Lefty Memes
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
Serious posts, news, discussion and agitprop/stuff that's better fit for a poster than a meme go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low quality!
Rules
0. Only post socialist memes
That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme. Please post agitprop here)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We require alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if they’re too complex.
We are committed to social equity and to reducing barriers of entry, including (digital) communication and culture. It takes each of us only a few moments to make a whole world of content (more) accessible to a bunch of folks.
When alt text is absent, a reminder will be issued. If you don't add the missing alt text within 48 hours, the post will be removed. No hard feelings.
0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms
When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart
- ofc => OFC
- af = AF
- ok => OK
- lol => LOL
- bc => BC
- bs => BS
- iirc => IIRC
- cia => CIA
- nato => Nato (you don't spell it when talking, right?)
- usa => USA
- prc => PRC
- etc.
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such
That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
4. No Bigotry.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)
6. Don't irrationally idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
- Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
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Pardon the circlejerk interruption, and believe me I hate BMW just as much as the next person, but this is just a patent application. Like, if you realize your logo has the potential to be a screw head, why would you not patent it to prevent others from using the design.
It’s not made it into any cars, and so far as I’ve seen there are no plans. Even if it does I’d think it’d only be used in some customer-facing application; interior maybe, or decorative attachments in the engine like valve covers etc. Slightly asshole that you’d need a different tool, but not exactly the end of the world unless they actively prevented the tool from being made.
My two cents
After the whole heated seats subscription bullshit I expect only the worst from them.
That’s a fair point.
Patenting things you don't have intention of actually doing, "just in case", is just shit tbh.
Used to be called patent trolling, but now that all the big corporations that own the politicians deciding patent law are doing it, it's considered "prudent business practice"
IBM alone files more patents that they'll never use (except for lawsuits in case someone else does something useful with something similar) in a year than most companies file IN TOTAL for several decades.
That is such fucking bullshit.
Please elaborate.
Bad phrasing, that they do that is such fucking bullshit, that’s fucked. Fuck IBM is what I was saying.
It can prevent others from doing it, which can be a net good.
How? In this specific case it's about brand identity, so I don't think anyone else would make BMW-shaped screws. But in general, how is "I had this idea, I don't want to make it, but want to stop others from making it" good?
It isn't under ANY circumstances and to think so without being the patent trolling asshole yourself is some Stockholm syndrome level simping for the overlords.
Design patents only last 15 years max. Unless they intend to use it, its just purely a publicity stunt.
It's likely that they filled this as a utility patent which would last 20 years.
No, there is no way for that to be a net good. That is brainwashed propaganda shit.
Did you see the Rossman video about this? The patent explicitly calls out that the reason for this design is to prevent people from using it without the proper "authorization" or told or whatever. It is not about branding or better functionality or anything else
Idk what a rossman video is, but bmw, being a german company, is beholden to Right to Repair. They need to make the tool available
Here you go
https://youtu.be/oM0W1li-a7g
That's fair, an on brand for BMW.
So it's just another pattern of tamper resistant screw, this time with tacky branding. Those have been used for decades on cars, idk this feels very blown out of proportion. People are acting like it's evil when it's just a normal thing but cosmetically way uglier.
Yeah the patent doesn't mention anything about it being a security screw as far as I can tell, it just looks like they patented a dumbass design that's only useful for the aesthetics and people are making some sensational headlines. Like, yeah, we'd just get or make the bits to undo them - they also know that?
Honestly, it doesn't look like a dumbass screw to me. Phillips heads are dumbass screws. It is a shit design. This actually looks quite solid as a screw head.
It will cam out and chowder if you're not 100% perpendicular to it, I would say it's actually worse than a phillips screw
... What are you talking about? The design ensures you can't be anything but perpendicular to it in order to have any positive engagement, and Phillips screws are so notoriously bad about camming out at even ideal angles that it's been popularly believed that was an intentional design feature (it wasn't phillips screws just suck) for almost as long as they've existed.
Seriously. Why the hell aren't star heads the standard by now? Is it spite? It feels like spite.
They will have the patent on the corresponding driver for the screw, and i doubt they will allow third party shops to purchase the drivers for anything resembling a reasonable price. Meaning that you will be forced to take the car to a BMW authorized mechanic. It's taking away the consumer's right to repair.
It’s all conjecture at this point. The patent alone on the screw head I understand, because companies are obligated to protect their logo.
You dont need a patent to protect a trademark.
fortunately i shop internationally and from vendors located outside their patent coverage.
Not to mention the odds of it having a better torque rating then any standard screw is low.
You would need a dedicated factory to build these at great expense for fancy looking screw heads.
the alleged application was critical fasteners that people shouldn't be working with, like frame connections
of course, this is bullshit, because it's been fine for the past half century, so why wouldn't it be now?
We've used tamper resistant screws as critical fasteners for that entire half a century, this is just a new and uglier version.
Naivete manifested in comment form.