CommunistCuddlefish

Protests aren't about sending a message to the government. The government doesn't give a shit and will not listen. Protests are about sending a message to the people, about signaling what should be accepted and what should not. Protests are about spreading an idea, about leading by example, about signalling to others "hey, you're not alone in your discontent!"

I think the very word "protest" is wrong. They aren't protests. They're demonstrations.

The anti-ICE demonstrations will not convince an evil government to stop abducting people. But they do send the message to everyone else that we don't have to and in fact should not let ICE abduct our neighbors. The anti-genocide demonstrations were never going to stop genocidal western governments from helping Israel slaughter civilians, but they did help spread a message around the world that people need to do something to try to stop it.

I feel like I should have known this already.

These super cute little friends with extremely photogenic faces, cute little antennae, and adorable dopey bumbling flight patterns are popping up in my area for a short period if frantically mating and laying eggs. They spread joy and magic wherever they go like little fairies.

blorp.bot.nu/o/visual_cuisine — just remember that you need a Hexbear account to join.

Description: A collaboration between Soviet Soyuzmultfilm and Japanese Enoki Films, this movie features some adorable penguins as they grow up in the beautiful and harsh Antarctic and come up against the dangers of Man.

Content Warnings: We will be watching the sanitized English version because it is cuter, at the cost of cutting down on some of the blood and death. A discerning eye will still be able to read between the lines and notice:

• Predation, death of animals offscreen

• Disappearance of a main character with no explanation at all, which I will cover.

Other disturbing content:

• Child abduction via poaching.
• parents grieving the deaths of unborn children
• 80's level of gender roles

Aiming for 5PM Central US Time

I just listened to a couple albums by Manilla Road because I learned that songs that I liked from other bands were covers of Manilla Road. (Melechesh, who are pretty based and you should check them out (they've got an album called "As Jerusalem Burns... al-intasar (to victory)" which got them run out of isn'treal) did a cover, and so did Visigoth). And what the goddamned fuck, this era of metal from the 80s is so goofy and the Manilla Road vocalist has such a weird voice, but it's good. It's good! It's catchy! The mixing and all aren't as crisp as I'd expect from music, but it's good anyway! It sounds kind of like modern power metal fused with doom metal but it's not either of them, it's just old-school heavy metal.

I don't know where I'm going. But here are some of the best songs which were all unexpectedly good.

No seriously I listened and started off thinking "wtf this guy's voice is whack and the song compositions are uhhhhhhhhh????" but then after a while I just got used to deciphering the beauty of it and it grew on me. Dragon Star: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrhW0o8lFRs Crystal Logic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJGDmGZjXxk Necropolis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF19h3TXQek

I'm trying to watch a video with comrades but low-key I just want to keep listening to Manilla Road.

And here's a clip of his God Damn America speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYqrXVNfYUI

And here's the full Chickens Coming Home to Roost sermon, it's long but it's also a really cool example of rhetoric and speech and is BASED AS FUCK. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUtZNQ0REFA

Yes this is basically a subtweet about how it's ridiculous to demonize "Christianity" because of the Bible.

I am not and have never been a member of the Church of Christianity, nor will I ever, but I respect the liberatory and militant strains within it.

Fine, I'll admit, I have a problem. I hear obvious bullshit and I sort of automatically filter it out because it's clearly bullshit and nobody will buy into it, and then sometimes it turns out it was actually a Really Big Deal that I probably should have paid some attention to. Made that mistake with Bitcoin, could have been rich but noooo, I ignored it because it was obviously dumb as hell. Another example: I distinctly remember going "What is this Gamergate shit? It'll probably blow over but let me try to see if there's a point to it" and then I got a booty-call from my then-girlfriend that her roommate was heading out to class so I went up to her dorm room, and that was the last I really paid attention to gamergate until years later when it turned out to have become a whole thing. My eyes would just glaze over anytime I saw the word because I basically went "oh yeah its that bullshit that dumbasses were losing their minds over and nobody cares about, I ain't got time to pay attention to that shit" and then it turns out it was actually this major flashpoint for the rise of the particularly bizarre new far right dweebs we get nowadays.

I did the same thing with "tankies". Never heard the term until maybe 2017? and largely ignored it. It just seemed to be a nothingburger, some new term for a few terminally online weirdos who hated Communists, and I assumed they were just fascists because you know who hated the Communists the most? Nazis. But then it spread and more people started using it, and then applying it more broadly (even Bernard Brethren are tankies, apparently?) which meant that it was such a varied term as to have no meaning. And I basically wrote off anyone hating on tankies as some dumbass who wasn't worth listening to because they were too ill informed to have anything of value to say.

It's probably not all of a sudden but it's really dawning on me that this is not some flash in the pan that'll just go away. I've been expecting it to just burn itself out because it's so obviously on its face bullshit. But, fast forward and the term seems to have taken on a whole life of its own. So many people hate on "tankies". Even anarchists I know irl hate on "tankies". Supposedly radical leftists hate on "tankies". I went on a date with an anarchist who started ragging on "tankies" and I just left because what even is that shit? It's become so prevalent I feel I can't ignore it anymore.

Don't support the NATO proxy war that's grinding up Ukrainian lives? Ebil tankie. Don't support genocide in Palestine? Ebil tankie. Wouldn't vote for Genocide Joe or Holocaust Harris? Ebil tankie. Not racist against Chinese people? Ebil tankie. Think Cuba and Venezuela are cool actually? Ebil tankie. Don't like NATO? Ebil tankie. Post on Hexbear? Ebil tankie.

I didn't grow up during the Cold War so idk how AmeriKKKan society was about Communists, but I don't remember any of this level of prevalent rabid anti-Communism from liberals and even people who fancy themselves as so-called radical leftists in like, 2000 - 2015. This is getting absurd and frankly baffling. Not too long ago a bunch of these same people were saying socialism is cool, war is bad, black and brown lives matter. But now all of a sudden it seems like you actually apply those slogans and you're an "ebil tankie".

What makes it seem extra insidious is that basically all of this seems to feed back into supporting USAdian warmongering and imperialism. Like, what is a "tankie"? When you ask people they'll say "Authoritarian Communists" but it really just seems that they call anyone who isn't deepthroating the boot of the AmeriKKKan Empire a "tankie".

How did this happen? What is going on?

I don't know where exactly to post this but the memes comm seems fitting. I've gone from finding the capitalist Democrats offputting and funny in how pathetic they are to genuinely horrifying and terrifying. There's something -- a lot of things -- fundamentally very wrong with them. If you look at the actual impacts of their actions it's clear they are murderers, and I feel like I'm going insane when people act like they're these friendly folksy wholesome heroes. I can see something that others can't! Isn't that insanity? But I'm the one who sees clearly, sees the truth, and they are the ones who are deluded and have their vision clouded by Capitalist lies: the lie that it is safe to get Covid over and over, the lie that genociding Palestinians is good, the lie that America is a force for good in the world instead of the most evil, tyrranical, and murderous empire to threaten the world since the Nazi Third Reich broke its teeth trying to take on the Soviet Union.

The King in Yellow imagery is perfect, and crossing that with king charles' beautiful bloody portrait that reveals what blood-stained eldritch monsters rule over us makes for a good effect.

Biden's smile is not the reassuring smile of your cozy safe grandpa, it's the creepy smile of a serial killer.

I mean I do care about it in the sense that I care about not wanting the US to become even more of a white supremacist Christian fascist imperialist genocidal autocracy than it already is. But I don't see anything I can do about it that would be even remotely effective. And more than that I just don't see anyone else who actually cares about it enough to even try to do something about it so what good is me "caring" even supposed to do?

Now I do see a lot of white liberals (and "progressives", and even some white people who consider themselves leftists) panicking about it. But then when pressed about what is to be done to stop it, their solution is always, always, ALWAYS just "vote for (Genocide) Joe", which tells me they don't actually care about Project 2025, they just want to use it as a cudgel to get me to vote for the same ghouls who are blowing up Palestinians and who have let the spooky scary Republican Party get this powerful. But when I point out to them that they obviously don't really care because they aren't interested in addressing the roots of fascism or doing anything real to stop fascism, they get all indignant and upset at me, call my takes "disturbing", "monstrous", "privileged", "psychotic", and after getting that a bunch I do have to wonder if maybe I just have some massive blind spot and am getting this wrong. But they won't tell me what is actually factually wrong about what I say.

Besides, what do they want me to do about it? They can't seriously expect me to back a party that loves genocide, but they won't suggest anything else.

Idk I just feel like the majority of people I see raising a fuss about Project 2025 and the threat of a "Trump dictatorship" are comfortable, privileged white liberals, usually white queer liberals, who have never had to worry about the government targeting their demographics until the last few years. I and every other queer poc I know is like, "oh, they're going to go after me for another thing? Sure whatever, put it on the pile of other shit they throw at us, what's one more? Now let's get back to trying to stop the fascist Democratic Party from stealing money from our paychecks to bankroll a genocide against some of the actual most vulnerable and oppressed people in the world. If Project 2025 actually lands here we'll fight that too, but we will NEVER throw away our solidarity with the wretched of the earth to preserve what comfort we do have."

Please Hexbearians, tell it to me straight: Is Project 2025 something we actually need to pay attention to and if so what can we actually do about it? Or is the furor over it just a bunch of fragile white people panicking because they might finally be lumped in with the rest of us and finally get targeted for oppression too?

Turns out I’ve got major gender problems and wish I had been born a girl. [Removed as it was pointed out how problematic and doomer my sentiment was] I'm well past puberty and am very masculine-looking. The dysphoria’s gotten worse over the years though, or maybe the gender affirming feelings have gotten more tempting as I’ve stopped being in denial so much and have explored a bit of transitional stuff — shaving, doing my hair different, less masculine clothing. But I just don’t know what to do next.

I’m terrified by the idea of trying to hormonally transition, mostly because I have a very high sex drive and am very attached to it. Dysphoria about the shape of my genitals aside, I do want my dick to keep getting hard, I want to still be able to orgasm from using it, and I want to still produce cum for my partner to enjoy. From what I’ve read hormonal transitioning would eventually disable all of those, and I feel for me that would be even worse than not transitioning.

I’m also pretty strong and muscular, and I don’t want to lose that muscle and put on a bunch of fat from going on estrogen, which I’ve seen happen to couple friends who’ve transitioned.

So, hormonal transitioning looks too risky for me. Still, I thought maybe I could still achieve a good degree of comfort with non hormonal transitioning, maybe getting rid of all the body hair for a start. But when it comes to non hormonal transitional steps it all feels so incredibly daunting. I’ve been “blessed” with prodigious masculinity, the ability to grow hair all over my body like a beast. Shaving is a pain and I grow hair so fast that my face turns into stubble in less than a day after shaving.

Nonhormonal transitional steps I’ve considered: Shaving all over. Problem: I’ve only shaved a bit of my body and it gets really old and time-consuming really fast.

Laser hair removal. Problem: Supposed to be very expensive, and it works better on people with white skin and light, fair hair, neither of which have I (EDIT: CORRECTION: works better with dark hair so at least I have that going for me). In particular the at-home DIY machines do not work as well in those use cases, and without training there’s more risk of damaging your own skin trying to do it.

Electrolysis hair removal: I had a bit done in the past on my face. It was not super effective, takes a lot of sessions, and was very painful even with a local anesthetic cream. On top of that, while I might be able to have it done on much of my body it is impossible to have done on my face because of Covid — I’d have to take off my respirator and that’s not happening unless I could find a practitioner wearing an N95 in an isolated room with heavy air filtration.

More drastic nonhormonal steps — facial feminization surgery, breast implants — are even more inaccessible because at this point very few healthcare practitioners give a shit about Covid so it’s nigh impossible to see a surgeon or even get to a gender care clinic. Regardless, the uncontrollable hair is a big barrier — I wouldn’t want to consider other options before getting it dealt with in the first place.

Everything seems so painful, risky, and dauntingly expensive to the point where idk how I could afford it anyway.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you, comrades.

I remember seeing someone mention there is a Mastodon instance for Hexbear, but I don't remember what it was called. I got kind of bothered by the one I was on (kolektiva.social has a lot of cool rad people but it also has too many unserious people with "tankies fuck off" in their bio), and someone I want to follow blocked the entire kolektiva instance because he was getting harassed by too many racists from there, so I'm looking to make a new account. Hexbear has proven to be the best part of the fediverse I've found so far and it'd be nice to make my new Mastodon account there too.

I watched the show Avatar The Last Airbender for the first time in my life in 2019 on a friend's recommendation. I was somewhat bothered by it seeming appropriative and orientalist, and how it was basically a show about Western imperialism set in the exotic trappings of Eastern and indigenous cultures. Still, I enjoyed those trappings and the martial arts choreography.

But then early on it did anticolonial freedom fighters dirty yet that was portrayed as a good thing, and that bothered me. I chalked it up to children's cartoons in the mid-2000s having to follow certain tropes about violence and didn't just ragequit there. Then when they did the blood-bender dirty I rationalized it away with "well they're kids who haven't been imprisoned and tortured like she has, they haven't learned that you have to be merciless when fighting merciless colonizers." Then when Aang did some bullshit peace-policing and manipulated Katara into not taking the justified revenge she so clearly needed yet that was portrayed as a good thing, I figured hey, I wasn't raised Buddhist, I don't know how this spiritual system handles things, maaaaybe this is in character... (but it was still very shitty of him to get in her way). And I was very close to the end and wanted to see how this played out and I'd already excused a couple bits of lib shit so I kept going.

Despite those flaws, I persisted in watching and found it pleasant and enjoyable enough. When it ended I wanted more. But the very first episode of Legend of Korra was an utter disappointment -- the liberatory heroes of the first series had just implemented neoliberalism and the setting was some uninspired 1920s new world shit, and the political questions that were being set up seemed utterly boring. So I stopped watching and dropped the entire franchise like a hot potato.

Well, apparently the ATLA story gets continued in comics and I was wondering if they're at all good or not. I want to read them because I want them to be good -- there's enough fun stuff in the first series that it could be and there are questions the show left unanswered I think I would like to know. But at the same time the world-building and rank liberalism in some of the plots make me fear that I would just ruin what enjoyment I got out of the show the first time around. If they have even a drop more of liberal "killing your oppressors makes you worse than them" bullshit in it I feel like it would sour any positive feelings I had about the show.

I guess now that I've typed it out the answer is obvious: Don't bother, there's better shit out there to read that isn't written by politically illiterate culturally appropriative liberals. Still, I'd welcome any comrades' thoughts!