This is the communist festival right? That one is very high on my list of things to do before I die.

All my Frogs and Toads, gone…

Interaction with other social/economic classes.

I like everything you said about travel but want to hone in on this one. I think it’s suuuuper important. I grew up in a middle class environment and it took a long time for me to truly “get” that there’s so many people who have less than that, just because it’s not something I grew up around (and media heavily reinforces this).

Likewise, if not for Hexbear I would living in a bubble of people roughly my own age and completely cut off from younger people, who (especially but exclusively comrades here) are very cool and good. I despise when older people hate “the youth” and have promised myself I will never become like that.

I’m thinking more like little kids (mine are little). When their older yeah, let them listen to their music during their time and your pods on your time (or however you split up what plays when kids are older, idk)

I strongly suspect that if Pete’s dad was like every other college professor I’ve known, there’s a good chance he was violating #1. Most professors I know put the job first and their families a distant second.

Ooooh dang, that’s pretty good.

I am a big fan of PBS Kids, not exactly “subversive” but on the whole teaches kids a lot of good stuff.

I think there’s plenty of “serious” podcasts. To name a few: Already Existing Socialism, Cosmopod, The Measures Taken, Rev Left, Varn Vlog. But I do lots of others than are not explicitly commie, like Means Morning News, Electronic Intifada (my kid asks really good questions about Gaza), Red Nation, Citations Needed, Macro & Cheese, and others.

But like Frank said, I’m not too worried about the crass factor too much. I don’t listen to TrueAnon or Chapo. Deprogram I think is more or less fine. I’ve already played Trillbillies for them and my kid loves them honestly. I think my kid picks up on the fact they are friends and that they have a nice conversational style to them.

Earlier today, I was reading an abstract of a paper that showed there was a relationship between being an overly fearful child and eventually becoming a conservative adult.

And on top of that, they can always write down the value further due to “impairment” like obsolescence. For example, maybe a specific missile costs $1 million and it is straight-line depreciated for 5 years. After 3 years the book value is $400k. However, they can just say “we have a new missile that’s better so this old missile is obsolete, the value should only be $100k” then they can write down the book value even further.

Also, if they use FIFO inventory accounting, only the oldest stuff on record is used EVEN IF IT ISN’T physically the oldest stock. So if the costs of the equipment get more expensive every year then what’s counted as being given to Ukraine has the lowest value, even if in real terms they are giving them the newest stock.

8.9k upvotes. If there was ever a comment that convinced me Reddit is astroturfed / an op, this is it. Because they are objectively wrong. Or at least intentionally misleading.

They’re focusing on the fact that the valuation equipment changed and ignoring what that actually means. Sure, by itself it doesn’t affect US taxpayers. But the point is, the military says they overvalued it by $2, so that allows them to send $2 billion more worth of equipment. That’s additional stocks of weapons that ostensibly have to be replaced, which is paid for by tax dollars.

And while it’s not provably corrupt, it strains credulity to think this was not done in order to ship more weapons. Revaluations of this kind are much much more likely because someone wants it revalued, i.e. corruption.

I don’t remember why it took me a like a week to sign up. I kept checking the lifeboat discord for news. I think I missed it by a couple days. I made an account but didn’t like the name so I came up with this one.

deleted by creator

Maybe I’m thinking about this too hard, but is this actually a bit self-deprecating? Like, the gamers and the women both have their backs to each other. The women seem to be completely oblivious to the presence of the men, and vice versa.

Was looking at some of the “no party affiliation” candidates in CA senate primary election. I came across a questionnaire that Laura Garza filled out for the OC Register (link). It first mentions she was “Former vice presidential candidate on Socialist Workers Party ticket in 1996”. I’m thinking hmmm… that’s sounds kinda Trot-y, but maybe not. Let’s see what her positions are. First question was about Palestine, “israel”, Ukraine, and Russia… and this was the response:

I defend Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews and condemn the Jew-hating pogrom organized by Hamas with the backing of the Iranian regime. The capitalist regime in Tehran and the reactionary forces it backs in Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad are enemies not only of Jews but of working people of all nationalities. So long as capitalism exists, in times of crisis, the rulers will turn to scapegoating Jews to smash the working class as they did in Nazi Germany. The fight for workers’ power and socialism is the only solution to end the anti-working class poison of Jew-hatred.

I stand with the people of Ukraine in their battle for independence and sovereignty over all of Ukraine and against Moscow’s reactionary invasion.

I don’t support the policies of the U.S. capitalist class and their military, which is used worldwide to defend U.S. profits and imperialist domination, not the interests of working people here or elsewhere. I am for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Korea, the Middle East and Europe. I defend the Cuban Revolution and call for an end to the U.S. embargo on Cuba, which is used to suffocate the Cuban population for their decision to reject living under Washington’s boot.

What a fascinating mix of leftist language and absolute dogshit, sprinkled with some good takes (but also ones that even normal libs support, like ending the blockade on Cuba). Honestly, her takes on “israel” sounds like what an actual neo-Nazi would come up with if they were trying to make a caricature of a leftist.

Yes. J Arch Getty - a legit Soviet historian who is a lib but is still very fair to Stalin IMO and generally very USSR-friendly - once said that Furr understands the material in the archives, but he just comes to really weird conclusions.

I think Furr is fine as long as you know you’re getting an apologist more than a historian. There’s a place for that. Furr himself admittedly (on the Proles pod) he thinks Stalin did nothing wrong. If you approach history from that angle you’re going to have blind spots. IMO skip Furr and go to Losurdo.

If only 18% of a group of people is willing to defend a country, I would say at that point the problem is definitely with the country, not the people.

I am old enough to remember Jerry Springer. He would always have these bizarre shows of the most outrageous guests, usually getting into a physical altercation at some point. But the funniest thing about the show was at the end, after the final commercial segment, Springer would have this segment called “Final Thought”, where he would look straight into the camera and attempt to say something insightful via monologue, like “we all might like to have a laugh at the adult who wears diapers for sexual satisfaction, but how would you feel if someone was laughing at you”. Just the most inane, smooth-brained, basic-ass thoughts.

We need something like that so we can end some of these multi-post struggle sessions. Maybe we can train some deepfake AI to make our own Jerry Springer “Final Thought” videos. Feed the posts into the AI and have fake AI Jerry Springer say something that attempts to bring everyone together, and we just leave it at that.

I hate to admit to things I used to do when I was a lib; one of them was listening to Pod Save America. Terrible, but I do remember laughing when the three of them talked about Lindsey Graham. They said that dude was always in the Oval Office kissing Obama’s ass as often as he could. Dude’s a real piece of work.