You don't need to run a candidate for president to gain popular support. And the candidate will never be the center of the revolution - that's "Great Man Theory" talking.

Revolution happens through popular support of the workers. Building and growing a coalition of working class orgs is where we should be putting in our efforts.

I was dissapointed that the one communist didn’t brutally blow Anastasia’s brains out, but I definitely think the play ... inspires violence in me.

I don't think this is a good thing. It is true that violence becomes regrettably necessary in resistance and revolution, but it should not be something we take pleasure in, for a myriad of reasons. It leads to adventurism, it hinders our ability to grow our movement, and it puts our culture in a bad spot post-revolution towards successfully building towards communism.

And on a personal level, no, you should never, ever tell your friend that you would kill them under some hypothetical scenario. You should never let the conversation get to the point where that's even a question being asked.

My disillusionment in Mormonism and subsequent embrace of atheism is what set me on the path that led me here.

We've got the University of Michigan here in Ann Arbor, Michigan State University is in Lansing. Very distinct and unique names /s

But yeah, checks out. Very much an affluent "middle class" city. The genocide in Gaza has stirred militancy in the student population here and in the surrounding area, Biden is not popular.

I cut out carbs and started hiking but I didn't cut out all of my "vices." Caffeine and the occasional shot of liquor, sex, video games. Way too much YouTube, the most pernicious of all.

Watching the weight go down on the scale also helped form a positive feedback loop.

It gets easier after a month-ish and you've somewhat adapted, but yeah it's a struggle. I completely fell off when lockdown started years back.

• old webpages (like from the 2000s) are fast and snappy
• new webpages take much longer to load

Modern webpages are less like a page and more like a full blown application. If you're not careful you'll get an unoptimized mess, which is exacerbated when you put a bunch of ads on top.

That being said I don't have memories of everything being snappy 20 years ago - there were messy scripts and gigantic images that made Geocities and Angelfire sites near unusable back then as well.

I've had to limit my interactions on both here and especially Hexbear because of this toxicity. Idealistic based bickering and hatred of individuals. Constantly wishing death on groups of people instead of understanding the material reasons they act the way they do.

I found memes like "To the wall with them!" amusing enough at first; but then I realized that more often than not the meme is being used seriously.

Even if you argue that there is, they are certainly not aligned with Israeli Bourgeoisie

He's a soc dem in the US, it's what we should expect. It's why I started putting my effort into CPUSA.

The fact that a 4 day workweek was a part of strike negotiations is heartening - this won't be the last time unions press for this, hopefully more aggressively over time.

Plant the seeds. Don't get dragged into a protracted argument if it doesn't turn into a good faith conversation. Take a deep breath. It's ok. Things take time.