39
Mamdani, Hochul accuse Trump of defunding the police (Look at my american leftists dawg)
(www.politico.com)
Good point, and that restores a bit of hope, thank you <3
CommunistCuddlefish
joined 3 years ago
Lol and sob no wonder you're so confused, now I'm also so confused.
Sorry then, didn't mean to give you unhelpful advice. Been there, when I was on ADHD meds I couldn't eat much throughout the day.
120g sounds really high to me. What source is telling you that? When I was tracking my macros I think I settled on a target of somewhere around 60 g / day and found it frankly impossible to hit sustainably.
To go back to your original question, IIRC the formula I thought was backed the most up by some studies (but sorry, I didn't save the source,and it was still a matter of active study and debate at the time) was about 0.75 x 0.001 x (body mass in kilograms). So, an 80Kg person would want 0.75 x 80g = 60g. This is markedly lower than the average bro science adages of 1g protein per kg of body mass.
Have done a lot of weightlifting and honestly the high protein stats are unrealistic and unsustainable. They define PEAK PERFORMANCE as prioritizing muscle gain above all else, and that is kind of bullshit. It's also bad for your kidneys to be slamming that much protein. The best health and general fitness advice I can give is to eat what feels, to you, like a healthy amount of vegetable, protein, fiber, and carbs, in that order from most important to least important. Pay attention to how your body feels with them and settle on that. Like, if I don't get enough protein, I feel bad. If I get too much protein, I feel bad. If I get too much carbs, I feel bad. If I get too little in the way of vegetables, I feel bad. In all these cases, cravings and food aversions kick in to adjust the diet based on what I probably need, and when I tried to adjust (e.g., slam in more protein because the calculations and macro tracking said I should) I just could not force myself to for more than a week.
When I lift more, I crave protein more. When I lift less, I crave protein less. I have found this approach to fitness far more sustainable than when I was tracking macros and trying to fine-tune it all. If nothing else, macro tracking can be useful for making people aware of bad habits, but that's really the best of it. You could track your macros, your lifting, and how you feel (energetic? exhausted? hungry all the time? overfull?) to help you figure out the best dietary approach for yourself.
I'm sorry. Health insurers are evil. Good luck to you and fuckwit_mcbumcrumble in getting your healthcare covered by the fucking organization that claims they'll step in to protect you from financial ruin if you pay them
Thank you that makes the scene even funnier/sadder
What a week, we've lost Frivolous_Beatnik and AlHouthiForPresident because they couldn't take the caucasity of the site anymore. 
Appreciating all the non-cracker comrades extra hard right now. 
I am very depressed because I’ve been having a resurgence in nightmares about my abusive shitstain of an ex so maybe it's just that despair talking. But idk, maybe the depression lets me see beneath the veneer of hopium to identify a bleaker truth that others will not, because it feels too bad to accept it and brings their mojo down: I feel the US Left is cooked, and I have no idea what to do about it. Because, after seeing white-led (or even non-white but still firmly Western / American-centric) protest movements over the last 2 decades, I have no faith in the American people's ability or willingness to actually make any meaningful structural change. Disclaimer, this is all anecdotal and vibes-based. IDEK if this belongs in only em_poc, but I trust the people here to handle the topic better than I trust the general site.
Despair, contrasting what a protest is in the third world vs what a protest is in the US
2020: a spontaneous, leaderless, black-driven uprising burns down Minneapolis kkkop precinct after police murder a black man on live TV. Establishment politicians and nonprofits successfully defang the movement with counterinsurgency techniques such as buying out organizers, and sending DemoKKKratic Party politicians in to claim ownership of the movement so they can walk the demands back from “abolish” to “defund” to “fund more and train better and reform” the police, and thence finally to “Woke 1 was craaaaaaaaaaaaazy!”. But most of all, and a crucial part of that counterinsurgency: local police worked with feds and assassinated black radicals who were calling for more, who were more militant in their condemnations of the police, leaving the field clear for opportunists and “moderates” to mislead and betray the movement, squandering what revolutionary energy there was. And yet, many white anarchists and rad-libs still held the whole thing as a moment of pride, as proof that decentralization is the way, that we got so close and we can again, that occupying a couple blocks to make an autonomous zone is a revolutionary strategy, because it shows that a better world is possible and we can dream bigger. But what are they even talking about? The protests and the burning of the precinct were not anarchist-led. They were not led by leftists at all. They were just unorganized people, some of whom were Leftists but most of whom were not politically conscious beyond “fuck the police”, showing up and taking out their anger at the system. Praiseworthy, for sure, but not a feather in the cap of any organized movement. The organization phase was attempted later, after, and the organization phase was soundly defeated.
2026: frozen water org abducts a bunch of African and Latine immigrants, shoots two white activists for interfering. White-led opposition takes the helm and spreads a message of love, “radicalized by basic human decency”. Anger is not allowed. Hostility is not allowed. Those who lead the opposition preemptively took out their own fangs and told everyone else to rip out their teeth as well. So instead, activists go out and get arrested for standing in the way. The operation in Minneapolis where people threw dildos at the frozen water org was funny and perhaps emasculating, but now they're making songs about it like it was some grand victory as opposed to a minor annoyance that showed the side with body armor and guns how powerless and how unwilling to fight the populace they're brutalizing is. Anyone hoping for a repeat of the George Floyd uprising was sorely disappointed, as nothing came even close to it. The act of throwing dildos at the frozen water org employees is turned into a heroic moment of resistance by musicians and the songs sung, as if singing is resistance. The type of resistance that is espoused is a joyous one, the air one of whimsy. “Resistance should be joyful” say people who I feel are unwilling to grapple with how evil the adversary is. Why? For fun? For sustainability? I feel no joy at the prospect of fighting these forces, only grim resolve and resignation that Evil must be opposed. And look, I remember Jeremy Scahill’s interviews with the Palestinian resistance. Those brave fighters were not talking about how joyous it is to have to fight against their people’s extermination! They lamented, instead, that they were forced into resistance, that they couldn’t have just lived out their dreams of having a farm, of being a competitive football player, of raising families without having to worry that their children would be blown up next to them. I contrast that with white-led resistance here and find the US left utterly lacking, and the attitude shows in the actions that are taken. It’s like they aren’t taking this shit actually seriously. A fight is a fight, not play. Imagine facing murderers and tortures and simply throwing dildos. Imagine being within throwing range of murderers and torturers and simply throwing dildos. I’m supposed to feel inspired and empowered by that symbolic act? No, it highlights how overwhelming the power imbalance is and suggests to me that facing off with them as a bloc is not the correct tactic.
I've seen white radicals -- usually anarchists and radlibs, but you know what, sometimes even PSL members! -- celebrating the accomplishments, the symbolic acts of #resistance, of consciousness-raising. Celebrating such tiny baby steps, such empty gestures, as if they mean something, as if they're the start of something bigger, but they never prove to be. And I haven't wanted to tear into them for it, because these acts certainly have been brave. People have been arrested, beaten, and even murdered in broad daylight by the government for these acts. But at the same time, what have they done? What have they actually achieved? Police are stronger than ever. ICE is stronger than ever. Their noses have not even been bloodied.
I just contrast the first world with the third world and I can’t take us seriously. I called the George Floyd riots, which was the most consequential mass-movement against power in the US this century (so far), an “uprising”, and someone else laughed and said that’s just a normal protest elsewhere, not an uprising. Correctly so! In Pakistan, on the heels of the Biden-backed coup, people rose up in mass protests, burned a general’s mansion, and it took the Army brutally shooting, arresting, and torturing protestors en masse to quell the populace. But here? Here in the US, in the belly of empire, we do 1% of what the third world does and pat ourselves on the back for how glorious and revolutionary we were.
And so I feel forced to accept what a friend told me toward the beginning of the year, that I agreed with intellectually but could not yet accept in my heart: The US has no revolutionary potential.
I know doomerism is counterrevolutionary, and I feel bad posting this, but I fucking need help working through these feelings. And I'm not saying do nothing. And I'm glad to see more people are getting angry, albeit decades and decades later than they should have figured it out. But I still don't see the US as having any positive revolutionary potential. If we get a successful revolution here in the next two decades, I have no doubt that it will be a fascist revolution. But since the US is already fascist as fuck, there's no actual need for them to have a fascist revolution, unless we get some succdem elected and then the fascists rebel against that to take power a la Franco. The most “positive change” we are getting is electoral “victories” by careerist capitalists who are more than happy to let the DSA propel them into power on promises to provide welfare and safety nets that they have no intention of ever delivering, and the movements have so fucking little solidarity with the oppressed masses of the third world whose life-blood the US Empire drinks for sustenance that “leftists” and “socialists” fall over themselves to support these lying careerist fucks who still send weapons to iϟϟntreal, who still glaze US veterans who happily signed up to torture,removed, and kill their way across West Asia. I’m supposed to believe these are the people who will build socialism here?
Or maybe not “socialism”, because the demsocs have stolen that word. At this point I feel people have to use the big C word to show they’re serious. Communism.
Thank you for listening to me scream into the void
What is a lollypop man? Asking because it's used in In Bruges and I never really understood that line
Packwatch, rip bozo, etc. Why should she get money for marrying an enthusiastic war criminal?
Oh he didn't want to fight in this war? Then what was he doing over there, in a volunteer army for an evil empire?
Who the fuck is Emma Vigelwhatever anyway? I've only ever heard about her posting massive L's but in contexts where it seems like other people think she's part of the left
Someone ripped the front cover off so idk what the title is. It's going straight into a recycling bin, the paper deserves better. And of course the "romance" is between a minor and a legal adult.
"This is the official community for Brayland Union, a micronation asserting sovereignty over asteroid 468 Lina (also designated 1901 FZ, A915 PA, and A918 EB).
This is a place to discuss Brayland Union, its development, and other micronation news."
Stumbled across this when my app accidentally showed me all instead of local and I got clickbaited into reading the comments on a post titled "AI for President? Here's why, as an AI expert, I think it could happen by 2032"
44
What is up with speculative fiction? With a bonus helping of "why are radlibs", and leftist sectarianism
(hexbear.net)
I’m supposed to be doing important life logistics self care stuff but I saw a book in a used bookstore and decided not to get it and then I saw a video dunking on Sim Kern’s "tankies are calvinists” brainworms and now here I am thinking about the outsized role that speculative fiction has had upon the political landscape. This is leading me down a rabbit hole of my own thoughts and idk if I’m cooking or if I am cooked (my AC can’t keep up so I’m at least partially cooked. Heat maketh for odd thoughts) so I’d like some outside perspectives. I don’t know where I’m going with this but if these disjointed ramblings inspire interesting related thoughts please, let’s chat.
Thread 1: Speculative fiction:
The book I considered picking up today was A Country of Ghosts by Margaret Killjoy, about an anarchist society that fights against colonizers and tries to defend themselves using asymmetrical warfare. Sounds cool. It’s short and I perhaps should have picked it up to read, but I ended up not, preferring to read other books (well tbh I’ve been mostly reading Red Sails essays of late). I can predict that she has them win the fight and that it will be inspirational, given what passing familiarity I have had with her body of work previously — she focuses on uplifting stories, “cool people doing cool stuff”, hope! (¿though might one say “hopium”?).
This reminded me that I’d read Alien Clay by Adrian Czajkowski and while I enjoyed it, I couldn’t help but note that
spoilers
the decentralized revolutionary organizing failed until the entire alien planet biosystem stepped in!
Which sent a message, likely not what the author intended, that anarchist organizing doesn’t work without some big unreal maguffin to back it up. But that wasn’t the point, the point was to show how it could work well and explore some cool xenobiology
Brave New World? Speculative fiction. 1984? Speculative fiction. Lord of the Flies? Fiction. Fiction, fiction, fiction, ideas must be explored in fiction, and those explorations are as valid as explorations that are not in fiction but are in the realm of real analysis.
Thread 2: Fleeing from the Horror of Reality into the Comfort of the Dream
Or, denying reality in favor of some hopeful message about how we can solve the unreal problems instead of doing the hard work to understand and grapple with the real problems
Liberals get upset with me for pointing out that the Democrats are genocidal Nazis and I think in some cases it’s because that makes them feel like the problem is too big to solve. As long as the problem is just with Trump, the problem is solvable or endurable. But if the problem is both wings of the AmeriKKKan Nazi Party, then it’s too insurmountable. “Stop fascism in the Fourth Reich? Better to hope that a pig will sprout wings! Therefore I need Cuddlefish to be wrong so that I can have hope, therefore she must be wrong.” Even though my message is not one of hopelessness, but a call to action, a naming of the problem so that the problem can be fought! They cannot conceive of a way and so turn to fiction and nebulous dreams to comfort them. Empty platitudes about community, about civil society and norms. Or perhaps they are upset about the threat to their privileges, their class positions, and so turn to comforting fictions instead. There are many reasons they turn their backs on reality, but they always do for whatever reason. They have to, to preserve the fiction.
Anarchists have gotten upset with me for going “hell yeah dude, that sounds awesome! Let’s look at these ideas of a better future more and delve into how that would work! What are some historical examples, successes and failures?” Or worse, when I asked questions about how to solve certain problems, I wasn’t even trying to poke holes in their utopian vision, I was trying to figure out how it would work, but somehow I was bourgeois for not being ok with letting people just die of cancer at age 30. I’ve tried to really dig in, but their answers are so nebulous and involve a lot of “just-so” magical thinking. It’ll work out somehow. Hookworm isn’t real. We will be greeted as liberators rather than as those bastards who destroyed the systems upon which people rely for survival. Every small community will figure things out through cooperation so we don’t need to think about what comes next. Source? Trust me bro. Read some poetry. The dream is beautiful.
The dream is beautiful. It is, and it’s a dream. They’re all dreams. But I try to work in the realm of reality, and reality is a nightmare from which we can never wake. Instead we must do what we can to fight against what makes it a nightmare, and that is ugly and difficult. It helps to look at what people have done that have survived for longer than 10 years, which means looking to the Soviet Union, Vietnam, Cuba, China, North Korea, all these countries that we’re not supposed to look at because they’re “authoritarian”. And it means looking at the ones that didn’t survive long either — rest in power, Comrade Sankara! — to understand why they were able to be defeated and try to avoid similar defeats if possible.
I don’t have a list of those historical examples from Anarchists other than the Zapatistas and Rojava, both of which have heavy asterisks (Zapatistas don’t even call themselves anarchist; Rojava had to make a deal with The Great Satan to win its wars against Daesh and it paid the devil’s price). The Liberals are even worse, as they give me historical examples which are all brutal genocidal colonialist states whose crimes they either wave away or dismiss as a result of corruption (not venal, but spiritual) that has been purged or will be purged. The liberals live in a dream too, a dream where AmriKKKa wasn’t evil from the start, where France and Britain were not evil empires. They reject reality because the dream is so much more soothing.
“Another world is possible”, the dreamers say at these community meetings where people dream and brainstorm other ways of being. But it’s always abstract, hypothetical, nebulous. Their zines ask thought-provoking questions without proposing hard answers that can be cross-examined, and perhaps they must never pin down something specific because specifics can be evaluated and scrutinized, and the dream cannot survive scrutiny.
“Another world is possible because it was possible, we had it” said anarchists who recommended to me The Dawn of Everything, and they were silent when I brought up serious critiques I’d read of it which point out its many methodological flaws.
“If you will it, it is no dream” arch-Zionist Theodor Herzl said. Evola and Nietzsche were both quite taken with the dream of a past that never was. Is it inherently reactionary to fixate so much on dreams instead of on hard reality?
I think there’s a difference between saying “I think things should be different in these ways, both vague and specific, and I am willing to fight for that and to take steps to achieve those changes even though they may not happen in my lifetime because I may die in the struggle”, which is what I think Marxist-Leninists do, and dreaming of a nebulous future wherein things will just work out if we want it badly enough to figure out the details later.
The union of those threads:
Thread 1, speculative fiction, and thread 2, denial of reality and emphasis on dreams, intersect. What is speculative fiction but a fictional exploration of dreams? In a fictional story, anything can go because the author can write it so. Sherlock Holmes can solve any mystery because the universe is created to allow him to do so, save for when his own genius must be subverted for the sake of the plot. Margaret Killjoy’s anarchist commune can win the asymmetrical war. The boys on that island can turn against each other and fall to barbarism rather than what actually happened when boys were stranded at sea. In all cases they are the argument the author puts forth to defend their views, but then they become examples people can point to as proof of those views, as if fiction is somehow not made up! And these threads intersect with that Sim Kerns “tankies are calvinists” thread — Sim decries commenters who bring up the very real fact that social democratic politicians keep betraying the socialist part of their base, or that social democracy does not even attempt to acknowledge the problems of imperialism but simply focuses on redistributing the spoils of said imperialism. Sim retreats into the dream that a better world is possible through elections. (I think? The video has actually been taken down before I could watch it so I’ve only seen clips). I found this comment in a Hexbear thread on their take though, detailing the blurb for a book they wrote: https://hexbear.net/comment/7190533
In an alternate 2020 timeline, Al Gore won the 2000 election and declared a War on Climate Change rather than a War on Terror. For twenty years, Democrats have controlled all three branches of government, enacting carbon-cutting schemes that never made it to a vote in our world. Green infrastructure projects have transformed U.S. cities into lush paradises (for the wealthy, white neighborhoods, at least), and the Bureau of Carbon Regulation levies carbon taxes on every financial transaction.
English teacher by day, Maddie Ryan spends her nights and weekends as the rhythm guitarist of Bunny Bloodlust, a queer punk band living in a warehouse-turned-venue called “The Lab” in Houston’s Eighth Ward. When Maddie learns that the Eighth Ward is to be sacrificed for a new electromagnetic hyperway out to the wealthy, white suburbs, she joins “Save the Eighth,” a Black-led organizing movement fighting for the neighborhood. At first, she’s only focused on keeping her band together and getting closer to Red, their reckless and enigmatic lead guitarist. But working with Save the Eighth forces Maddie to reckon with the harm she has already done to the neighborhood—both as a resident of the gentrifying Lab and as a white teacher in a predominantly Black school.
When police respond to Save the Eighth protests with violence, the Lab becomes the epicenter of “The Free People’s Village”—an occupation that promises to be the birthplace of an anti-capitalist revolution. As the movement spreads across the U.S., Maddie dreams of a queer, liberated future with Red. But the Village is beset on all sides—by infighting, police brutality, corporate-owned media, and rising ecofascism. Maddie’s found family is increasingly at risk from state violence, and she must decide if she’s willing to sacrifice everything in pursuit of justice.
What on earth. What the actual fuck. I cannot express verbally my horror. Oh wait we have emotes. 
This is speculative fiction! This is a radlib fever dream. (I do not know Sim Kern’s politics other than that apparently they oppose Iϟϟntreal’s genocide in Palestine, and they hate “tankies”, so I don’t know what to call them but the vibe I get is somewhere in between liberal and anarchist, hence “radlib”).
I keep coming back to this: when I ask liberals and anarchists to demonstrate their politics, they point to fiction, that is, things that by definition have not happened. When I ask Communists, they point to history, that is, things that actually happened. “But history is booooooring”, say consumers of slop. History is hard. They turn to the realm of dreams instead.
Dreams can be comforting, and they outcompete bleaker material analysis precisely because they allow people to avoid looking at how fucked things are and how much of an uphill battle we have.
I have to ask then, is there value in writing Communist speculative fiction? I don’t want to say fiction is inherently reactionary and cede that ground. I love reading fiction. I’ve enjoyed writing a few stories, and I have ideas for many more myself. Or is that counterproductive, because our task is not to lie to people, not to encourage people to stay in the realm of dreams where they can avoid grappling with reality, but to teach people about the real world?
My current partner is the first person I’ve ever dated who was not a big reader when young. They mostly read nonfiction. And it got me wondering if perhaps, much as being a “reader” and an “intellectual” is fetishized, there is not just as much value and honor in being fully immersed in the world, in the present, in the here and now, grappling with material reality as it is, enjoying what is to be enjoyed and fighting what is not?
Fuck it I have no idea what I’m saying anymore but I’ve procrastinated long enough. Time to go read more about heat mitigation so I don’t boil. 
I may even do my dishes.
I swear when I was a child and saw the logo I thought this dude was oooooooooooooooolllllllllllldddddddddd. His face I recall crinkling with wrinkles in the TV ads when he smiled. But now he just looks normal, not ancient. Yeah he's got white hair but I'm pretty sure that's just those powdered wigs. Option 1: they made him look younger. Option 2: I am no longer 9 years old.
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Cute! Reminds me of a fake metal band album cover I saw on Reddit 12 years ago (aaaahhhh, the passage of time is horrifying!)
Found it. "Album cover for our imaginary metal band, Death Pigeon" And then someone wrote gory lyrics and a tracklist with a story synopsis for it, link below: https://www.reddit.com/r/Metal/comments/wr2ur/album_cover_for_our_imaginary_metal_band_death/