson is not a Marxist.







  • Some of the endnotes inserted by Progress’s Stalinist editors in editions up to and including the last editions in the 1970s are fraught with polemics aimed at prejudicing the reader against this or that Bolshevik or revolutionary who, since Lenin’s death, had fallen out of favor with the current leadership of the USSR at the time the notes were inserted. Wherever possible, we have deleted, corrected, or toned down these polemics. In addition, we have added our own notes where appropriate, integrating them into the whole of the endnotes for each document.

    Wow yeah that’s pretty ridiculous. They claim to be archivists and yet they’re clearly editors.